TURKEY
"Two, three, many Intifadas"
TOTALLY ignored by the international media, a war has been going on in Turkish Kurdistan since the summer of 1984, between guerillas of the Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK) and the Turkish state. According to official figures, more than 1,700 people have died, a third of them PKK militants, a third poliçe and soldiers and the rest civilians. The confrontations have essentially been concentrated in the Mardin and Siirt regions, near to the Syrian frontier.
On March 14 this year, the funeral of a PKK militant turned into a demonstration and the army fired into the air to disperse the crowd, killing one person. Two days later, during this person's funeral service at Nusaybin, clashes took place between the police and the population, with women and children throwing stones at the forces of order. Shopkeepers shut their shops in protest and demonstrations spread throughout the region, to Cizre, Silopi, Idil, Slirt, and Batman, with hundreds of arrests and several more deaths. This is the beginning of an uprising. The Turkish state now has a with counter-guerilla operations against the PKK.
Besides the regular forces the Turkish state has decided to arm one part of the population against the other, creating village protection units (VPU), a sort of civilian militia whose personnel are well paid for by the state. While the average annual income of the inhabitants of Mardin and Siirt is $280, (as compared to an average for Turkey as a whole of $1,400), these "protectors of the village" get a monthly salary of some $200.
This policy has social consequences. Some 200,000 people live on the salaries of these 18,000 "protectors". But, above all, the VPU are organized on the basis of the traditional social hierarchy of the clans (asiret). The clan chiefs are getting rich and their power is being reinforced. This system, a caricature of the "Hamidiye divisions" of the Ottoman Empire, strengthens social inequality by creating a privileged layer devoted to the Turkish state. Even so, there are rumours that some of this money finds its way to the PKK.
The recent uprising is more a response by the population to the Turkish state's repression than the product of the agitation of any specific political current. A
3) 17 May 7, 1990 • #184 International Viewpoint
"Kurdish intifada" on its hands. FUAT ORÇUN T HESE RIOTS have caused a wave of panic in the ruling spheres in Turkey. The National Security Council, where the higher levels of the military and political bureaucracy meet, was urgently convoked. Putting aside their internal quarrels, the leaders of the three main parties, the ruling Motherland Party (ANAP), the Social Democratic People's Party of Erdal Inönü (SHP), and Süleyman Demirel's Party of the Just Way (DYP) came together under the auspices of the Republic's President Ozal, to find a consensus and a "national" response.
On April 10, the government published its new measures for Kurdistan. These involve a total administrative and judicial reorganization of the region, amounting to a kind of unacknowledged permanent martial law. Two towns, Batman and Sirnak, have been elevated to the status of prefectures to ensure better administrative centralization (or, to organize the repression better). Some 50,000 white-collar administrative posts and 40,000 posts for workers are to be created in the region. The powers of the region's special prefect are to be still further increased.
Henceforth the "super-governor" will be able to banish from the region and send into internal exile anyone considered to be a threat to public security, including judges, prosecutors and military personnel, without possibility of appeal. The right to strike is subject to the prefect's approval. Censorship of the press is to be stepped up, with penalties going from big fines to closure of the presses - even if they are outside the region. Furthermore the functionaries' wages will be raised from two to five times, amounting to privileges of the colonial type.
The regime is determined on a military and repressive solution. It has thus, by creating a quite special type of administration for this region, in a sense officially "proclaimed" that Kurdistan exists.
In reality, the Turkish state long ago abandoned any idea of controlling the situation through "reason" and has relied solely on repression. While the South East of the country is the poorest part of Turkey, it is richly endowed from the point of view of forces of order per inhabitant. For a few million people there are 65,000 gendarmes, several regiments of infantry, a division (13 regiments) of commandos and a division of regular soldiers. On top of this must be added the 1,500 Rambos of the special unit charged
TURKEY national "counter-identity" has been created amongst the Kurds.
Kurdistan is one of the poorest and most backward parts of the country. At Siirt and Mardin there are only five enterprises employing more than ten people. The unemployment rate is triple the Turkish average. Some 40% of the population is illiterate. It is also, historically, the region where Kurdish national identity has been strongest. The resistance to the Turkish language has been most stubborn, while the population reacted strongly • to the death of Barzani.!
For the past year there have been Kurdish nationalist demonstrations in this region as well as in Istanbul 2. But this is the first time that the situation has become really explosive, even if the tension is not the same throughout Kurdistan. For example, in Diyarbakir, the most developed town in Kurdistan, the protest demonstrations and the shopkeepers' strike were not as large or as widely followed. Even so some 50,000 shops closed.
The development of the Kurdish national movement in Turkey has been different from the other parts of Kurdistan? . In fact, if the national dimension is taken away, the Kurdish intelligentsia, has the same characteristics — and defects — as the Turkish intelligentsia, with which it has been intimately associated from the start. Ideology has taken priority over serious study of the concrete social, economic and political problems of Kurdistan. In fact the only serious studies of this ques tion are by a Turk, Ismail Besikçi, who has been totally dedicated to this cause and has spent ten years in jail for his writings. He has recently been arrested twice for his last two books.
Birth of independent Kurdish organizations
In the 1960s, Kurdish intellectuals joined the first legal socialist party of the period, the Workers Party of Turkey (TIP). They succeeded in imposing a sort of autonomy for their group, called the "orientals", on the party. There was even an unspoken quota arrangement for them on the leadership. Towards the end of that decade, the first independent Kurdish organizations were created among the youth, notably the Revolutionary Assembly of the Culture of the East (DDKO). The young Kurdish intelligentsia had trouble defining itself politically, although usually considering themselves socialists. In general socialist ideas have been well received in Kurdistan, basically as a result of the inherent radicalism of the population's democratic aspirations.
Starting in the 1970s a new generation of radical militants arrived at the head of the Kurdish national movement, based on their own independent organizations, not under the tutelage of the Turkish organi18 develop their ideas in prison after the mili- zations. Many of these youth had time to International Viewpoint #184 • May 7, 1990 tary coup in 1971. The defeat of Barzani's movement in Iraq had an impact on them. Despite political splits in line with those in the Turkish left (pro-Moscow, proBeijing and so on), the Kurdish left succeeded in reinforcing national consciousness even in the most backward sections of the population. This went to such a point that the traditional bourgeois parties had to make concessions to local feelings to maintain any influence in the region. In the 1980s the Kurdish national question became one of the mainstays of Turkish political life.
After the 1980 coup, while the crushing of the left in general and the workers movement seems to have had long-lasting effects, things have been different in Kurdistan. The repression, which has intensified since the launching of the guerilla struggle by the PKK in 1984 has not cowed the population - quite the opposite.
### Government repression unites Kurds
The policies of the military dictatorship and its civilian continuation, the Özal government, have made daily life unbearable for the Kurds. As a result, the whole population, including those who perhaps were not even initially sympathetic to the PKK, have found themselves on the same side of the barricades. Many of the women and children who have risked their lives by coming into the streets to protest against the repression are certainly unable either to read or write and have probably no idea of the programme or slogans of the PKK. But they know that the soldiers with the rifles are their enemies. It has become impossible to remain neutral between the state and the PKK.
This political change is not only due to the actions of the PKK. For three decades Kurdish national consciousness has been awakening in a way that has not been seen since the start of the century. Furthermore, insofar as all repression against the Kurds also implies the application of anti-democratic measures in Turkey itself, this has caused a reaction within Turkish public opinion, at least as far as respect for the elementary rights of the Kurdish people are concerned.
With the passing of time even sections of the Turkish bourgeois parties have come to realise that any liberalization of the regime, not to speak of a more thoroughgoing democratization, is impossible without taking the Kurdish question into account. But none of them has worked out a concrete project capable of reconciling intransigent defence of the integrity of the Turkish state with recognition of the national identity of the Kurds.
Furthermore, at a time when, on the international stage, Turkey puts itself forward as the defender of oppressed Turkish minorities in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, and even the Caucasus and Central Asia, arguing that they comprise a dis- has comprise dis. tinct national entity, the traditional claim that the Kurds are not a distinct national entity is becoming more and more untenable and ridiculous. In fact, both the regime and the opposition have given up describing the Kurds as "mountain Turks" and the Kurdish language as a Turkish dialect. But if the state representatives recognize the right of people to speak the language they wish as long as Turkish stays the official language, the Kurdish language is still officially forbidden and the statement that the Kurds even exist is still a crime carrying a prison sentence.
The situation in the "Turkish" part of Kurdistan is more complicated than in the other Kurdish areas. Firstly, the region is on the main route that connects Turkey and the Islamic East. Furthermore, not only is the birth rate much higher amongst the Kurds than the Turks, but Kurdish villages and even whole towns are emigrating westwards towards the country's big cities. Thus the Kurdish question has an impact beyond the limits of Kurdistan itself. This creates favourable conditions for those who want to make a link between the national and social questions.
For the moment the Turkish left is completely out of the picture, bogged down in endless discussions and redefinitions. No movement of solidarity, capable of changing the relationship of forces seems to be appearing on the Turkish side — with the exception of some leaflets and limited "vanguard" actions by some small groups. On the other hand, the programmatic projects of the Kurdish groups, in the first place, the PKK, have a certain influence.
The PKK is a nationalist movement with a particularly sectarian Stalinist origin. Before the 1980 coup it was very isolated, owing to its authoritarian methods and its recourse to physical violence as a way of dealing with political differences both within the Kurdish national movement and the Turkish left. The violence was also directed at its own militants and sectors of the population that opposed it. The only excuse that can be made is that it was not the only group to behave in this way! But whatever the content of its political actions, the PKK has succeeded in winning total hegemony over the Kurdish movement and has become a political alternative. Its actions have also had the effect of forcing the regime to speed up its self-reform.
The main proponent of the line of self-reform is Inönü's Social Democratic People's Party. Inönü has recently come up 1. Mustafa Barzani was the principal leader of the Kurdish revolt in Iraq in the 1960s and 70s. 2. Notably at Newroz, the Kurdish new year and on the anniversary of the Halepce massacre. 3. The Kurdish people are divided between five states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the USSR. 4. Bülent Ecevit, ex-prime minister and president of the fourth largest opposition party, the Left Democratic Party (DSP) 1c Party (DSP)
TURKEY / SYRIA
Assad regime increasingly isolated
ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS in the last few months, hundreds of Syrian women, the mothers of leftist political detainees, have demonstrated in the streets of Damascus.
These protests, which have received no coverage abroad, bear witness to the growing crisis of the
Syrian regime.
SAMIR LADKANI with a proposal for a solution based on regional autonomy on Spanish lines. Even so, the same Inönü did not hesitate to expel seven Kurdish deputies from his party. They had commited the "crime" of attending — against the leader's advice - a conference in Paris in mid-October 1989, under the auspices of the Kurdish Institute in Paris and Mme Mitterrand's France-Libertés association.
### Recognition of Kurdish national Identity
Demirel's centre-right Party of the Just Way, even if it does not talk about "Spanish" or "Irish" solutions, has abandoned its traditional position of denying the existence of the Kurds. For Demirel the main reason for the events in the region is its backwardness and the neglect of its economic and social development over the last decade.
Nonetheless, these two parties have given their support to the government to "meet arms with arms and win the affection of the people". The ANAP govemment knows no other solution than that of military repression.
The government is much weakened by internal quarreling between "nationalconservative" and "conservativenationalist" factions and over the status of Özal, who became president in controversial circumstances. Furthermore, the govemment's weakness poses problems for its control of the civilian and military bureaucracies. Confronted by the guerillas and the mass movement, the state has chosen to beef up its forces, despite the increased cost of a military solution,