The killing of seven soldiers by the PKK last week caused a great stir among the public after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan told a protesting citizen that “the Army is not a place for slacking.”[1] During the funerals, two of the fallen soldier’s parents told a general that they did not believe that their sons had died for a legitimate cause and did not bode farewell to their sons in peace.

Just yesterday, another mother cried at his son’s funeral: “They killed my son, but don’t let other boys be slain.” What was more noteworthy about that funeral was that an attendee carried a sign reading “he was no slacker,” in protest to Erdoğan’s statement.[2]

The most worrisome news came from the province of Sakarya in northwest Turkey. Seasonal workers of Kurdish extract, while conversating in their mother tongue, were harassed by a group of local youth at a tea garden. The quarrel got out of control, rumor spread in town that “PKK supporters” were beating up the youth, and the events were only quelled with the involvement of police forces.[3]

For Turkey, which did not have a hint of ethnic tension or questioning of government policies during the first phase of the struggle against the PKK from 1984 until 1999, these affairs are too dangerous for comfort. During those gruesome fifteen years, never was a connection made between PKK militants and Turkey’s Kurds, who have been overwhelmingly loyal to the country and an integral part of its social fabric. During those tragic fifteen years, where 30,000 souls perished – civilians (mostly Kurdish, murdered by the PKK), government forces, civilian government employees, PKK militants – never did a parent say anything other than “the country be well” (vatan sağolsun) at the funerals.

It is time to face some of the new facts about the second phase of PKK terrorism and take some precautions.

First of all, state officials from the top down – starting from President Sezer and Prime Minister Erdoğan to the bottom – must make it very clear that ethnic tension will not be allowed to rise in a country with thousands of years of multi-cultural heritage. Not only is it a waste of time, but it is also practically impossible to sustain ethnic hatred in a society that is so mixed, diverse, and inter-married. Toward that goal, a major publicity campaign must be initiated to remind Turks of all backgrounds on what is at stake and what all this can lead to – Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Second, terrorism cannot be wiped out; it can only be marginalized. There will always be some individuals or a collection of them, regardless of their ethnic, socio-economic, and educational background, who are perverse enough to hurt innocent civilians in myriad ways. This is a fact of life and neither Spain nor Britain, despite making immense progress in fighting terrorism over the decades, have figured out a way to eradicate terrorism for good. This message must be brought to Turkish public opinion with great emphasis, for it is one of most salient elements of the whole question.

Following last week’s killings, there is renewed talk of conducting an operation against the PKK’s base camp Mt. Kandil, situated in Northern Iraq. The Turkish military recently fortified positions on the Iraqi border yet has not fully succeeded in halting incursions from Northern Iraq. With public opinion growing evermore restless about the current attacks, Turkish decision-makers may think it politically expedient to move into Northern Iraq.

A move of that sort, however, would be ill-advised. Even though the Bush administration has declared that it respects Turkey’s right to self-defense, Ankara has been getting mixed signals from Washington over its possible move into Northern Iraq. [4] Meanwhile, both the central government of Iraq and the Kurdish-dominated regional government of Northern Iraq do not want to complicate the security of the war-torn country. The north is the only part of Iraq with some sense of stability and nobody wants that changed. Ankara is justifiably traumatized by its military and civilian casualties at the hands of the PKK operating from Iraq, yet it is not in Turkish interests to see Northern Iraq succumbing to the prevailing chaos in the rest of Iraq.

A military operation may not yield the results that Ankara seeks. Turkey conducted three major operations into Northern Iraq and dozens of smaller ones in the 1990s with limited success. Terrorist organizations, be they Turkey’s PKK, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Spain’s ETA or Britain’s IRA, have a strange habit of recovering fairly quickly from infrastructural, logistical, and manpower setbacks. Similarly, a large-scale operation, if carried out single-handedly, can cause more damage than necessary to Turkish efforts. It is therefore wiser to pursue the current cooperative framework with the United States, Iraq, and the regional government of Northern Iraq.

Five months ago, ISRO director Sedat Laçiner pointed out that new laws and “tough approaches” are not the solution for fighting terrorism. Basing his analysis on Britain’s experience with the IRA, Laçiner argued that only security forces cannot be held responsible for curbing terrorism. Two weeks ago, Laçiner reiterated in an interview that what Turkey needs are long-term policies that refrain from “choosing the path of least resistance.” The Turkish Grand National Assembly should be brought into the debate in order to legitimize the government’s policies. By democratizing the debate, Turkey would be able to stop convicting “anyone who writes or speaks of the Kurdish or PKK issues.”[5] In other words, by insisting on militarizing the question, Turkey will not find an effective solution to the problem.

This must not be mistaken for a Vietnam analogy, however. A comparison of the sort is completely unfounded. The eastern regions of Turkey, where a little over half of Turkish Kurds live, have been a part of the country for a millennium. Turkey is not fighting its Kurdish citizens, but a group of fanatical terrorists bent on causing havoc. The PKK’s aims should not be confused with the socio-economic and political realities of the country. We Turks still have a distance to go in terms of political freedoms and prosperity.

It is not logical on the part of Prime Minister Erdoğan to quarrel with his own people. He may be counting on his party’s victory in the next general elections. But hyped talk insensitive to Turkish people’s feelings can not only cost him the elections in Turkey’s volatile political landscape, but cause him to go down as one of the biggest failures in Turkish political history. Sometimes the populace can fail to see the bigger picture in the midst of its sorrow, but statesmen cannot afford that luxury. Turkish policy-makers have to think beyond the continuum of Mt. Kandil, mere rhetoric, and a hard place.

Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to JTW.

E-mail: kayaoglu@virginia.edu

JTW

10 September 2006