KurdistanObserver.com
Terrorist Turkey Complains About Need for Human Rights
Turkish Military Admits
Losing Psychological War, Targets Kurdish MPS
By Gareth Jenkins
jamestown
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
General
Yasar Buyukanit, the chief of the Turkish
General Staff (TGS), yesterday (December 11) admitted that Turkey was losing the
psychological war against Kurdish separatism.
Buyukanit was speaking at a symposium in Ankara
organized by the Strategic Research and Studies Center (SAREM), a think tank
established by the TGS, on the economic and ideological dimensions of the
struggle against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In a nuanced and remarkably
candid assessment of Turkey’s attempts to contain the PKK insurgency,
Buyukanit admitted that, whatever their successes on
the battlefield, the Turkish authorities had been outmaneuvered on the
propaganda front and had allowed the PKK-led Kurdish nationalist movement to
appropriate the terminology of rights and freedoms.
Buyukanit warned against assuming that, just because
the PKK received support from outside Turkey, this meant that the root of the
problem also lay outside the country.
“First you need to look inside yourselves,” he told the symposium.
“If you can’t sever the support that is coming from inside
[the country] then you can’t do anything about the foreign support” (Radikal,
Cumhuriyet, December 12).
Buyukanit noted that, since the PKK launched its
insurgency in August 1984, Turkey had allowed it to take the moral high ground
by portraying the conflict not just as an armed struggle, but as a clash of
values. He admitted that Turkey had allowed the PKK-led Kurdish nationalist
movement to appropriate values such as human rights, democracy, freedom, and
peace.
“Who uses these values at the moment? The terrorists use them,”
Buyukanit said. “And we end up on the defensive. It
is we who look as if we don’t care about human rights, don’t believe in
democracy, are opposed to freedom and hate peace. This is our fault.”
“Put yourself in the position of a foreigner,”
Buyukanit told his audience. “[They see] some people
in Turkey who are always talking about human rights, democracy, freedom, and
peace. There is another group that is struggling against them. Who is this
group? The security forces and the organs of state.
[The foreigners] then say that the military and the police are fighting against
those who want democracy, human rights, and peace. This is a psychological war.
It makes it look as if we hate democracy and freedom” (Radikal,
Cumhuriyet, December 12).
Buyukanit refused to single out any one state
institution but, in what appeared to be a reference to the recent rise in ethnic
violence between Kurds and Turks, he warned that all of Turkish society had a
responsibility to prevent the PKK from achieving its aims.
“Our area of responsibility is the armed struggle,” he said. “But you cannot
combat terrorism by arms alone. There are economic, psychological, political,
and human rights dimensions. As a result, when we fight against terrorism we
must as a society avoid doing anything which will
give hope to the terrorists and the terrorist organization” (Radikal,
December 12).
Perhaps most surprisingly for a member of an institution that has previously
dismissed even the possibility of the PKK achieving its aims,
Buyukanit suggested that, for the moment at least,
Turkey was losing the psychological war.
“There have recently been some developments which have led the [the PKK] to
wonder whether their efforts are succeeding,” he said. “Terrorism has become
both politicized and legalized. The politicization has finished. The
legalization is partly complete. All that remains is the
legalization of the [PKK] itself” (Radikal,
Hurriyet, Taraf,
Hurriyet, Milliyet,
Vatan, December 12).
When asked by a member of the audience what he meant by saying that terrorism
had been legalized, Buyukanit did not pull any
punches.
“The PKK has become politically legalized by entering parliament. They are doing
things like proposing changes to the constitution,” he replied in an
unmistakable reference to the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), which
won 20 seats in parliament in the July 22 general election (Hurriyet,
Vatan, Radikal,
Sabah,
Taraf, December 12).
Ahmet Turk, head of the DTP parliamentary party,
refuted the accusation: “We are trying to reduce tensions. We expect everybody
to display sensitivity when making statements,” he said (Radikal,
December 12).
But his words appear to have gone unheeded by his colleagues in the DTP. The DTP
has persistently refused to characterize the PKK as a terrorist organization or
explicitly condemn its use of violence. At the same time as
Buyukanit was addressing the SAREM symposium, DTP MP
Aysul Tugluk, who once served as lawyer for
imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, was giving a speech in parliament.
Several DTPs have recently advocated a redrafting of
the Turkish constitution and the recognition of Turks and Kurds as equal
co-founders of the state. In her speech to parliament
Tugluk called for reconciliation between “the Turkish and Kurdish
peoples.”
“There is a need for a new strategic partnership, a new strategic alliance,” she
said. “No army can stand against an idea whose time has come.” (Radikal,
Cumhuriyet, December 12).
But just as Ahmet Turk’s message did not appear to
be getting through to Tugluk, neither did
Buyukanit’s about Turkey appropriating the moral
high ground when it came to rights and freedoms seem to be getting through to
elements in the Turkish judiciary. Yesterday (December 11), 54 DTP MPs went on
trial for holding a press conference in March this year to accuse the Turkish
authorities of slowly poisoning Ocalan in his cell on the prison island of
Imrali. Subsequent laboratory tests failed to find
any evidence to corroborate their claims. Nevertheless, the 54 mayors now face
up to two years in prison for allegedly praising Ocalan during their press
conference (NTV, CNNTurk,
December 11).
