By Norm Dixon
Turkey's military dominated government is cynically exploiting the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) unilateral political concessions. Rather than respond with a relaxation of its hardline opposition to Kurdish political, language and cultural rights, Ankara has intensified its attacks. Within the Kurdish national movement, a small but increasingly vocal minority believe that the PKK's moves have played into the Turkish regime's hands.
The legal pro-Kurdish rights People's Democratic Party's (HADEP) deputy leader, Eyup Karagecili, was arrested on March 13. This follows the February 25 jailing of 18 HADEP members, including HADEP chairperson Ahmet Turan Demir and his predecessor, Murat Bozlak. On February 19-20, the popular HADEP mayors of Diyarbakir, Siirt and Bingol were arrested. Turkish government prosecutors are also attempting to have the courts ban HADEP.
During his trial in June, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan proposed a peace process based on a "democratic [Turkish] republic" which would grant the Kurds "linguistic and cultural freedom". In return, the PKK would end its armed struggle and repudiate its "historic mistake" of seeking an independent Kurdistan.
On August 2, Ocalan issued a statement calling on PKK guerillas "to end the armed struggle, [from] September 1 ... and withdraw outside the borders of Turkey". He called on the "relevant state and social institutions" to "support the success of a peace process" and urged "international bodies to demonstrate positive and active assistance".
The PKK presidential council, the party's exiled top leadership, on August 5 expressed its "full support" for Ocalan's call: "From now on our ideological-political, organisational and military activities will be undertaken ... based on the fundamental points of our president's statement and initiative to create a Democratic Republic."
The PKK leadership on August 11 stated: "Instead of fighting against the New World Order, the PKK will determine its place within it and continue its resistance with political means ... The possible realisation of a Democratic Republic requires dialogue and cooperation, which the other side must also make possible. In the future, the resistance at the political level will concentrate on this democracy project."
On September 1, Osman Ocalan, a presidential council member and Ocalan's brother, appeared on the Kurdish satellite station Medya TV to declare: "We are laying down our weapons, never to take them up again ... We will try to prevent others from taking up arms, should they try to."
No response
The PKK's appeals to Ankara to also make concessions have been treated with contempt. Defence minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu described the PKK's sweeping concessions as an "insincere show of repentance" and promised to eliminate the "centres of terrorism".
On October 1, Turkish president Suleyman Demirel told parliament that the PKK's decision to "abandon armed struggle does not change the nature of the threat ... The state's will and determination to end terror is maintained." The Turkish military high command declared that Turkey is "determined to fight until the last terrorist is rendered ineffective".
In late September, the Turkish military sent thousands of troops to intercept the PKK fighters withdrawing from the Kurdish-populated south-east. Another 5000 troops, backed by tanks and US-supplied Cobra attack helicopters, entered southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
Still, the PKK continued to pile concession upon concession. On October 1, under orders from Ocalan, eight PKK guerrillas — dubbed the Peace and Democratic Solution Group — surrendered. On October 29, eight leaders of the European-based Kurdish National Liberation Front (ERNK), PKK's political wing, gave themselves up.
Disregarding Ankara's dismissal of earlier calls for an unconditional amnesty for PKK fighters, Ocalan on November 5 urged his party's fighters: "Everyone must return to their birthplace ... The place to resolve this conflict is on Turkish soil ... I am calling for a fight through democratic means and political channels in our mother country ... whatever the consequences, [be it] death or imprisonment."
Under the "repentance law", passed in August, only PKK activists (the PKK leadership is excluded) who have not engaged in armed activity can apply. Amnesty is granted only if information is supplied that results in the arrest of other PKK members.
European pressure
Meanwhile, an appeals court on November 25 upheld Ocalan's death sentence, exhausting the jailed leader's last avenue of appeal within the Turkish legal system. It remains only for parliament to confirm the sentence and for the president to ratify it for it to be carried out.
The Turkish government's anti-Kurdish intransigence faltered only under pressure from the European Union. The EU let it be known that Turkey would not be accepted as a candidate EU member at the organisation's December 10-11 Helsinki summit if it proceeded with Ocalan's execution and did not move toward abolishing the death penalty.
But Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's government — which came to power on a wave of anti-Kurdish, anti-PKK hysteria and Turkish national chauvinism, and is dependent on its neo-fascist Nationalist Action Party coalition partner — could not bluntly agree to commute Ocalan's sentence at the insistence of the EU.
Instead, Ankara privately assured the EU it would postpone Ocalan's execution pending his lawyers' appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, a process that could take as long as two years. In that time, the Turkish ruling class and its political parties will be able to judge just how few concessions will be necessary for the EU to accept Turkey as a full member.
The PKK presidential council on December 5 announced: "The Kurdish side has made all the concessions and [has gone] beyond the call of duty in fulfilling the required steps to make this process successful. In response, the Turkish state has insisted on its policies of denying the Kurdish identity and annihilating the Kurds ... Our president and party's initiative for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict is taken as an opportunity by the state to exterminate our struggle for freedom."
Yet, this recognition did not lead to a reassessment of PKK strategy. On December 11, the presidential council welcomed the EU's decision to accept Turkey as a candidate member. On December 21, the council stated: "The acceptance of Turkey as an EU candidate brings a new dimension to the process and makes practical measures urgent. Encouraged by recent developments, [the PKK] is determined to fully carry out the decision to end the struggle and withdraw forces from the area of battle."
Ocalan held hostage
On January 12, the Turkish government announced that Ocalan's execution would be postponed. With this concession, Ecevit cleverly turned Ocalan into a hostage, his life dependent on the PKK's good behaviour. Ecevit said: "If the terrorist organisation [PKK] and its supporters attempt to use this process against the high interests of the state, then the ... execution will be started immediately".
An EU spokesperson welcomed the decision and stated that it "assumed that in the future the execution of Mr Ocalan is not going to be carried out". "This is a courageous decision which comforts all those who work to abolish the death penalty in Europe", gushed Council of Europe (Europe's governmental human rights organisation) secretary-general Walter Schwimmer and the president of the council's parliamentary assembly, Lord Russel-Johnston, in a joint statement. "We trust its full value will be appreciated in Turkey's rapprochement to the EU."
On January 15, Ocalan issued a statement heeding Ecevit's warning: "... [the PKK] will adopt behaviour that is most appropriate for peace and democracy ... The recent decision will be the start of a series of reforms. Everybody should contribute to this process, and on this basis nothing is needed more than stability and peace within the country. If some positive developments are observed, the PKK will also act accordingly."
He added: "Democracy needs to be strengthened both in content and in procedure. I am not a separatist. I am separate from the historic mistakes [the struggle for an independent Kurdistan] committed in the past."
The PKK's strategy was approved by 400 delegates attending an "extraordinary" congress held in Iran, January 22-23. Symbolising the party's direction, the PKK's armed and political wings were renamed, dropping the word "Kurdistan". The ERNK became the Democratic People's Union and the Kurdish National Liberation Army is now the People's Legitimate Defence Force. The party's hammer and sickle logo was replaced by a burning torch.
Dissent
There are signs of discontent within the usually highly disciplined PKK, and in the wider Kurdish national movement. On January 6, the presidential council disowned PKK guerilla units that had ignored Ocalan's call to end the armed struggle. "One group in Tunceli [province] has not complied with the decision to withdraw. This group may carry out an armed attack at any moment. Such actions are not the responsibility of the PKK and these people have no ties with the PKK", the council statement said.
Hamili Yildirim, a founding member of the PKK and the regional commander of PKK forces in Tunceli and Erzurum provinces, is leading the rebel fighters. His decision to defy Ocalan reportedly followed attacks by the Turkish military on his fighters as they were withdrawing from Turkey.
The downing of a Turkish military helicopter in early January in Tunceli has been attributed to the dissident PKK fighters. Two other guerilla commanders in Dersim province, Kazim and Isa, have also rebelled.
In mid-January, a group called "Kurdish Initiative in Europe" issued a statement to Agence France-Presse stating that it had aligned itself with Yildirim. Dissent has also been reported in the PKK camps in northern Iraq.
On January 21, a group called the "PKK Revolutionary Line Fighters" restated its opposition to the course of the PKK leadership. In a statement issued on September 26, PKK central committee members Mehmet Can Yuce and M. Kidir, political prisoners in Canakkale Prison in Turkey, accused the PKK leadership of imposing "an unprecedented liquidation, weakening and disarmament ... upon our party".
Yuce and Kidir rejected the leadership's "reduction of the program for national liberation to a program for 'cultural rights'. Within the parameters of this ideology, a substantial disarmament is nothing but liquidation." They declared that "the decisions passed by the PKK Presidential Council have no political, legal or moral basis".
"To trust the state and to make the state trust us have forcefully been put before us", Yuce and Kidir said. "This is one of the most important parts [of the PKK leadership's] process ... Let the people who are faithless, ideologically broken and tired, and the people who have the intention of becoming part of the system, stay where they are.
"A Democratic Republic, which is nothing but the Turkish Republic, should be celebrated by them. We, however, must walk onward on our martyr's path of victory with unlimited bravery and unwavering determination."
It is not only proponents of the armed struggle who have criticised the PKK leadership. Exile Mahmet Kilinc, who is not a PKK member, is a former parliamentary representative of the banned pro-Kurdish rights Democracy Party (HADEP's predecessor) and an elected member of the pro-PKK Kurdish parliament in exile. He has long argued that the PKK should concentrate on the political struggle, rather than the armed struggle.
Writing in the magazine Serbesti, which is owned and edited by one of Ocalan's defence lawyers Ahmet Zeki Okcuoglu, Kilinc said that, while the PKK is entitled to attempt to "establish a dialogue between parties or take unilateral steps, no one has the right to come forth in the name of Kurdism and cast a shadow over the national resistance for which the Kurdish people have paid a high price over the past two centuries, or over [the Kurds'] natural right to self-determination, thus rendering controversial the grounds on which the Kurds base [their resistance]."
Kilinc wrote, "Nor do they have the right to make the kind of statements which justify the groundless claims that the Turkish Republic has put forward against the Kurds for 75 years. It is unacceptable that Abdullah Ocalan has taken an 'excessive stance', when it is quite possible for him to voice his demand for a 'democratic republic', for 'peace' and for 'reconciliation', as well as his proposals for a solution on this basis, without casting a shadow on the justified foundations of Kurdish national resistance."
Failure of armed struggle
While the dissident guerilla commanders seem to be on strong ground when they criticise the PKK leadership for its abandonment of struggle for the Kurdish people's right to national self-determination — to the point of becoming partisans of a "modern" all-inclusive Turkish nationalism that can accommodate some rights for the Kurds — they are on shakier ground when they continue to counterpose the armed struggle to the political struggle.
Selahattin Celik, a former PKK central committee member and another prominent advocate of the political struggle who has condemned the PKK's new strategy, has argued in several recent interviews that the PKK's political crisis began during the mid-1990s when it failed to adjust its strategy and tactics to the changing political terrain in Kurdistan. The armed struggle had reached an impasse.
Throughout the 1990s, billions of dollars worth of US-supplied military hardware had put the guerilla struggle on the back foot. Celik pointed out in the February 2 issue of the German newspaper Junge Welt that factors that impacted on the effectiveness of the armed struggle included "the breakup of the Soviet Union and the increasing US presence in the region; the Gulf War against Iraq; and the new Turkey-Israel alliance and military cooperation". In the latter part of the 1990s, the PKK lost most its rear bases in Syria and Iran, and was under increasing pressure from the Washington- and Ankara-backed Kurdish Democratic Party in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
"After 1994, the Turkish state was able to crush the rising tide [of the mass Kurdish liberation struggle]", Celik said. "The PKK could not provide protection for the civilian population from the brutal actions of the [Turkish military and state-sponsored death squads] ... Because of the war, the social structures in the Kurdish regions had greatly changed. A primarily agrarian society had become forcibly urbanised due to migration from the conflict."
According to a US State Department report issued in February 1999: "The exact number of persons forcibly displaced from villages in the south-east since 1984 is unknown. Most estimates agree that 2600 to 3000 villages and hamlets have been depopulated. A few non-governmental organisations put the number forcibly displaced as high as 2 million."
The vast majority who fled remain in the Kurdish region's major cities, such as Diyarbakir. HADEP's sweeping victories in last April's local government elections, winning control of 38 city and town administrations, some with votes of more than 60%, indicated the potential political force that the urban Kurdish population now represents. Millions more Kurds live in the main cities of Turkey.
The time was ripe in the mid-1990s for a turn to a militant political struggle in the main Kurdish and Turkish cities, a struggle that could have united with the Turkish left to demand greater democratic rights, to challenge the military's continuing behind-the-scenes control of Turkish politics and for recognition of the Kurdish people's right to national self-determination. Such a struggle would have been similar to that of the Palestinian intifada or the South African liberation movement's strategy to make apartheid South Africa "ungovernable".
Instead, Celik pointed out, the PKK chose to expand the armed struggle. As a result, the PKK fighters were isolated in the mountainous south-east and in southern Kurdistan: "75% of the martyrs fell [in northern Iraq], not in Turkey".
The PKK's new "political struggle" is not one that is based on the mobilised strength and militancy of the millions of urban Kurds. Ocalan and the PKK's demands go no further than those acceptable to the EU and Turkish politicians uneasy with the political dominance of the Turkish military. These are very unreliable allies.
Celik's assessment was even blunter in a February 18 interview in the German newspaper Freitag: "It was very simple. The Turkish military told him, 'You founded the PKK, and now you will disband it'. There have been no negotiations between the Turkish state and Ocalan. There have only been orders and Ocalan has followed them."
Celik also does not believe the dissident guerilla units and political prisoners can save the PKK: "The new line of the PKK is being supported by NATO, HADEP and a large segment of the Kurdish population who are tired of war. Others hope that things will now improve. The opposition is a fading minority ... Instead, I fear that the PKK is threatened with a long-term process of decay."