Dealing with traumas in the Kurdish initiative
by
EMRE USLU*

As we debate the Kurdish initiative, the best place to start working from may be deciding on how these kinds of traumas can be healed. PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan knows this kind of suffering very well and in order to be able to benefit from it, he wants a “truth commission” to be set up.

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government's plan should give priority to healing social traumas caused by martial law and state of emergency practices that started in the mid-1970s and continued all the way up to 2002. These traumas can be summarized under a few different categories. Firstly, there are the traumas caused by torture cases in the Diyarbakır Prison in the 1980s, which have left a scar in many people's memories. The PKK capitalized on this type of trauma and used it to create the Kurdish identity. It managed to keep the pain alive over the years and many people would talk about the torture that took place in the 1980s as if they had experienced it themselves. Narratives that were told during the construction of the Kurdish identity were particularly important. These narratives kept and continue to keep the Kurdish political identity, the memory of suffering and the pain of Kurdish victimization alive.

To prevent this specific type of trauma from growing, the government should apologize to all victims, not sparing any Kurd, Turk, leftist or rightist, for the 1980 military coup. An apology will at least acknowledge the injustices they have suffered and prevent nationalist Kurdish organizations from building political identities over these traumas.

The second category of traumas that need to be examined is village evacuations and burnings. Although the government is trying to compensate for material losses with different projects and the counter-terrorism indemnity, the traumas in this category are still fresh in society's conscience because these efforts are not essentially aimed at healing the wounds. This in return leaves an open door for Kurdish nationalists to use these traumas to build an identity.

Turkish experts believe the traumas stem from the material losses caused by the village evacuations and burnings. But this only intensified the misunderstanding. According to this perception, if victims are compensated for the material losses, then the problem will be solved.

But when we look at the problem from the perspective of those who live in the region, village evacuations also caused emotional trauma. Take, for example, how important it is in that region to pay visits to cemeteries on special days and holidays. One can understand the depth of the emotional damage by just looking at how families that don't have a gravesite to visit -- either because they live in a village where the cemeteries were emptied or in cities where their deceased family members don't have a grave -- go to cemeteries to visit graves that belong to other people.

The pain of not being able to go to a grave and pray for a loved one is easily agitated by nationalist Kurdish organizations and used to construct an identity. The third type of trauma is the trauma of loss which stems from the high number of people that have lost their loved ones. Those who suffer in this way can be divided into two main groups. The first of these groups comprises people whose children were killed after joining the outlawed organization. According to official figures, 30,000 “terrorists” were killed in this way. In this society, where the average family has seven members, up to 210,000 have lost an immediate family member (mother, father, sibling) that was a member of the PKK. When members of extended families (aunts, uncles, cousins) are added to this figure, there are more than 2 million people suffering from trauma because they have lost a PKK militant family member. This segment of society also comprises the core of the Kurdish nationalist organization.

The second group comprises people that have lost family members in unresolved murder cases. Their pain is different from those who mourn the death of a loved one. In other words, the continuous pain of having lost someone whose body has not been found is different than the pain of having lost someone who has a grave. The trauma felt by these people especially intensify when the media reports on unresolved murder cases. This also facilitates Kurdish nationalist organizations in developing a Kurdish identity.

Then there are the traumas of people that have served time in jail, that have joined the PKK and later left and the traumas of their relatives. The number of people that suffer from these kinds of trauma is at least twice as many as the figures mentioned above. In other words, there are around 5 million people who are or who have relatives that have been investigated by the counter-terrorism department, categorized or have faced judicial and administrative charges for being PKK militants, supporting and aiding the organization, carrying out pro-PKK propaganda or throwing stones at security forces.

Although the traumas of this group are not as evident and scarring as the others, the stories of those mentioned above are very meaningful for them. This group, which comprises the remaining part of the picture, may believe that aligning with the PKK will protect them from suffering further pain. In other words, a mother who has lost a child to the organization may make strenuous efforts to ensure her other son does not join the organization, but a mother whose son has only faced legal proceedings for carrying out activities in favor of the organization may not exert the same effort. This shows that for this group of people the pains they have suffered are not a strong deterrent.

Even if the PKK were to give up its arms, the next few generations will continue to construct the Kurdish political identity out of the sociology of trauma as long as these traumas exist. Inevitably a society that has an identity that is built on this kind of sociology will have a difficult time establishing ties with other societies. If work on how to overcome the traumas of Kurdish society are not addressed in the initiative package this wound will continue to bleed and suppurate.