Analysts Say Political Rights Key To Wooing Turkey's
Disenchanted Kurds
ANKARA, March 15, 2008 (AFP) The Turkish government's pledge of more
investment and television broadcasts for its disenchanted Kurds is unlikely to
end a long-running bloody insurgency as it fails to address key Kurdish demands
for ethnic acceptance and political rights, analysts say.
As part of a push to erode support for Kurdish guerrillas fighting the
government, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday announced a planned
investment of up to 15 billion dollars over five years in infrastructure
projects in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
He also pledged a special public television channel broadcasting in Kurdish,
Arabic and Farsi as opposed to weekly 45-minute broadcasts launched in 2004.
The announcement follows a week-long Turkish military incursion into Iraqi
Kurdistan last month to hunt Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas waging a
23-year campaign for self-rule in the southeast (Northern Kurdistan) that
triggered calls for Ankara to also consider political and economic measures to
win over the Kurds.
For political analyst Dogu Ergil, the planned measures show Erdogan's
unwillingness or inability to address the basic demand of Kurds to be accepted
for their ethnic roots and be allowed to participate in Turkey's affairs as
Kurds.
"Turkey has a system which is based on a Turkish ethnic identity and sees Kurds
as a dependent component that has to suffice with what it is given and told to
do," he said. "Unless Turkey addresses this issue, nothing can resolve the
tensions between the state and society."
The measures are "an indication that the government does not want to or is
unable to take a serious and bold step on the Kurdish issue" for fear of a
nationalist backlash, Ergil said.
Many here, among them the army, are wary of Kurdish demands for political and
cultural freedoms.
They (Army) fear that increasing cultural rights for Kurds could strengthen the
PKK's hand and lead to the breakup of the country.
Turkey's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which enjoys
considerable support among the Kurds, was also unimpressed by Erdogan's plans.
"The essence of the Kurdish problem is creating a nation based on a single
language, a single religion and a single ethnicity," the party's deputy
parliamentary group chairman Selahattin Demirtas said.
"One cannot solve the Kurdish problem with factories and Kurdish broadcasts," he
added.
Such a change is difficult as rising guerrillas violence that culminated in the
army's foray into Iraqi Kurdistan has revived a nationalist rhetoric and frenzy,
with Turks sending in letters of support to the army or lining up in front of
conscription offices to fight the guerrillas.
"Turkey is fighting a monster of its own creation, a Frankenstein, right now,"
Ergil said. "The government believes that it will be very difficult to deal with
the nationalist masses and such an effort will not have any significant return
for them."
Sedat Laciner, president of the International Institute of Strategic Research (USAK)
said time is needed for Turkey to back up economic measures for the Kurds with
cultural and political moves.
"This is a more important area than economics and it requires a change of
mentality and not just legal changes to expanding rights," he said.
"We have to get people not to be afraid of the word 'Kurd'," he added.
