Tension with the Kurds sparks fear of civil war in Turkey
Giuseppe Didonna 18 September 2015

The attacks in Daglica and the words spoken by Erdogan, threw the country into a state of latent tension that exploded when news came on the Tuesday morning of 14 policemen killed in a PKK ambush. Thirty dead in 48 hours, 100 in a month and a half. Tension in the country could be cut with a knife.

The headquarters of the daily newspaper Hurriyet were attacked twice in 48 hours. Ultra-nationalists, fascists and AKP supporters accused the newspaper of having intentionally misquoted Erdogan, thereby acting as part of the HDP’s electoral campaign.

On September 9th and 10th a wave of violence erupted on the streets of Turkey with about 130 offices belonging to the pro-Kurdish HDP attacked by ultra-nationalist groups. The headquarters in Ankara were the first to be destroyed. Ultra-right-wing demonstrations, also attended by political representatives of the nationalist MHP and Turkish fascist circles, always anti-Kurds, or others such as the Ottoman Association, which is close to the AKP, raged all over the country. Buildings were set on fire, stones thrown and HDP flags replaced with Turkish ones.

Party leader Selattin Demirtas said, “the police had been forewarned about protests and that there was possible danger.” His words were echoed by the MP Garo Paylan, who, speaking of the attack in Ankara, said controversially, “our headquarters were set on fire while the police watched.” The party’s archives were destroyed by the fire according to the IMC channel.

Tension and fear surfaced in a country that suddenly found itself once again experiencing the dark days of the nineties, when being a Kurd was a crime. The clear impression is that the conflict has moved from a military level to a social one and that clashes no longer only concern the army and insurgents, but now involve the squares, the streets and the homes of ordinary people. The fact that there is more to this than just a shared perception, is confirmed by the fact that the government ordered a curfew in Cizre.

Cizre: shots fired, screams and then silence

After eight days of curfew the funerals of 16 citizens were held in Cizre, a small town only a few kilometres from the two tormented borders with Syrian and Iraq, an almost compulsory junction for the transit of separatists, the heart of the province of Sirnak and a PKK stronghold. On September 10th an HDP delegation of 30 MPs and two minsters, led by Demirtas himself, was stopped by the army while trying to reach the area that had been the centre of military operations for a number of days. The delegation’s objective was to gather information about the health conditions of civilians, verify any possible violations of human rights and understand what had happened in the course of previous days after a curfew enveloped the area in a bubble of silence.

The decision to block the delegation, which then tried to reach Cizre on foot but was stopped by the police, was confirmed in the following days by Davutoglu, who said that measures taken “will continue to be implemented for as long as the government and the army consider them necessary” and invited all political parties to “respect security conditions.”

His words were echoed by Interior Minister Selami Altinok, who said, “We consider the delegation’s arrival as an element of provocation to the extent that it could cause incidents and that is why, for reasons linked to public order, the delegation has not been allowed access to Cizre.”

Under pressure from the European Union and under the eye of the international media, the road to Cizre has been reopened, and Altinok claimed the necessity of the measures implemented, observing that “30 terrorists had been killed, a further 10 arrested, 800 kilos of explosives and a large amount of weapons seized.” Prime Minister Davutoglu guaranteed that “No civilians were involved”.

This version of events clashes with another far more tragic reality told by the HDP’s lawyers who reported the death of at least 20 civilians and the total isolation the curfew imposed on the population, adding that it was impossible to find essential goods and that town could not be accessed by ambulances and doctors. The case reported by the lawyer Ertugrul Kurkcu to the BBC is emblematic. A man was shot twice while going to buy bread and died of his wounds because ambulances were not permitted access to the area. A woman, Zeynep Taskin, was shot in the doorway of her home while carrying her son. There was no ambulance for her either, and she died slowly. Photographs of her body wrapped in canvas and covered with ice due to the fact that she could not be buried for three days, went viral on-line. A baby who was only 35 days old also died in these clashes.

The fusion with politics

The HDP has accused the government of punishing Cizre for having voted en masse (92%) for the HDP in the recent elections, when, thanks to it having obtained more than the 10% the threshold, the pro-Kurd representatives became MPs, preventing Erdogan’s AKP from having an absolute majority in parliament.

And it is the mix with politics that frightens people most. “They intended to impart an exemplary punishment on those who voted for us, they sent a message to all the cities in which the HDP governs, but the consequences may be uncontrollable throughout the south-east,” observed Demirtas.

Two months have passed since Erdogan and Davutoglu both swore that they would do anything to prevent the birth of a Kurdish state. It is a battle that Turkey would have predictably fought beyond its southern border. The occupation, together with the United States, of a strip of Syrian territory, aimed at frustrating Syrian Kurds’ dreams of joining the enclaves in which they are an ethnic majority, should certainly be seen in this perspective. Questions, however, were addressed at Ankara’s policies concerning Kurds living in Turkey.

Having buried the peace process, over 100 Turkish security officers have been killed in PKK attacks since July 23rd,  systematically followed by Turkish F16s dropping bombs on the Kurds (according to the army 1,000 terrorists have been killed). The war in the south-east of the country has started again and the intertwining with politics is evident in the AKP’s repeated accusations to the ADP of being the PKK’s political wing. Attempts to exacerbate the conflict on the one hand, magnifying the government’s work on the other, clearly answer electoral needs.

“Democracy or terror. Stability or war” is the AKP’s electoral strategy and often repeated by Erdogan himself.

With Cizre, with attacks on the offices of newspapers that criticise the government and on HDP offices, one is under the impression that Turkey is on the edge of a passage from a military to a social conflict. Further evidence is provided by investigations concerning Selattin Demirtas, accused of “terrorist propaganda” and of having fuelled among the Kurds the idea that the government is taking provocative action to erode the HDP’s success. All this is taking place while the media continue to broadcast images of the funerals of soldiers and policemen who died in the PKK attacks, while tension and rage rise incessantly.

While initially the AKP’s attempt was clearly aimed at getting more nationalist votes by espousing the interventionist option, it is very probable that political strategies have changed, with percentages in polls almost totally unchanged following the resumption of air raids. Social tension is rising; attacks against the Kurds and events such as those in Cizre raise serious questions regards to possible reactions to such a situation from the Kurdish population. The end of social peace would lead to the declaration of a state of emergency and elections would be postponed. This is a prospect the AKP would not dislike at all should the HDP continue to remain above the 10% threshold.

Translated by Francesca Simmons

SUPPORT OUR WORK

 

Please consider giving a tax-free donation to Reset this year

Any amount will help show your support for our activities

In Europe and elsewhere
(Reset DOC)


In the US
(Reset Dialogues)


x