She won a National Press Club Award in the United States for her coverage of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). I believe her book titled “Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence” (New York University Press, 2007) is the best book to read for those interested in learning the inside story of the PKK. (See my column in Today’s Zaman, Nov. 26, 2007)
Marcus recently published a highly noteworthy article on the recent developments regarding the Kurdish question and the PKK in Turkey titled “Troubles in Turkey’s Backyard” (Foreign Policy, July 12, 2010). I must first of all state that I entirely agree with the following observations she makes: “Erdoğan, increasingly embattled at home and abroad, likely does not have the political capital to push forward with negotiations with the PKK or even with legally elected Kurdish politicians. …
“Erdoğan could still surprise, however -- and so could the Kurds. Although Kurdish activists publicly insist that the state must negotiate directly with Öcalan and be ready to free him as part of a settlement, they are more accommodating in private. ... Still, making peace will require both sides to adopt some useful fictions. The legal Kurdish party may not be part of the PKK, but it is under the rebel group’s sway. For talks to get off the ground, Turkish officials will have [to] pretend they are not talking to the PKK, and the PKK will have to act as if it is not involved in negotiations. …
“Erdoğan’s goal should be to transform the PKK through negotiations -- giving PKK rebels a reason and the political space (including amnesty and a lifting of restrictions on pro-Kurdish political activity) to put down their weapons and join the democratic process. Ending the PKK’s war requires recognizing that the organization, despite its brutality and anti-democratic methods, has won legitimacy among Kurds by dint of refusal to give up fighting for their rights, whatever the means. The prime minister needs to accept this.”
I would, however, like to draw attention to some of the shortcomings of the analysis put forward in the article. First of all, it is not possible to properly analyze Turkish politics without considering the distinction between the state and the government. In Turkey, more than in any other democracy, the state elites behave independently of the elected government. And as is well known there is considerable disagreement and tension between the Kemalist bureaucracy and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
The Erdoğan government has been subject to various military coup plots that have luckily been averted. In 2008 the Constitutional Court almost banned the AKP, which had garnered nearly half of the national vote in the general election held in the previous year. Erdoğan does not only have “himself to blame” for the failure thus far of the “Democratic Initiative” he announced last year meant to solve the Kurdish problem and end the PKK insurgency. It is not at all fair to disregard the resistance to the initiative coming from both the military and the judiciary on the one hand, and from the nationalist main opposition parties on the other.
It is neither fair to argue that Erdoğan’s only “concrete achievement” is the start of a 24–hour Kurdish language television station. Not only language courses and broadcasting, but also political campaigning in Kurdish have recently been legalized under the AKP government, and pro–Kurdish parties have come to power in a large number of municipalities in the Kurdish–majority region and have gained representation in Parliament. Under the AKP government Turkey has come a long way in recognizing Kurdish identity in practice, if not officially.
It is true that the PKK has the sympathies of a considerable segment of Turkey’s Kurds. But it would be nonsense to argue that it is their sole representative. A vast majority of Kurds vote for the AKP, and at least a fifth of AKP’s parliamentary group is made up of Kurds who do not deny their ethnic identity. Pro–Kurdish parties, the Participatory Democracy Party (KADEP) and Rights and Freedoms Party (Hak–Par), who advocate a federal restructuring of Turkey, and a large number of Kurdish liberals, see PKK violence as a major obstacle for the solution of the Kurdish problem.
It is greatly misleading to label the Turkish military as a “secular institution” and the AKP as “Islamist.” Any serious analyst of Turkish politics is aware of the highly authoritarian nature of the kind of secularism that prevails among the state elites, and particularly the military. Neither establishing good relations with Syria, Iran and Hamas nor demanding an end to the blockade of Gaza renders a government “Islamist.” It is true that the Erdoğan government deserves criticism in many respects. It would, however, be greatly misleading to label it “Islamist,” since its economic policies as well as domestic and foreign policies are based more on liberal principles than any other. The AKP is a culturally conservative party, but no other government has done as much as the AKP government to broaden democracy and to recognize Kurdish rights.
It surely does not make sense to argue that the AKP government’s diplomatic efforts to avoid the nuclear crisis with Iran or that to achieve peace between Israel on the one hand and Palestinians and Syria on the other has nothing to do with Turkey’s security interests.
