These claims clearly distort reality. There is no doubt that both Turkey and Israel suffer from terrorism. It is also true that Turkey, particularly during the 1990s has, like Israel against the Palestinians since its founding, resorted to state terrorism in the fight against the PKK.
Beyond that, however, any drawing of parallels between the cases of Turkey and the PKK, on the one hand, and Israel and Hamas, on the other, is not justified. The current bombings of PKK strongholds in the mountains of northern Iraq by Turkey is surely not in any way comparable to the ongoing bombing of Gaza by Israel, as argued in a commentary published in Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post on Jan. 5. The PKK-Hamas comparison does not hold simply because the conflict between Turkey and the PKK is not at all similar to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Even the obvious, apparently, sometimes needs to be explained.
Let me begin with Turks and Kurds. In the multiethnic and multi-religious Ottoman Empire Turks and Kurds, like all other Muslim ethnic groups, belonged to the same "millet" (nation) and were given equal status. The Republic of Turkey was established following the success of the national war of liberation against foreign invasion waged jointly by the Muslims of Anatolia and Rumelia, including the Turks and the Kurds. Israel, on the other hand, was established by the driving out of the vast majority of Palestinians from the greater part of their homeland, and Israel continues the occupation, siege and oppression of Palestinians in the remaining part of their homeland.
Turks and Kurds are two peoples with strong ties that bind them together. It is true that the Republic of Turkey, beginning with the single-party regime between 1925 and 1950, has until as late as the last decade of the 20th century, denied the existence of Kurds in Turkey and even banned the use of their mother tongue. It is also true that Turkey has assimilated and integrated a substantial part of its Kurdish population. Kurds have been free to settle in any part of the country, so that currently the majority of the Kurds live in the western, Turkish-majority regions of the country. They have been able to rise to all ranks and positions within Turkey's economic, political and cultural elites as long as they did not assert their Kurdish identity. Turks and Kurds who, as Sunnis or Alevis, share the same religion, have intermarried throughout the ages, so that generations born out of mixed families form a sizable part of Turkey's population.
The ban on the Kurdish language was finally lifted in 1991. The reforms adopted between 2001 and 2004 in the context of the EU accession process allowed for courses and broadcasting in the Kurdish language. And, beginning on Jan. 1, 2009, one of the state television channels began broadcasting in Kurdish, signaling the official end of the policy of denial of Kurdish identity in Turkey, raising expectations that reforms toward full recognition of the linguistic and cultural rights of the Kurds are on the way.
From the early 1990s on, the formation of pro-Kurdish parties was allowed for in Turkey. Most of those parties were closed down by the Constitutional Court for engaging in activities against the territorial integrity of the state, but new ones were organized in their place. A pro-Kurdish party won most of the principal mayoral positions in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern and eastern regions of the country in the 1999 local elections. A pro-Kurdish party that is believed to be the political wing of the PKK and is currently under threat of closure by the Constitutional Court was able to get a sufficient number of representatives elected to Parliament to form a parliamentary group in the recent national elections held in July 2007.
Clearly the position of Kurds in Turkey does not in any way resemble the position of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Neither does the PKK-Hamas comparison hold. The PKK is an illegal organization that set out in the 1980s to dismember the internationally recognized Republic of Turkey through armed rebellion. PKK violence is regarded by most Kurds in Turkey today as detrimental to the democratic struggle for Kurdish rights. Hamas, on the other hand, is an organization that won 76 out of 132 seats in the Palestinian legislative assembly in elections held in January 2006 under international supervision. The fact that Hamas representatives were driven out of the Palestinian assembly in June 2007 following the conflict between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority does not change that fact that it is a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
