The hopes briefly ignited by the government’s “Kurdish opening,” announced with much fanfare last year, have now faded as Turkey is once again being pulled into a downward spiral of violence.Kurdish politicians have not shown much flexibility and Abdullah Öcalan’s insistence of being part of the process has not contributed to making the government’s task easier. But while the authorities were talking of a democratic initiative, dozens of Kurds were being arrested, among them several democratically elected mayors. The militants whose return at Habur caused such a stir last autumn are now being tried and three of them have already been sent to jail.
The authorities and the Kurdish politicians are blaming each other. Nothing new here. But what happened to change the atmosphere so radically? And why are violence and military methods, which have clearly failed to solve the problem in the past three decades, once again gaining the upper hand?
Violence in Turkey is not limited to the thorny Kurdish issue. It is also seen routinely in daily life at all levels of society. In spite of the suffering that is caused, hitting out still seems the first reflex in many conflict situations. Is a militarist culture responsible for this state of affairs or is it, on the contrary, the violence lurking in society that makes military solutions appealing?
Lale Kemal has described in these pages the abuse and humiliation suffered by some conscripts at the hands of their military commanders. Among civilians too, frustration runs high. Not a day goes by without stomach-churning stories of mindless violence, whether it is the recent case of the man in Ümraniye who, 15 years after his divorce, felt the need to confront his ex-father-in-law and ended up being lynched by his ex-wife’s relatives or regular accounts of women killed by their husbands.
A low level of daily violence lurks around us, barely acknowledged: the young pupil hit by his teacher during his first week of primary school, the son who gets whacked by his father because he asked to watch his favorite television program. A friend just told me about her newly married young cousin, whose romance turned sour on the day she got married. The young woman is subjected to daily abuse at the hands of her husband, who threatens to kill her if she leaves. The traditional Turkish passion for football holds special significance for her: If her husband’s favorite team loses, he holds her responsible and expresses his frustration with more physical and verbal abuse.
Only a few days ago, I had a frightening ride with a taxi driver who felt insulted when another cab tried to overtake him. The two men raced down a hill side by side before stopping at a crossroads and getting out of their vehicles. They would have come to blows had their customers not restrained them.
Violence, in various forms, lurks in all societies, but what strikes me about Turkish society is the degree to which physical abuse, human rights violations and even deaths have been internalized and normalized. At a recent meeting of international lawyers, a Turkish speaker shrugged off military coups as quite insignificant because “the army always returns power to the civilians very quickly”: the hundreds of thousands of people who had been arrested, the widespread torture and beatings, not to mention the executions, had been all but forgotten.
As the Kurdish issue threatens to suck Turkey into a new cycle of death and destruction, all sides need to consider the long-term implications of this escalation. Hitting those perceived as the “enemy” may bring short-term satisfaction to nationalists, but the repercussions are long lasting. Ultimately, the use of violence does not demonstrate strength: It signals a failure of communications. The Turkish government was right to seek a new beginning last year, but it did not go far enough.
