Turkish PM Erdogan at an AKP rally in Diyarbakir before the March 29, 2009 elections. The scarf is of the local football club.
Over the past year, Turkey's ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), under the leadership of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, has made an unprecedented push for Kurdish rights in Turkey.
An article in last week's edition of the Economist, "Turkey and the Kurds: Peace Time?", fumbles badly in its attempt analyze this push and explain its ramifications.
Surely, the Economist does a fine job of reviewing the Kurdish problem in Turkey, and details recent reforms. However, its fatal flaw is that it never examines why Erdoğan is pushing so hard for Kurdish rights. Erdoğan is no Nelson Mandela, and he's certainly no liberal-- despite the picture that the Economist paints for the unacquainted reader.
But it is in concluding sentences that the article really takes a nosedive:
"[Solving the Kurdish problem] will not be easy, but Mr Erdogan seems determined to plough on. If he succeeds, says Sezgin Tanrikulu, a human-rights lawyer in Diyarbakir, the Kurds will flock to back him..."
This might be Sezgin Tanrikulu speaking, but by finishing with this quote, the Economist is endorsing this view.
The only problem is, Sezgin notwithstanding, there is absolutely ZERO evidence that Erdoğan (whom Kurdish nationalists like to call Katil Erdoğan: Erdoğan the killer) is on the cusp of winning over the Kurdish electorate.
Click "Read More" to Continue ------>
An article in last week's edition of the Economist, "Turkey and the Kurds: Peace Time?", fumbles badly in its attempt analyze this push and explain its ramifications.
Surely, the Economist does a fine job of reviewing the Kurdish problem in Turkey, and details recent reforms. However, its fatal flaw is that it never examines why Erdoğan is pushing so hard for Kurdish rights. Erdoğan is no Nelson Mandela, and he's certainly no liberal-- despite the picture that the Economist paints for the unacquainted reader.
But it is in concluding sentences that the article really takes a nosedive:
"[Solving the Kurdish problem] will not be easy, but Mr Erdogan seems determined to plough on. If he succeeds, says Sezgin Tanrikulu, a human-rights lawyer in Diyarbakir, the Kurds will flock to back him..."
This might be Sezgin Tanrikulu speaking, but by finishing with this quote, the Economist is endorsing this view.
The only problem is, Sezgin notwithstanding, there is absolutely ZERO evidence that Erdoğan (whom Kurdish nationalists like to call Katil Erdoğan: Erdoğan the killer) is on the cusp of winning over the Kurdish electorate.
Click "Read More" to Continue ------>
But Erdoğan and the AKP brain trust certainly seems to think that he is. The AKP government announced a slew of reforms in anticipation of the March 29th municipal elections, including the unprecedented launch of the state-broadcasted Kurdish language channel TRT 6. This was a huge reform in a country that denied Kurdish existence until the 1990s.
Erdoğan himself campaigned hard in Turkey's predominately Kurdish southeast in support of AKP candidates. In a burst of overzealousness, he even blurted out "I want Diyarbakir!"--meaning that he wanted his party to win the city's mayoralty, the unofficial Kurdish capital in Turkey and a nationalist bastion. This sounded like someone hungry for power, not someone looking to help the Kurds out of conviction.
When push came to shove, the entire effort for votes-- the real reason for the reforms-- was a complete failure. The Kurdish nationalist DTP party crushed the AKP in Diyarbakır, 65% to 31%.
Nevertheless, Erdoğan "ploughs on" in an attempt to reshape Turkish politics in the "mildly Islamist" AKP's favor. This is the true motivation behind Erdoğan's newfound passion for human rights, and it is the reason why the Economist falls so short in its analysis.
Since the advent of modern Turkey, Turkish politics have dominated by a secular nationalist class. The Islamists, led politically by Erdoğan, want to change Turkish secularism. The Kurds, representing 1/5 of Turkey's population, want to change Turkish nationalism. Conveniently, Kurds also tend to be more religiously conservative. If the two groups could unite, they could transform Turkey-- making it more democratic, less nationalist, and less secular. The only way left to expand AKP's shrinking electoral base is to gain Kurdish votes.
It will fail. The state establishment and the general populace are too far behind on this. People are hardly ready for Kurdish language to be taught in schools when Kurds cannot even speak it without fear on the streets of Istanbul. The constraints of the state establishment and public opinion will ultimately prevent Erdoğan from enacting the reforms that he seeks.
If I am wrong, and Erdoğan does enact meaningful reform (and I'm rooting for him), there will be a backlash. Many Turks will be furious. The Kurds, conversely, will become more nationalistic, not less. Ahmet Turk, Leyla Zana, Osman Baydemir, and the rest of the Kurdish leadership will not stand by meekly and watch as Erdoğan takes away their power.
Instead, Kurdish leaders will demand more rights and more autonomy, and the Kurdish citizens of Turkey will stand behind them. Most people in Diyarbakir are unemployed, an issue that the Economist never mentions. They will remain so after any human rights reforms. Thus the strongest source of Kurdish discontent-- the extreme underdevelopment of Turkey's southeast-- will endure. In any event, Kurdish voters will not be flocking to back Tayyip Erdoğan.
- Jon
Erdoğan himself campaigned hard in Turkey's predominately Kurdish southeast in support of AKP candidates. In a burst of overzealousness, he even blurted out "I want Diyarbakir!"--meaning that he wanted his party to win the city's mayoralty, the unofficial Kurdish capital in Turkey and a nationalist bastion. This sounded like someone hungry for power, not someone looking to help the Kurds out of conviction.
When push came to shove, the entire effort for votes-- the real reason for the reforms-- was a complete failure. The Kurdish nationalist DTP party crushed the AKP in Diyarbakır, 65% to 31%.
Nevertheless, Erdoğan "ploughs on" in an attempt to reshape Turkish politics in the "mildly Islamist" AKP's favor. This is the true motivation behind Erdoğan's newfound passion for human rights, and it is the reason why the Economist falls so short in its analysis.
Since the advent of modern Turkey, Turkish politics have dominated by a secular nationalist class. The Islamists, led politically by Erdoğan, want to change Turkish secularism. The Kurds, representing 1/5 of Turkey's population, want to change Turkish nationalism. Conveniently, Kurds also tend to be more religiously conservative. If the two groups could unite, they could transform Turkey-- making it more democratic, less nationalist, and less secular. The only way left to expand AKP's shrinking electoral base is to gain Kurdish votes.
It will fail. The state establishment and the general populace are too far behind on this. People are hardly ready for Kurdish language to be taught in schools when Kurds cannot even speak it without fear on the streets of Istanbul. The constraints of the state establishment and public opinion will ultimately prevent Erdoğan from enacting the reforms that he seeks.
If I am wrong, and Erdoğan does enact meaningful reform (and I'm rooting for him), there will be a backlash. Many Turks will be furious. The Kurds, conversely, will become more nationalistic, not less. Ahmet Turk, Leyla Zana, Osman Baydemir, and the rest of the Kurdish leadership will not stand by meekly and watch as Erdoğan takes away their power.
Instead, Kurdish leaders will demand more rights and more autonomy, and the Kurdish citizens of Turkey will stand behind them. Most people in Diyarbakir are unemployed, an issue that the Economist never mentions. They will remain so after any human rights reforms. Thus the strongest source of Kurdish discontent-- the extreme underdevelopment of Turkey's southeast-- will endure. In any event, Kurdish voters will not be flocking to back Tayyip Erdoğan.
- Jon
Comments
Leave a Reply
Loading
