Why broader minority rights are no remedy to separatist violence
Five years ago, Turkey’s Kurds enjoyed much less rights than they do today. Since then there has been a ‘reformist’ prime minister in power, and many EU-sealed reforms. Oddly, five years ago coffins were not arriving in abundance like they do today.
The recent wave of Kurdish violence against Turkish targets is first-class proof of what the headline for this article plainly argues. This is of course, NOT to suggest that broader rights for minorities should not be granted. As a matter of fact, they should be granted in full as in a decent democracy. It is only too naïve and in vain to hope that they would wipe out violence.
Violence is a matter of sentiments
Should the Americans consider ‘democratic means, broader political rights for and dialogue with’ the world’s radical Muslims in order to fight Islamic terror? Do the Israelis have the luxury of ‘abandoning their military endeavors and instead finding a democratic solution’ to the Arab dispute when radical Muslims swear on the Holy Koran to fight them until no Jew is left alive on earth?
Did the Irish or the Basque people not enjoy democratic rights when their separatist terrorists bombed buses and trains and airports, when they killed innocent people, including their own? Are we sure that the Chechens who massacred school children in Beslan would turn into peace doves if the Russians had granted them broader autonomy? Are we sure that the violent Uighur youth would swear never to touch weapons or explosives again if, suppose Beijing gave them better democratic rights? No doubt, these examples can be multiplied endlessly in a world that tends to go astray.
Violence as a means of fighting for a political cause (ideological, religious, ethnic, separatist or any combination of any of these) is a matter of sentiments. This is how this column opened on March 15, 2006: “Separatism is a matter of ‘sentiments’ rather than of social/economic/political dynamics, no matter how romantics are ideologically programmed to ignore this bitter truth. Kurdish separatism and the non-Kurdish romanticism for it are no exception.” That article, written in Sevilla, Spain, quoted a local girl as saying: “I am Andalucian… but, above all, I am Spanish and so proud of that!” And this is how the article closed: “The (Kurdish) problem is less related with political and socioeconomic dynamics, and more with sentiments. There would probably not be a ‘problem’ if the average Kurd, when asked whether he felt Kurdish or Turkish, could say, ‘I am Kurdish… but, above all, I am Turkish and so proud of that!’ Just like the Andalucian girl…”
Five years ago Turkey’s Kurds enjoyed much less rights than they do today – as evinced by various EU reports and the standard international media reference to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as “Turkey’s most reformist prime minister.” All the same, five years ago coffins wrapped in the Crescent and Star were not arriving in abundance – actually there were no coffins around, no blood spilt on soil, no civilian victims for the ‘holy Kurdish cause.’ How should we explain the contradiction?
Holy murderers vs. unholy murderers
It’s not very difficult to understand, unless one is ideologically blinded. Individuals or groups of individuals react in different ways against what they think is injustice – it may or may not really be injustice, because, after all, this is a matter of subjectivism. Someone who thinks he or she had been treated unfairly by a judge, by a government official, by a lover, or just by someone else may choose silence or civilized protest, or may murder whom he/she deems guilty. In the latter case, we simply call that person a murderer. Murders may often take the form of ‘honor killings,’ for instance in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast.
Or a football fan may attack the rival team’s supporters, or the referee if he thinks (and he may be right in his judgment) that his beloved team has been treated unfairly – while his fellow teammates silently and sadly go home after the game in which their team faced the referee’s injustice. Violence should not be tolerated if its justification is not a life triviality but a political controversy, right or wrong.
There must be hundreds of millions of Irish, Catalan, Basque, Chechen, Kurdish, Uighur, Turkish or Turkic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Assyrian, Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Afghan, Iraqi, Jewish, Arab, Transylvanian, Hispanic, African people on the globe who think they are being unfairly treated because of their ethnicities/religions but who never think of killing another man just because of a presumed injustice. If a handful of their fellow nationals prefer to murder for a holy cause that does not mean the holy cause is really a holy cause, but that that handful of fellow nationals are sick men: men who would have killed for another cause, holy or unholy – football, traffic brawl, love, professional rivalry or any other dispute life produces every day.
Separatists want separatism, not rights
There must be millions of Turkish Kurds who sentimentally favor an independent Kurdish state to be carved out of –among other countries—Turkey, but who categorically oppose killing even one man for that purpose. Are they the ones to be blamed for passivity, or the ‘other Kurds’ for murder?
Kurdish violence does not primarily kill to force the Turkish state to allow full day TV/radio broadcasts or education in Kurdish language. PKK men, their supporters and sympathizers could not care about those fancy – but of course necessary – accessories in the least. They want something else that they think they can only win by violence. Allow me to repeat, separatist Kurds want eventual separation, and not broader rights!
Funny, the prime minister has been talking about a few thousand PKK men as the root cause of the Kurdish problem. Likewise, the stereotype western intellectual cites a few stereotype facts for the Kurdish problem (which are all true, but represent a wrong etiology): that Turkey’s southeast has been widely ignored; that the Kurds have been deprived of their cultural rights; that there is absolute poverty in the Kurdish areas, and hence the separatist violence. Does that explain why the dollar-millionaire Kurdish owner of a nightclub in Istanbul or the super-dollar-millionaire Kurdish businessman in İzmir is sentimentally attached to the idea of Greater Kurdistan and/or to the PKK? Or why do millions of better-off Kurds in Turkey and in Europe fight for the ‘Kurdish holy cause?’
Sadly, I must repeat another quote from this column on March 15, 2006:
“Are millions of separatist-minded ethnicities in the EU zone deprived of decent political rights? No. Have the decent EU rights satisfied them? No. Can any further Turkish “overture” satisfy the kids and adults who will possibly burn the Turkish flag and chant pro-separatist slogans on March 21? No. But should Turkey stop thinking of further overtures to diffuse the Kurdish tensions, although they will be of no use? Again, no.”
The optimal policy blend for the Turkish state should be full respect for Kurdish rights and zero tolerance to Kurdish violence.