Both conservative newspapers such as the Star and liberal ones such as Radikal supported Erdogan’s initiative, warning however that this right to have Kurdish language courses cannot be perceived as the beginning of a process that will result in the creation of an ethnic states within the Turkish Republic, but rather that it should be seen as a sign of Turkey’s own democratisation.
The news, announced by Erdogan, was known in political circles thanks to a very important agreement signed between the party currently governing Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The news within the news was that the initiative for this agreement, addressed at creating a parliamentary commission entrusted with drafting a road map for resolving the so-called Kurdish issue (on the backdrop of the process leading to the drafting of a new Turkish constitution), had come from the party that is traditionally the most Kemalist and nationalist, the Republican People’s Party, founded personally by the “Father of all Turks”, Kemal Ataturk.
It has not escaped the most careful observers that the current Republican leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, has this change of gear in his DNA. The son of an Armenian mother, a Kurd and an Alevi, Kilicdaroglu personally represents the clearest signs of the wounds inflicted on the Turkish nation through the discrimination directed over time at the minorities who have lived there. Thus, the Turkish Gandhi, as the media call him because of his calm speaking manner, did not stop at wanting just an agreement with the ruling party, but is insisting on involving in this process the other two parties represented in parliament, the nationalist (MHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
We shall see whether the initiative embarked upon by Kilicdaroglu and Erdogan will manage to overcome the objections based on principle coming from the nationalists (who still see the Kurdish issue in ideological terms) and those more specific of the pro-Kurds (who instead object that all this is not enough). In the meantime, however, the fact remains that in recent months, also thanks to the Syrain chaos, the repression of the PKK’s Kurdish independence fighters in south-eastern Turkey has increased significantly, at times reaching levels of extreme brutality. In December, in Uludere, the Turkish Air Force killed more than forty civilians who were crossing the border with Iraq, mistaking them for terrorists. Furthermore, Turkish prisons continue to detain people, charged with supporting PKK terrorists, who are active members of the pro-Kurdish BDP. The situation is the result of a very strict anti-terrorism law that allows people to be jailed even if only suspected of having links with terrorists. The most recently detained include Leyla Zana, an independent Kurdish member of parliament and two mayors from the district of Van, Abdulkerim Sayan and Murat Durmaz, not to mention the dozens of journalists who have ended up in prison accused of propagandizing Kurdish terrorism.
On the other hand the PKK seems to have no intention of laying down its weapons. In recent days eight Turkish soldiers were killed in combat with Kurdish guerrillas in the province of Hakkari, in the southeast of the country, bringing the number of those killed in the past year to over 500 (161 members of the security forces, 270 Kurd guerrilla fighters and 76 civilians).
Erdogan’s openness to Kilicdaroglu’s plans for reform thus clashes with events moving in the opposite direction to the one wanted by the two leaders. Obviously, there is the possibility (and the hope) that the hand held out by the Turkish political parties will change events, managing to heal a decades-old and extremely bloody conflict. It is however possible that nothing will change and that this new strategy will end up by clashing with the mental and political bonds that have so far prevented a shared solution being found. One should not forget that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had bet a great deal on what he had called a “democratic initiative,” a policy of aperture to the Kurds (among his most important voters in his first two election wins) that came to nothing. Now there is also the important support provided by his Republican opponents (if indeed the ancient Kemalist party really is totally controlled by its leader). There is no certainty that all will end well, but a happy ending cannot be excluded.
Translated by Francesca Simmons