Kurdish disaffection within Turkey hurts the country’s past, present and future. Over the years, Ankara spent untold billions of dollars trying to suppress and assimilate its Kurdish minority. For every dollar spent on a development project or a school that forbade the use of Kurdish, another ten were spend on soldiers, helicopters and police stations. A large part of Turkey’s diplomatic capital was also exhausted trying to contain Kurdish initiatives around the world, from Europe to neighboring Syria, Iraq, Iran and the former Soviet Union. For years, the Turks looked completely absurd as they ran around the country and the rest of the world trying to stymie the Kurds while simultaneously denying that any Kurds exist in Turkey.

A popular story many Kurds like to recount has it that in the late 1970s, the Kurdish expatriate population in Libya got permission from Ghaddafi to open a Kurdish cultural center in Tripoli. The Turkish ambassador to Libya lodged an official protest over the center’s opening, at which point Ghaddafi summoned him for a meeting. Before the ambassador could even finish his complaint in person, however, Ghaddafi interrupted him: “Wait!” he said. “First I want to know one thing! Is there a Kurdish minority in Turkey?” Surprised, the ambassador immediately replied “No,” at which point Ghaddafi clapped his hands and retorted “So what’s the problem then?”

Still today, every time a Turkish leader speaks up for democracy and human rights somewhere in the world, people point to the Turks’ dealings with the Kurds as evidence of their hypocrisy. European accession talks crumble on the anvil of the Kurdish issue as well. Democratization likewise gets sacrificed on the altar of “counter-terrorism,” as excessively broad anti-terror laws destroy freedom of expression, freedom of association, due legal process and minority rights in general.

It does not have to be this way. In fact, with the right new policies, Turkey could change its Kurdish problem into its Kurdish resource. For an example of the possible benefits that ethnic diversity can offer, one need only look at countries like Switzerland, Belgium or Mauritius. In each of these countries, different ethno-linguistic communities maintain economic and cultural ties with their kin in other states. German, French and Italian Swiss do brisk business with their fellows in Germany, France and Italy. The Flemish community in Belgium attracts Dutch investors and pursues business opportunities in the Netherlands, while the French-speaking Wallons do the same with France. In Mauritius, Afro-Mauritians pursue their links especially with communities in Africa, while Indo-Mauritians work with India and Pakistan and French caucasian Mauritians deal especially with France. Each country enjoys a lot of benefits from the ability of part of their population to interact easily with a major community outside the state.

The analogy to Turkish Kurds and their brethren in neighbouring countries should be obvious. The brisk business that Turkey now does in Iraqi Kurdistan offers a foretaste of what could be. With a resolution to the Kurdish issue, the political environment would become much more stable for business, from oil pipelines to capital investments and trade. In a Turkey where Kurds felt respected and valued as Kurds, they would offer a natural gateway to business, culture and political alliances with neighbouring states that also have strong Kurdish communities.
What’s more, Turkey would no longer squander so many billions of dollars on internal security. The Turkish military could spend more time training for what such militaries truly stand for: protecting the country from external aggressors. Many of the countless army bases, gendarmerie posts and police stations across eastern Turkey could be closed down and their personnel put to better use. Outside powers would no longer find it so easy to find Kurdish rebels to support in order to weaken their Turkish rival.

When Turkish leaders stand up for the rights of minorities in Cyprus, Bulgaria, Germany, Chechnya or elsewhere, they would also no longer be greeted with derisive snorts and comments about how they should “look at their own backyard before pointing their fingers at others.” In such a new Turkey, we could even expect leaders in Ankara to stand up for the rights of Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Iran. Why not? Did Kurds from not only Diyarbakir, Van and Sirnak, but also from Kirkuk, Qamichly and Erbil not also die defending Galipoli from invasion, or while fighting in Turkey’s War of National Liberation?

In such a scenario, Turkey would enjoy a very bright future indeed. In order to create such a future, however, the Turkish state and people need to come to terms with Kurdish identity. They need to not only acknowledge it, but also give it the respect it deserves. Instead of trying to repress Kurdish identity, Ankara should celebrate it as one of the core components of Turkey. That includes spending tax dollars to promote Kurdish language, culture and symbols, just as they do with the Turkish language, culture and symbols.

The old argument that “Turk” is not an ethnic identity but a civic one never held much weight anyhow, especially as long this meant accepting the Turkish language, an imagined Ergenakon past in Asia and symbols like the grey wolf, but denying the Kurdish language, the Zagros mountains and symbols like the Kurdish sun. If Turkey for its citizens would adopt a term like “Turkiyeli” instead of “Turk,” which grammatically denotes civic belonging to the state of Turkey but not ethnic Turkishness, this would go a long way towards rectifying the problem. If that word doesn’t currently exist in Turkish, it’s time to invent it and use it.