The Kurds in Turkey: A History of Conflict

Introduction 

The Kurds in Turkey have been inhabitants of the larger Anatolian landscape for centuries. It is estimated that the Kurdish population could be up to 20% of Turkey’s current population of Turkey. This means that between 15 and 25 million Turkish citizens identify themselves as Kurds, making them the largest minority group in the country. The conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish has existed for the last 40 years at great cost to both the Turkish government and the Kurdish minority. Historically, the conflict has taken place in the Eastern and South Eastern parts of Turkey, which have been the traditional strongholds of the large Kurdish minority in Turkey. This paper seeks to analyze this conflict. In this pursuit, the paper will explain the conflict, including those involved in it both within and outside Turkey. It will also explore the conflict resolution attempts that have been made, and lastly, present possible strategies of ending the conflict and bringing peace to the region. 

Origin of the Conflict 

Kurdish rebellions are not anything new. Even before the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Kurdish rebellions were common during the era of Ottoman rule. Upon the formation of modern-day Turkey, Kurds felt left out and marginalized owing to the nationalist outlook that was unanimously adopted by the new nation's leaders. A series of Kurdish rebellions followed the formation of modern-day Turkey each protesting different acts of cruelty and mistreatment that the Kurds felt they were experiencing in the nation. The Kocgiri rebellion, Sheikh Said rebellion, Ararat rebellion and Dersim rebellion were all perpetrated under the banner of an increasingly ostracized group of people that had been made to feel like second-class citizens in their own country. Among the list of grievances that Kurds presented included the mass migrations that Kurds were discriminately forced to make. Another grievance they had was the lack of recognition of their unique cultural identity and the clear, discriminate suppression of their cultural heritage in the arts and music. The other complaint lodged against the Turkish government was the systematic underdevelopment of infrastructure and disproportionate lack of access to critical amenities and public services. This last aspect was seen as a way of controlling the Kurds by breaking their morale and slowly reducing their ability to participate in the larger Turkish national development. 

The Modern Day Conflict 

The Turkish government had been fighting various insurgent groups but the chief Kurdish nemesis from the start of the modern day conflict in 1978 was the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). The party was formed along Marxist-Leninist ideologies with the goal of fighting for the rights of Kurds. This was done in a push for the realization of the Kurdish dream of self-rule. The party was formed by Abdullah Ocalan along with other young like-minded revolutionaries in 1974, but the official founding congress was convened in August 1978. Initially, gatherings of the PKK had workers' rights and the rights of Kurds as their main agenda. As time passed the agitation for recognition and the safeguarding of their rights as a marginalized group became of paramount importance. At the start, non-violent means of agitation seemed to be the primary strategy, but with time, a more militant and violent approach began to take prominence, particularly with the launch of the group’s insurgency. 

Immediately after its launch, the Kurdish Worker’s Party began to experience attacks from groups drawn from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Some ultranationalist groups like the Nationalist Movement Party began to target PKK members specifically. This forced the organization to start arming some of its members. The coup of 1980 did not change the situation, as Turkey was heavily militarized after the event. Likewise, there was widespread suppression of all politically active groups forcing many citizens into hiding. The subsequent widespread crackdown affected the PKK particularly hard. The group incurred casualties amongst its ranks with some of the members losing their lives in skirmishes with government forces. This forced many PKK members to seek refuge across the border in Syria. The conflict continued throughout the 80s until political goodwill to have a peace process with the Kurds began to be experienced. Geopolitical dynamics had been affected by the first Gulf war. Subsequently, a weakened Iraqi central government was unable to successfully diminish the powers of an autonomy-seeking Kurdish minority to the North of its territory. Under President Turgut Ozal, a genuine push for a peace process began to be made. In 1993, negotiations with the PKK reached an advanced stage. This led to the declaration of a ceasefire in the same year. 

President Ozal, with the help of Adnan Kahveci, the former Turkish finance minister and Esref Bitlis, the commander of the Turkish gendarmerie had planned to table a proposal for extensive Kurdish reforms at the next National Security Council meeting. However, he died on the 17 th of April that year under suspicious circumstances. His compatriot, General Bitlis had also died in a mysterious plane crash in February the same year. Following these deaths, the proposal was never tabled, and hostilities resumed a month after the president's death. It was the events of late May 1993 that fully reignited the conflict. This took place when the members of PKK ambushed unarmed members of the Turkish military along the Elazig-Bingol highway. In the incident, 38 people were killed 33 of them being off-duty soldiers along with 5 civilians. The new president did not seem to be as sympathetic or as partial to the peace process as his predecessor had once been. Together with his new prime minister, Tansu Ciller, President Suleyman Dimirel adopted a stronger approach towards the Kurdish insurgency, especially after the PKK army ambush. This culminated with the commencement of the Castle Plan. The Castle Plan was created so as deal with the Kurdish insurgency with finality by any means necessary. The plan had proposed the elimination of PKK leaders along with their supporters. This was to be accomplished through counter militia tactics amongst other methods of unconventional warfare. 

The tide began to turn against the Kurds in 1999 with the arrest of PKK’s leader and founding member, Abdullah Ocalan in Nairobi, Kenya following a joint Turkish Intelligence and CIA operation. A ceasefire was then declared in 1999 but only lasted until 2004 when the Kurds declared an end to the ceasefire following continuous attacks from the Turkish government and a lack of willingness and impetus to negotiate for peace. Attacks escalated from both sides with Turkey being ushered into a new wave of deadly violence between 2006 and early 2012. Scores of attacks from both sides of the conflict had led massive casualties and great economic cost. Some pundits suggest that the Kurd-Turkey conflict has cost the economy of Turkey between $300-450 billion. The human cost of the violence has reached tens of thousands. Some estimates claim that 30,000 civilians and soldiers have died since the conflict began. 

Resolving the Conflict 

During a television interview in late 2012, Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that the Turkish government had been in talks with the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The result of this new negotiation initiative was a declaration of ending all hostilities through a letter that was sent by Ocalan to the people. In the letter that was read out on 21 st of March 2013, Ocalan called for a stop to all hostilities, an end to the armed conflict, and withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from Turkish soil. A consultative body named the ‘wise people’ council was formed under the orders of Prime Minister Erdogan. This was aimed at helping to guide public perception of the peace process as well regularly reporting on the progress of the peace process. The process seemed to be progressing smoothly until September 2014. Due to a spillover of the conflict in Turkey, relations between the two parties began to be strained. The PKK accused the Turkish government of aiding the Islamic State during the siege of Kurdish majority city of Kobani in Northern Syria. 

Matters escalated when some members of the PKK shot 3 Turkish police officers who stood in their way as they sought to travel to Kobani to help their Kurdish brothers in the besieged town of Kobani in late September 2014. Protests followed angry sentiments among the Kurds that Turkey was deliberately and maliciously preventing Kurds in Turkey from offering help to their suffering compatriots across the Syrian border. Protests across many towns and cities in Turkey by Kurds were met with deadly force with some 37 protesters dying during skirmishes with Turkish security forces. The situation took a complete turn for the worse after the Suruc bombing, where 32 people lost their lives on the 20 th of July 2015. The bombing was blamed on the PKK even though it was not clear that the group had perpetrated the attack. The government responded swiftly and with deadly force. On the 24 th of July 2015, the Turkish military began operation Martyr Yalcin. This was a military offensive against the PKK and the Islamic State in Syria. Following commencement of the operation by the Turkish government, the PKK declared a resumption of full hostilities against the government. 

Conclusion 

Given the historic nature of the Turkish and Kurdish conflict, it appears that the vicious cycle of violence is bound to continue. Both parties historically had a hard time sustaining peace for long periods of time. The added complexity of the current geopolitical situation in the Middle East makes peace much harder to negotiate. On the one hand, there is a large Kurdish minority that has aspirations of having an independent state in the future or significant autonomy as a region at the very least. On the other hand, there is a government that sees Kurdish autonomy as a threat to growing Turkish nationalism and an attack on the very idea of the Turkish identity. If peace is to be reached, both parties have to agree to compromise on their positions. They also have to commit to long-term preservation of the agreement no matter the prevailing conditions. There is also a need to understand that continued conflict may threaten the stability of Turkey and the entire Middle East. Possible approaches towards the maintenance of this stability should form the basis for future research efforts. 

References

Barkey, Henri J. "Erdogan’s Foreign Policy Is in Ruins."  Foreign Policy  4 (2016). 

Çelebi, Elif, Maykel Verkuyten, Talha Köse, and Mieke Maliepaard. "Out-group trust and conflict understandings: The perspective of Turks and Kurds in Turkey."  International Journal of Intercultural Relations  40 (2014): 64-75. 

Gunes, Cengiz, and Robert Lowe.  The impact of the Syrian War on Kurdish politics across the Middle East . Chatham House, 2015. 

Houston, Christopher. "Provocations of the built environment: animating cities in Turkey as Kemalist."  Political Geography 24, no. 1 (2005): 101-119. 

Romano, David. "A People Without a State: The Kurds from the Rise of Islam to the Dawn of Nationalism/Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War/Rival Kurdish Movements in Turkey: Transforming Ethnic Conflict."  The Middle East Journal  71, no. 2 (2017): 301. 

Romano, David. "A People Without a State: The Kurds from the Rise of Islam to the Dawn of Nationalism/Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War/Rival Kurdish Movements in Turkey: Transforming Ethnic Conflict."  The Middle East Journal  71, no. 2 (2017): 301. 

Çelebi, Elif, Maykel Verkuyten, Talha Köse, and Mieke Maliepaard. "Out-group trust and conflict understandings: The perspective of Turks and Kurds in Turkey."  International Journal of Intercultural Relations  40 (2014): 64-75. 

Ibid., 65 

Ibid., 67 

Romano, David. "A People Without a State: The Kurds from the Rise of Islam to the Dawn of Nationalism/Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War/Rival Kurdish Movements in Turkey: Transforming Ethnic Conflict."  The Middle East Journal  71, no. 2 (2017): 301. 

Gunes, Cengiz, and Robert Lowe.  The impact of the Syrian War on Kurdish politics across the Middle East . Chatham House, 2015. 

Houston, Christopher. "Provocations of the built environment: animating cities in Turkey as Kemalist."  Political Geography 24, no. 1 (2005): 101-119. 

Romano, David. "A People Without a State: The Kurds from the Rise of Islam to the Dawn of Nationalism/Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War/Rival Kurdish Movements in Turkey: Transforming Ethnic Conflict."  The Middle East Journal  71, no. 2 (2017): 301. 

Barkey, Henri J. "Erdogan’s Foreign Policy Is in Ruins."  Foreign Policy  4 (2016).