Turkey Analyst,
vol. 4 no. 10
16 May 2011

WHAT THE COLUMNISTS SAY

The escalation of the Kurdish conflict is the major preoccupation of the political commentators in Turkey. There is widespread apprehension that the situation is on the verge of getting out of hand, in the wake of the offensive that has been launched by the army against the PKK guerillas in the southeast and after subsequent PKK attacks against the police. Many commentators wonder why the army offensive is taking place right now and several of them posit that the intention is to influence the outcome of the June 12 elections. It is generally recognized that the way the Kurdish issue is handled will determine Turkey’s future.

AKYOL: I’M SCARED
I am sacred, writes Taha Akyol in Milliyet. Yes, I am scared, and I am so because of two developments: The first reason is that terror continues and that in spite of all democratic openings, the Kurdish imbroglio is getting worse instead of getting close to a solution. I am really worried, and I am wondering how all this will end. The second thing that concerns me is the rage of our political leaders; that has indeed become unsupportable. How on earth are the leaders ever going to be able to sit down together and agree on a new constitution? And in the process of drafting the new constitution, the highly contentious Turkish-Kurdish matter will be high on the agenda. How are these political leaders and the BDP (the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party) going to be able to produce a solution? It seems inevitable that tensions will rise further along the road to a new constitution; where will such an escalation take Turkey? Aren’t these eventualities scaring you as well? Much will depend on how Prime Minister Erdoğan is going to handle matters. He will carry the main burden of responsibility.

AKÖZ: WHO IS GOING TO OPPOSE THE NEW CONSTITUTION?
Emre Aköz in Sabah lists those groups that he expect are going to oppose the drafting of a new constitution:  a liberal constitution that satisfies the demands of our Kurdish citizens will first of all put the PKK and BDP (Peace and democracy party) in a quandary; indeed, they will oppose a constitution that grants the Kurds their demands but that does not at the same time alleviate the conditions of the PKK.  But of course, the source of main opposition will be the military. The military has used its hegemony over the political system to secure incredible privileges; these include not only things like housing, hospitals, resorts (such things are after all also accorded to high bureaucrats). There are other privileges as well, granted by the law: when it comes to real estate and taxes, there are a pile of them that singles out the military for special treatment. And of course, our main interest concerns what is termed the system of military “tutelage”; the foundations of this tutelage are laid out in the preamble to the current constitution and will have to be rewritten totally. But this is not only going to be resisted by the military but also by others in society (as everyone knows, the military is supported by the big capital in Istanbul, the secularist middle class and by the Alevis). But a romantic view of the military prevails among the majority, the Sunnis, as well. The Sunnis regard the military as the “hearth of the prophet”, and have always tended to exonerate the military as an institution. Getting rid of such romantic notions and recognizing that the military is just another vested interest is not going to be easy. But of course, the main resistance is going to emanate from the military. Remember what happened to the run-up to the 2007 election: as the elections approached, soldiers were suddenly slain (in the southeast). Why are these military operations, that are provoking the militants (of PKK) and the Kurds being undertaken now? That gives you a hint of what we are going to experience during the drafting of the new constitution.

ALTAN: COULD THIS BE THE LAST ELECTION FOR A UNIFIED TURKEY?
Mehmet Altan in Star notes that the situation in the Kurdish dominated southeast of the country is rapidly deteriorating. Everything started when thirty five local Kurdish politicians were detained in a police operation in Hakkari. Then, seven PKK members were killed in Tunceli. It has to be said that there is almost no common ground left between the west of the country and its east. Just like the attacks against the military are provoking angry reactions in the west, the east treats the killings of the members of the PKK in the same way. It was a case in point that the city of Tunceli declared three days of official mourning after the recent killings, and that a big crowd gathered at the funerals of the slain PKK members. And the next step in the escalation came when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that “there is no Kurdish problem, only the problems of our citizens of Kurdish origin.” The last weekend, I heard local Kurdish politicians in the region say that if there is no radical change, “these elections are going to be the last”. I was told that if the independent Kurdish candidates fare as well as expected in the June 12 election, and if a support in the range of ninety percent is secured (by the BDP) in critical places in the region in the ensuing local elections, the Kurdish movement is no longer going to treat Ankara as an interlocutor but rather continue along its road with an international interlocutor of its choosing. The question is, have we reached the end of politics in the southeast? Indeed, if nothing is done quickly to restore the hope of peace, we should recognize that the answer is unequivocally yes.

OGUR: WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE ARE TWO STATES AND TWO PKK
Yildiray Ogur in Taraf writes that it is crucial to understand that there are two states in Turkey. We have one state that allowed the members of the PKK to enter Turkey at the Habur border crossing (in October 2009), and we have another state that issued an arrest order for the same PKK members who had taken off their uniforms and who were getting ready to enter political life. We have one state that vetoes independent Kurdish parliamentary candidates, and we have another state that in one stroke re-enables those candidates to stand for election. And we have one state that does not deny that it has set down to negotiate with the PKK’s founder and leader Abdullah Öcalan on the prison island of Imrali, and we have another state that is seeking up and killing off young PKK members in the mountains. And the second thing that we need to appreciate is that there are two PKK’s. There is one PKK, represented by Öcalan that understands that things have changed since the Cold war, making it necessary for the organization to adapt, and that realizes that it has no option but to change as the state itself is in the process of changing. This PKK desires a dialogue with the Turks. The other PKK meanwhile sees the ongoing negotiations as a threat, perceiving them as aiming only to dismantle the organization. It is this PKK that Öcalan criticized recently when he said “you can neither fight nor build peace”.

ÇANDAR: IF THE KURDISH PROBLEM IS NOT SOLVED, TURKEY COULD BECOME ANOTHER SYRIA
Cengiz Çandar in Radikal writes that the upcoming general election lacks the suspense and drama that characterized the 2007 election. Those elections were a “popular uprising” against the regime of military tutelage. This time around, the Turkish political scene has been stabilized, although no one should make the mistake of assuming that the regime of military tutelage has been definitely defeated or that democracy has been consolidated. But the risk this time is that the AKP is going to lose its reformist energy and become a “conservative” party, in the sense that it inherits the well-known statist reflexes that have historically defined the actions of the centre-right parties in this country. If that were to happen, we may wonder how “new” the new constitution is really going to be – assuming that a new constitution is going to be drafted at all. And it is the course that it chooses to pursue with regard to the Kurdish issue – Turkey’s number one problem – that will reveal whether or not the AKP will be able to rid itself of its “conservative” and negative “statist reflexes”, and continue as it has done so far to clear the hurdles on Turkey’s road to a better future. After the elections, the AKP, BDP and CHP are going to have to reach an understanding to solve the country’s number one problem; in the absence of such an understanding, we may start to view Yemen and Syria from within Turkey.

© Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center, 2010. This article may be reprinted provided that the following sentence be included: "This article was first published in the Turkey Analyst (www.turkeyanalyst.org), a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center".

The Turkey Analyst
The Turkey Analyst is a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center, designed to bring authoritative analysis and news on the rapidly developing domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey. It is published bi-weekly, and includes topical analysis, as well asa summary of the Turkish media debate. It is edited and compiled under the supervision of Svante E. Cornell and Halil M. Karaveli.

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