Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Özeti
BY JENNA KRAJESKI
March 24, 2013
Peace Comes to Turkey
O
n Thursday afternoon, in front of a
crowd so large it surged over fences
and up scaffolding, peace was declared
in Turkey. A letter from Abdullah Ocalan, the
imprisoned founder of the P.K.K. (Kurdistan
Worker’s Party, the armed Kurdish resistance)
had been carried from the island prison where
he is being held to Newroz Park on the outskirts
of Diyarbakir, where it was read—first in
Kurdish and then in Turkish—from a stage
positioned at the tip of an asphalt field that
had been hand-painted with the Kurdish
colors and atop which the crowd waved smaller
red, yellow, and green flags. It was
Newroz, the Kurdish New Year and the start
of spring. “Today a new period is beginning,”
the letter read. “From a period of armed resistance,
a door has been opened to democratic
struggle.” Later, when the speaker read
Ocalan’s question, “Will you answer my call,”
the crowd answered by holding aloft emphatic
v-for-victory signs.
For nearly thirty years, the P.K.K. and the
Turkish Army have been fighting in the
remote mountains on the border of Turkey and
Iraq, along the roads that connect those mountains
to Turkish towns, and sometimes inside
of those towns. Over forty thousand people on
both sides, including civilians, have died.
Ocalan has been in prison since 1999, and the
day marked his return, if only in a sense. It
was met with wild exuberance. Many of the
people at the rally carried flags that featured
only his face against a canary-yellow background.
His portrait swayed above the crowd,
suspended between two lampposts; another
was draped over the stage rafters; another to
the rear of the stage. When the M.C. led a
chant of “Long live Newroz,” the crowd answered
back, using a nickname for Ocalan,
“Long live ‘Apo.’” The slogan for the day put
Ocalan first: “Freedom for Ocalan, Status for
Kurds.” It didn’t matter that the guest of
honor was a no-show. On Newroz, which
typically ushers in a renewed vow of P.K.K.
resistance, the absences are as important as
the attendees. A red chair labelled for Sakine
Cansiz, one of the Kurdish women murdered
in Paris early this year, sat unoccupied in the
front row of the V.I.P. bleachers. Her photo
and the photos of the two young women killed
along with her were emblazoned stage left. As
in years past, Newroz was about remembering
the dead; this year it was also about preventing
more deaths.
Ocalan’s letter went on. “We have sacrificed
our youth. We have paid heavily, but not in
vain. Fighting gave the Kurdish identity back
to Kurds.… But blood spills from the chest of
youth no different from Kurdish as from
Turkish. This is a new period. Instead of arms,
we have ideas.” The words thumped at full
volume from dangling speakers. The crowd
chanted “Apo.” Young men climbed the stage
rafters to drape a giant, slightly battered
Kurdish flag over the top. Rows of revelers
reached the very back of the park, where still
more people tried to climb over the fence.
Farther away the rally morphed into a fair.
Families sat on picnic blankets, eating sticky
pastries and pushing their kids on portable
metal swings, half-listening to the distant pronouncement
of Ocalan, who, as one woman
told me later, “is the only one we trust.”
In 2012, Turkey’s ruling Justice and
Development Party (A.K.P.) banned the
Newroz celebration. Fighting between the
P.K.K. and the army had been especially
intense, and cancelling Newroz was both a
punishment and an attempt to prevent more
violence. But people gathered anyway on the
expansive fields surrounding locked Newroz
Park, and the day devolved into demonstra-
tions and clashes with the police, who saturate
Diyarbakir’s streets. This year’s Newroz was
both larger and more peaceful, and the police
sat leaning against their armored vehicles a
few blocks from the park, looking bored.
It was clear that day that an overwhelming
majority of Kurds support an end to the violence.
But among the crowd at Newroz Park
on Thursday were perhaps a million different
specific expectations. Two women from
Roboski carried framed photographs of their
sons, killed by the Turkish military in 2011
while they smuggled goods from Iraq into
Turkey. The mothers told me what they expected
now that the years of fighting were over:
“We want them to find out who killed our
sons.” Others wanted to be able perform
Kurdish dances and wear Kurdish clothing.
They wanted to be able to speak Kurdish in
school and defend themselves in Kurdish in
court. They wanted to be able to gather publicly
without fear of arrest or aggression from
the police. They wanted the existence of
Kurds acknowledged in the constitution. They
wanted some industry to move to southeast
Turkey. Peace, they hoped, would create an
environment in which these rights could, at
the very least, be discussed. Far from the
stage I climbed a grassy hill and asked an
older man named Habib what he expected.
“There’s never enough money,” he said. “I
want a government job.” Nearby, Fatma sat
smoking a cigarette. “Fighting makes everyone’s
life very difficult,” she said. “If there
is peace, we can speak our language.” It was
understood that, in addition to all of this, everyone
also wanted Ocalan to be released from
prison.
Alongside the hope was urgency. This is not
the first time Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has tried to solve the so-called
“Kurdish issue,” but people felt certain it
would be the last. Newroz was as much a welcoming
of peace as it was a farewell to the
P.K.K.—a bittersweet moment for a community
that hates war but is grateful to those who
waged it. The parting would not be easy.
Without the authority of the P.K.K., Kurds felt
suddenly at the mercy of a Turkish politician
who had disappointed them in the past. The
Kurdish people, they told me, would not be
fooled again. This skepticism was expressed
the loudest by a few P.K.K. youth who took
the stage, all but their eyes obscured by
scarves. “Today we don’t trust the A.K.P.,”
they said. “But we trust our movement, and
we trust our leader… We would like to warn
the A.K.P. that they shouldn’t hinder the process.
We will not accept any conspiracy. If
they conspire, they will know who is their
friend and who is their enemy.”
Distrust on both sides is one of the major
challenges to real reform. The circumstances
of a changing Middle East—war in Syria,
wealth in Iraqi Kurdistan—have made peace
with the Kurds necessary for Turkey, and
Erdogan’s ambitions for the Presidency are
surely a factor as well. But Erdogan has not
often sounded like a leader intent on negotiation
with the Kurds. Just this past ➤
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