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But the nation's treatment of the Kurds presents a complex evasion of the EU's human rights requirements. The EU's Copenhagen Criteria calls for the "respect and protection of minorities." But Kurdish identity is not an acknowledged identity in Turkey's constitution, nor in the Lausanne Treaty signed in 1923. In it, a "minority" is defined as non-Muslim. Since Kurds are predominantly Muslim, they are not accorded any of the rights of a minority. Depending on who you ask, the number of Kurds ranges anywhere from 15 to 25 percent of the country's population of 65 million.

Clashes between Kurds and Turks are nothing new. Kurdish identity, language and nationalism were officially banned in the 1920s upon the founding of the Turkish Republic. At that time, Kurdish leaders and their followers revolted. In response, the Turkish government set up an independent tribunal in the Southeast that for two years was granted the authority to impose capital punishment.

Ocalan formed the PKK in the 1980s along Marxist-Leninist lines in order to bolster Kurdish identity and to wrest territorial autonomy from the government. Since the beginning of the guerilla war, some 3 million Kurds have been forcibly evacuated from their villages, according to the IHD. The Turkish central government declared martial law in the entire region from 1978 until 1987. Six provinces remain part of the so-called Emergency Rule Region.

Although the state denies it, a suppressed government report by a parliamentary committee that convened in June 1997 reveals that Turkish security forces, as well as the PKK, were responsible for the forced evacuations. The report quotes former Diyarbakir Gov. Dogan Hatipoglu as describing a scene in which "men in uniform" set villages on fire. He added that the evacuations "must have occurred 'with the knowledge or instructions of security forces or state officials,'" and that no one has investigated whether unauthorized people ordered the evacuations.

Kurdish people have also struggled for cultural survival. Back on Istiklal, the director of the Mesopotamia Cultural Center, Yildiz Gultekin, explains how the police make regular visits and have disrupted the center's work. It publishes books, calendars and cassettes, and produces films in the Kurdish language.

"Ten people have been arrested here in the last year, and we can't give performances outside in the Kurdish language," she says. The government also warned them it would close the center and all its branches if they performed plays in the center's theater. In December, the state opened a case against it for a calendar it produces in Kurdish. In what many hope will prove to be an official turnaround, Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem recently said, "All people should be allowed to learn and broadcast in their native tongue."

Change appears to be coming, if slowly. Even before the prospect of EU membership, influential Turkish industrialists spoke out about the need to democratize on issues of diversity and ethnic identity. TUSIAD, an organization of the country's largest industrialists, recently released a report that calls for lifting cultural prohibitions, abolishing thought crimes and lifting restrictions on language.

Prospects seem to be improving for the Kurds, as well. HADEP, a legal Kurdish party, won four mayoral races last April in the Southeast. These victories came in spite of state lawsuits that threatened to close it down because of suspected links with the PKK, despite the detention of thousands of its members and the raiding of its offices since Ocalan was captured.

HADEP Diyarbakir Mayor Feridan Celik told a Turkish daily that he thinks things have changed for the better. "Everyone thought that the state would remove from office the elected HADEP mayors." Instead, he said, "The state appointed officials and administrators who could get on well with the local people and not struggle against the local mayors." The HADEP mayors had an official meeting with Turkey's President Suleyman Demirel, which was viewed as tacit acceptance of HADEP at the highest level of state.

Similarly, the Turkish government and the Parliament have passed constitutional amendments and legislation that are undoing some of the more draconian laws. Last year in a move to broaden the independence of the judiciary, the state security courts are no longer allowed to have one presiding military judge. In order to curb abuses by security forces, a provision that allowed them liberal use of firearms was canceled. Law now prohibits virginity tests, which had routinely been administered to women in detention or entering prison.

In its bid for EU accession, there are indeed positive signs that Turkey is moving forward. But whether or not its reforms and changes will be put into practice on all levels -- from government to police to increased rights of its citizens -- remains to be seen.
salon.com | Feb. 9, 2000

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