Reconciling Statism with Freedom: Turkey's Kurdish Opening

Reconciling Statism with Freedom Turkey’s Kurdish Opening Halil M. Karaveli SILK ROAD PAPER October 2010 Reconciling Statism with Freedom Turkey’s Kurdish Opening Halil M. Karaveli © Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program – A Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center Johns Hopkins University-SAIS, 1619 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 Institute for Security and Development Policy, V. Finnbodav. 2, Stockholm-Nacka 13130, Sweden www.silkroadstudies.org “Reconciling Statism with Freedom: Turkey’s Kurdish Opening” is a Silk Road Paper published by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the Silk Road Studies Program. The Silk Road Papers Series is the Occasional Paper series of the Joint Center, and addresses topical and timely subjects. The Joint Center is a transatlantic independent and non-profit research and policy center. It has offices in Washington and Stockholm and is affiliated with the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy. It is the first institution of its kind in Europe and North America, and is firmly established as a leading research and policy center, serving a large and diverse commu- nity of analysts, scholars, policy-watchers, business leaders, and journalists. The Joint Center is at the forefront of research on issues of conflict, security, and development in the region. Through its applied research, publications, research cooperation, public lec- tures, and seminars, it functions as a focal point for academic, policy, and public dis- cussion regarding the region. The opinions and conclusions expressed in this study are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Joint Center or its sponsors. © Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, 2010 ISBN: 978-91-85937-91-2 Printed in Singapore Distributed in North America by: The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies 1619 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 Tel. +1-202-663-7723; Fax. +1-202-663-7785 E-mail: [email protected] Distributed in Europe by: The Silk Road Studies Program Institute for Security and Development Policy V. Finnbodavägen 2, SE-13130 Stockholm-Nacka E-mail: [email protected] Editorial correspondence should be addressed to Svante E. Cornell, Research and Pub- lications Director, at either of the addresses above (preferably by e-mail). Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 7 Glasnost à la Turca ......................................................................................................11 A “Road Accident” ......................................................................................... 19 The Gorbachev Syndrome ............................................................................ 22 A Leap in the Dark? ....................................................................................... 25 The Ghosts of History .................................................................................. 28 A House Divided ........................................................................................... 33 Saving the State ......................................................................................................... 43 “We are Trembling with Fear” ..................................................................... 53 From the Turkish-Pagan Synthesis to a Turkish-Kurdish Condominium? .............................................................................................. 58 Slaying the Zombies? ................................................................................................ 65 “Real” Kurds and “Mature” Turks .......................................................................... 80 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 90 About the Author ........................................................................................................93 Preface For decades, the Kurdish question has been Turkey‟s most intractable problem, and one that has mired both the country‟s domestic development and foreign relations. Domestically, Turkey has suffered greatly from its inabili- ty to resolve the issue. The Kurdistan Workers‟ Party‟s armed campaign against the government, coupled with the regular use of terrorism, drew the Turkish government into a long war that has gone on, with minor interrup- tions, for over two decades – and in which counter-insurgency tactics contri- buted to further alienating large sections of the country‟s Kurdish population. Close to 40,000 people have perished; and increasingly, it has become clear that there is no military solution to the problem. Likewise, as repeated elec- tions in Turkey‟s southeast have shown, Kurdish nationalism is a reality that will not go away through economic development – long the assumption of Turkey‟s elites. Counter-terrorism long provided both a reason and an excuse for the slug- gishness of Turkey‟s democratization process. But while this was not the case initially, the conflict has also increasingly led to fissures on the basis of ethnicity at the societal level. While much focus has been on Kurdish senti- ments, the growth of anti-Kurdish feelings in western Turkey has long es- caped attention. On the external front, the Kurdish issue – and the state‟s response to it – has been the perhaps largest obstacle, rivaled only by the Cyprus dispute, to Tur- key‟s accession to the European Union. Not staying at this, it has been the chief issue complicating Turkey‟s relations with its southern and eastern neighbors as well as with the United States. Indeed, the two American military interventions in Iraq – in 1990 and 2003 – did more than anything else to facilitate the creation of a Kurdish political entity in northern Iraq, with po- werful implications for Turkey. 6 Halil M. Karaveli Addressing the Kurdish issue is thus perhaps Turkey‟s paramount concern. In this study, Halil M. Karaveli does not propose to analyze the Kurdish issue per se, something that numerous scholars have already attempted. Ra- ther, Karaveli‟s purpose is to explain the evolution of the Turkish state‟s thinking around, and handling of, the Kurdish question. Specifically, he ana- lyzes the tumultuous context and evolution of the „Kurdish Opening‟ that the Turkish government has embarked on since 2009. The „Opening‟ was marked by numerous obstacles and setbacks; but as Karaveli shows, it was far from the abortive political adventure that it has often made out to be. Indeed, as Karaveli‟s research amply illustrates, the „Opening‟ was the result of a grow- ing pragmatic consensus in Turkey‟s state institutions – including the power- ful intelligence and military bureaucracies – around the urgency of modify- ing state policy to address the Kurdish question in novel ways. As this study goes to press, Turkey is teeming with reports of the Turkish state being in direct negotiations with the imprisoned head of the PKK, Ab- dullah Öcalan – something barely conceivable only a few years ago. Whatev- er the accuracy of these reports – which neither the government nor state institutions have denied – and whatever the outcome of the process, it is clear that the Turkish state has a fundamentally novel approach to the Kurdish issue. Given the ramifications of the issue, the outcome of this process will have a deep effect on both Turkey‟s domestic politics and foreign relations. Karaveli‟s study, in advancing our understanding of Turkey‟s handling of the Kurdish question, will serve as a must-read for observers with an interest in the future of Turkey and its region. Svante E. Cornell Research Director Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Introduction On July 29, 2009 the government of Turkey unfurled a democratic, or as it came to be known, Kurdish “opening.” Interior minister Beşir Atalay issued an invitation to the public to participate in the search for a solution to the country‟s long-standing Kurdish problem: “I call upon all societal and political actors to take part in this process.”1 The initiative of the government of the Justice and development party (AKP) was an expression of a determination to explore a new path to deal with the Kurdish problem of the Turkish state and to end the quarter century long Kurdish insurgency. The insurgency started on August 15, 1984, when Kurdistan Workers‟ Party (PKK) guerillas launched coordinated attacks on the police stations and army compounds in two counties, Eruh and Şemdinli, in the southeastern provinces of Hakkari and Siirt. The PKK temporarily took control over the two counties, yet the strange events in the remote Southeast were initially not properly appreciated in Ankara; indeed, the assaults did not even make the headlines of the national media until several days later. Prime Minister Turgut Özal dis- missed the attackers as ‟brigands‟ of little consequence. A quarter century later, the death toll in the struggle that has since raged intermittently between the PKK and the Turkish state stood at more than forty thousand. The Kur- dish guerillas had sustained most of those losses, yet it is the Turkish state that has,

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