Haberler      English      العربية      Pусский      Kurdî      Türkçe
  En.Haberler.Com - Latest News
SEARCH IN NEWS:
  HOME PAGE 28/03/2024 23:05 
News  > 

The Kurdish Issue Perplexes The Turkish State

06.07.2015 12:07

Visibly, the Turkish state is failing to formulate a consistent strategy toward the Kurds. In a sense, the Kurdish issue is perplexing Turkish politics. On the one hand, the Kurdish party -- the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) -- got 13 percent of public support in the latest nationwide election. The HDP has become the third biggest party in İstanbul. Note also that the Kurdish party has a strong constituency in many Kurdish cities. On the other hand, in northern Syria, there are Kurdish cantons with increasing international legitimacy.Being trapped between these two sides of Kurdish politics, Ankara seems desperate.

Visibly, the Turkish state is failing to formulate a consistent strategy toward the Kurds. In a sense, the Kurdish issue is perplexing Turkish politics. On the one hand, the Kurdish party -- the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) -- got 13 percent of public support in the latest nationwide election. The HDP has become the third biggest party in İstanbul. Note also that the Kurdish party has a strong constituency in many Kurdish cities. On the other hand, in northern Syria, there are Kurdish cantons with increasing international legitimacy.
Being trapped between these two sides of Kurdish politics, Ankara seems desperate. Some key actors in Ankara support a military incursion into northern Syria to prevent the formation of a Kurdish state. But is that realistic? Can Turkey lead such a unilateral action? Would the international community tolerate Turkey's unilateral move that might put the Kurdish cantons at risk over there? Also, does Turkey have the material capacity to do it? Turkey's Syrian foreign policy is almost an encyclopedia of failed strategies. Worse, many Turkish strategies have backfired and generated a new dynamic that is completely against Turkish interests.
One may even argue that it is Turkey's two main policies that have helped the emergence of a strong Kurdish political presence in the region. The first is Turkey's Syrian policy. Weakening Syria has become a nesting milieu for Kurdish politics. Did Ankara not expect this from the beginning? The Iraqi case taught that if you destabilize a multiethnic country, what you get is loose or fractured federal politics. This is happening in Syria. Turkey's policies anti-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and support for anti-Assad groups have generated pro-Kurdish results. I am sure some Kurds will indirectly thank Ankara for this, in the future.
The second is Turkey's bad performance in the Kurdish initiative at home. For more than two years, Ankara approached the Kurdish initiative as an electoral strategy. While politicians harvested the positive outcomes of the initiative, the Kurds used its two years in a very wise way. They reorganized eastern Turkey. The Kurds are more consolidated and more organized today. A political scientist might well call what we have in eastern Turkey “a kind of Kurdish statelet.” Still, Ankara has no short or long-term strategy for offering the Kurds a new political trajectory.
Perplexed by the various dynamics of the Kurdish issue, what will Ankara do? Realistically speaking, Ankara does not have many options. The Kurdish political actors, who have 80 seats in the Turkish Parliament, are representative of a transnational movement today. While Ankara is facing serious problems even on its national territory, the Kurds are acting freely in more than two states.
A more critical development is the rise of a new Kurdish generation. Recently, Ahmet Türk, a key name in Kurdish politics and the mayor of Mardin, reportedly said that “we could be the last generation that you shake hands with.” This is indeed an alarming statement. However, it is a good summary of the current sociological reality among young Kurds: They are gradually splitting psychologically from the rest of Turkey. Unfortunately, a psychological boundary is emerging between Turks and Kurds. Most of these young Kurds no longer believe in the idea of unity with Turks.
A final factor that deepens the problem is the Kurds in the western part of Turkey. As stated above, the Kurdish HDP is the third biggest party even in İstanbul. Kurds have large constituencies in various western cities like İzmir and Bursa. Thus, even federalist solutions may fail, given that many Kurds live in western Turkey. Furthermore, there is serious social tension between these Kurds and their Turkish “neighbors.” In the past, the geography of the Kurdish problem was to a large extent limited to Southeastern Anatolia. However, that political geography is changing with a revolutionary momentum. First, it is expanding so far as to include some parts of northern Syria. Second, it is reaching the western Turkish cities of İzmir and İstanbul.

GÖKHAN BACIK (Cihan/Today's Zaman)



 
Latest News





 
 
Top News