[lg policy] TURKEY: GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES PR OFFENSIVE ON KURDISH QUESTION

Wed Nov 25 18:09:13 UTC 2009

TURKEY: GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES PR OFFENSIVE ON KURDISH QUESTION
Nicholas Birch 11/17/09

Turkey’s political leaders are taking to the road to explain their
plans to end a 25-year Kurdish war to the people. The PR offensive is
opening amid rising political tensions and dwindling hopes of a
multi-party accord on the initiative. "We are ready to be stripped of
all the offices and titles we possess," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan told an audience in the conservative eastern town of Malatya
on November 14. "Our only desire is that not another drop of
[soldiers’] blood be spilt." A day earlier, in an often tumultuous
parliamentary session, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or
AKP, provided for the first time concrete details about the contents
of what Interior Minister Besir Atalay, the government’s point man on
the issue, repeatedly stressed was a "program of national unity."

"Our slogan is more freedom for everybody", Atalay told deputies,
listing measures including a start to private broadcasting in Kurdish,
an end to bans on political campaigning in Kurdish, and the
restitution of Kurdish names to villages given Turkish names since the
1950s. Over the longer term, Atalay added, Turkey needed a new
"democratic and civilian" constitution to replace one drafted by a
military junta in 1982. "Our people deserve better," he said. He added
that AKP leaders would be visiting every one of Turkey’s 81 provinces
in the coming weeks to explain the government’s plans in greater
detail. Mainstream opposition parties have expressed dismay at the
initiative. Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Action Party,
called the session "one of the most unfortunate days in Turkey’s
89-year parliamentary history." Deniz Baykal, head of the secular
Republican People’s Party, accused the government of "collaborating"
with the former separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which took
up arms against Ankara in 1984.

His comments were indicative of the extremely thin line the government
has to tread between Turkish and Kurdish opinion. Neither Atalay nor
other AKP speakers made any mention of a possible pardon for an
estimated 4,000 armed PKK militants hiding out in the mountains of
Turkey and northern Iraq, a key demand of Kurdish nationalists. In a
statement released on November 14, PKK representatives called the
government’s measures "claptrap," adding that the "Kurdish question
cannot be resolved without recognizing the will of the Kurdish people
and initiating dialogue with its interlocutors."

The head of a Kurdish nationalist party that shares a support base
with the PKK, Ahmet Turk, struck a more dovish tone. "We will not
obstruct this initiative", he told the daily Milliyet on November 16,
noting that Besir Atalay had described it as "an open-ended process."
"Of course, as debates continue and tensions begin to fall, demands
which today are rejected will of course come onto the agenda," Turk
said. But this is exactly what roils Turkish public opinion. For
years, Turks have been encouraged by mass media to see the Kurdish
issue as a simple matter of terrorism. Many analysts think the
government could have done more to prepare public opinion for an
initiative, which, while much less sweeping than expected, represents
a radical departure from traditional state policy.

"For months, we have been debating an initiative whose contents were
unknown", says Adil Gur, a leading pollster. "That has deepened the
divisions of society along party lines."

It also appears to have reduced support for the government. According
to a survey of AKP supporters carried out in mid-November by the
pollsters Metropoll, support for the government has slumped to 32%,
from 39% in August.

The chief foreign policy advisor to the Prime Minister, Ibrahim Kalin,
notes rightly that polls continue to show a majority of Turks
supportive of efforts to bring fighting to an end. "I have never seen
any issue discussed in such a lively and civilized way in Turkey," he
says. "People are now freely discussing not only the Kurdish issue,
but also ... other fundamental issues. ... I believe that is a huge
contribution to Turkish democracy."

With the debates in parliament coinciding with allegations that senior
members of the traditionally secular judiciary have illegally been
wire-tapped, political analyst Mesut Yegen thinks tensions over the
initiative are a microcosm of much deeper anxieties over the direction
Turkey is taking. "The government renamed what it first called a
Kurdish initiative a democratic one to reduce potential tensions," he
says. "It may inadvertently have made its job more difficult by
implying that this was a debate about Turkey’s regime."

That is certainly the impression opposition parties are trying to
give. The government caused a stir by calling for a preliminary
parliamentary debate on the initiative on the anniversary of the death
of Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Ataturk, on November 10. Secular
deputies ended up disrupting the debate by brandishing posters of
Ataturk and shouting slogans. Two days later, they stormed out of
parliament en masse in protest over Erdogan’s angry claims that they
were "making politics by exploiting the blood of soldiers."

Erdogan seems to have given up hope of trying to reach a compromise
with the political opposition. Mesut Yegen thinks he should try harder
to find common ground at least with the secularists. The Prime
Minister’s efforts to solve the war are undoubtedly helped by the fact
that Turkey’s bureaucracy is in general agreement that its traditional
Kurdish policy is bankrupt, he says. Without support from other
parties, however, "the whole weight of the initiative risks being
carried forward by Erdogan’s charisma alone."

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav111709.shtml

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.
Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal.
(H. Schiffman, Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************

_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list