What do Kurds in Turkey want?

Anyone who visits Turkey, speaks with an average Turkish person or reads the op-eds of AKP parliamentarians on news sites like al-Jazeera, has heard the following refrain quite a few times by now: “Kurds have all their rights. They can speak Kurdish in Turkey, they have radio stations, a television station and newspapers. They are equal citizens; they can even be Prime Minister. What more do they want?” Sometimes the person saying this also adds, “We are not against Kurds, they are our brothers. We are against the outlawed PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) terrorist organization, which is on the terrorism lists of Turkey, the United States and European Union.”

Your humble columnist therefore decided to ask his Kurdish friends from Turkey, as well some Turkish friends who are sympathetic to and share Kurdish demands, what they actually want. Their first reaction pointed out that the Turks asking “What more do they want” are not really interested in asking this question to Kurds in Turkey, much less listening to their replies. It is really a rhetorical question. The way the question is posed also shows that the Kurds are objects of government policy and “the other.” Determining what rights the generous Turkish government will give the demanding Kurds is the business of the AKP and other governments in Ankara, based on what the international community and European Union is criticizing them the most for.

What’s more, Ankara apparently also gets to decide who represents the Kurds. The PKK obviously does not, even if in many majority-Kurdish cities in the southeast it often appears difficult to find many Kurds who are not broadly supportive of the group (although they typically will not say so to a Turk from Western Turkey, much less a government official or soldier). The People’s Democracy Party (HDP) does not either, since according to the government in Ankara the HDP is just a political front for the PKK. If that is true, the millions of people who voted for the HDP must have therefore been tricked about the HDP’s real nature, since the PKK does not represent Kurds in Turkey.

No, the ruling party in Ankara will tell Kurds what they want, like an abusive husband who speaks for the woman betrothed to him in an arranged marriage. “I spend a lot of money on her, and give her everything she needs,” he says, “but you can ask her what she wants and she is free to say so, although she will regret it if she gives the wrong answer.” On a general level, Kurds do not want to be the woman in such a patriarchal, abusive marriage. They demand to be a partner in Turkey with control over their own public lives, much as Kemal Ataturk promised them in 1919-1923 when he was rallying Kurdish forces during Turkey’s War of Independence. Although you cannot find mention of it in Turkey’s official history, historians have the letters that Ataturk wrote the Kurds during this time – letters that promised things like autonomy for Kurdish areas and a partnership role in the new post-war state.

My friends also gave specific examples of what Kurds in Turkey want, of course. One wrote to me “First, a new constitution that redefines the national identity of Turkey based on multiculturalism. Second, schools from K to 12 that provide language of instruction in Kurdish in Kurdish-inhabited areas and change some universities to accommodate Kurdish language and Kurds who wish to receive their higher education in Kurdish. Third, reconcile all the past atrocities from Dersim to Cizre to Sur that were committed by the Turkish state. Fourth, change curriculum (especially history) that reinforces/creates prejudices and biases against the Other in Turkey. Fifth, create platforms where the majority of Turkish population can be educated on coexistence and multiculturalism. I recognize that some of these are very idealistic. However, they are crucial for rebuilding Turkey in which Kurds may be willing to remain part of.”

Others I spoke with mentioned the desire for security from the state’s police and army (which in the Kurdish case means something very different than for a Turk in Western Turkey, who usually views these forces as the providers of security to the people). Some spoke of the need for a system where the central government would not have the unilateral power to build endless dams to flood their communities and police stations on every mountain top to rule over them. Still others spoke of a democratic system that does not criminalize all dissident speech as “terrorism,” without which they cannot even answer the question of “what do Kurds want?”

Regarding language, like people in Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Cyprus, Iraqi Kurdistan, India, Spain and elsewhere, non-ethnic Turks in Turkey want to maintain their language, identity and culture and live with dignity as Kurds, Arabs, Roma or whatever, yet the state still sees this as a mortal threat. Kurdish schools that tried to open saw authorities arrive and close them down with the most demanding fire and building code inspections ever conducted in Turkey. Several people I spoke to pointed out how when various Kurdish municipalities in Turkey began providing services (for things like hygiene education, child care and so forth) to their people in not just Turkish, but also Kurdish, Arabic, Chaldani, Armenian and Syriac, they had court cases opened against them for violating laws that insist that “only Turkish can be used.” The former mayor of Diyarbakir, for instance, had state investigators in his office two hours after announcing these multilingual services for a population of which 70% speak Kurdish as a first language, 24% Turkish and 3% Armenian, Syriac, Chaldani or Zaza. Among other things, he was charged with using letters that do not appear in the Turkish alphabet (such as X, W and Q). Along with many other mayors who tried to do the same thing, the AKP government in Ankara then removed him from office and imprisoned him.

Finally, some of the people I asked mentioned demands that are more closely associated with the PKK, such as freedom for Abdullah Ocalan, decriminalization of the guerrillas should they lay down their arms, and “democratic autonomy.” These demands would be much harder for the government in Ankara to meet given popular attitudes amongst most Turks regarding the PKK. Instead, Ankara’s strategy has supposedly focused on “drying up the sources of PKK support and sympathy” by “’giving’ the Kurds more rights” and via economic development plans. The only problems, however, are that first, only AKP deputies in parliament, Kemalists and non-Kurds in Western Turkey seem to think the Kurds have their rights, or to even know what they want and why they want it. Second, the PKK is the group fighting the Turkish state, and a “military solution” has evaded Ankara since 1984. If the current level of disconnect in narratives and conflict continues, the next time your humble columnist asks the question, most answers might simply say “secession.”

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.

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