Kurds are struggling to breathe in Turkey

THE Kurdish situation in the Middle East cannot be put off anymore as it is fast becoming the key issue determining the fate of the region in the near future.

The Kurds who live in northern Iraq, north-eastern Syria, south-eastern Turkey, north-western Iran and western Armenia, are known as the world’s largest minority group without a state.

Iraqi Kurds gained autonomy in the northern part of the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Thanks to Western support, Syrian Kurds declared a de facto federal region in Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria in 2016. But while Kurds gained considerable autonomy in Iraq and Syria there is growing anger towards them as the major ethnic groups in the region – Arabs, Persians and Turks – treat Kurds as separatists.

As the region’s fourth-largest ethnic group, with a population estimated to be 30 million, the Kurds have become a major factor in the Middle East’s future stability.

US and European governments supported the Syrian Kurds in their successful fight against Isis, and the international media have widely covered their success against Isis in Syria.

The Kurdish struggle is, however, not only about fighting against Isis. The Kurds have long been carrying out armed resistance against these major countries for their political and cultural rights. The Kurdistan Free Life Party, which was founded in 2004, has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region within the Iranian state but the armed group has not carried out any major operation since the 2011 ceasefire agreement following the Iranian government’s military victory.

Turkey has the largest and most politicised Kurdish population in the region and is one of the main issues in Turkey. According to The World Factbook, more than 16 million Kurds live in Turkey. More than 60 ethnic groups gained their independence during the Ottoman Empire’s loss of power and its complete collapse, but not the Kurds.

Turkish Kurds have historically held more rights than other Kurdish minorities in neighbouring states as they were given equal citizenship with the majority Turks in Ataturk’s modern Turkish republic. However, this came with the condition that they don’t acknowledge their Kurdish identity publicly.

The Kurdish crisis in Turkey has always been deeper compared withIran, Syria and Iraq’s Kurdish issue, despite these nations having never issued even national identity cards for their Kurdish population for many decades.

Following the Ottoman collapse, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created a secular, purely Turkish state, under one language, one ethnicity and one culture which resulted in the suppression of all other religions and ethnic groups including the Kurds. Ataturk’s new ideology based on cultural and religious assimilation caused Kurdish revolts. Ataturk bloodily suppressed the Kurdish Islamic scholar Sheikh Said’s rebellion in Turkey’s Kurdishmajority Diyarbakir, Elazig and Bingol cities in 1925.

Ataturk’s revolutionary “Independence Tribunals” executed Sheikh Said and his followers who wanted Kurdish autonomy and an Islamic Caliphate.

Decades after Said’s rebellion, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has become the major Kurdish rebellion movement, which started an armed struggle against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40 000 people have lost their lives in this conflict.

The country’s Constitutional Court has shut down many Kurdish political parties since the 1990s and hundreds of Kurdish political leaders have been assassinated or jailed.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had launched a peace process with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in late 2012, but the Turkish government ended the truce in June 2015 following the PKK’s killing of two Turkish policemen, and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP’s) June 2015 general election victory, which caused his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to lose its majority in parliament for the first time since the AKP came to power in 2003. With the end of the truce, Turkish forces destroyed many Kurdish cities during the full-scale warfare in south-eastern Turkey.

As a result of losing the Kurdish vote, Erdogan’s AKP has increasingly become dependent on its electoral ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Erdogan was elected president with the support of the MHP in 2018.

The latest election surveys show that Erdogan’s support is at an all-time low. He is thus preparing to close down the HDP to please the nationalist MHP.

Just weeks after Erdogan pledged a series of human rights reforms, Turkey’s parliament stripped prominent HDP legislator and human rights defender Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu of his parliamentary seat on March 17. A top Turkish prosecutor filed a case with the Constitutional Court on the same day, seeking to dissolve the HDP.

In a CNN Turk political debate last week, the HDP’s former deputy Altan Tan said the basic demands of Kurds are unbanning the usage of the Kurdish language in public and private life, and a decentralised political system, to give more power to the local authorities in the Kurdish-majority region.

The level of intolerance towards Kurds in Turkey’s current political environment is well exemplified by Hulki Cevizoglu, who is a well-known TV personality, journalist and founder of Turkey’s short-lived Democratic Left People’s Party. Despite being a journalist, Cevizoglu continuously accused Altan Tan of being an outlawed PKK propagandist and separatist in CNN Turk’s Neutral Zone programme.

The ruling AKP’s credit-fuelled economy has faltered and the country is experiencing severe economic challenges. In these challenging circumstances, Erdogan is doubling his ideological war against all opponents.

Kurds are undergoing a painful test given the new nationalism of the Islamist AKP and nationalist MHP coalition.