Kurdish deputies, Leyla Zama and Hapit Dicle, spoke in Kurdish about the friendship of Turks and Kurds. The press and the DYP were outraged, while the SHP considered that this act meant that the two had effectively resigned from the party.
Another Kurdish SHP deputy was thrown off the parliamentary rostrum by DYP deputies - his coalition partners — for raising the Kurdish question. Thus at the very moment when the PKK leader was declaring that it was "necessary to give the government a chance conciliation was being ruled out inside the ruling coalition.
Despite soothing declarations from Demirel, who had "recognized the Kurdish reality" and permitted the publication of Kurdish language newspapers, the assassination of Kurdish militants by death squads continued. A few weeks later the tension went up a notch. Five PKK militants were killed and the army's "special brigade" fired on the funeral crowd leaving eight dead.
Attack on working class neighbourhood
The next day a group of young Kurdish militants threw molotov cocktails into a big shop in a working class neighbourhood of Istanbul - 11 people were killed, including children, in the fire that followed. This event of action as a reply to state terrorism in Kurdistan.
The stepping up of state terrorism and the counter-terrorist response have reinforced a climate of nationalism among both Turks and Kurds. The government had promised reforms but has in fact made no concessions. This was the climate at the time of the Newroz.
The tension reached its height with warlike declarations: president Ozal announced that the army would carry out a huge "Spring operation" to clean the PKK out of the country if that organization did not "lay down its arms", ", while the PKK envisaged a big uprising for the spring along with a "war government and a Kurdish parliament". The whole country was awaiting the foretold bloodletting, described by journalists as the Spring syndrome".
No political control of armed forces
Neither Demirel not the SHP leader Inönü were in favour of using the methods preferred by the previous prime minister Özal. But the civilian government has long ago lost control of the police, the army and the special brigade, who are the real masters on the ground, not to mention the death squads. Furthermore, insofar as the government knows that it cannot rule in the Kurdish regions without repression, it has chosen the military option, even if it is not happy with all the consequences of this decision. They have made their choice: "first military control, then reforms", according to Inönü.
Since 1984, when it launched its guerilla campaign, the PKK has grown from a rather isolated group of 500 people to an organization of some 10,000 militants which carries out mass propaganda and organization both in Turkey and abroad.
The PKK's legitimacy is essentially a product of state repression in Kurdistan, which has been ruled by "exceptional" military 1. The HEP was founded by the Kurdish deputies of the SHP, expelled from their party for having participated at a conference on the Kurdish question in Paris in October 1989, and by deputies originating from the DISK trade union federation. The HEP was not able to participate in the legislative elections of
1991, having not yet fulfilled the legal conditions.
Finally, the HEP made an electoral alliance with the
SHP. The SHP, supported by the HEP, won an overwhelming majority of the votes in the south-east and 22 Kurd deputies were elected on its lists. The former president of the HEP and former general secretary of DISK, Fehmi Isiklar, was vice-president of the parliament. Thus, for the first time in the history of the republic, a Kurdish party appeared in the
Turkish parliament, even if through indirect means.
2. See Cumhuryiet, December 7, 1991.
From the mountains to the parliament
THE PKK launched its guerilla war in 1984.
• In Spring 1990 huge demonstrations took place at
Kurdish funerals at Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi, Idil, Slirt and Batman.
This was the start of what has been called the Kurdish intifada.
This rebellion went beyond the limits of the PKK's activities, even if it remained confined in a narrow geographical area, and sounded the death knell of the traditional political parties in the
Kurdish South East of Turkey
(except for the Islamic RP).
• The legislative elections of
October 1991 and the election - with nearly 70% of the votes - of the HEP candidates on the SHP lists led to the formation of a coalition government which gave rise to hopes of a softening of
Turkish policy towards the
• The recent confrontations during Newroz have represented a test of the balance of political and military forces between the state and the PKK, and have led to the resignation from the SHP of the Kurdish deputies.
However, the entry into parliament, for the first time, of a Kurdish party is of major significance. * regimes for more than 14 years. As Demirel himself has pointed out, someone who was five years old in 1978 will have reached adulthood — and an age to join the guerillas — without ever having known a "normal" regime. The Kurdish identity and any kind of cultural rights have been denied for years, the Kurdish language and Kurdish names being prohibited. The army has insulted, imprisoned, tortured and killed; a police brigade even forced the people of one Kurdish village to eat their own excrement. These acts give a "justification" to the violence of the PKK.
The denial of the Kurdish identity, poverty, and state violence and repression have produced a counter-violence which seems justified in the eyes of the Kurds subjected to such
The PKK thus has mass influence; other political currents have not yet been able to present themselves in these regions and those who have dared to do so have been wiped out by the PKK, which has declared itself the sole representative of the Kurds and will accept no competition in this field. Nor does it permit opposition in its own ranks, not hesitating to do away with internal critics.
Thus, the PKK's "democratic revolution" is pursued with methods that have little to do with democracy.
Ideologically it is under Stalinist influence. It has justified its suppression of its opponents in the Kurdish movement by reference to the Moscow Trials. However in more recent times its propaganda has been dominated by integral nationalist and even religious themes.
All other currents in the Kurdish national movement find themselves squeezed between the state and the PKK, as does the
Turkish left. The latter is regretting at leisure its failure to take the Kurdish issue seriously and is morally crushed by the
PKK, all the more so in that the latter, unlike the Turkish left, represents a real force.
Furthermore the slightest criticism of the
PKK is considered to amount for support to the Turkish state. In this Manichean world, the Turkish left is tending to turn into an appendage of the PKK.
### Kurdish issue dominates political life
The political situation in Turkey has become dominated by the Kurdish question, pushing other democratic issues into the background. On March 8, 1992 — International Women's Day - slogans relating to the Kurdish question became the main theme of a demonstration (not organized by the independent women's movement) of
300 women in Istanbul.
It is the same in the union movement.
Every struggle becomes reduced to a single question: the proclamation of the Kurdish identity. That identity itself is presented in a narrow nationalist way, without any definite social project. The PKK leader Apo recently talked about a federation, specifying that this would be a society of a "Western type".
In the recent elections, the PKK hesitated over which party to support. At first Apo declared that the SHP leader Inönü was even more the creature of the Turkish state than Özal.3 After the elections, he confirmed that the PKK would have been able to support Özal's Party of the Motherland (ANAP), the successor to the military regime.4
Subsequently, the president of the HEP in his turn confirmed that negotiations for an electoral alliance had taken place with the Islamist Party (RP) but that the alliance had failed owing "to a disagreement on the regions and the dividing up of the lists" s
After the failure of its negotiations with the HEP, the RP sought an agreement with the Turkish fascists and the HPE made an alliance with Inönü's SHP. That is to say, to get as many Kurdish deputies into parliament as possible, the Kurdish nationalists were ready to make alliances with even their worst ene-
TURKEY / KURDISTAN
Even after the Newroz massacres Apo has continued to make overtures to Özal. "In fact, of all of them it is Ozal who understands us the best... I am sure that he even has some sympathy for us. It is clear that he thinks about us a lot. Perhaps he is even thinking about telephoning me. If anyone is going to find a solution to our problem, it will be Özal. He says he is a Kurd and talks of a federation. It is Özal who is most in touch with the situation" 6
A series of terrorist attacks in the big cities has provoked a nationalist and even racist anti-Kurdish mood in the Turkish population. Certainly, the PKK cannot be held solely responsible since there were already plenty of nationalist chauvinists, racists and fascists in the Turkish population, before the PKK even existed, but that does not justify such actions.
The Turkish population has no real interest in opposing the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people and the PKK has a duty not to alienate the working class and the oppressed of Turkish society. In reality the indignation of Turkish workers in response to terrorist attacks works to the benefit of the state, while the social layers who would be the natural allies of the Kurdish movement are rendered increasingly passive. Furthermore, the real level of support for the PKK among the Kurds in Istanbul is doubtful.
Rather than appeal to the Turkish masses, the PKK has decided to engage in a duel with the state. Faced with the near impossibility of winning a military victory over the Turkish army, it seems to have opted to search for methods of bringing internal and international pressure to bear on the Turkish government.
After the Newroz, the Kurdish deputies called for a referendum under United Nations auspices. They hope to get the question onto the international agenda to force the government to negotiate on the question of the rights of the Kurdish minority.
It is indeed true that international agreements signed by Turkey give the Kurdish movement some room for manoeuvre as far as cultural rights and some local administrative arrangements are concerned. Furthermore, the HEP, which has a strong electoral base — and which has decided to ask for admission to the Socialist International — will be represented in parliament.
Extreme nationalism and religious themes
Starting out in the Stalinist camp, the PKK has been carried further towards extreme integral nationalism, while the strength of 3. See Nokta, August 8, 1991. 4. See Cumhuryiet, December 7, 1991. 5. See Cumhuryiet, December 20, 1991. 6. See Milliyet, March 25, 1992. 7. The PKK has also attempted to prove the "superfority" of the Kurds by reference to ancient history: 1 5 going as far back as the Medes of 2,600 years ago!
International Viewpoint # 227 • April 27, 1992
TURKEY / KURDISTAN religious fundamentalism has led it to make alliances with these forces and more and more openly employ religious tones in its propaganda.®
Furthermore, the PKK has a de facto alliance with Iran, which it considers as an anti-imperialist regime, omitting to say that this regime too has massacred Kurds on its own territory. The PKK is also known to have close links with the Baathist dictatorship in Syria.
We are thus, for the time being, in a dead end. The weakness of the workers' movement in the west of Turkey leaves the state a free hand to pursue repression in the Kurdish east, strengthening the PKK. The latter in its turn blocks off any possibility of the emergence of alternatives amongst the Kurdish people capable of building an alliance with the population of Western Turkey. And so it
Any escape from this vicious circle depends on the outcome of political struggles and differentiations amongst the Kurdish people. Whatever the judgements that could be made of the PKK and its acts, it undoubtediy represents a legitimate component of the Kurdish movement - the most important on the ground. It is necessary to support the struggle of the Kurdish nationalist movement. * 8. During a symbolic hunger strike in protests against the massacres of Newroz, a Kurdish nationalist mufti characterized Demirel as an "infidel".
that we will give our support and solidarity at all levels to the democratic and revolutionary forces of Turkey. • An uprising, as we all know, is an attempt to take power. Either conquered. It is more than a stepping-up of the struggle. Did the PKK have such a project this spring or is it a question of the government attempting to provoke a
That is not our concept of an uprising. A study of our history and of provocations until this day shows that this conception has existed in history. They have wanted to impose
Kurdish guerilla this on the people's movement that we lead and to draw us into an uprising that would end in failure. Our tactical approach is not to get a final leader speaks The recent Kurdish rebellion in Turkey was led by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). Below we publish extracts from an interview with the PKK's leader, Abdullah Öcalan, which first appeared in 2000'e Dogru, the journal of the Socialist Party, a Turkish group of Maoist origin. DOCUMENT
H AVE you planned
uprising for this spring? I must first of all make it clear that the PKK had not specially planned attacks which would plunge Turkey into turmoil in 1992. In reality our activities, which we have pursued in a systematic fashion for 20 years, have gained a new and specific acceleration in 1992 with the transition to a national army, the national awakening, and a firmer affirmation of the national will. All this could certainly be called an uprising or attack, but, and I am speaking in the broadest sense, there is an opportunity that one can seize in 1992
This movement is led by the PKK and we arrive at Newroz (the Kurdish New Year) in spring in a strong 16 blows despite a very hard winter. I position, without having suffered any must emphasize that 1992 should be considered an important year not only for the national liberation of the Kurdish people, but for the democratic liberation and independence of
Our struggle had an impact, albeit indirect, on the coming to power of the Demirel government. If he is really intelligent, if he is a real politician, he would correctly analyze his raison d'etre and why he came to power and would find a way to resolve the problems with us. We said this via the media before he formed his government. We even said that we would not step up our actions but await the opening of channels for a political solution.
But I saw that even if the government wanted this, the forces in the shadows would not allow it. Demirel did not have the capacity to enter into a dialogue [with us]. It was the shadowy forces who called the tune. Their advice, presented by their representatives on the National Security Council (MGK), is accepted by parliament and this is how business is conducted. Demirel is trying to get along with the military and is making a charm offensive towards them. He is even taking Ozal as a model.
We have seen that this government does not pursue a different goal to its predecessor. We have of course used our right to resistance. There is also an attempt to whip up chauvinism in Turkey. To combat this we have said result by a sudden uprising but to put popular struggle in the forefront.
The peasant is tempted by jacqueries. His character leads him to want a final result in two or three days, by an uprising. We know what this has cost the people. We have said to our insurgent peasants: "You will get nowhere with this mentality."
The results of such cut-price uprisings are clear. Crushing defeat and capitulation. And, of course, such moods have also developed in our party. Those who want a jacquerie today will be ready to capitulate tomorrow. They are unable to accept the need for planned and organized work.
Our party follows a long-term policy. It aims to better organize the people under guerilla protection. It is not a matter of aiming at an immediate result but to change into a growing army that organizes itself and does not leave room for provocations; it aims to spread throughout the country the permanent people's uprising — or action or demonstration - the terminology doesn't matter — without limiting it to one or two places.
There could be a big movement arising out of Newroz, but in my view there will not be an uprising aiming at a seizure of power. They [the forces of order can still mount provocations and attempt a massacre. But our reply will take place in the limits I have just described.
It is necessary that what happens is not just a demonstration by the people of Kurdistan alone; it must also [find an echo] in Turkey. It is necessary that a demonstration that
money nor arms. Iran is not an enemy of the PKK, since it fears Turkish ambitions in the Middle East... Saddam does not make any difficulties
April 27, 1992 • # 227 International Viewpoint starts in Istanbul is pursued as far afield as Bolan or Cizre. Such is the meaning of the symbolic slogan: "Solidarity between Zonguldak [the miners] and Botan [the Kurds]".
The guerillas are certainly going to step up their activities. This is essential because they are calling for our total capitulation. And we will not unilaterally lay down our arms. We are not opposed to a ceasefire. We are indeed inclined to this so that the problems can be resolved politically.
The Turkish people must understand that the PKK does not want violence at any price. It says: there is a serious national question, there is a democratic question. This cannot be resolved by unilateral acts by the government, the parliament or the army, but by starting out from dialogue between the organizations that represent our peoples, the legitimacy of these organizations and their official character.
To put an end to the violence it is not enough to recognize the [Kurdish] reality; the parties have to find the courage to sit down around the negotiating table. This would be a very civilized and reasonable solution. • What do you think of the government's attitude, in particular concerning the state of emergency?
The government, and especially the SHP as a member of the coalition, has had an incoherent attitude on the
Who backs the PKK?
question of the state of emergency. Its abrogation was initially included in the [government's] protocol and in the
SHP election manifesto as well as in the protocol signed between the SHP and candidates originally from the
HEP. Demirel raised a lot of hopes. But at the same time as was speaking his fine words, the very same day the bombings were stepped up and the shadowy forces multiplied their anonymous assas-
I thus say that either these people [SHP-DYP] have not succeeded in becoming the real government of the country or they are playing a double game. In fact, instead of waiting for gestures of goodwill from our side, it is for the stronger party, the party that in practice dominates, that is the government, to make the necessary
It is 13 years now that I have been here with my comrades. We have come through the worst winter of the century, and known hunger and thirst. After all, we too are human beings. If we did not have elevated objectives to achieve, objectives that we cannot renounce, we would not have come through these conditions.
The government does not want to understand this. They think we are fanatics addicted to terrorism, bloodthirsty monsters who take pleasure in
TURKEY / KURDISTAN shedding it. This is not true.
Furthermore, who in fact are the bloodthirsty monsters if not the exploiters? How have people been able to become rich in Turkey? I ask people to reflect on this and compare
It is not the PKK who commits daily anonymous assassinations. Perhaps there have accidentally been some murders, which fall outside our political line. Those who commit undisciplined acts in our ranks are known. They are expelled or called to account for their actions. But we always find a solution, despite our limited capacity to control what goes
But opposite us is a government which has a great capacity for control and good information. Why has it not been able to catch the murderers of journalists? How can one have confidence in such a govern-
IN an interview in the Turkish newspaper Milliyet early this year PKK leader Abdullah Örcalan made the following remarks: "the people will be more active... and take part in the war. I have armed the country's people. The only way in which [the state] can admit the Kurds' identity is by agreeing to talk to us....
"The constitution should be amended...A unitary state cannot be democratic. The Turkish republic must become a federation...We will be setting up a national parliament this year... Each town will choose its delegates...We are preparing a meeting for next July or August... The article in the constitution on the integrity and indivisibility of the people and the territory is a calamity...
Henceforth we will react against Demirel...The person we best understand is Özal... he says he is a Kurd and talks of a federation... The members of the HPE have been ineffective in parliament... I have sent them their instructions... it is useless for them to remain inside the
The PKK's present budget is $100m and our annual income in Europe is about 50m Deutschmarks... The Germans support us now... France and Greece have softened their position. Syria gives us neither for the PKK. *
It is necessary to put an end to army terrorism. One does not need to use air power against a handful of terrorists, nor amass such a concentration of troops in the region. This is not aimed at a handful of terrorists. Tanks have taken up position everywhere in Cizre. Is the [town of] Cizre wholly terrorist? And what then is the definition of terrorism? • What have you to say to those SHP deputies who were previously in the HEP, if the emergency law is voted through parliament?
A party [like the SHP] which shows so little coherence, so few principles, and so many contradictions is doomed to disappearance. As for the HEP deputies, if the PKK had not supported them, nobody would noe reave heardof them. They can- 1 7 not renounce their Kurdish identity;
TURKEY-KURDISTAN / ex-YUGOSLAVIA