Society way ahead of politicians on Kurdish issue

After the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) Democratization Program opened its December 2008 report “A Roadmap for a Solution to the Kurdish Question: Policy Proposals from the Region for the Government” up to public discussion, it has recently decided to crosscheck the report in organized debates in the western provinces of Turkey.

“The results show that acceptance in society regarding the Kurdish question is way ahead of politics,” said journalist and columnist Cengiz Çandar, who was a discussant on Thursday when the report “Social Dimension: Between Conflict and Reconciliation” was introduced at a TESEV panel discussion.

The main objective behind preparing this new report is to document how the demands voiced by the direct counterparts of the Kurdish question, Kurds in Turkey, are perceived by the wider Turkish society, and which of their demands are regarded acceptable and which are considered outrageous and unacceptable, said Yılmaz Ensaroğlu, who presented the report.

In roundtable discussions in İzmir, Mersin, Trabzon and Ankara with participants from the cities where the meetings were held, as well as discussants from other towns and cities in the vicinity, participants provided their general evaluation of the Kurdish question and the democratic initiative; offered their criticism and recommendations on the TESEV report; and discussed the issues concerning Kurds who reside in the cities hosting the roundtable meetings.

“Most of the participants say that the problem should be identified as the Kurdish problem,” said Ensaroğlu, coordinator of law and human rights studies at the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) in Ankara, pointing out the government’s hesitance in identifying the problem as such.

He added that those who voiced the view that the Kurdish problem was born out of the state’s policies of assimilation and discrimination were first and foremost the citizens who were not Kurds.

Another important point that came out of the discussions was that the participants, although they represented a wide range of views across the political spectrum from the far left to the far right, were in consensus on the necessity of a democratic and civilian constitution to find a solution to the Kurdish problem and other problems in society.

Participants also expressed a desire for a quick solution to the problem before it leads to an inner conflict between Kurds and Turks. One other demand was a cleanup in school textbooks to eliminate homogenizing expressions regarding society.

Among some of the worrisome results of the research, Ensaroğlu said that a large part of society is not aware of the Kurdish problem and that they are under the influence of “media disinformation.”

“When they do not know what the problem is about, they evaluate the suggestions in the TESEV report as the demands of the organization [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party-PKK], not the demands of the Kurds,” he said.

In that context, participants in the meetings find ridding the PKK of its weapons to be a difficult task, as opposed to Kurds’ economic demands, which they think can be met more easily, he added.

Ensaroğlu added that participants in the meetings in Mersin indicated that a Turkish-Kurdish conflict could easily be sparked in the city, sounding alarm bells about the confrontation and tension between the two groups following the eviction of Kurds from thousands of villages in the provinces under the Emergency Rule Region (OHAL) throughout the 1990s and their migration from the east to the west of Turkey.

Ensaroğlu and Çandar pointed out that one consequence of this forced migration has been an increase in social tension and conflict, which at times has resulted in attempts to lynch Kurds.

Feeding on this atmosphere, Turkish nationalism has created public pressure that complicates the limited steps the government took or is trying to take toward a solution to the Kurdish problem, they also said.