Of all the Turkish governments, the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has been the most courageous in dealing with the ‘Kurdish problem’ (even naming the issue as such) with instruments other than counter-violence. However it had encountered two limitations that limited its success. The first was the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish militant organization that elevated its expectations from full-fledged democracy to demanding an independent Kurdistan carved out of Turkey.
The second limitation was the misperception of the AKP leadership in choosing the right party to negotiate a peace deal. Instead of looking at the matter as a problem of equal citizenship and incorporating Kurds into the narrowly defined nation (as Turks), the government opted to negotiate the nature of the regime with the PKK in return for peace.
However, the PKK enjoyed allegiance of and control over only one third of the Kurds in Turkey. Two third of the Kurds neither wanted to resort to violence in search for their democratic rights nor did they want to restrict politics to acknowledgement of their ethnic identity. They wanted integration into the wider society without any discrimination.
In fact ending discrimination against them and acknowledging democratic/civic rights of all citizens could have dissolved the authoritarian and tutelary political system in Turkey enabling the solution of the Kurdish problem. But the system built on the primacy and predominance of the Turks survived even under the AKP government. The officialdom insisted on the mistake of associating the Kurdish problem with the PKK, and believed that if violence ends stability will restored.
So rather than dealing with the reasons of the problem, the government opted to deal with its outcome, namely violence and the organization that had chosen violence to air the dissent of a people who felt oppressed and victimized. This misperception made the PKK look larger than life and elevated it to the level of official partner of the government to negotiate a settlement. But negotiate what? This is where the rub is. The government began to negotiate the institutional structure and legal framework of the regime. Oslo, Norway became the venue for secret talks with the PKK.
At a time when a deal was near, emboldened and believing that it can wrench more out of the government the PKK overturned the peace table and resorted to violence once again in demand of a country to run on its own. As a Member of Parliament from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP, the legal Kurdish party affiliated with the PKK) has said to this author: “The PKK wants the Turkish government to set up a Kurdistan and hand it over to the PKK so that it can run it in the fashion North Korea is run.”
In its deliberate campaign of enhanced violence the PKK tried to initiate a ‘Revolutionary People’s Uprising’ in what it called Turkish Kurdistan. But the people did not follow suit. As winter approached and the operational capacity of the PKK is about to diminish considerably, the organization tried yet another method to draw attention to its cause: hunger strikes.
Presently there are about 700 people in different prisons engaged in hunger strikes. Some of them have turned their civil disobedience into death fasts and approaching the critical stage of unconsciousness and death. Seeing that this a dramatic and affective public relations method the PKK is preparing to organize public meetings in support of the death fast and encouraging thousands of other Kurdish political prisoners to join this deadly ordeal.
It is obvious that the PKK is trying to influence Kurdish political prisoners to lay their lives for the cause of the organization that it could not succeed in attaining through overt violence. Death fasts is a form of introverted violence for which no one can be accused of hurting others. Many people in Turkey blame the PKK for asking Kurdish inmates to give their lives for the maximalist cause of the organization and inmates who follow suit. But in the end human beings will die no matter what their political motivations are. That is why after harsh rhetoric against the hunger strikes and their abuse by the PKK, the government began to feel the humanitarian pressure on itself. After all, governments are there to safeguard the lives and welfare of their citizens.
The Minister of Justice has set in motion mechanisms to end the death fasts by meeting inmates. The government prepared resolutions to be voted in the Parliament such as legal defense in courts in the mother tongue as well as education in the mother tongue of ethno-cultural groups. These will be voted soon before more damage is inflicted.
The question is why democratic rights are not put into effect before people suffer so much? Couldn’t Turkey democratize without the painful struggle of the Kurds to be full and equal citizens? The answer is simple but dismal: the Turkish political culture is state-centric and authoritarian. And the definition of the nation (defined as Turkish) is narrower than the people living in the country, excluding those that are non-Turkish. It is high time for the Turks and their government to come to terms with the reality of their country and to adopt the higher standards of democracy if they really want be the exemplary nation they aspire to be.


Prof. Dr. Doğu Ergil is a Professor of political Science in Fatih University \ Turkey, and also an expert on the Kurdish Question, and he is one of the well-known authors in Turkey.