A masked Kurdish demonstrator holds a PKK flag next to a portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, the group's jailed leader [EPA]
In 1923, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey from the ashes of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, there were two significant groups that opposed the formation of a secular nation state: Islamists and Kurds.
Whereas Islamists supported the continuation of sharia law and the sultanate and were against the westernisation of society and politics, Kurds realised that there was no place for their ethnic and cultural rights in the newly established Turkish nation state.
Kemal's right-hand man, Ismet Inonu, made a speech in 1925 in which he summarised the Turkification campaign aimed at other ethnic groups: "As Turks are in the majority, other groups do not have any power. Our mission is to Turkify non-Turkish groups in the Turkish homeland. We are going to eradicate groups who oppose Turks and Turkishness."
Indeed, Turkish nationalism prompted the reaction of Kurds, who revolted numerous times during the early republican period against the assimilation campaign and each time were harshly suppressed by the Turkish military.
Language banned
Until the 1980s, Turkey's political establishment had refused to recognise the existence of Kurds and instead used the derogatory term "mountain Turks". The Kurdish language was banned in education, media and in parliament.
However, this policy of ignoring the existence of a distinct Kurdish identity started to be challenged by the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), founded by Abdullah Ocalan in the late 1970s.
The PKK, classified as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States, waged an armed campaign against the Turkish state in southeast Turkey that aimed at independence for the Kurds. Compared with ETA in Spain and the IRA in Northern Ireland, whose armed campaigns killed hundreds respectively, the PKK's armed insurgency was bloodier and the death toll has reached more than 40,000 people since 1984.
The intensity of the conflict decreased significantly after 1999, when Ocalan was captured. He has since been serving a life term. Since then the PKK leader has prioritised the political struggle rather than the armed one, renounced separatism, and announced that the Kurdish problem would only be solved through the autonomy of Kurds in "a democratic republic".
However the Turkish political establishment, mainly the military and judiciary, considered the recognition of Kurdish rights as a first step that would lead to the collapse of Turkey and ultimately independence of the Kurds. In the last two decades the Constitutional Court banned four Kurdish parties because of links with the PKK.
Enter Erdogan
The deadlock between the PKK and the Turkish state continued until the rise to power of Erdogan - an outsider to Turkey's ruling elite - in 2002. This changed the political balance significantly. The AKP (Justice and Development Party), having originated in the Islamist movement, was accused by the secular-nationalist establishment of pursuing a secret Islamic agenda.
The clash between the two camps peaked in 2008 when the AKP narrowly escaped being banned by the constitutional court for alleged anti-secular activity.
Erdogan's distance from the Kemalist establishment has made the AKP acceptable to many Kurds. He became the first Turkish prime minister who recognised the Kurdish problem as a problem of ethnic identity rather than economic backwardness.
In 2005, in a ground-breaking way, Erdogan acknowledged that "the state made mistakes about the Kurdish issue". The AKP's reformist approach had a deep impact on Kurds in the 2007 general election. In the predominantly Kurdish south-eastern part of Turkey, the AKP surpassed the Kurdish Party and doubled its vote from 26 per cent to 53 per cent.
Indeed, with its Islamist-conservative discourse, the AKP succeeded in overcoming the conflict between Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms and became the party of all people in Turkey from different ethnic backgrounds.
In 2009, in an effort to find a lasting settlement, Erdogan launched "the Kurdish opening": improving cultural rights for Kurds, launching the first state television channel in Kurdish language, and encouraging PKK fighters to lay down their arms and return from the mountains.
'Treacherous project'
When 34 PKK members returned to Turkey from the mountains of northern Iraq dressed in guerrilla outfits and joined "victory celebrations" at mass rallies in October 2009, the two main opposition parties, the secularist CHP (Republican People's Party) and nationalist MHP (Nationalist Movement Party), branded the "Kurdish opening" a "treacherous project", declared that AKP was negotiating with the "enemy" and would pay the price for its "treason".
Soon the rapprochement with the Kurdish side stopped and the PKK resumed fighting. Erdogan's biggest concern was the upcoming general elections and the possible loss of votes from those inflamed by the nationalist campaign of the opposition.
To appease the growing Turkish nationalist reaction, the government arrested hundreds of Kurds, including politicians, and accused them of being the urban wing of the PKK.
The most crucial issue after the general election will be the writing of the first civil constitution that will mark a clear break from military tutelage, since the current constitution is a product of the military regime which came to power after the coup of September 1980.
During that process, the cultural and political rights of the Kurds will be fiercely debated by Kurdish and Turkish nationalists, secularists and conservatives. According to recent polls Erdogan is expected to form a majority government and he has showed signs of stepping back from his previous reformist stance on the Kurdish problem.
During the election campaign, Erdogan put forward the socio-economic development of southeast Turkey and did not discuss the political reforms for Kurds. He said "there is no Kurdish issue but problems of the Kurdish people".
Nevertheless, the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) emphasised that the new constitution should recognise autonomy for Kurds and education in the Kurdish language. Moreover, Abdullah Ocalan, who retains his power over the Kurdish movement even from his jail cell, warned that "all hell will break loose" if fully-fledged negotiations for a settlement between himself and the Turkish government do not commence after the elections.
Erdogan's nationalist tone in the election campaign aims to lure voters away from the opposition parties, and presumably will change after the election as the AKP will need the support of the Kurdish MPs to write a new constitution.
However, many Kurds consider Erdogan's stance as a strategy to stall reforms demanded by Ocalan. If a new constitution fails to address Kurdish concerns, the PKK might renew its struggle, not only through an armed campaign, as happened in the last two decades, but also through a campaign of civil disobedience, which has become very popular in the Middle East in the recent months.
Dr Behlul Ozkan currently teaches at Mamara University in Istanbul. His book, From the Abode of Islam to Turkish Vatan, will be published by Yale University Press in 2012.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
General Isik Kosaner, the head of the Turkish armed forces, has quit along with the heads of the ground, naval and air forces.
The country's state-run Anatolia news agency said on Friday that the military chiefs wanted to retire because of tensions with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the recently re-elected prime minister.
Anatolia reported Kosaner as resigning "as he saw it as necessary".
In a written statement released after the news of the generals' retirement, Erdogan said that the armed forces would continue to do their duty in a spirit of unity.
Erdogan also named General Necdet Ozel, head of the gendarmerie paramilitary force, as both the commander of the ground forces and acting chief of the armed forces. Abdullah Gul, the president, approved the appointment.
Ozel was the only one among the top commanders not to ask for retirement.
He was expected to be appointed as chief of the military's general staff in place of Kosaner, as tradition dictates only the ground forces head can take over the armed forces.
Hurriyet, a Turkish daily newspaper, said on its website that Kosaner was quitting his post as an act of protest against the court cases jailing military officers, which meant he could no longer defend the rights of his staff.
"It has become impossible for me to continue in this high office because I am unable to fulfil my responsibility to protect the rights of my personnel as the chief of general staff," the report quoted Kosaner as saying.
This is the first time so many top commanders in Turkey have stepped down at once.
Al Jazeera Turk's Elif Ural said Erdogan, Gul and Kosaner met for 50 minutes in the morning, which was the last time the three could meet before next week's Supreme Military Council meeting, where key posts for next year are to be decided.
There were hopes that leaders of the government and the military could reach a compromise about the postings, but the retirement announcements showed the rift could not be bridged, Ural reported.
Campaign
The mass retirement notices came hours after a court charged 22 suspects, including several generals and officers, with carrying out an internet campaign to undermine the government.
The unprecedented departures come ahead of the annual spring meeting scheduled for August 1, where leaders of the government and the military come together to discuss key appointments for the next year.
Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reports from Istanbul .. video inside ..
Reports say Friday's news signals a deep-rooted rift between the military and the government, amid an ongoing trial accusing dozens of generals and officers for plotting to overthrow the government.
In a 2003 case called the "Sledgehammer", 17 generals and admirals in line for promotion have been jailed along with nearly 200 officers on charges of plotting to over throw the government.
More than 400 people - including academics, journalists, politicians and soldiers - are also on trial on separate charges of plotting to bring down the government.
That case is based on a conspiracy by an alleged gang of secular nationalists called "Ergenekon".
The government denies the cases are politically motivated and says it is just trying to work to improve democracy.
Military vs government
Erdogan's ruling AK party, which won a third term in elections on June 12 in a landslide victory, has said its key goal is to replace a military-era constitution with a more democratic one.
But critics say AK has a secret Islamist agenda, an allegation it denies.
The Turkish military has staged three coups between 1960 and 1980 and forced the country's first Islamist-led government out of power in 1997.
Coup leaders drew on the support of Turks who saw them as saviours from chaos and corruption, but they were often ruthless.
In the 1960 takeover, the prime minister and key ministers were executed and in a 1980 coup, there were numerous cases of torture, disappearance and extrajudicial killing.
Such intervention is no longer regarded as feasible, as the power of the military has been curbed sharply under reforms carried out by Erdogan's government.
Kosaner, who took over as head of the armed forces in August 2010, is regarded as a hardline secularist, but he has kept a lower profile than previous chiefs of the general staff.
The announcement comes amid an upsurge in fighting in southeast Turkey between the military and the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party guerrillas.
Kurds Renew Their Movement for Rights and Respect in Turkey Associated Press
Kurdish demonstrators clashed with the police in Istanbul this week during a protest against political restrictions on Kurdish parliamentary candidates.
By LANDON THOMAS Jr. Published: April 21, 2011
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — As more than 5,000 Kurds bent their heads to the ground in prayer on the main square of this provincial capital in Turkey’s volatile southeast, the voice of the imam rang out.
Kurds seeking greater political and cultural rights staged a protest march this week in Istanbul.
“No one can deny us the right that God gave us to speak our own language, in our schools or in our mosques,” the religious leader said in Kurdish, the language of Turkey’s 12 million to 15 million Kurds that the Turkish state still forbids the official use of in schools, mosques and government offices. “To do this is against God and the Koran — we are united with our Arab brothers and we want our rights.”
Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, Turkey’s ever restive Kurds have begun a fresh push to achieve what they have been fighting for since the founding of the Turkish republic in 1923: true freedom of representation and the right to be educated in their mother tongue.
Whereas in the past, the main force behind this impetus has been a bloody guerrilla war, it is now a campaign of civil disobedience that Kurdish leaders here say is inspired not just by the events in neighboring Syria as well as Egypt, Yemen and Libya, but by the fight for civil rights in the United States in the 1960s.
“Our struggle is not just for our rights, but to bring democracy to Turkey,” Mehmet Ali Aydin, the chairman of the Diyarbakir branch of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, known as the B.D.P. for the initials of its Kurdish name, said in an interview. “Forty years ago blacks and whites in America could not eat together. Now the president of your country is black — we are trying to follow in the same steps.”
Arguably Turkey’s most powerful and regionally influential leader since Kemal Ataturk, .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/kemal_ataturk/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. the founder of the republic, Mr. Erdogan, who has transformed Turkey into an economic dynamo, has drawn increasing criticism at home and abroad for a recent crackdown on journalists, writers and other critics.
Those concerns were amplified this week when Turkey’s electoral body disqualified 12 parliamentary candidates, seven of whom were from the B.D.P., from running in the June elections. The decision set off violent protests not just in traditional Kurdish hotbeds like this city, Van and Hakkari but in Istanbul as well. B.D.P. leaders threatened to boycott the elections. On Thursday, the electoral body revised its decision, saying that eight of the barred candidates were now eligible, following appeals by the candidates. But it was unclear whether that would mollify Kurdish anger.
For a political party that has been closed down six times, the four demands that underpin the B.D.P.’s protest movement ask much of a state that has always been extremely sensitive to any perceived threat to its unity.
The demands call for the right for Kurds to be educated in their own language and the freedom to use it in the political arena; the immediate cessation of military operations against Kurds by the Turkish Army; the release of all political prisoners, including Abdullah Ocalan, .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/abdullah_ocalan/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. the leader of the Kurds’ illegal military wing, the P.K.K.; and the removal of the controversial 10 percent electoral threshold that bars any party that cannot attract that share of the national vote from gaining seats in Parliament.
In its blend of the reasonable, like language and representation rights, and the more far-fetched, like the release of Mr. Ocalan, the Kurdish demands exemplify the tensions within the movement between those who want change through the ballot box and those who prefer to secure it by more violent means.
Perhaps no one embodies this push and pull more so than Abdullah Demirbas, the Kurdish mayor of one of Diyarbakir’s larger municipalities. Jailed in 2009 for having used Kurdish in an official capacity as mayor, he was released last year and was recently re-elected.
Over lunch at a local restaurant, where he was frequently interrupted by his constituents giving their best wishes, Mr. Demirbas recounted the story of his 18-year-old son who abandoned high school two years ago to join the P.K.K. and its armed struggle.
“When I got my jail sentence he told me: ‘That is what you get for being a democrat — now it is time to fight,’ ” Mr. Demirbas said. Attempts to dissuade his son were unsuccessful, and Mr. Demirbas has not had any communication with him since then. In fact, he cannot be sure if he is alive.
“As a father I was upset, but my son was fighting for freedom,” he said. “It’s the state I blame, not him. It is so important to solve these problems in a democratic way, but how do we do this if they put us in jail?”
When Mr. Demirbas speaks of Mr. Ocalan, he uses the Turkish honorific “sayin,” loosely translated as esteemed, and he refers to him as “the representative for three million Kurds in Turkey.” Because Mr. Ocalan led a military uprising that resulted in the loss of more than 36,000 lives and is seen by most Turks as an unreconstructed terrorist, statements like Mr. Demirbas’s anger many and feed a suspicion that the party is a front for the P.K.K.
“We have given them schools, TV channels and still they want more,” said Remzi Akin, the owner of a leather shop and a part-time taxi driver in Istanbul. “You extend your hand and then they take your whole body.”
Mr. Akin, a supporter of Mr. Erdogan, fumes with anger that Mr. Ocalan has not yet been hanged.
But his view, while perhaps on the extreme side, is one that the government, which has gone further than any other in ceding ground to the Kurds, is sensitive to because it can ill afford to alienate the large number of Turks who see any concession to the P.K.K. as traitorous.
Still, the shift in attitude toward the Kurds under Mr. Erdogan has been significant. His government has removed the emergency law that covered the southeast in 2002, and it has established a Kurdish-language channel. This month, Turkey’s finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, who is Kurdish, delivered portions of a public speech in Kurd-dominated northern Iraq in Kurdish.
For Kadri Yildirim, who operates a Kurdish-language institute at a state-run university in Mardin, a mountaintop town that overlooks northern Syria, those and other changes are, he said, “beyond my wildest dreams.”
Opened a year ago, the four-year postgraduate program trains teachers in the Kurdish language and culture and is to be followed by a similar course for undergraduates — a baby step, but one that Mr. Yildirim said he saw as positive nonetheless.
But as tensions increase before the elections, these small measures of progress have been overcome by the push for faster, bolder changes.
“Why shouldn’t I be able to listen to my Friday sermon in Kurdish?” asked Resat Dalgic, a 56-year-old shoeshine man, as he prepared to attend the mass prayer protest. “It’s a basic right, is it not?”
Warplanes bomb areas of northern Iraq in apparent retaliation for PKK ambush that left eight Turkish troops dead.
Last Modified: 18 Aug 2011 06:35
Turkish warplanes frequently attack PKK strongholds in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq [EPA]
Turkish fighter jets have attacked Kurdish targets in northern Iraq, in retaliation for an ambush by separatist fighters in southeast Turkey which killed eight soldiers.
The planes took off from a base in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir and struck targets in the mountainous Kandil and Zap areas of Iraq where the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) operate a number of bases, according to Turkish military sources.
They said the targets included anti-aircraft defences and PKK shelters in the region, where several thousand PKK fighters are based and from where they launch attacks on Turkey.
Dozdar Hamo, a PKK spokesman told Reuters, "The border area has been bombed by Turkish planes, and the bombing is very intense. Nearby there are three Kurdish villages. We have no casualties on our side. We don't know if there are any casualties among villagers."
The Turkish military has carried out similar air attacks on the PKK hideouts there in recent years.
"Different areas along the border have been bombed by Turkish aircraft on the pretext that there are camps from the PKK," said Ahmed Qadir, a local government representative in the hamlet of Sedaka, near the Turkish-Iranian border in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
The latest operation came hours after the deadly attack by Kurdish fighters on a military convoy in southeastern Turkey left .
The attack took place in the Cukurca region of the predominantly Kurdish Hakkari province, close to the border with Iraq, Turkish security sources said. A PKK spokesman said it was responsible for the ambush.
Turkish news channel NTV said fighters attacked a military unit with bombs and automatic rifle fire. The unit was on its way to conduct an operation against a group who had earlier detonated a roadside bomb in an attack on another military unit.
The Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan condemned the killings, saying those who carried out such attacks would "pay the price".
"Our patience has finally run out. Those who do not distance themselves from terrorism will pay the price," said Erdogan.
Recent Turkish media reports suggest Erdogan plans to launch a new offensive against the PKK in southeastern Turkey after the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
In July, Kurdish fighters killed 13 troops, the highest death toll for Turkish troops in an attack since the PKK ended a ceasefire in February. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in 1984.
The PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, is fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey.
The French bill requires a fine of 45,000 euros, or about $58,700, and a year in jail for “those who have praised, denied or roughly and publicly downplayed genocidal crimes, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” It is not expected to be considered by the upper house until after the new year.
That Mr. Erdogan took such pronounced steps before the bill had become law underscores the obstacles facing Turkey’s reach for a new international profile and its long-frustrated efforts to join the European Union.
Turkey acknowledges atrocities without any specific death toll, but says that they did not constitute systematic genocide. It argues that such a declaration should be a matter before an international committee of historians with access to state archives.
Turkey’s own penal code makes affirming the genocide a crime on the grounds that it is an insult to Turkish identity. In March, Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Prize .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/nobel_prizes/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier .. winner, was fined 7,000 lira, about $3,700, for his statement in a Swiss newspaper that “we have killed 30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians.”
Television stations here followed the vote in live broadcasts from Paris, showing parliamentary debates in a barely filled hall and people protesting outside, waving Turkish flags behind security barriers. Another group of protesters gathered in front of the French Embassy in Ankara to lay a black wreath and chant slogans against France, according to NTV, a private television network.
Turkish lawmakers joined to denounce the bill and called on France to investigate its own atrocities in Algeria and Rwanda. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the bill violated the spirit of the French Revolution and European principles like freedom of speech.
Mr. Erdogan said he had recalled Turkey’s ambassador and canceled the annually issued permission for French military planes to use Turkish airspace and French naval vessels to enter Turkish harbors. The move means that French military planes will need to apply for permission for each flight. Turkey also refused to cooperate with France in joint European Union projects or participate in a joint economic summit meeting scheduled to take place in Paris in January.
Bernard Valero, the spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, said that France “deplored all the announcements” made by Mr. Erdogan and regretted the recall of the Turkish ambassador from Paris, and he stressed the need for cooperation on a range of issues, including the unrest in Syria, the future of Afghanistan and Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
“We need to handle this current period in a responsible, peaceful and level-headed way,” Mr. Valero said. “We will push for dialogue, not threat.”
Relations between Turkey and France began taking a turn for the worse after President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in 2007, and Turkish officials see political motives in his increasingly nationalist stance against Turkish accession to the European Union and his support for the genocide denial law, despite the fact that Mr. Sarkozy’s opposition to full membership for Turkey is shared across the French political spectrum.
“These irrational steps by Sarkozy based on vote calculations will harm French-Turkish relations,” Mr. Erdogan said.
Maïa de la Baume contributed reporting from Paris.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 22, 2011
An earlier version of this article said incorrectly that the French vote and Turkish response occurred Wednesday, rather than Thursday.
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