During the years that followed, this lapse became, in my mind, a metaphor for the way in which Turkey struggled to grasp the implications of the ending of the Cold War. The region's political geography was being rewritten, former ideological foes in Central and Eastern Europe were knocking down barriers, brand new nations were popping up in the ashes of the former Soviet Union, and yet somehow Ankara hoped that it would be business as usual. While it is true that Turkish diplomats attempted to reach out to Central Asia and create a new league out of the nations along the Black Sea, psychologically the country's leadership was still fighting the Cold War. It was almost with a sigh of relief that it learned of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Of course it did not rejoice at the presence of an American invading army and complained bitterly at the cost of the embargo against Iraq, but it gave a satisfied nod that Turkey was again on the war room map and that the ending of the Cold War had not deprived it of its trump card in the world arena -- its strategic importance. I was sitting in a courtroom on İmrali Island just over 10 years ago, listening to the judges pass verdict on Abdullah Öcalan, a death sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment. No newspapers were late with that particular story. Turkey had scored a knockout blow against the nation's most treacherous foe, and there was a sense of celebration. Yet, at the same time it was impossible not to fear that the overwhelming sense of victory of winning a war would get in the way of the equally difficult work ahead of winning the peace. During the course of his trial, Öcalan had attempted to plea bargain by stating that he was the only one who could get the PKK off the mountains. His attitude was “What's done, is done; let's look to the future. You still need my help.” We may one day learn what went on in private, but no government could then deal with public enemy No. 1 in public. More to the point, governments failed to seize the opportunity of making the democratic overture that would have undermined the radical Kurdish nationalist cause.
These two events are, of course, related. Turkey was unable to seize the full peace dividend during the 1990s because it was still fighting a war of attrition in the Kurdish Southeast of the country. Its credibility as an emerging power in a new era was undermined by an inability or unwillingness to resolve its own problem. Many things have changed since then. In 2001 Turkey was forced by an economic crisis to address the question of bank reform and public finance. And lately it has tried to establish itself not as “an island of stability in a region of instability” but as an agent of stability, trying to drain the regional swamp. In his column on Monday for this paper, Bülent Keneş asserted that Turkey has earned the right to be taken at its word as a constructive agent and a force for good in trying to defuse a whole series of troubling conflicts, from the Caucasus to the Middle East.
What keeps the Turko-skeptics alive is Ankara's track record of being late to get the story, of finding excuses not to address its own need for reform. So the importance of this week's events cannot be underestimated. The discussions will continue whether this is a show of strength by Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK, or whether it is an acknowledgement of their weakness. On the surface it is the return of a handful of Kurdish political exiles from camps across the border. At the same time it is a chance for Turkey itself to make the journey home.
