This page is fully interactive with JavaScript. The text and links below are here so the archive stays reachable without it.
History was written during this year's Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakır (Amed), the largest city of Turkey's Kurdistan.
A major step was taken towards ending the armed Kurdish insurgency led by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has cost an estimated 35,000 lives and $400 billion. Turkey's Kurds in their hundreds of thousands celebrated Newroz with unprecedented joy in the hope that peace will from now on prevail and that they will no longer find themselves in the crossfire of the armed conflict between security forces and PKK fighters. The vast majority of the rest of Turkey, except for those who thrive on the continued shedding of blood, also rejoiced.
Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, in a letter read out to the celebrating crowds, ordered PKK fighters to cease fire and withdraw from Turkish territory. He said, “The point has been reached where guns should be silenced and ideas and politics speak out instead.” He was clearly referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's statement at the end of last year. That Erdoğan and Öcalan meet at the same “point” signifies the fact that both sides recognize there can be no military solution to the Kurdish question and that they can both win by talking.
We have arrived at this point because both the Turkish state and the PKK have changed over the course of the conflict. Let's think back: Until the end of the Cold War, the politics of a “military solution” prevailed in Ankara. It essentially meant that the existence of Kurds was denied; they were subjected to forced assimilation; those who objected to it were punished severely; and even the Kurds of Iraq were regarded as enemies.
Beginning in 1990, signals for a “civil solution” started to come out of Ankara. The Social Democratic People's Party (SHP) published the “Report on the Southeast,” which talked about Kurds and their identity rights. President Turgut Özal lifted the ban on spoken Kurdish, announced that his mother was Kurdish and suggested we debate federalism while he sought dialogue with Öcalan in the Bekaa Valley. Former President Süleyman Demirel declared, “We recognize the Kurdish reality.” Former Prime Minister Tansu Çiller mumbled about the “Basque model.” Former Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz said, “The way to European Union membership goes through Diyarbakır.” Even former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan attempted dialogue with Öcalan. Every time, however, the prime ministers' will had to give in to the hard-line Kemalist will of the military, and the low-intensity civil war that started in the early 1980s became very dirty in the 1990s.
It was Erdoğan who picked up from where Özal had left off and adopted a “civilian” approach to the problem after taking the military under control. The denial of the Kurds came to an end. Measures against forced assimilation ranging from broadcasting in Kurdish to elective Kurdish courses in public schools were adopted. Changes in the anti-terror law that will soon come into force will lift restrictions on the non-violent expression of Kurdish demands. Close political and economic relations were established with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. And finally peace talks with the PKK were initiated.
The PKK has also changed over time. At its founding in 1978 it aimed at uniting all the Kurds of the Middle East under the flag of a Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan. Confronting the realities on the ground, it first dumped Marxism-Leninism and later pan-Kurdism to begin advocating autonomy for Turkey's Kurds. And finally it is looking for ways to replace, if possible, armed insurgency with a legal political struggle for Kurdish rights. His latest statement seems to indicate that he is no longer aiming at a Kurdish nation-state, but searching for a model where people irrespective of ethnic and religious identities will be able to freely live side-by-side.
A major step towards Turkish-Kurdish peace has been taken. For peace to take root it is now necessary that arms on both sides are silenced for good and that a new constitution based not on Kemalism but on a liberal and pluralist democracy which assures the democratic rights of the Kurdish citizens of Turkey is adopted.