KurdistanObserver.com

Violence In Southeast Turkey Overshadows EU Drive

By Daren Butler

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Anticipation is mounting in Turkey ahead of next week's start of European Union membership talks. Even Kurdish guerrillas have caught the fever.

Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) commanders holed up in the northern Iraqi mountains have marked the date in their diaries, extending a ceasefire until Oct. 3 and pledging support for a democratic solution to the Kurdish problem.

The statistics tell a different story.

With rebels armed with Kalashnikovs and road mines pouring into the region from Iraq, southeast Turkey is suffering the biggest upsurge in separatist violence since PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999.

Clashes between the militants and armed forces have killed 123 people in the last three months, compared with 14 deaths in the whole of 2002. Claims of torture have also increased.

The climate of violence contaminates all of Turkey. In the west, rebel bomb attacks have targeted tourists and pro-Ocalan protesters have provoked clashes with Turkish nationalists.

The political atmosphere is also poisoned. Violence is strengthening the hand of those, in the military, the judiciary and the political establishment, who see EU-inspired democratic reforms as a danger to Turkey's stability and unity.

The "Deep State", the underlying conservative force in Turkey, may see its fortunes on the rise.

Strife has soured the mood in the main southeast city Diyarbakir, where Kurds look beyond the PKK to explain it.

"The increase in violence is being provoked deliberately to destabilise the region because there are some people who profit from it," said Mehmet Dumruk, a moustachioed man in his 20s, strolling in the city's main commercial district.

Some political commentators say elements within the PKK and the military, political and bureaucratic establishment have a common interest in sabotaging the EU process by violent means.

"This is false planned violence. This is a symptom of the struggle within the state between those who do not want society and the state to change and those who do," said Mehmet Altan, a professor at Istanbul University.

PKK SHOW OF STRENGTH

A leading human rights activist said the increased violence of the last six months could be traced back to a PKK show of strength at Kurdish new year celebrations in March, designed to counter claims that the group had been marginalised.

Turkey blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since it began its violent campaign for an independent Kurdish homeland in 1984.

Security forces responded with restraint to the rise in PKK activity as Ankara was wary of alienating EU opinion, said Selahattin Demirtas from the Human Rights Association. The reaction has come from civilian nationalist circles.

The powerful military General Staff has complained that legal and administrative reforms, largely inspired by the EU drive, have hampered its fight against the rebels.

Observers expressed concern that against the backdrop of a global "security syndrome" in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Ankara was looking to tighten up anti-terror laws recently relaxed as part of the EU reform process.

A return to the repressive atmosphere of the past would only serve to alienate the country's Kurds, Demirtas said. He warned that this may prompt locals to look with envy at their ethnic kin who live in an autonomous enclave in northern Iraq.

"The Kurds here look to Ankara and Brussels but if they are provoked and the nationalist wave grows they could turn their face towards (northern Iraq's) Sulaymaniyah and Arbil," he said.

The European Union has a key role to play in quelling the current unease and averting any backsliding on democratisation, according to Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir.

"The EU should not let Turkey down on its path to integration. There should be recognition for its democratisation steps, otherwise there will be a loss of confidence which will strengthen those against democratisation."