The bullet-ridden Fatih Paşa Mosque in the heart of Diyarbakir's historical Sur district, which was heavily damaged in clashes between Turkish armed forces and local militant youths. Credit: Joris Leverink/IPS

By Joris Leverink
ISTANBUL, Turkey, Feb 4 2016 (IPS)

The latest footage to come out of Sur, the historical district in Diyarbakir that has been under total lock down by Turkish armed forces for the past sixty days, shows a level of devastation one would sooner expect in Syria. In more ways than one – empty streets lined with debris, bombed-out buildings, tanks and soldiers shooting at invisible assailants – the situation in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern regions resembles a war zone.

The Turkish government maintains that it is engaged in a fight against terror. However, the security operations are characterized by a disproportionate use of violence, whereby entire towns and neighborhoods are cut off from the outside world with civilians trapped inside their homes for weeks on end. This has led to calls by international human rights organizations to end the collective punishment of an entire population for the acts of a small minority.

At its second general congress in late January, the key political representative of the Kurdish population in Turkey, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, stressed its determination to seek a peaceful solution to the violent conflict. “If politics can play a role, weapons are not necessary. Where there’s no politics, there will be
weapons,” Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the party summarized the situation.

From autonomy to conflict

In the spring of 2013 hopes were high for a political solution to the decades-old violent conflict between the Turkish state and its Kurdish minority, represented on the battlefield by the leftist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. After years of fighting and tens of thousands deaths, both parties appeared determined to bring the war to an end and engage in peace talks. For almost 2.5 years the fighting ceased. The precarious peace came to an end in the summer of 2015.

As a spillover from the war in Syria, tensions between the Kurds in Turkey and the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, reached a boiling point. In Syria, local Kurds had been fighting off a number of Turkey-backed jihadist and Syrian opposition groups – most prominently the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. When Kurdish groups in Turkey became the target of two ISIS-linked suicide attacks – in Diyarbakir in June, and Suruç in July – it was the AKP that was held responsible for the onslaught.

The ceasefire broke down and violence escalated quickly. Turkey launched air raids against PKK targets in northern Iraq, in response to which security forces inside Turkey were attacked by Kurdish militants. Having lost their trust in the Turkish state to properly address Kurdish grievances concerning the right to speak and be educated in their mother tongue, to practice their own religion, to be represented politically and to protect the natural environment of their historical homelands, many Kurds instead turned to the ideology of “democratic confederalism”.

Developed by the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, democratic confederalism promotes the autonomy of local communities and a decentralization of the state.

When towns and neighborhoods across the Kurdish regions of Turkey started declaring their autonomy in the wake of the re-escalated conflict, the Turkish state under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan responded by sending in the army and declaring dozens of so-called curfews that in practice amount to military sieges. Besides hundreds of casualties among the army and Kurdish militants, around two hundred civilians are believed to have been killed in the past six months.

Bleak prospects for peace

After the HDP became the first party with roots in the Kurdish freedom movement to pass the exceedingly high electoral threshold of 10 per cent at the parliamentary elections in June – and again at the snap elections in November – it has come under severe pressure from the political establishment. President Erdogan personally suggested that the HDP representatives ought to be stripped from their immunity so that they could be prosecuted for supporting terrorism.

Nonetheless, the party refuses to succumb to the intimidation and has consistently called for a peaceful and democratic solution to the conflict. “Despite all the oppression, a new democratic model is emerging,” HDP co-chair Figen Yüksedağ said in her speech at the congress. “This model continues to gain support, even while under attack. The HDP has a historical responsibility to bring this project to a successful end.”

Her co-chair Demirtaş added the warning that “If we fail to produce a solution for the end of the violence, it is the end of politics in Turkey.” Unfortunately, prospects for a political solution are bleak. Mayors and political representatives of the towns and districts where the population has called for autonomy are prosecuted and jailed. At the same time President Erdogan warned that, “It should be known that we will bring the whole world down on those who seek to establish a state within a state under the name of autonomy and self-governance.”

Prime Minister Davutoğlu recently vowed to continue the military operations until “our mountains, plains and towns are cleansed of these killers.” This type of uncompromising discourse from the country’s two most powerful political leaders instills little hope that the government is prepared to return to the negotiation table any time soon. The Kurds, both at home and across the border in Syria, are seen as the biggest threat to the territorial integrity of Turkey, and to stop this perceived threat no price is too high.

In the same way that Turkey has refused to allow the Syrian Kurds a seat at the negotiation table in Geneva, it is refusing to enter into dialogue with the Kurds at home.

The multiple references to Syria in this article are no coincidence; if the Turkish government continues to ignore all but a military solution to the current unrest, there is a very real threat that part of the country will soon resemble its southern neighbor.

The HDP’s invitation is there. In the words of co-chair Demirtaş: “Dialogue and negotiation should be the method when the public is under threat. Strengthening democracy is the only way to save Turkey from disaster.”

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By Joris Leverink
ISTANBUL, Turkey, Dec 16 2015 (IPS)

While the war in Syria continues to draw in more outside forces, the work towards finding a political solution to this five-year old conflict carries on. In the past week, no less than three separate conferences were organized by different clusters of opposition groups. Conferences were held in three places: Damascus, Dêrîk – a city in the Kurdish-controlled northern part of Syria – and Riyadh, the Saudi capital, respectively.

With the Damascus conference widely regarded as a sham, organized with the permission and under the firm control of the Assad regime, and the conference in Dêrîk being all-but ignored by the international media, the eyes of the world were fixed on the proceedings in Riyadh.

The conference in the Saudi capital was sponsored by a number of international allies to the various warring factions inside Syria. The intended outcome was to unite the Syrian opposition so that it could present a common front in upcoming negotiations with the regime, as determined by the Vienna talks held in November.

Remarkably, little attention was paid to the conference in Dêrîk – called the “Democratic Syria Congress” – organized by Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies. This conference brought together more than a hundred delegates representing religious and ethnic groups from all over Syria, with an important role reserved for women and youth organizations. It was the first peace conference of its kind organized in opposition-controlled territory inside Syria – a fact that goes a long way in pointing out the significance of this particular event. Contrary to the one in Riyadh, this was a conference by Syrians, and for Syrians, not controlled by the agendas of powerful international allies nor obstructed by the dogmatic views of some of its participants.

The Riyadh conference was attended by political bodies such as the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the National Co-ordination Committee for Democratic Change, as well as rebel factions like Jaysh al-Islam, the Southern Front and Ahrar al-Sham, a salafist group fighting in alliance with the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front.

Tellingly, the New York Times reported that in the final statement of the Riyadh conference the word “democracy” was left out because of objections by Islamist delegates, and replaced with “democratic mechanism” instead.

In contrast, the final resolution presented at the Democratic Syria Congress in Dêrîk underlined the delegates’ commitment to democracy, social pluralism, and national unity. It confirmed the participants’ determination “to form a democratic constitution to enable solutions to the Syrian crisis through democratic, peaceful discussion, dialogue and talks; … to hold free and democratic elections required by the current process in Syria; [and] to secure the faith, culture and identities of all Syrian people.”

The Dêrîk conference also saw the establishment of the Democratic Syrian Assembly, which will serve as the political representation of the newly formed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated coalition of rebel factions, including Arab, Syriac, Turkmen and Yezidi forces. In recent months, the SDF has proved to be ISIS’ most formidable enemy, and the international coalition’s most reliable ally in the fight against the terrorist organization.

It might come as a surprise, then, that neither the SDF nor any other Kurdish organizations were invited to the Riyadh conference. As a faction that controls an area many times the size of that under control of the National Coalition – or any other rebel group for that matter – and which has been able to claim a string of victories against ISIS, it naturally ought to play a role in any post-Assad, post-ISIS future plan for Syria.

The Kurds’ absence in Riyadh has everything to do with Turkey’s position in the Syrian conflict. From the Turkish perspective, the Kurds in Syria pose a bigger threat to its national security than ISIS.

Turkey fears that the establishment of the autonomous regions, or “cantons,” in the Kurdish parts of northern Syria might inspire its domestic Kurdish population to pursue a similar goal. The fact that the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the most powerful political body in the region, is a sister organization to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a 35-year insurgency against the Turkish state, only adds insult to injury.

Commenting on the Riyadh conference, PYD co-chair Saleh Moslem stated that “it doesn’t pay regard to the current political and military reality in Syria and the region, as the most active and dynamic actors and representatives of the actual Syrian opposition haven’t been invited. In the circumstances, such meetings will have no seriousness.”

Before it even started, the precarious alliance formed in Riyadh was already on the verge of collapse. Ahrar al-Sham threatened to pull out of the talks, condemning the presence of “pro-Assad forces” and deeming the final statement “not Islamic enough.”

The goal to bring all the different opposition factions to the table, to explore common ground and to form a united front against the Assad regime is a noble one. Unfortunately it is doomed to fail when the alliance neglects to reflect the reality on the ground as well as the will of the Syrian people.

When it is merely the outcome of external parties pushing their agendas for personal benefits – whether it is to strengthen the position of local allies on the ground, to obstruct the efforts of the Kurdish autonomous administration or to explore options for negotiations with Assad in order to be able to focus all energy on destroying ISIS – any alliance will be too weak to withstand the test of time, let alone the test of war.

In this regard, despite the lack of international attention, the conference in Dêrîk might actually supersede the one in Riyadh in terms of importance. Despite the increasing involvement of outside forces, diplomatically, politically and, most important, militarily, any real solution to the crisis in Syria must be initiated by the Syrian people, not any outside power.

The Democratic Syria Congress in Dêrîk has shown that there is not only a will to work towards peace, but that there is also an infrastructure in place, a platform, where the first, cautious steps towards a peaceful future and an “alternative democratic system aiming at change” have been made.

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By Joris Leverink
ISTANBUL, Oct 27 2015 (IPS)

This Sunday, November 1, Turkey heads to the polls for the second time this year, to elect the 550 members of its Grand National Assembly. The snap elections were called for by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in late August when the different parties failed to form a coalition government after the June elections, in which the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since its 13 years in power.

Joris Leverink

Polls suggest that the outcome of the upcoming elections will differ only slightly from the previous one. This means that AKP will come in first, followed by the republican opposition party CHP, then the ultra nationalist MHP and finally the “new kid on the block,” the HDP, a leftist democratic party with its roots in the Kurdish political movement.

Even though it’s the same quartet of parties that is most likely to pass the exceedingly high election threshold of 10 percent, the socio-political environment in which the elections are being held is entirely different from the situation in June. In the months between the elections, two of the deadliest terror attacks in Turkey’s history killed a total of more than 130 people, leaving scores more wounded; Turkey joined the fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria; and, the breakdown of the peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK has led to the escalation of violence in the country’s southeast.

On the eve of the elections, Turkey stands at a crossroads. The path it takes will determine whether the high hopes of the international community in the first years after the AKP came to power – when Turkey, with its roots in Islamic culture on the one hand and its economy guided by a neoliberal agenda on the other, was perceived as the ideal bridge between the West and the Middle East – were well-founded, or not.

As reasons for the country’s current troubles, opposition figures point to Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule, the worrying demise of press freedom, a slumbering economic crisis, Turkey’s awkward disposition towards the Kurds in Syria while it maintains its support for Syrian opposition groups with much more dubious reputations, and the targeting of civilian populations in the country’s southeast in an attempt to crack down on the PKK.

The June elections saw the AKP’s number of seats in parliament decline from 311 to 258, meaning that for the first time since the party came to power in 2002 it had to look for a coalition partner. This result came as a severe blow to the AKP, which had aimed to win a two-thirds majority in order to be able to change the constitution and introduce a so-called “presidential system.” After being elected president with 52 per cent of the votes only 10 months earlier, Erdogan made it no secret that he imagined an entirely new role for the president, from a ceremonial head of state to powerful leader, heavily involved with the day-to-day rule of the country.

However, after managing to take only 258 seats in the 550-seat parliament, the AKP was not only short of a two-third majority needed to change the constitution, but also 18 seats short of the simple majority it required to rule on its own.

From the onset, any possible coalition between each of the four parties in parliament seemed an impossible feat to accomplish. A deep-rooted mistrust between the ultra nationalist MHP and the pro-Kurdish HDP made any coalition between the three opposition parties practically impossible. The two most likely options – a coalition between the AKP and either the CHP or the MHP, respectively – never came to pass due to opposition demands to reopen a controversial corruption case that would see many senior AKP members compromised, and the opposition’s refusal to cooperate with any plans to empower the position of the president.

New elections were the most likely outcome of all the coalition talks, and few were surprised when on August 24 the official announcement came that Turkey would return to the polls on November 1.

While talks were going on in Ankara, the clock in the country’s east was set back by 20 years. The re-escalation of the conflict between Turkish armed forces and the PKK reminded many people of the 1990s – a period also referred to as “Turkey’s lost decade” – when the fighting killed thousands and displaced millions, leaving entire villages burned and a population on the move.

On July 20, an IS-suicide bomber, originally from the Turkish town of Adiyaman, blew himself up in the middle of a group of activists that had traveled to Suruc, on the Syrian border, to help with the rebuilding of Kobane. In the attack 32 people lost their lives.

Even though IS never claimed responsibility for the attack, few have any real doubts that it was the terrorist organization based in Syria and Iraq that was behind it. Nevertheless, fingers were pointed at the government in Ankara for failing to protect its citizens and allowing IS to gain a foothold on Turkish territory. In retaliation, two police officers were murdered by a group with links to the PKK, to which the Turkish government responded with full force and launched an all-out bombing campaign on PKK positions both in Turkey and northern Iraq.

More recently, on October 10, another IS attack caused the deaths of over a hundred people in Ankara, when two men with links to the terrorist organization blew themselves up in the middle of a crowd that had gathered to demonstrate for peace. Again, public anger was directed at the government for failing to take sufficient security measures, while AKP-party leader Ahmet Davutoglu and president Erdogan both tried to turn the events to their advantage by accusing all enemies of the Turkish state – from Syrian security forces to the PKK, and the Syrian Kurds to IS – to be behind this attack.

This Sunday’s elections will take place in a climate of social and political tension. For the past few months the country has been held hostage by a political impasse that has to be broken in order for the country to move forward. It is very likely that the results will be more or less the same as in June. When this happens, it will be up to the people in Turkey to make clear to their party leaders that they have to put aside their egos and disagreements, and show the courage necessary to put Turkey on the right track once again.

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