Democratization of Kurdish region: the economic perspective
by
EMRE USLU

 When we look at the economic parameters of the region what we see is a state-dominated economy. For instance, in the following 15 Kurdish-dominated provinces, Adıyaman, Ağrı, Bingöl, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Kars, Mardin, Muş, Siirt, Tunceli, Şanlıurfa, Van, Batman and Şırnak, where approximately 4 million people live, almost a half a million people depend on the village guard system financially. In addition to the village guard system, the economy in the region depends heavily on the economic activities of the state bureaucracy. As an example, just for travel allowance, the Turkish National Police spends approximately $10 million to transfer approximately 8,000 police officers from the west to the east and the east to the west each year. As another example, in Batman province, where 450,000 people live, the Social Solidarity Fund distributes approximately $2 million in financial assistance to 46,000 households. This means that almost 250,000 people in the province depend on financial assistance from the government. In addition to the assistance from the Social Solidarity Fund, the government distributes compensation to those who lost their property during the intense fighting between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the state.

 To give you a rough idea how much this money really amounts to, we could look at the province of Bingöl. In Bingöl, for instance, approximately 80,000 applications for financial assistance are in the government’s hand. In the last few years, 30,000 applications for financial assistance were dealt with, out of those approximately 15,000 applications were accepted. Approximately $5 million was paid to those people.

 In the end, the rough figure on government assistance for each month is $10 to $15 per person, which is a lot of money for the government but not sufficient to boost the economy in the region.

 In addition to state aid, the economy in the region depends heavily on other state sources, i.e., bureaucrats salaries are used as sources of economic stimulus in the region. For instance, the government pays approximately $1 million in salaries to police officers in Bingöl each month. However, the money that is sent to Bingöl via the salaries of state employees is not pumped into the local economy for two reasons: Firstly, government employees who come from the western part of the country for their compulsory service in that region usually stay in designated compounds called lojman, separate from local population, where not only is economic integration between government employees and the local population limited, but social integration as well. Secondly, since the government employees work in the region for two to four years only, they do not want to invest their money in the region either. Therefore, the money that goes into the region to pay the government employees does not stay in the region.

Financial support from abroad

As well as the sources of income mentioned above, we need to include the money that is sent to the region by the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. In Bingöl for instance, almost every family has one person working in a European county and that person sends a percentage of his/her to his/her family in the region.

 The sources of income in the region clearly show that the government is the major player in the economy of the region, but the region has a service-based economy and as such it does not make the people in region rich. Just as in Bingöl, in many provinces that are mentioned in this article there is not even a single factory running. Yet roughly 70 percent of the existing buildings in Bingöl, i.e., apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and government buildings are paid for out of the government’s pocket.

We see a rentier economic model in the region which, as in any part of the world, does not produce a democratic state structure. Therefore, the government should change the state’s long-lasting attitude of trying to buy the loyalty of the people in the region. What needs to be done is to find new sources of money and change the economic structure of the region. In order to do that one option is to promote intense economic relations between Syria, Turkey and Iraq, which the government has been trying to do in recent years. In addition, the government should promote tourism in the region. One way of doing this would be to build new tourism centers. For instance, building a mini-Las Vegas in the region would not only attract rich Turkish tourists to the region, it would also attract tourists from the Middle East. Adopting new policies toward government employees, aiming to hire them from amongst the local population, or, if not possible, providing economic incentives to encourage doctors, police officers and military personnel to stay in the region for an extended period, for example, 10 to 15 years, instead of rotating them in and out of the region every few years, would help the local economy when they start spending their money in the region.

 Without a functioning economic structure it is not possible to see functioning democracy in the region. One of the missing parts of the government’s Kurdish initiative is the economic aspect of the initiative. In its rhetoric, the government underlines a similar argument; however, in reality it is not implementing new concepts to the economic reality of the region. For instance, it is the duty of the government to change existing practices of rotating government employees from the western part of the country to the east to boost the economy, however, even on that issue no statement has been made yet.