By IPS Correspondents
ISTANBUL, Feb 18 1999 (IPS)

The capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan this week stunned the minority Kurd population here but some protest demonstrations were reported from the countryside.

“I am perplexed and confused,” said a 34-year-old Kurdish widow in Istanbul. “I have almost forgotten to speak.”

The woman, a mother of five, wished to remain anonymous. Her native village in the southeast Diyarbakir countryside was destroyed and her husband killed in 1995.

Like other Kurds, she had hoped that Ocalan’s 14-year struggle for Kurdish autonomy would some day end her sufferings and her miserable existence in Istanbul.

“I feel dizzy. I tried to reach my friends as soon as I heard the reports on Ocalan…meanwhile my brother-in-law in Diyarbakir was detained,” she said.

The Turkish seizure of Ocalan while he was seeking refuge at the Greek embassy in Nairobi Kenya stunned the Kurds here – in contrast to the jubilation of Turkish nationalists.

TV news clips showing the defeated guerrilla leader making his last trip in a plane from Nairobi to Istanbul, and his later transfer to the high security prison on Imrali Island sparked opposite feelings among Turks and Kurds.

In cities like Istanbul, Izmir and Adana Kurdish communities remained confused and disillusioned but there was anger too, particularly among younger Kurds.

Clashes between demonstrators and security forces occurred Thursday in the oil-rich southeast city of Batman, it was reported here.

“We have heard reports one district, Brahimgazi, is surrounded by troops. People have been pouring out to the streets, a police car was overturned and burned and 49 people are under detention,” said Sedat Ozevin, the head of a local branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD).

“The situation remains tense. There are fervent and spontaneous reactions against Ocalan’s arrest. Groups of 200-300 are demonstrating in different parts of the city. I hope, I beg, this will not lead to a civilian strife between the Kurds and Turks in West parts of the country,” he said.

Since Ocalan’s arrest, particularly in Istanbul’s suburbs small groups have staged angry demonstrations in the Kurdish inhabited districts of Gazi and Umraniye and setting city buses and cars ablaze and stoning shop windows.

“What do they gain by burning buses,” asked an elderly Kurd Musa Agac. “Those buses are for poor like us, the rich live somewhere else.”

Since Ocalan’s arrest, around 300 people, members and officials from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HADEP) and other Kurdish organizations have been detained across the country, mostly in Istanbul, capital Ankara and in Diyarbakar..

Some Turks, while not supporting Ocalan’s rebel momvement , were sympathetic to the plight of the Kurds.

“I hope Ocalan gets what he deserves,” said shopkeeper Haydar Gomec, 35. “But Kurds have the right to live a honorable life. The government should implement immediate reforms to improve their conditions.”

Ocalan, the founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) began his guerrilla war against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of carving out an independent Kurdish state in Turkey’s Kurdish- inhabited southeast provinces.

He later softened his demands to national-cultural autonomy for some 12 million Kurds within Turkey’s existing borders but successive governments refused Ocalan’s proposals for negotiations.

The insurrection and the state’s draconian response has caused the deaths of about 30,000 people – mostly PKK combatants. Throughout the bloody conflict the Turkish military, in a bid to cut any local support for PKK fighters, forced an estimated 2 million people from their villages and hamlets – many of whom fled to Europe to seek asylum.

The war has cost the Turkish government some 90 billion Dollars – an amount equal to Turkey’s total foreign debt.

Now that Ocalan had been captured “perhaps there will be a substantial decrease in the degree of violence in the southeast, but the source of the conflict remains,” said Mustafa Sonmez, editor of the economic monthly magazine “Forum.”

“We know that, even before the PKK emerged, poverty and misery alongside ethnic problems had played a major part in the Kurdish insurrection,”

Sonmez told IPS that the “gulf between the living conditions of Turkey’s western sector and those in the east has widened – particularly in the last 14 years of conflict. Livestock farming has collapsed, self subsistent village economy is ruined and the unemployed are dumped in big cities.”

While the annual average per capita income in Turkey has risen to 3,130 US dollars, it has remained as low as 500-600 in southeast provinces inhabited by the Kurdish population. “When compared with wealthier provinces such as Izmit with annual income of some 7,000 US Dollars per capita, the income gulf grows as wide as 10 times, and one out of every five people is unemployed,” he added

“Unless immediate measures for economic reforms and cultural freedom are implemented, there will be little hope for improvement in the near future, ” Sonmez said.

A Kurdish member of the Diyarbakir Chamber of Commerce, Sehmuz Diken, added that “economic reforms alone would not suffice…cultural and social rights are as important as economic improvement.”

Among some Turks, however, there was little sympathy for Ocalan’s cause.

“He has killed thousands of men. Even death is not enough of a penalty for him,”” said Mehmet Caliskan, 28 a Turkish restaurant owner. “They (Kurds) are employed as army officers, and are represented in the parliament. There is no ‘Kurdish Question’ as such existing here.”

There are more moderate voices concerned at the rising nationalist euphoria. The Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP) of the united left warned Turkish and Kurdish peoples against ethnic strife.

“The government should start immediate reforms for a broader democracy and open the path for a free discussion on a solution to the Kurdish issue,” ODP vice-chairperson Saruhan Oluc said in statement Thursday.

Political observers, however, believed there was little chance of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit’s minority government implementing any cultural and economic reforms after general elections in April when a new parliament will be convened.

Still, business magnate Ishak Alaton lent his voice to the calls for change:

“A new social contract should be signed between the state and the society,” he said. “The door to a lasting peace should be opened by the government and the framework of a peaceful coexsitence should be laid. Then the Turkish business community will follow suit for creating jobs in the region.”

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