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Feb. 28 victimized both Kurds and hope for a solution
Among those decisions was the strict protection of the principle of secularism and the invention of new laws to protect it if existing laws fell short of doing so. A headscarf ban was introduced at universities, strict control of education was ensured, journalists were imprisoned, newspapers were closed down and special intelligence units were established in the army to keep records on pious people.
The process had a negative effect on predominantly Kurdish areas, which were under emergency rule at the time.
One of the inventions of the Feb. 28 process was the controversial Protocol on Cooperation for Security and Public Order (EMASYA), which was signed by the General Staff and the Interior Ministry on July 7, 1997 and empowered the military to intervene in society on its own initiative. EMASYA gave the military the authority to gather intelligence against internal threats. It was abolished just recently, but since the beginning, it was implemented mainly in the country’s Kurdish areas.
A missed opportunity?
Kurdish intellectual İbrahim Güçlü recalls that just before the Feb. 28 process, some Kurds with Islamic sensibilities who thought that the solution to the Kurdish problem could be achieved within the framework of religious brotherhood based on Islamic principles were hopeful about Erbakan’s government.
“Erbakan’s discourse at that time on the Kurdish issue gave hope to certain segments of society, but these hopes ended with Feb. 28, and the Kurdish Islamists realized that religious brotherhood cannot be the only solution. So, the Islamist Kurds started to stress the national aspects,” he told Sunday’s Zaman.
Fethullah Erbaş, a Van deputy from the RP at that time known for his efforts to free eight Turkish soldiers captured by the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for almost one year, said that the Erbakan government was preparing the ground for a solution to the Kurdish problem but the Feb. 28 process ended these efforts.
He recalled that at that time, Erbakan was holding indirect talks with the PKK and its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, who is currently serving a life sentence on İmralı Island. Öcalan confirmed that these talks took place during his trial.
“At the beginning, Öcalan was positive, but later he changed his mind, and we did not understand the motive behind this change. Very soon after this, the coup occurred,” Erbaş told the AK news agency.
But Bülent Orakoğlu, the head of the police intelligence unit at that time, hinted at another possible reason behind Öcalan’s attitude change. Orakoğlu, who was removed from office during the Feb. 28 process while he was investigating links between criminal gangs and the deep state and was arrested by a military court for two months, said he was arrested because he uncovered cooperation between the deep state and the PKK.
Journalist Nevzat Çiçek agreed that the RP was trying to develop a solution to the PKK problem by keeping in mind their strong roots in the country’s Kurdish areas. But according to him, one of the main problems that Feb. 28 brought Kurds targeted their social structure, especially their religious education.
Çiçek underlined that madrassas had special importance in the Kurdish tradition for the preservation of the Kurdish language and culture. In those religious schools, Kurds were able to solve their local disputes.
“All the madrassas were closed down, and all the people who had links with them were on state blacklists. Many of them had to emigrate,” Çiçek told Sunday’s Zaman.
But on the other hand, as Sezgin Tanrıkulu, the former chairman of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, points out, conditions in Kurdish areas at that time were already very difficult and Feb. 28 did not result in division between secularists and conservatives like it did in western Turkey.
“I think in terms of protesting the Feb. 28 process, secularists and conservatives acted together in the region. All the Kurds were against it. Even at that time we were saying that the perpetrators should be brought to justice, and this is what we are saying today, too.”
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