Kurdish Intifada

In the last few weeks, the people living in the Kurdish cities of Turkey showed a determined resistance and civil uprising. Starting in Diyarbakir, the uprising spread to other cities including Batman, Siirt, Mardin, Kiziltepe, Nusaybin, Hakkari, Agri, Van, Ergani, Kars, and Istanbul. Kurds took to the streets to voice their demands and defended themselves against police attacks by throwing stones and firebombs. The clashes started with the killing of 14 HPG (People’s Defensive Forces of Kurdish Liberation Movement (KLM)) guerrilla fighters. The HPG claimed that chemical weapons had been used against the guerrillas and demanded that NGOs should investigate the incidence. The families of the guerrillas said that they saw burns and other signs of chemical weapons on their corpses. This information triggered large-scale demonstrations in Diyarbakir during the funeral. The police attacked the funeral using firearms. The demonstrations to protest the attack and the use of chemical weapons spread to other cities. During the demonstrations 13 people, including three children aged three to six, were killed by bullets and several people were hospitalised. Hundreds were arrested and tortured.

How did things come to this point?

In 1999 Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdish Liberation Movement, at that time called PKK (Kurdistan Worker Party), was captured as a result of an international conspiracy.

In his trial, he called on the Kurdish Movement to abandon the armed struggle against the Turkish state and to pursue a peaceful, civil rights struggle in order to obtain the basic identity and cultural rights of Kurds living in Turkey.

The Movement responded positively to his call and the civil war which had continued for 15 years was terminated unilaterally by the Kurdish Liberation Movement about seven years ago. The Kurds focused on peaceful civil political activities. The Kurdish Liberation Movement founded a congress (KADEK) which would be an umbrella structure for promoting peace and democracy in Turkey. They have re-elected Abdullah Öcalan as their President, who has been in jail since 1998.

The Kurdish guerrilla forces did not abandon their arms, but they withdrew beyond the Turkish borders and located themselves in Northern Iraq. Since then they have called themselves "self-defence forces" and did not attack any military targets. They demanded of the Turkish state that an amnesty should be declared and channels opened that would enable them to participate in peaceful political activity in Turkey.

As the process of membership negotiations with the European Union sped up, hope for a peaceful solution increased. The Turkish state made minimal improvements of regulations in the area of cultural rights, but during this seven-year period, not much progress was made concerning the Kurdish problem and the military operations continued uninterrupted.

During the “low intensity warfare” of the 1990s more than 3,000 villages were evacuated and destroyed by state security forces, a fact that was acknowledged by the Parliament. The repression of the Kurdish cultural identity continued and Kurdish university students demanding education in their native language were dismissed from the universities and even arrested. Institutions which published books on the Kurdish question were subjected to severe punishment. The demands of the families who lost their relatives as a result of summary executions were rejected and suppressed. The housing requirements of the people who immigrated to the slums of the big cities after being forcefully evicted from their villages were ignored, and they were subjected to repression in the big cities. They had to watch the destruction of their culture and language in miserable living conditions.

The Kurdish people who have lived through this repression have understood in the last few years that the approach of the Turkish state to the Kurdish problem is to persistently deny the Kurdish identity, to destroy those who resist, and to let the problem rot away with time. The uninterrupted military operations have intensified, and the summary executions have restarted since last spring. JITEM (Military Intelligence Unit, the existence of which is denied by the Turkish state) carried out bombing attacks against neighbourhoods where the Kurdish opposition is strong. These events reached a new dimension on the 9th of November 2005.

On this day in Semdinli, a small town in Hakkari, three persons were captured by the townspeople, after they had thrown hand grenades at a bookstore. Those captured included two army sergeants and an informant. They were handed over to the police by the townspeople. Fire arms, hand grenades and some documents including a list of some residents of Semdinli and a map on which the locations of the 17 places in the town that had previously been bombed were indicated were found in the car in which they attempted to flee the crime scene.

This was clear evidence of the fact that the bombings previously attributed to the KLM by the mainstream press had been carried out by the security forces. Army Chief Commander General Yasar Büyükanit, who is going to be promoted to Chief of Staff this summer said that he knows one of the sergeants very well and that “he is a good guy”. The state prosecutor who demanded an inquiry concerning the General was condemned by the military and he himself became the subject of an inquiry. Lastly, he’s dismissed from office. The demand for an inquiry concerning the General was refused. These events demonstrated that the death squads formed by the military are still active in the region. The people reacted and demonstrations took place in several Kurdish cities and towns.

Then came Newroz on the 21st of March, a festival that has been celebrated by the peoples of the Middle East since ancient times to mark a mythological day of uprising against a tyrant. This festival, which was banned during the 1990s, has been celebrated by large crowds since 2000. However, it is used as an opportunity for provocations: for instance, last year the Turkish flag was burned by unkown people and the mainstream media used that incidence as a pretext for provoking a lynch campaign against Kurds and some people were actually killed.

The Newroz festival this year was particularly important given the non-solution policy of the Turkish state and the escalation of violence. The Semdinli events have increased the tension in the Kurdish provinces. The state ignored the calls for a peaceful solution and increased the tension through terror operations and the people were full of rage. The mainstream media helped to raise the tension towards Newroz by warning of bloodshed during the celebrations. The KLM declared that it would stop all actions and military activity during Newroz, helping to ease the tension. Newroz was celebrated with utmost enthusiasm in all places where Kurds live and large crowds gathered for celebrations. There were no acts of violence and the Kurds strongly declared their political demands once more: constitutional recognition of the existence of Kurds, their language and cultural rights and a general amnesty for all political prisoners and guerillas to facilitate their inclusion into the legal political process. Everybody was wondering how the Turkish state would respond to these demands.

The long-awaited provocation came on the 25th of March when 14 HPG guerrillas were killed by chemical weapons. The Kurds reacted to the reply they received for their call for a peaceful settlement by organizing large demonstrations. Three persons lost their lives to the fire opened by the police during the funeral of the guerrillas. The most grisly comment came from Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan: “The events are under control... Security forces will intervene with every possible means indiscriminately, including against women and children.” There were scenes reminiscent of the Palestinian intifada: the people, including women, children and elderly were on the streets demonstrating and throwing stones, and the security forces opened fire indiscriminately. Thirteen people including a three year old child and a 78 year old grandfather were killed. The state security forces reacted disproportionately using German Leopard tanks and American helicopters, whereas the people only had stones and firebombs.

After the events, the KLM condemned the terror inflicted on the population and invited the people to show their democratic reaction. The Movement said that the statements made by the Prime Minister legitimized the disproportionate use of violence by the security forces including opening fire on unarmed people and that those responsible for the deaths should be prosecuted. On the government side, the legal pro-Kurdish party DTP (Democratic Society Party) and elected local mayors from that party were held responsible for the events and many of them were prosecuted, some arrested. The DTP stated that they were asking for a dialog to find a democratic solution for the Kurdish problem, but that their offer was rejected by the Turkish state. The Turkish Prime Minister stated that unless the DTP condemns the KLM as a “terrorist organization”, the request for a meeting will be rejected. The main opposition party CHP gave full support to the government in its policies regarding the Kurdish issue and even criticized the government for its soft-handed approach.

The government claimed that a call for action was made on the Kurdish ROJ TV channel broadcasting via satellite from Denmark, and launched a campaign to ban this TV channel and the USA gave its full support to this call. Attempts were made to suppress the dissident media, and one reporter was shot in his foot and another one was severely injured and lost his life in hospital. The mainstream media were in harmony with the government and gave full support to the state policy of demonising the Kurdish people. The broken glass of some shops was the main issue on mainstream TV channels while people were losing their lives to the bullets fired by security forces. The mainstream media was actually provoking an ethnic civil war.

By 12th of Apri, 18 guerrillas, 34 soldiers and 1 policeman had lost their lives. The Turkish state tried every possible means to “solve” the Kurdish problem, the origins of which can be dated back to 1978: dirty war, paramilitary forces, death squads, forced evictions, torture, economic sanctions, summary executions, chemical weapons etc. There is only one approach which has not yet been tried: peaceful dialog. The key to peaceful dialog is the model tried in South Africa: “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions”. That model is proposed by the leader of the KLM, Abdullah Öcalan and it seems to be the only possible way to uncover the human rights violations for which both parties are responsible and to heal the suffering from the prolonged civil war.

As of 20th April 250,000 Turkish troops are said will be deployed in southeastern Kurdish region of Turkey to organize operations against Kurdish guerillas and according to mainstream media the operation could include a cross-border attack to the Northern Iraq where there are guerilla bases.