The KCK is said to be operating as the urban wing of the PKK, which is based mainly in the Kandil Mountains in northern Iraq. The Silvan attack came in the midst of a PKK-declared cease-fire. The PKK’s violation of the cease-fire by resuming deadly attacks against Turkish security forces prompted the Turkish government to intensify its military measures against the PKK, while already fragile peace talks between the terrorist organization and the state have, at least for the moment, come to an end.
The KCK investigation and detentions first started in December 2009. A large number of Kurdish politicians, including several officials from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) represented in Parliament, were detained in the case. The suspects were accused of various crimes, including membership in a terrorist organization, aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and attempting to destroy the country’s unity and integrity.
The pictures of many KCK members handcuffed after their arrests in 2009 and published in many dailies caused unease among the Kurds in particular, but also among the liberals, too, which shadowed the peace talks.
“It was necessary to remove this negative perception among the Kurds as a result of the KCK operations and the pictures of suspects in handcuffs. Thus, the KCK operations at the time were halted and certain activities of KCK members were tolerated by the government so as to not poison the then-peaceful efforts that were under way,” a Turkish security official told me. He added, however, that “the government felt betrayed following the Silvan attack and resumed its crackdown on the KCK because the PKK was exploiting the peace talks.”
At the center of the problem of the KCK operations is the scarce and confusing information coming from the judicial authorities that failed to justify the large number of arrests.
Most of the information relayed about the KCK operations has been from press reports leaked by security officials, rather than public statements made by the judiciary justifying the arrests.
For example, the arrest of a professor and an activist late last week came as a surprise to many. Professor Büşra Ersanlı, who was assisting the BDP’s preparations to draft proposals for a planned new civilian constitution, and a human rights activist and publisher, Ragıp Zarakolu, were detained last week as part of the police operations against the KCK. Zarakolu was charged in 2009 with spreading propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organization because of a book published by his Belge Publishing House.
Are the KCK operations a case of political genocide, as BDP deputy Sebahat Tuncel declared last Saturday? It is hard for the BDP to convince the public over its reactions to the KCK operations. This is because the BDP has so far failed to cut its ties with the PKK, which has stepped up its violence and has been targeting civilians.
Independent of the BDP’s stance on the KCK matter, the informed section of the Turkish public are not satisfied with the few legal explanations being made over the reasons for the detention of so many people.
This is mainly because judicial procedures are also problematic in the detention process of the alleged KCK members.
“Concerns about judicial procedures were also reported in connection with the KCK case in which around 2,000 politicians, locally elected representatives and human rights activists in the Southeast have been detained since April 2008. The investigation continues to widen. … Frequent use of arrests instead of judicial supervision, limited access to files, failure to give detailed grounds for detention decisions and revisions of such decisions highlight the need to bring the Turkish criminal justice system into line with international standards and to amend the anti-terror legislation,” stresses the report released by the European Commission on Oct. 12 on Turkey, a candidate member nation to the European Union.
The Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and the courts do not publish information relating to judicial proceedings, it added in the report.
The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank working to prevent conflict worldwide, was also critical over the operations against the KCK in a report released on Sept. 20 titled “Turkey: Ending the PKK insurgency.” It, however, also blamed Turkish Kurd nationalists for exploiting peaceful efforts for propaganda purposes.
Mainly due to the absence of transparency in the judicial proceedings and also problems with counterterrorism laws, the informed section of the Turkish public are of the belief that the KCK operations and detentions have started to turn into a lynch campaign against the Kurds.
Turkey has the right to resort to military tactics to curb the PKK’s increased violence, but it has to at the same time refocus on a non-military solution to address the Kurdish grievances that require mainly language and legal reforms in addition to constitutional changes while pursuing a transparent process in legal proceedings.
