WEEKLY SELECTION: Kurdish Problem Highlights Need For Devolution

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dipankar De Sakar

LONDON, Feb 20 1999 (IPS) - Turkey must recognise the cultural rights of its Kurdish minority and join the trend in Europe toward greater de-centralisation in order to ease its entry into the European Union, say political analysts.

“This is a European problem – it is of concern to Europe because Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe and is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights,” says Katarina Dalacoura of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Dalacoura, a Middle East specialist, says Europe’s first concern was to ensure that Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who faces murder charges in Turkey after his seizure this week, received a fair trial.

Turkey, long castigated for its human rights record, “will have to look at a political solution to the Kurdish problem,” she adds.

Such a solution, she says, would entail respecting the basic cultural rights of the more than 11 million Kurds in Turkey, including recognition of their right to freedom of expression and association.

“Granting these rights do not actually require political devolution, which is the next step,” Dalacoura says.

Sir John Moberly, former British ambassador to Iraq and Jordan, says Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish population has made European countries “wary” of allowing it EU membership.

Their remarks come amid increasing moves within EU countries to decentralise power and decision-making. Such efforts include the devolution of power in the United Kingdom to allow national assemblies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and granting greater regional autonomy to the Basque region of Spain.

In addition, the government of Yugoslavia is being urged by Western powers to grant put in place an autonomy package for the province of Kosovo.

Representatives of the two million-strong Kurdish diaspora living in Western Europe, however, complain that no such pressure has been brought upon Turkey in spite of gross human rights violations against its Kurdish population.

They say the main reason for the soft line on Turkey is because that country is considered an important geo-strategic ally for Western interests in the Middle East. Another reason is Turkey’s “obstinate refusal” to brook any advice on Kurdish matters, considering it an interference in its internal affairs.

Europe-based activists sympathetic to Ocalan’s PKK guerilla group also believe regional autonomy within the Turkish borders was the most realistic option before the international community.

“This is the minimum demand made by Ocalan in a seven-point peace plan last year,” says Estella Shmid, the spokeswoman for the London-based Kurdistan Solidarity Committee.

“World developments (toward devolution) would prove there is something in the idea for a Turkish Federation. But given the intransigence of the Turkish state, I do not see this happening.”

The main problem, says Shmid, is that the Turkish portrayal of Ocalan and his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as being wedded to violence has left Turkey without a representative organisation with whom to negotiate.

“In a way, Ocalan was a containing force. You may now have an all-out war in Turkey. Ocalan was a pragmatist to a degree and he has shown flexibility, both politically and diplomatically.” she says.

The Kurdistan Workers Party was founded in 1978 and had close links with various Turkish revolutionary groups, characterising the Kurdish cause as an anti-colonial struggle against Turkish “colonisers.”

Since the mid-1980s, the PKK has fought an intense and violent battle with Turkish government troops, matched by increasing government repression of Kurds. According to Amnesty International the war between PKK guerrillas and government forces claimed 6,000 lives in 1997, including civilians.

Persistent serious human rights violations – not only against Kurds, but also other political opposition – has led to criticism of Turkey by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) defence pact.

United States Assistant Under-Secretary at the State Department, on a visit to Ankara in 1994, said: “We believe that a lasting solution to the problems in the southeast (where Kurds live) cannot be achieved through purely military means. We believe that non-military civil and social solutions must be pursued at the same time.”

In the same year, another State Department official, John Shattuck, expressed concern at reports which have “grown more serious recently, particularly in the areas alleged, restrictions on freedom of expression, allegations on the use of torture against pre-trial detainees and alleged abuses against civilians…military operations (against the PKK).”

But strategic and political concerns largely have overriden human rights concerns, according to analysts who point to the European Parliament’s ratification of a customs treaty long sought by Turkey in 1995.

According to some experts, Turkey was allowed to join because of a view among a majority of European Parliament members that rejection of the customs union would increase bolster Islamic fundamentalist parties in Turkey.

But despite the move, the pro-Islamic Welfare Party won the largest number of seats in elections in the December of 1995.

“The way to eventually defuse this situation is to regard the Kurds as a part of Turkey but separate culturally and give them the minimum things they ask for, such as the right to use their own language and have their own education,” says Sir John Moberly.

But, he adds, “it is very difficult to see what Europe can do. The repression of the Kurds is one of the factors that has made Europe wary of opening welcoming arms to Turkish membership of the European Union. The human rights of Kurds comes into it.”

Moberly also says that Europe is limited by the fact that there is as yet no unified European foreign and security policy.

Although Estella Schmid wants an immediate emergency of the European Union or an international conference to discuss the Kurdish situation, Moberly feels such a demand is unrealistic.

“Any Europe-sponsored talks will be absolute anathema to Turkey,” he says, and there are strong feelings in Turkey “against any concessions that would seem to strengthen the Kurdish identity.”