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
March 23, 2013
Turkey sees accords with
Israel, Kurds as first step
to greater regional role
By Roy Gutman
McClatchy Newspapers
ISTANBUL, Turkey — After two
major breakthroughs in less than a
week – an accord to end a three-year
squabble with Israel and a landmark
step by a jailed Kurdish leader to settle
a 30-year insurgency – Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s star
appears to be rising – and with it,
Turkey’s role as a major regional
power.
Erdogan, 59, a moderate Islamist
and a former mayor of Istanbul, is
described as a man of passion and
plain speech, two characteristics that
sometimes get him in trouble, such
as when he recently equated Zionism
with a crime against humanity.
He seemed matter-of-fact and
serious on Saturday as he voiced
hope that the Turkish-Israeli reconciliation
that President Barack Obama
brokered on Friday might even help
resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute –
though he also called for Israel to
return to the borders that existed
before its 1967 victory in the Six-Day
War, something that Israeli officials
have rejected previously.
“My wish is that common sense
prevails in this process, and we make
this process a permanent one, to end
the years-long suffering, with
(Israel’s) withdrawal to the 1967 borders,”
he told reporters Saturday.
Israel, for the first time in
memory, formally apologized for a
military operation and promised
compensation to families of eight
Turks and one Turkish-American killed
in the attack against the Mavi
Marmara, an aid ship bringing supplies
to civilians in Gaza in July
2010.
Erdogan avoided hyperbole as
well on Thursday when Abdullah
Ocalan, the jailed founder of the PKK
guerrilla group, called for his followers
to end their three-decade-long
military campaign for Kurdish independence
in favor of constitutional
reform and political struggle.
Erdogan termed the move, announ-
ced in a letter read before a crowd of
1 million Kurds, a “positive development.”
But close students of Turkish
affairs say the twin events could be a
turning point for both Turkey’s
democracy and the Middle East
region, as well as providing Erdogan,
who became prime minister in 2003,
a longer lease on power, possibly as
popularly elected president under a
new constitution.
“This is an extraordinarily important
set of developments,” said
James Jeffrey, who retired last year
as U.S. ambassador to Iraq and served
as U.S. envoy in Turkey before
that. “It shows the capability of
Turkey to be an extraordinary player
in the region. They have reached
these accords with folks they’ve been
in conflict with, in one case a diplomatic
conflict, in the other a guerrilla
war.”
He expressed hope that Israel and
Turkey would recognize the need for
cooperation in addressing Iran’s
nuclear program, which Israel is
convinced will produce nuclear weapons,
and in addressing Syria, which
borders both Israel and Turkey and
is now in the third year of a brutal
civil war.
“Sooner or later, we’re going to
have to do something about Syria,”
Jeffrey said. Having Israel and
Turkey talking to one another again
may help the U.S. find a policy that
satisfies both U.S. goals and those of
Israel and Turkey, Jeffrey said.
Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish
Foreign Minister, said the deal with
Israel showed the value of Erdogan’s
insistence on an apology for the Mavi
Marmara incident.
“From the outset, we had a principled
approach,” he said in a television
interview. “This time Israel felt
isolated in the process.” Without the
apology, he said, “this issue would
not have ended, even if it lasted for a
century.”
While the Israel-Turkey reconciliation
may have received more headlines
abroad, in Turkey, the letter
written by Ocalan from his prison on
Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara
near Istanbul, got equal billing, and
may be of even greater significance.
Davutoglu frequently compares
the Kurdish insurgency to “shackles
on our feet” and tells visitors: “Once
we solve this problem, we will be
unleashed from those shackles, and
we will be able to use our full potential.”
Other officials have compared the
insurgency, which has claimed an
estimated 40,000 lives since it began
in 1984, to a cancer. The end of the
fighting, officials hope, will make
Turkey a more attractive place for
both investment and as a partner in
regional political efforts.
“We will be rejuvenated in every
sense,” was the way one official put
it.
Davutoglu gave a hint of the optimism
Turkish officials hold for the
agreement in a visit he paid 10 days
before the Ocalan letter was read to
Diyarbikar, the mostly Kurdish city
in southern Turkey. There, he spoke
about the historic significance of
reconciliation with the Kurds, who
comprise a little less than one fifth of
Turkey’s 80 million population.
He said the peoples of what is now
Turkey were formed in several major
historical waves dating back to the
3rd century B.C. “Whatever anybody
says, wherever there is anyone with
whom we share this common history,
they are our relatives and those with
whom we share our destiny,” he said
in a speech at Dicli University. “That
is also the main element if our
foreign policy. When defining this we
never differentiate between Turks,
Kurds, Albanians or Bosnians. All
these are peoples to which we are
indebted by virtue of our shared history.”
And then he said reconciliation
with the Kurdish minority would liberate
Turkey to play a bigger role on
the world stage.
"Just such a responsibility rests
on our shoulders, my brothers,” he
said. The restoration of peace in
Turkey “will have a domino effect in
other places,” he said. “The winds of
the resolution process blowing in
here with the spring breeze will result
in great spring winds." ◆
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