Turkey may see solutions to Kurdish problem take root for first time

After the early 1990s, when Turkey decided to start applying a variety of different civil solution ideas to the Kurdish problem, there were a series of back-to-back bloody incidents and assassinations. The dates for these tended to coincide with the new decision by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to bring its mountain activities down into the cities of Turkey. During this same period, a period when a real search for a solution had begun, Hiram Abas, the deputy undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), was murdered. Abas, known amongst other things for his closeness to the president at the time, Turgut Özal, was actually one of the few intelligence specialists who favored trying to solve the Kurdish problem not through military solutions but through civilian solutions.

Then, on Jan. 30, 1991, retired Lt. Gen. Hulusi Sayın was murdered. Sayın, who had worked until 1989 at the headquarters of OHAL (Emergency Rule Region, martial law in the Southeast that was declared against terrorism and remained in place throughout the ‘90s) command headquarters, was at the top of the list of military members who asserted that military methods alone would not be enough to find solutions to the Kurdish problem.

Özal’s views when it came to Turkey’s Kurdish problem were very different; some even alleged that he was working on models that resembled a federation. On March 12, 1991, Özal hosted Jalal Talabani, the current Iraqi president, at Ankara’s Çankaya presidential palace. As a result of Özal’s prompting during these meetings, both Talabani and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani decided to take joint action with Turkey against the PKK.

During the same period when Talabani and Barzani were cooperating together against the PKK, one of the most important names at the time in the pro-Kurdish People’s Labor Party (HEP), a man named Vedat Aydın, was killed. Aydın was killed on July 5, 1991, and at his funeral, gunshots rang out from an unidentified location over the crowd. After this, Diyarbakır turned into something resembling a battlefield. This particular murder, in which the name of JİTEM was implicated at the time, was labeled by many as one of the greatest incidents of provocation to be recorded in the framework of the Kurdish problem. Refusing to take any steps back, Özal set out on Oct. 14, 1991 on a tour of the Southeast, promising at the time: “I will definitely solve the Kurdish problem. This will be the final act of service I do for my people.”

Not long after these words of resolute determination from Özal, there was the swearing-in crisis that broke out in Parliament, involving Kurdish deputies such as Leyla Zana, Orhan Doğan, Hatip Dicle and Ahmet Türk. It was only years later that it emerged that the orders for the Democracy Party (DEP) deputies to take their oaths in Kurdish had come from PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan himself. Özal, discovering on his own that there were also Kurds who saw the whole Kurdish problem from a different perspective, invited, in March 1992, DEP deputies Türk, Sırrı Sakık and Doğan to the Çankaya presidential palace to meet with him. During the meeting, Özal said, “I am going to announce a general amnesty and see this problem solved from its roots.” After this Çankaya meeting, the PKK and other factions that fed off the Kurdish problem in Turkey started to go crazy. The Nevruz celebrations that occurred two days after the meeting were some of the bloodiest confrontations ever witnessed during a celebration in Turkey. According to official numbers, 57 people were killed during these Nevruz incidents, although civil society organizations put the number at a much higher 113.

Every real suggestion for solutions elicits death

One of the bloodiest years Turkey saw was 1992. While citizens were killed by the PKK in a variety of different cities -- 43 in Bitlis, 10 in Silvan, 10 in Batman -- there were also 27 soldiers killed in Şırnak. It is known that every single one of these incidents was carried out by the PKK. On Sept. 20, 1992, an important Kurdish intellectual, Musa Anter, was murdered in Diyarbakır. The identities of those who killed him are still unknown.

In January 1993, Özal asked Gen. Kemal Yamak to prepare yet another report on the Kurdish situation in Turkey. Right at this point, journalist Uğur Mumcu died in a targeted bomb attack, on Jan. 24, 1993. Before he was killed, Mumcu had been working on a book investigating the relations between the PKK and the state. Then, on Feb. 17, 1993, top Gendarmerie Gen. Eşref Bitlis was also killed in a suspicious airplane accident. Just one week before he was killed, Bitlis had met with foreign ministers from Syria, Iran and Iraq about trying to finish off the PKK. Before Özal even had a chance to see any of his ideas for a solution be put into practice, he died, on April 17, 1993. There were many conspiracy theories that emerged in the wake of Özal’s own death.

Çiller, pushing for solutions, made to go ‘outside routine’

After Özal’s death, Suleyman Demirel became president while Tansu Çiller took over the position of prime minister. Çiller, like Özal, was on the side of civilian solutions. Çiller called a meeting of the Cabinet on May 25, 1993, at which a general amnesty for the PKK was on the agenda. But on May 24, 1993, 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in Bingöl. Arguments are still waged today over who was responsible for this incident.

On Oct. 22, 1993, Diyarbakır Gendarmerie Regional Commander Brig. Gen. Bahtiyar Aydın was killed, shot in the forehead while in the garden of the Lice Unit Command headquarters. After this incident, Lice was also turned into a battlefield, and 30 people were killed in the aftermath. Many years later, one former member of the PKK asserted that actually, the murder of the brigadier general had been carried out by a JİTEM member.

After all these events, Prime Minister Çiller was convinced that on the matter of the PKK, things needed to “go outside the routine.” This was a period when many unsolved murders took place. On Jan. 24, 2004, Kurdish businessman Behçet Cantürk was murdered. Also, former Diyarbakır JİTEM Group Commander Ahmet Cem Ersever, declaring that he was going to tell the court about many of the illegal activities that had gone on in the name of the struggle against the PKK, was murdered in Ankara, where he was supposed to appear at a court hearing.

RP also blocked from seeing solutions take root

The perspective taken by the Welfare Party (RP) -- which appeared to be in the lead in the 1995 elections -- when it came to the Kurdish problem was also very unique. In the ranks of the RP, the solution to the problems was linked with “primary identity” and economic investment. RP Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan chose economic development and civil solutions to fight terror. It was during this period that processes such as the gradual elimination of OHAL and amnesties aimed at those accused of aiding and abetting the PKK were brought to the agenda.

In the midst of this all, a 50-vehicle military convoy headed from Tunceli to Ovacık in March 1995 was attacked, and 18 soldiers were killed. The assassinations of journalist Metin Göktepe and Sabancı Holding founding board member Özdemir Sabancı took place in this atmosphere. On Jan. 15, 1996, 11 people were killed in Şırnak’s Güçlükonak district.

The PKK attack on June 14, 1995 on the police headquarters in Şemdinli Ortaklar, as well as the deaths of 15 soldiers there, was met with resistance. When the eight soldiers kidnapped during this attack were turned over to former RP Van deputy Fetullah Erbaş and Human Rights Foundation (IHV) President Akın Birdal (currently a deputy), this event was turned into a lynching campaign. Later, Birdal was targeted in an assassination attempt.

Later still, a car accident that took place on Nov. 3, 1996 in Susurluk revealed things which shed light on some ties between actions taken by the PKK and a group within the state. And then, after the RP was removed from power in the Feb. 28, 1997 post-modern coup, Öcalan was captured in Kenya and turned over to Turkey under the tenure of the Democratic Left Party (DSP) minority government.

After Öcalan was captured, the PKK stopped its actions for some time, fearing that Öcalan could be executed. But when the EU’s pressure to get Turkey to eliminate capital punishment were successful, the PKK started up its activities again. And its first activity was to kill the head of the Diyarbakır police force, Gaffar Okkan, and 11 policemen in that city.

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power on Nov. 3, 2002, and brought the 15-year OHAL period to an end, on Nov. 30, 2002. The AK Party believed that the answer to the Kurdish problems lay in civil solutions, and with the speeding up of the EU accession process in 2003, a series of bills aimed at solving the Kurdish problem passed by Parliament. Still though, the armed struggle that the PKK had stopped since 1999 started up once again.

In September 2006, a thermos bomb that exploded in Diyarbakır killed 11 people, mostly children. And a decision that emerged from a Feb. 23, 2007 MGK meeting that there would be dialogue with northern Iraq was countered by news from Öcalan’s lawyers that he was being poisoned; this news caused considerable public chaos.

In September 2007, 12 citizens were killed in Şırnak. An attack on a military unit in October 2007 in Şırnak caused the deaths of 15 soldiers. On Oct. 21, 2007, the Dağlıca attack took place. And right after that, the Aktütün assault. After these events, Turkey saw pending bills to approve cross-border military operations in northern Iraq passed by Parliament.

It was in 2008 that the ties between the PKK and the Ergenekon terror group emerged. In meetings with his lawyers on July 2, 2008, Öcalan asked that Kurds not support the Ergenekon investigation.