Turkey must deal with Syria on Kurdish problem

By Jonathan Power

ISTANBUL, Turkey (JP): It's easy to imagine the worst about the Kurdistan Workers Party -- the PKK -- a ruthless Marxist Kurdish movement that moves under the umbrella of Syria's strongman Hafaz Assad. It's easy, too, to imagine the worst about the Turkish authorities who, despite their democratic pretensions, walk uneasily in the shadow of an army that toppled the politicians in 1960, 1971 and 1980, and which still preserves its virtually untrammeled "license to kill".

On the Kurdish question it would seem simple to say that the situation is hopelessly polarized -- the PKK attack, the army razes another village, and the innocent are punished in equal proportions as the guilty.

That is indeed part of it. Yet there are other sides to the Kurdish question which, while appearing to complicate the picture, should make it easier to resolve in the end.

The Kurdish "problem," as the government spokesmen call it, goes back to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, following World War I. Greeks, distinct but indistinct, lacked the resolve that comes from possessing a single ethnic origin, religion, or leadership and thus were relegated to the sidelines of the nationalist drama.

Once a minority in one empire they are now split between Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia and Lebanon. Most of the time Kurdish leaders do not meet, do not talk, often speak different languages and even write in different scripts.

Thus it was relatively easy for Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, to make a Faustian bargain with the Turkish Kurds -- offering them full and complete citizenship in exchange for their giving up their language, traditions and identity. But the Kurds never sat easy with this arrangement. From the beginning they resented the banning of the use of the Kurdish language in schools and law courts and their first major revolt broke out in 1925, only to be brutally repressed.

In the relatively short period since the PKK emerged in the early 1980s, the best estimates suggest that the war between Kurdish dissidents and the central government has led to the destruction of over 2,000 villages and the creation of over two million refugees. As Human Rights Watch reported last month, it remains a continuous story of "torture, village destruction, disappearances, unlawful deaths in detention and murder."

Yet it is not so simple as this spotted history suggests and the recent general election in Turkey clearly shows why. The Kurdish People's Democracy Party, unlike on previous occasions, was allowed to contest the election without harassment.

Indeed, it attracted the largest and most enthusiastic crowds, both in the larger cities where many Kurds now live and in their homelands in the southeast.

Nevertheless, out of six or seven million potential Kurdish voters it received only 1.2 million votes. Of course, many Kurds have been effectively disenfranchised after being uprooted by the fighting. Moreover, there was probably vote tampering in the rural areas. Nevertheless, it seems that Kurds in the larger cities voted principally for the mainstream parties and there was a significant rejection of Kurdish nationalism, even of the democratic variety, much less that of the PKK.

The message for the PKK was that the cause they solicit, independence for the Kurds, is not widely shared and certainly not in the towns. For the authorities there was also a message, that they exaggerate the potency of the PKK and tend to overreact. Kurdish unrest is not a nationwide problem but a localized one in the southeast.

The other complicating factor in the Kurdish equation is Syria. Syria still claims part of Turkey and keeps Turkey on the defensive by underwriting the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan who resides in Damascus. Without Syria and to a lesser extent Iran PKK activity would undoubtedly shrivel.

Syria, however, is not going to call off its dogs as long as it has not made peace with Israel. In recent years Turkey has drawn close to Israel, most recently agreeing to a military cooperation pact. Naturally this infuriates President Assad. Syria is also angry over the Turkish plan to build a massive network of dams on the Euphrates, accusing it of not "sharing" water equitably.

Turkey needs to start being a little shrewd. The heavy-handed tactics of its army should be reined in and the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Kurds by respecting more their traditional institutions and cultural separateness more fully engaged. Turkey, too, needs to realize that the balance of power with Syria lies firmly in its favor and that time -- and water -- are taking their toll on Assad. He is increasingly on his own in the Arab world and he cannot afford to further alienate the country that controls the head waters of the Euphrates.

Turkey must hang tough with Syria and loosen up with the Kurds. What it certainly mustn't do is confuse the two.