TURKEY: Cancelled Peace Train Leaves Activists Waiting For Buses

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

ISTANBUL, Aug 27 1997 (IPS) - In the face of determined opposition, plans are still being laid to ship a group of international dignitaries by bus from Istanbul to the heart of the south-east Turkish war zone in time for World Peace Day on Sep. 1.

The buses were hastily organised after Turkish and German officials conspired to derail an earlier plan to take a specially chartered ‘Peace Train’ to the city of Diyarbakir, capital of the disputed territory where the Turkish armed forces and Kurdish guerrillas have warred since 1984.

The train trip, called off on Sunday, was supposed to be a high profile appeal for a peaceful end to the war in the region.

Its passengers were expected to include such luminaries as South African Nobel peace prize laureate Desmond Tutu, playwrights Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter, Belgian Nobel peace prize laureate Dominique Pir and a broad range of parliamentarians, intellectuals and activists from across Europe.

It is not known how many will make the trip by bus on Sunday and Monday, and Turkish officials have already warned that foreign passengers trying to join the protest may be stopped at the country’s borders.

“Our fight for peace can not be stopped by any powers that be,” says Ahmet Cihan of organisers Hannover Appeal, a German based NGO campaigning for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict.

“We will start our trip to Diyarbakir on Sunday in line with our schedule,” he said. “Some 200 of the expected participants are already on the way to Istanbul and we will set out for Diyarbakir on hundreds of buses as tens of thousands cheer our peace convoy.”

Ankara says the peace train is a thinly disguised effort in support of the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and accuses its sponsors of campaigning in the name of separatism.

“Even if the train is able to start on its way it will not be allowed to enter Turkey,” Turkish premier Mesut Yilmaz warned last week.

Berlin took the same line. “German security units have observed that there exists the great risk that the trip might turn into PKK propaganda,” said German Interior Ministry spokesman Oger Kiel.

“In line with the general ban on PKK activities in Germany it was decided to stop this kind of an activity on German soil.” German railways also withdrew their train on advice from the government.

The PKK are fighting for self-determination for the country’s Kurdish population, who predominate in the south east.

“Western powers may have yielded to Ankara’s pressure but the international campaign to stop the war in the south east will remain on track,” said Cihan. “It is once again understood that fighting for peace in Turkey is an even more arduous task than warmongering.”

Ankara appeared to have been roused into special resistance by the extraordinary scale of support that had fallen behind the project; even senior U.S. consular official Stephan Kimmel had visited the Hannover Appeal offices to pledge both support and participation before Yilmaz spoke out.

The train was supposed to leave Brussels Tuesday and to travel south via Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria before crossing into Turkey and heading to Diyarbakir on Sunday. The PKK is also banned by the German, Bulgarian, Romanian and Yugoslav governments.

The peace train protest has also drawn the ire of Devlet Bahceli, leader of the pro-fascist Nationalist Action Party (MHP). His supporters threaten peace activists from Turkey and overseas with ‘direct action’ should they try to restage the Peace Train protest, or run a scheduled week long programme of accompanying activities for peace before Monday’s World Peace Day climax.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the nationalist leftist Labour Party (IP) claimed that the trip was “playing into the hands of Western imperialism,” and called on Ankara to act determinedly against similar “Western based” campaigns.

Nevertheless the initiative retains the support of trade unions, leftist and pro-Kurdish parties, and with qualifications, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), whose 49 members of parliament lend critical support to Yilmaz’s coalition.

“We will sincerely support peace and all efforts towards peace,” Haydar Oymak, deputy CHP secretary general told journalists here, while warning against peace campaigns that are “converted into factional propaganda by leftist groups”.

Political analysts here suspected that Ankara’s hard line against such a high profile peace initiative would ultimately prove damaging to its longer term ambitions.

“Turkey’s uncompromising attitude has trapped it in a vicious dilemma,” political analyst Murat Belge told IPS. “Ankara has convinced itself that the Greens and other deputies from European Parliament are simple tools of the PKK propaganda.

“However this claim is much less convincing for European public opinion, and will be taken as new proof of Ankara’s intolerance.”

Even if the train’s passengers really were PKK dupes, the government would gain nothing by barring them, and would simply reinforce the PKK case, he speculated. “Either way the PKK wins.”

“Regardless of who the participants are, the Turkish government is more preoccupied with who the initiators were,” added Umit Firat, an independent Kurdish analyst from Istanbul. He did not think that the Sunday bus trips would come to pass.

“They will take stern measures against the Sunday rally just as they have done against PKK action in the past.”And he warned that security forces might turn a blind eye if the neo-fascists keep their promise and target the peace activists.

“The government may somehow tolerate ultra-right demonstrations, thereby finally providing the government the justification they needed for the ban in the first place.”