There have always been three problems in the modern Turkish Republic. These problems have also been anchors of our nation state.
These anchors are grouped under three headings; namely, the Kurdish issue, secularism and civilian-military relations. What was eighth Turkish President Turgut Özal’s reaction when his advisers informed him about these anchors? What about when they explained to him that these anchors, each of which is a historical issue, could not be solved by him? Did he suffice with a nod?
Among these three anchors, which Turkey carries like a hump on its back, the administrative power has periodically taken up various initiatives to solve the Kurdish issue. The latest one of these initiatives is the final initiative process, which is being positioned under the umbrella of the democratic initiative. Nearly a year and a half has passed since President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that “there will be initiatives for the Kurdish problem” and “a historic opportunity for the Kurdish problem” in mid-May of last year and since the National Security Council (MGK) extended its support to the process. Both before and after Özal, there has been the perception that developing a formula that can save the mentioned problem from being a pit of hell is impossible. Regardless of what is said, done or offered for a solution, the issue remains a part of a pit of hell. Just like how a person may experience regression when the cognitive level reaches the point of producing anxiety within the psychoanalytical framework, every level of anxiety we face within the course of this problem causes us to refer back to history again and make us experience regression.
Mosul question source of one of the anchors
For example, whenever action is taken to solve the “Kurdish issue,” and the impression that this initiative will fail becomes evident, traumas that occurred following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire resurface on the cognitive level. We can say that this cognition represents the Mosul issue of the new Turkish Republic because the Mosul vilayet represents the fight the Ottoman Empire had to engage in at the table during the establishment of the nation-state following the victorious War of Independence against Western states. The disruption that was caused after modern Turkey left the Mosul vilayet to the Kingdom of Iraq under a British mandate conditionally following the second Lausanne conference corresponds to the abstract platform of the problem described as the “Kurdish issue.”
Regardless of how the issue is handled, it is an inescapable fact that the fault lines created by the disruption of losing the Mosul vilayet has produced a new system and introduced new problems. Time does not run backwards and there is no other space in which history can be rewritten. We know that this issue was a big concern for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the time of his death and we know that he told İsmet Pasha about the heritage of the Mosul vilayet, which was within the borders of the Misak-ı Milli (National Pact). This heritage was relayed from İsmet Paşa to Bülent Ecevit and from Ecevit to former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
Decreasing Ottoman heritage and the youth movement
The Mosul vilayet crack in the big roof brought along with it the traumas that have been experienced in the last 90 years. Several attempts have been made to cover up these traumas. But the wounds were never given enough time to heal. Perhaps the reason for this is that Turkey could not find the opportunity to examine and evaluate natural and historical problems pertaining to the region in depth on a long-term and realistic platform. The breaking of the predominantly Kurdish Mosul vilayet after the second Lausanne negotiations caused Kurds to feel like they were an abandoned, unwanted and ignored people.
As Turkey developed and its problems, as well as its borders, became clearer, the remaining Kurdish population on both sides of the region started searching for their own legitimate platforms. Until the 1960s, this quest for legitimate grounds was built on problems and systems inherited from the Ottoman Empire. But after the 1960s, the Ottoman heritage started depleting. Particularly after Turkey made its stance clear following its membership in NATO, the “Kurds of the Turkish Republic” were left completely neglected. It is under these circumstances that Turkey, which was trying to find its own course, and the Kurdish people, who were trying to find a ground of legitimacy, encountered the youth movements that started forming in the world in 1968. The Turkey of 1968 was significantly affected by the youth movements that had displayed their influence all over the world. The youth movements had found a void in modern Turkey. They were leftists and their Marxist-Leninist students organizations used the youth to serve their own interests and exploited the dynamism and demands of young Turkey’s youth.
Youth movements and the establishment of the PKK
The anarchist activities of the youth movements pushed the Kurdish issue into an even more illegal area and, with its heritage falling apart, Turkey turned into a place where the “leaders could not lead like before, and those being led did not want to be led like before.” Young Kurds who transferred the task of searching for legitimacy to the dynamic youth movements and who wanted to be taken seriously by the administration started seeing themselves as saviors of Kurds, people who they felt were oppressed, excluded and unwanted. When the idea of being a savior started abandoning legitimate grounds, there was a regression and the idea of separation from Turkey started being discussed more frequently. Particularly during the period from 1968 to the Sept. 12, 1980 coup d’état, people started processing separation -- even if it was considered unrealistic -- in their subconscious. In the 1970s, a time when Turkey was scene of blood and pain, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which adopted Marxist thought, rattled Turkey’s still unstable fundamental dynamics. The PKK embarked on its journey with a young and revolutionary team of five to 10 people under that kind of chaotic environment and laid the foundation for a low-intensity war in the country.
In brief, Abdullah Öcalan and his comrades held their first meeting in April 1973 at the Çubuk Dam near Ankara. During that meeting, a claim was brought forth that the Kurdistan region, which was a historical name, was a colony. The core team of the PKK, which adopted a stance that was particularly against armed struggle for a certain period, had trouble finding a counterpart in their imaginary revolutionary struggle. Öcalan and his comrades held their second meeting in the Abidinpaşa-Tuzluçayır district of Ankara. The Tuzluçayır meeting is believed to be more important than the Çubuk Dam meeting. There are strong claims that this meeting was the first time the PKK’s core team came together as an organized structure. However, Öcalan denies such claims. According to information compiled from various sources, 11 people participated in this meeting. These include Öcalan, his first wife Kesire Yıldırım, Cemil Bayık, Ali Özer, Haki Karaer, Musa Erdoğan, İsmet Kılıç, Hasan Asgar Gürgöze, Kemal Pir, Kamer Özkan and Haydar Keytan.
A third meeting, which served as the basis for the PKK’s strategy and initiative, is believed to have taken place in an apartment where students lived in Ankara’s Dikmen district. At the end of this meeting, in which the structure of the group became clearer, some decisions were made, including that it would be more appropriate for Öcalan to stay in Ankara. What essentially makes this meeting important for the organization is the shift from amateur to professional organizational activities. A group of 25 people attended the meeting in Dikmen led by Öcalan. The group gave itself a centralized structure and started organizing. Although armed struggle was mentioned in all meetings and training activities, the group adopted the principle of not resorting to arms, except for a bank robbery in Tunceli, and not falling behind on daily revolutionary practice.
Öcalan describes these talks -- which began with the Çubuk Dam meeting, enabled the formation of a core structure and laid the foundation for the organization between 1973-1976 -- as an ideological groundwork and the formation of a leading cadre. As of 1976 these cadres started spreading out to eastern and southeastern Anatolia and started putting theory into practice.
During this process, organizational activities focused on obtaining more elements and expanding its support base by creating influence over the youth. In reference to activities targeting the youth, Öcalan says: “Activities were mainly being carried out within the young and intellectual segment of society. The intellectual youth has a unique character. This time, the youth, as a social category, are open to revolutionary ideas and can easily adopt them. Secondly, the intellectual youth is the segment that is in touch with science the most and has the propensity to espouse revolutionary ideas the earliest. Thirdly, young people have features that are venturous, vigorous and determined. From this perspective, the young segment carrying out the work was natural and necessary.”
PKK a heedless structure
The fact that the Mosul vilayet had become a reflection of how the Ottoman Empire had to struggle a little more at the table during the establishment of the nation-state following the victorious War of Independence against Western states prevented Turkey from being able to include Kurds into its structure sincerely, consciously and spiritually. The emergence of a heedless structure caused by a void that formed in Turkey, which could not incorporate Kurds and whose Ottoman heritage was being lost, is extremely detached from the gist of the matter. Just as it is wrong to call Öcalan the leader of the Kurdish public, saying the PKK is fighting for the Kurdish people is also inappropriate and a distortion. The Kurds should never have doubts about their honor in Turkey, which is fighting against the PKK. Turks should not be worried about division because of the PKK. Trying to read the Kurdish issue through the PKK is a kind of heedlessness that is exercised by the PKK.
*Yusuf Ergen is a political analyst based in Ankara ,Today's Zaman, 19 August 2010, Tuesday
