Liu Zhongmin: The Kurdish Issue: Stubborn Illness of the Türkiye Republic, A Critical Research
Prof. and Researcher in P.R. China
2023-10-31
Modern nation-states have achieved the construction of a nation-state based on national identity through political ties such as territory, central authority, and political and legal norms, on the basis of transcending original ties such as ethnicity and religion.
However, in many Middle Eastern countries, sub-national ethnic, religious, sectarian and other ethnic organizations either oppose the secular system of the current regime in terms of religious-secular relations, or challenge the legitimacy of the current nationalist regime on issues of legitimacy, or threatening the country’s unity and stability through ethnic conflicts, or creating conflicts with other countries in foreign relations, this has led to the abnormal fragility of the nation-state system in the Middle East.
Turkish citizens are mainly Turks who believe in Sunni Islam. In addition, they also include ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Armenians, Jews, and minority sects such as Alawite Islam.
The tension between ethnic and sectarian identity and Turkey’s national identity has been a long-standing problem that has plagued Turkish politics and posed a huge challenge to its social stability and territorial integrity. Among them, the Kurdish issue is the most eye-catching.
The historical evolution and essence of the Kurdish question
The issue of Kurdish ethnic identity began in the late Ottoman Empire. Historically, the Kurds have long been distributed in the southeastern Anatolian Plateau and the northwest Mesopotamian Plain, and their internal social structure consists of loose tribes.
As a border people, the Kurds enjoyed a semi-autonomous status within the Ottoman Empire. Their religious identity with Islam as the core and imperial identity closely linked the Ottoman Turks and the Kurds, and they shared allegiance to the Caliph-Sultan.
However, with the decline of the empire and the impact of Western nationalism, since Sultan Selim III (reigned 1789-1807), the Ottoman Empire gradually strengthened central control over local areas, weakening the power of the Kurdish tribes, which triggered The Kurds’ resistence and their national consciousness sprouted.
After the founding of the Republic of Turkey, the 1924 Turkish Constitution clearly stipulated its nation-state attributes and did not recognize any ethnic group other than the Turkish nation.
In other words, the minority ethnic groups represented by the Kurds were “forced” to become Turks. The Turkish government portrays the Kurds as a “past, traditional and marginalized” group, while itself is a “progressive, modern and central” group.
This political discourse belittles and excludes the Kurdish identity, leading to the othering of the Kurdish identity. The abolition of the caliphate system has led to the collapse of the Kurdish religious identity that has long maintained their identity, which directly severed the religious ties that connect the Kurdish people to the country’s political center.
The selective neglect of the Kurdish ethnic identity and autonomy rights demands in Turkey’s national construction has led to the outbreak of the Kurdish issue. In 1925, the Kurdish tribal leader Shaykh Sayyid launched an uprising, which opened the prelude to the Kurdish armed resistance to the government.
Between 1925 and 1938, a total of 16 Kurdish anti-government rebellions occurred in Turkey.
Among them, the “Dersim” rebellion that killed 13,800 people was called the “most tragic event” in contemporary Turkey.
The Dersim rebellion broke out in May 1937. It originated from the Turkish government’s forced relocation of the Kurds in the Dersim area and the enactment of laws and regulations restricting their rights.
This triggered protests by the Kurds, and was led by the local Kurdish tribal leader Seyid Riza launched an anti-government rebellion.
The Turkish government launched a special military operation to combat the incident. The conflict between the two sides continued until the end of 1938, causing a large number of casualties. The Kurds accuse the Turkish government of creating a humanitarian disaster, and some Kurds and related scholars even call it a massacre and genocide.
In 2011, Erdogan publicly apologized on behalf of the Turkish government for the great harm caused to the Kurds in the Desim incident, calling it one of the most tragic events in Turkey’s recent history.
In response to the increasingly serious Kurdish problem, the Turkish government has not sought to win the national identity of the Kurds through national reconciliation and national equality policies. Instead, it has continued to accelerate the implementation of assimilation policies and adopted severe military strikes and high-pressure control measures. Although the Kurdish rebel movement was contained, the issue of their ethnic identity has not been fundamentally resolved.
After the 1950s, Kurdish ethnic identity evolved into an identity political movement with a nationalist nature.
In order to win Kurdish votes, both the Republican People’s Party and the Democratic Party have sent overtures to the Kurdish tribes. Democratic politics further stimulated the Kurds’ awareness of ethnic identity and demanded recognition of their ethnic identity and rights.
In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party, advocating the use of violence to promote the nationalist movement to achieve a “revolutionary” transformation, emphasizing that “the most reliable means of struggle are based on widespread violence.”
The PKK used guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks to challenge the Turkish government, becoming “the biggest challenge facing the Turkish government in the 20th century.”
Under the pressure of sudden changes in the international environment after the Cold War, the Turkish government had to adjust its national policies.
Then-President Özal announced the abolition of the ban on the Kurdish language in 1991; Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel gave a speech in Diyarbakır in the same year, becoming the first politician to recognize the existence of Kurds in Turkey.
These changes have prompted Kurdish identity politics to gradually shift from “national liberation” to political participation and the struggle for human rights.
From reconciliation to stagnation: The dilemma of the AKP’s Kurdish policy
The AKP’s Kurdish policy has experienced a transition from seeking reconciliation to stagnating.
The war in Iraq and the Syrian crisis have complicated the surrounding Kurdish issues, serious differences between the Turkish government and the PKK, serious setbacks in Turkey’s membership of the EU, and constant discord between Turkey and the West have all led to the AKP’s Kurdish policy stagnating or even failing.
Since the AKP came to power, it once sought to achieve reconciliation on the Kurdish issue.
For example, the Turkish government uses shared faith in Islam and Muslim brotherhood as tools for political mobilization and gaining political legitimacy to gain support from conservatives and Islamists in Kurdish society.
During the process of applying to join the EU, the AKP government reduced restrictions on the use of Kurdish language in accordance with EU human rights standards, allowing Kurdish broadcasts to be opened, and the Kurdish ethnic identity rights were partially protected and enhanced.
Unfortunately, the 2003 Iraq War once again intensified the Kurdish issue. The PKK, which had been dormant for many years, took the opportunity to resume violent attacks, posing a serious security threat to Turkey and causing divergence of interests between the United States and Turkey.
In order to promote reconciliation, Erdogan announced that he recognized the existence of the Kurdish problem, emphasized that the Kurdish problem should be solved with more democracy, equal citizenship and more welfare, and emphasized that the Kurdish problem should be solved by promoting economic development.
In 2008, the Turkish government announced an investment of US$32 billion to promote the “Southeast Anatolia Plan” to promote the economic development of the Kurdish region.
In 2009, the AKP government announced the “Kurdish Opening Policy” and made some protective provisions for the Kurds’ language and cultural rights, civil rights, and local government rights. However, the initiative lacked substance and was merely abstract and could not be implemented.
Since the “Arab Spring”, Turkey’s surrounding environment has deteriorated sharply, and domestic violent and terrorist activities have increased.
The AKP government immediately launched the “Oslo Peace Talks” and the “Imlal Peace Process” with the PKK . However, the two sides had huge differences on key issues involving the Kurds’ identity demands and autonomy rights, and it was always difficult to reach an agreement.
In the June 2015 elections, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a political party with a Kurdish background, suddenly emerged, winning about 13% of the votes in Turkey and about 70% of the votes in areas dominated by Kurds. Political threats to the AKP were immediately rejected and suppressed.
During the Syrian crisis and the fight against the “Islamic State”, Turkey carried out severe attacks on the rapidly rising Kurdish forces in neighboring countries, especially the pro-Kurdish political party “PYD” in Syria and its military organization “People’s Protection Units” (YPG) and the “Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)”.
Turkey carried out attacks and characterized them as “supporting terrorist organizations”. At the same time, Turkey also crossed into Iraq many times to attack Kurdish forces.
These measures have caused dissatisfaction among some Kurdish groups in Turkey, and have led to differences internationally between Turkey and Syria, Iraq, the United States, European countries, Russia and other countries.
Some scholars think that this crisis not only shows that Ankara ignores the concerns of Turkish Kurds for their compatriots in Syria (Kurds), but also marks that the AKP will never be able to formulate policies to comprehensively solve the Kurdish issue domestically and regionally.
After the attempted military coup in 2016, Erdogan strengthened the centralization of state power.
In addition, the AKP chose to form an alliance with the far-right National Action Party (MHP).
Nationalist sentiment in Turkey continued to rise, and the living space of the Kurds and their parties was threatened. The identity politics movement was being squeezed again.
In addition, the deterioration of relations between Turkey and the West has led to the weakening of Turkey’s external motivation and restraint mechanism to promote national reconciliation on the Kurdish issue, causing the relationship between the Kurds and the Turkish government to fall into a predicament of stagnant political reconciliation and violent conflicts, making it difficult to solve the Kurdish issue in the short term.
The hope became even slimmer.
Taken together, Turkey attempts to use state nationalism to coercively and homogeneously integrate the Kurdish religious and ethnic identities.
This attempt to eliminate the Kurdish ethnic identity has aroused strong dissatisfaction among the Kurds and prompted the Kurds to rise up against Turkey.
The transition of Kurdish ethnic politics from the expression of ethnic identity to a nationalist political movement has posed a severe challenge to Turkey’s national identity and national security, and impacted Turkey’s territorial integrity and social stability.
The transnational nature of Kurdish ethnic politics and national movements has also made it an important reason for Turkey’s conflicts with many neighboring countries, and has become a key factor in Turkey’s conflicts with the West over issues such as human rights, EU accession, and counter-terrorism.
To a certain extent, the Kurds, as the largest “minority” in Turkey, also represent the situation of various minority groups in Turkey.
Their struggle for identity and rights also reflects the pursuit of recognition and protection of ethnic and religious minorities by various ethnic groups in Turkey.
Some scholars commented on this: “Turkey’s identity conflict became more obvious after the Cold War, and many Turks and other ethnic groups, including Kurds, began to think about their history outside the republic.. ”
In view of the tension between the identity of various ethnic groups and national identity at the sub-national level, the Turkish government needs to change its past mandatory and homogeneous ethnic integration policies and truly find ways to achieve national reconciliation and reasonable path of soluitioms.
In short, due to the tension between national identity and ethnic identity, Turkey has conflicts between national identity and ethnic identity, and faces the struggle between national unity and ethnic separation in political practice. At the same time, this issue has profoundly negatively affected Turkey’s political development and External relations.
Turkey’s ethnic political problems, represented by the Kurdish issue, originated from Kemal’s reforms because of the top-down homogenization and compulsory national identity construction which ignored the identity and rights demands of various ethnic minorities.
As Turkey’s democratization process developed, the struggles of various ethnic minorities for recognition and their own rights and interests have continued to rise.
This has not only restricted Turkey’s party politics, but has even given rise to extreme nationalism and violent terrorism aimed at ethnic separation, seriously threatening national security. and social stability.
In the process of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations, how to deal with the identities and rights of various ethnic minorities has also become a core disagreement negatively affecting Turkey’s relations with Europe and the West, and has extended to the fields of ideology and values, becoming a conflict between the West and Turkey.