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Thomas Schelling won the Nobel Prize for his work on game theory, coercive diplomacy and deterrence. In his 1966 book, Arms and Influence, he had the following to say about violence and the inflicting of suffering on others: “The only purpose, unless sport or revenge, must be to influence somebody’s behavior, to coerce his decision or choice. To be coercive, violence has to be anticipated. And it has to be avoidable by accommodation. The power to hurt is bargaining power. To exploit it is diplomacy – vicious diplomacy, but diplomacy.”
After teaching some of this material to my students this week, it occurred to me that it might prove interesting to try and apply it to Ankara’s dealings with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Although Schelling focused on coercive diplomacy between states, surely some of his observations would also have relevance for some other scenarios.
If the AKP government in Ankara were conducting a truly astute strategy à la Schelling, its policy towards the PKK might have looked like this: Along with the anticipation of painful military force should the PKK continue its armed campaign, Ankara would have offered ways beyond unconditional, abject surrender for the Kurds to avoid such violence. Although many nationalist Turks think it wise to offer PKK militants only the choice of “unconditional surrender or death,” they forget that these Kurds (and some non-Kurds as well) already chose to risk death over unconditional surrender when they launched their insurgency in 1984. Many people hold some values – such as dignity and a measure of freedom to choose and live one’s own identity – more dear than life. After over thirty years, elites in Ankara still seem unable to force PKK fighters to choose unconditional surrender. Although they have dealt death to more than a few – tens of thousands in fact – there always appear more to take their places.
A much more astute state strategy would therefore have involved offering the PKK and its supporters some better options, somewhere in between violent revolt and abject surrender or death. For a time, it looked as if the AKP might do just this. They instituted some modest reforms that most countries take for granted – such as people’s right to use their mother tongue in public or name their children as they wish – and implicitly promised to let Kurds participate as Kurds in the legal democratic system. This was followed by indirect peace talks with the PKK and a 2013 ceasefire that culminated in the February 2015 Dolmabahce Agreement -- announced by the AKP government and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP). The agreement envisioned, among other things, a legal amnesty for PKK fighters who disarmed, constitutional changes guaranteeing basic freedoms and plural identities in Turkey, and an end to vague “anti-terror” laws that criminalized all kinds of speech. In short, the Dolmabahce Agreement offered a compromise that the PKK could disarm for.
After the June 7, 2015 election results saw the AKP lose its majority government, however, President Erdogan renounced the Dolmabahce Agreement. At the same time, a great many Kurds believed that Ankara had a hand in the past year’s bombings of an HDP rally in Diyarbakir, a Leftist-Kurdish youth gathering in Suruc and a large Leftist-Kurdish-labour union demonstration in Ankara, among other attacks. This convinced many that even if they tried to play by the legal rules of a supposedly democratic system, they could not anticipate or avoid violence by accommodation. The same government that could not even spare a single green space in Gezi Park or tolerate the protestors there, the same government that fast-tracked the construction of hated dams and police stations in Kurdish areas even as it “negotiated” with the PKK, the same government that seemed to think democracy is the dictatorship of the majority, appeared increasingly unlikely to ever leave others room to live in the “democratic” system.
When the PKK assassinated two Turkish policemen it accused of collaborating with the Islamic State Suruc bomber, the government seized upon the incident to relaunch a total, “take no prisoners” war against the group. Mr. Erdogan also called for the lifting of the parliamentary immunity and prosecution of HDP deputies. While Professor Schelling and a great many others would have instead recommended a calibrated coercive response from Ankara, the AKP government seemed intent on a no-holds barred return to violence, pain, suffering and punishment, which continues even now with round-the-clock curfews and the siege of many towns in majority Kurdish parts of Turkey.
In this way Turkey returned to the realm of internal violence and suffering. The PKK knows this language well enough, and has resumed its campaign of roadside bombings, guerrilla attacks assassinations. In Schelling’s words, “War appears to be, or threatens to be, not so much a contest of strength as one of endurance, nerve, obstinacy, and pain.” This is especially true of guerrilla war, which can go on for years before both sides finally tire of the spectacle enough to return to negotiations.
The PKK and the population from which it draws its support did not anticipate the return to violence and could not avoid it by reasonable accommodation and things like the Dolmabahce Agreement. The reason may have to do with something Professor Schelling did not account for, however. Instead of focusing on influencing the PKK to disarm, Mr. Erdogan and his AKP seem to have been playing a different game altogether: the game of electoral politics. In this game, conflict and violence can restore flagging support for the governing party as nationalists rally around the flag. Such support can even allow someone to redo an election whose results disappointed.
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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