The stepping up of state terrorism and the counter-terrorist response have reinforced a climate of nationalism among both Turks and Kurds. The government had promised reforms but has in fact made no concessions. This was the climate at the time of the Newroz.
The tension reached its height with warlike declarations: president Özal announced that the army would carry out a huge "Spring operation" to clean the PKK out of the country if that organization did not "lay down its arms". ', while the PKK envisaged a big uprising for the spring along with a "war government and a Kurdish parliament". . The whole country was awaiting the foretold bloodletting, described by journalists as the "Spring syndrome".
No political control of armed forces
Neither Demirel not the SHP leader Inönü were in favour of using the methods preferred by the previous prime minister Özal. But the civilian government has long ago lost control of the police, the army and the special brigade, who are the real masters on the ground, not to mention the death squads. Furthermore, insofar as the government knows that it cannot rule in the Kurdish regions without repression, it has chosen the military option, even if it is not happy with all the consequences of this decision. They have made their choice: "first military control, then reforms", ", according to Inönü.
Since 1984, when it launched its guerilla campaign, the PKK has grown from a rather isolated group of 500 people to an organization of some 10,000 militants which carries out mass propaganda and organization both in Turkey and abroad.
The PKK's legitimacy is essentially a product of state repression in Kurdistan, which has been ruled by "exceptional" military 1. The HEP was founded by the Kurdish deputies of the SHP, expelled from their party for having participated at a conference on the Kurdish question in Paris in October 1989, and by deputies originating from the DISK trade union federation. The HEP was not able to participate in the legislative elections of
1991, having not yet fulfilled the legal conditions. Finally, the HEP made an electoral alliance with the SHP. The SHP, supported by the HEP, won an overwhelming majority of the votes in the south-east and 22 Kurd deputies were elected on its lists. The former president of the HEP and former general secretary of DISK, Fehmi Isiklar, was vice-president of the parliament. Thus, for the first time in the history of the republic, a Kurdish party appeared in the
Turkish parliament, even if through indirect means.
2. See Cumhuryiet, December 7, 1991.
that organization out. FUAT ORÇUN A FTER the repression, 14 of the
20 Kurdish deputies from the Popular Social Democratic Party (SHP — a member of the coalition government and of the Socialist International) resigned from the party, putting an end to the entryism they had been engaged in since the October 1991 elections (see box on p. 15)
The clashes and the demonstration of force by both sides at Newroz proved that neither the state nor the PKK are yet able to definitively defeat the other. After eight years of guerilla war, the PKK has not succeeded in significantly increasing its sphere of action beyond the South-Eastern region, apart from occasional raids. Furthermore it has been losing strength on its home ground.
The PKK has been able to build up a certain strength by armed propaganda, but this has also hidden the need to find new forms of political action. The Kurdish national movement cannot be reduced to the PKK alone, even if this is an unavoidable part of it.
Thanks to the coalition between the Party of the Just Way (DYP, led by Demirel) and the SHP after the elections, Kurdish deputies and supporters of a negotiated solution to the Kurdish question from the People's Labour Party (HEP) indirectly found themselves in government as SHP members. 1
However the DYP hawks could not accept 1A a this. Incidents took place at the very opening International Viewpoint # 227• of the parliamentary session when two Kurdish deputies, Leyla Zama and Hapit Dicle, spoke in Kurdish about the friendship of Turks and Kurds. The press and the DYP were outraged, while the SHP considered that this act meant that the two had effectively resigned from the party.
Another Kurdish SHP deputy was thrown off the parliamentary rostrum by DYP deputies — his coalition partners — for raising the Kurdish question. Thus at the very moment when the PKK leader was declaring that it was "necessary to give the government a chance" conciliation was being ruled out inside the ruling coalition.
Despite soothing declarations from Demirel, who had "recognized the Kurdish reality" and permitted the publication of Kurdish language newspapers, the assassination of Kurdish militants by death squads continued. A few weeks later the tension went up a notch. Five PKK militants were killed and the army's "special brigade" fired on the funeral crowd leaving eight dead.
Attack on working class neighbourhood
The next day a group of young Kurdish militants threw molotov cocktails into a big shop in a working class neighbourhood of Istanbul — 11 people were killed, including children, in the fire that followed. This event children, in the tire that Tollowed. Ils event
April 27, 1992
From the mountains to the parliament
THE PKK launched its guerilla war in 1984.
• In Spring 1990 huge demonstrations took place at
Kurdish funerals at Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi, Idil, Slirt and Batman.
This was the start of what has been called the Kurdish intifada.
This rebellion went beyond the limits of the PKK's activities, even if it remained confined in a narrow geographical area, and sounded the death knell of the traditional political parties in the
Kurdish South East of Turkey
(except for the Islamic RP).
• The legislative elections of
October 1991 and the election - with nearly 70% of the votes - of the HEP candidates on the SHP lists led to the formation of a coalition government which gave rise to hopes of a softening of
Turkish policy towards the
Kurds.
• The recent confrontations during Newroz have represented a test of the balance of political and military forces between the state and the PKK, and have led to the resignation from the SHP of the Kurdish deputies.
However, the entry into parliament, for the first time, of a Kurdish party is of major significance. * regimes for more than 14 years. As Demirel himself has pointed out, someone who was five years old in 1978 will have reached adulthood - and an age to join the guerillas — without ever having known a "normal" regime. The Kurdish identity and any kind of cultural rights have been denied for years, the Kurdish language and Kurdish names being prohibited. The army has insulted, imprisoned, tortured and killed; a police brigade even forced the people of one Kurdish village to eat their own excrement. These acts give a "justification" to the violence of the PKK.
The denial of the Kurdish identity, poverty, and state violence and repression have produced a counter-violence which seems justified in the eyes of the Kurds subjected to such treatment.
The PKK thus has mass influence; other political currents have not yet been able to present themselves in these regions and those who have dared to do so have been wiped out by the PKK, which has declared itself the sole representative of the Kurds and will accept no competition in this field. Nor does
TURKEY / KURDISTAN it permit opposition in its own ranks, not hesitating to do away with internal critics.
Thus, the PKK's "democratic revolution" is pursued with methods that have little to do with democracy.
Ideologically it is under Stalinist influence. It has justified its suppression of its opponents in the Kurdish movement by reference to the Moscow Trials. However in more recent times its propaganda has been dominated by integral nationalist and even religious themes.
All other currents in the Kurdish national movement find themselves squeezed between the state and the PKK, as does the
Turkish left. The latter is regretting at leisure its failure to take the Kurdish issue seriously and is morally crushed by the
PKK, all the more so in that the latter, unlike the Turkish left, represents a real force.
Furthermore the slightest criticism of the
PKK is considered to amount for support to the Turkish state. In this Manichean world, the Turkish left is tending to turn into an appendage of the PKK.
### Kurdish issue dominates political life
The political situation in Turkey has become dominated by the Kurdish question, pushing other democratic issues into the background. On March 8, 1992 — International Women's Day — slogans relating to the Kurdish question became the main theme of a demonstration (not organized by the independent women's movement) of
300 women in Istanbul.
It is the same in the union movement.
Every struggle becomes reduced to a single question: the proclamation of the Kurdish identity. That identity itself is presented in a narrow nationalist way, without any definite social project. The PKK leader Apo recently talked about a federation, specifying that this would be a society of a "Western type".
In the recent elections, the PKK hesitated over which party to support. At first Apo declared that the SHP leader Inönü was even more the creature of the Turkish state than Özal.3 After the elections, he confirmed that the PKK would have been able to support Özal's Party of the Motherland (ANAP), the successor to the military regime.4
Subsequently, the president of the HEP in his turn confirmed that negotiations for an electoral alliance had taken place with the Islamist Party (RP) but that the alliance had failed owing "to a disagreement on the regions and the dividing up of the lists". 5
After the failure of its negotiations with the HEP, the RP sought an agreement with the Turkish fascists and the HPE made an alliance with Inönü's SHP. That is to say, to get as many Kurdish deputies into parliament as possible, the Kurdish nationalists were ready to make alliances with even their worst enemies.
Even after the Newroz massacres Apo has continued to make overtures to Özal. "In fact, of all of them it is Özal who understands us the best... I am sure that he even has some sympathy for us. It is clear that he thinks about us a lot. Perhaps he is even thinking about telephoning me. If anyone is going to find a solution to our problem, it will be Özal. He says he is a Kurd and talks of a federation. It is Özal who is most in touch with the situation" 6
A series of terrorist attacks in the big cities has provoked a nationalist and even racist anti-Kurdish mood in the Turkish population. Certainly, the PKK cannot be held solely responsible since there were already plenty of nationalist chauvinists, racists and fascists in the Turkish population, before the PKK even existed, but that does not justify such actions.
The Turkish population has no real interest in opposing the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people and the PKK has a duty not to alienate the working class and the oppressed of Turkish society. In reality the indignation of Turkish workers in response to terrorist attacks works to the benefit of the state, while the social layers who would be the natural allies of the Kurdish movement are rendered increasingly passive. Furthermore, the real level of support for the PKK among the Kurds in Istanbul is doubtful.
Rather than appeal to the Turkish masses, the PKK has decided to engage in a duel with the state. Faced with the near impossibility of winning a military victory over the Turkish army, it seems to have opted to search for methods of bringing internal and international pressure to bear on the Turkish government.
After the Newroz, the Kurdish deputies called for a referendum under United Nations auspices. They hope to get the question onto the international agenda to force the government to negotiate on the question of the rights of the Kurdish minority.
It is indeed true that international agreements signed by Turkey give the Kurdish movement some room for manoeuvre as far as cultural rights and some local administrative arrangements are concerned. Furthermore, the HEP, which has a strong electoral base — and which has decided to ask for admission to the Socialist International — will be represented in parliament.
Extreme nationalism and religious themes
Starting out in the Stalinist camp, the PKK has been carried further towards extreme integral nationalism,? while the strength of 3. See Nokta, August 8, 1991. 4. See Cumhuryiet, December 7, 1991. 5. See Cumhuryiet, December 20, 1991. 6. See Milliyet, March 25, 1992. fority of the Kurds by reference to ancient hisper: 1 5 7. The PKK has also attempted to prove the "supergoing as far back as the Medes of 2,600 years ago! going as far back as the Medes of 2.600 vears non!
TURKEY / KURDISTAN religious fundamentalism has led it to make alliances with these forces and more and more openly employ religious tones in its propaganda.8
Furthermore, the PKK has a de facto alliance with Iran, which it considers as an anti-imperialist regime, omitting to say that this regime too has massacred Kurds on its own territory. The PKK is also known to have close links with the Baathist dictatorship in Syria.
We are thus, for the time being, in a dead end. The weakness of the workers' movement in the west of Turkey leaves the state a free hand to pursue repression in the Kurdish east, strengthening the PKK. The latter in its turn blocks off any possibility of the emer-