The Head Terrorist and the Honorable Leader of a People
In Diyarbakir, the center of the Kurdish region in Turkey, or in Batman, the Oil capital of Turkey, where oil is not necessarily flowing like water, there is a pledge that students have to take every morning. It starts with “I am Turkish, I am rightful, I am hard working” after about 2-3 minutes of nationalist lyricism, it ends with “My existence is dedicated to the existence of Turkishness”. It is taken in Batman in a primary school close to a statue of Ataturk which says “Happy is the one who calls himself Turkish” or in a high school in Diyarbakir close to a 7 story tall relief of Ataturk on a buildings outer walls, as well as in other cities in other parts of Turkey.
Now the Kurds can speak Kurdish, freely in the streets, listen to music in Kurdish, freely in streets and discotheques. There is a state owned television channel broadcasting in Kurdish, some newspapers printed in Kurdish, even though their staff may get prison terms longer then your favorite murderer. It is a long way from the ’80s and ’90s, even before that, when the Kurdish Identity was officially denied and consequently considered a crime. The memories of the Diyarbakir Penitentiary after the 1980 military coup, famous for horrific tortures, or thousands of villages that were forcefully evacuated, burned or shelled in the 90’s are still not far in the collective mind of Turkish Kurds. It would be safe to say that a majority Kurds living in south east Turkey has a relative who died during the 80s and 90s, under torture, or murdered by “dark forces” (which now we learn were state sponsored, or plain old military) or as a PKK fighter. It is hard to convince them that times are much better, even though they really wish to be convinced. Well of-course the latest operations do not help, where hundreds of Kurdish politicians have been arrested. Kurds often complain that there is no one left to represent them on the political front.
The “Kurdish problem” of Turkey is as old as the republic, if not more. Even though with the Lausanne Treaty in 1922 there were certain rights given to the minorities of the then new born Republic of Turkey, they were never applied in the case of “Muslims speaking other languages then Turkish”, including Kurds. This led to numerous uprisings over the last 88 years, starting with Seyh Said in 1925, and more recently the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) movement that started in the late ’70s, with many in between. Many ended with burned villages, executions, and lots of blood on both sides. Until 2000’s, the Turkish state declined to see Kurds as a people, the official claim was Kurds being “Mountain Turks”. Their language was mere gibberish, a broken version of Turkish, they were savages, backwards people and most certainly had no separate identity than the “Turkish Identity”. The big problem is that, the 16 or so million Kurds living in Turkey, have no intention of owning the “Turkish Identity”, they see it vital to speak and study their language, to be “Kurdish” and be recognized as such. They do not want to have a separate state from Turkey, as long as they can be Kurdish in Turkey.
The military coup in 1980 was the beginning of terrible, if not horrific, times for Kurds, as well as Turks who did not subscribe to the official state ideology. A great number of Kurdish, as well as Turkish, intellectuals and politicians, mostly leftists were arrested and put in the famous Diyarbakr Penitentiary. The systematic torture in the Military Prisons all over the country were notorious, but Diyarbakr was the worst, in Turkish and world standards. The torture was done not only to get information, but also to destroy the prisoners “self”, to turn him or her into what the state, or the military which at the time and still to some point dictated the state ideology, wanted to be. This meant a good Turkish citizen, a Turk first, a firm believer in the state, not a leftist, or a radical rightist and a secular sunni muslim. For Kurds this meant de-announcing the Kurdish identity. Speaking only in Turkish even if they did not know any (Most villagers couldn’t speak Turkish). Several accounts by ex-prisoners of the Diyarbakr Penitentiary tell the same stories. Beatings and torture was 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Even sleeping was transformed into a way of torture, inmates, who had to share single beds with 2 other had sot sleep still. In dormitories that housed up to 60, if a single inmate moved slightly during sleep, the whole dormitory was beaten, not lightly, but with the use of wooden planks that had rusty nails. Inmates were allowed 2 minute baths, very irregularly, with freezing water in the winter and boiling water in the summer. As with every activity in the prison they were beaten during the trip to the bath house, and after the baths they had to go back to their cells naked, crawling on the floor, even when going up the stairs. They spend their days, singing nationalist Turkish anthems, standing still, for 8 hours straight at times. Even inmates who could not speak Turkish were required to memorize anthems over a weeks time, supervised by other inmates who could speak Turkish. Failure meant more physical torture for both the supervisor and the supervised. The average inmate spend his or her first two weeks in a rooms with such names as “The Bath House” or “The Cinema”. The Bath house was a small and dark room where the floor was covered with knee deep feces. Not only they had to live there, at times they were forced to swim in the feces, for hours at a time in different olympic styles. During family visits, which were extremely short, speaking in Kurdish was forbidden, even though it was the only language many inmates and families knew. A big sign said “Speak Turkish, Talk a lot”.
Instead of having the desired effect, these condition made the Kurdish Nationalism stronger, amongst inmates, families and friends. It can be said that PKK got much stronger as a result of Diyarbakr Penitentiary in the ’80s. After heavy protests of inmates, protest involving lethal hunger strikes, burning of dormitories and self-immolations the conditions got better in the 1990s. In the 1990’s, south east Turkey was in a state of semi civil war. While the Army and PKK had a strong presence in the region, engaged in open warfare, organizations openly or covertly sponsored by the state, such as Hizbullahn (A militant Islamist organization, responsible from many murders. Different than the Lebanese version.) and Jitem (secret intelligence agency of the gendarme forces, that also is responsible from murders) were raging. There was a policy, to designate certain areas High Risk and to evacuate the population due to “terrorist activity”. These evacuations were forceful, and led to the migration of tens of thousands of people from villages to the big cities in the region and elsewhere. According to the many similar stories, with a few hours of notice, villagers were taken out of their homes, often strip naked and beaten, and many times the whole village was burned in front of them. The reasoning was usually “giving support to terrorists (PKK)”. While this might be the case, according to villagers, there was no option but to give support (as in food, clothing and shelter) to PKK members, as they would come to the village at night with guns, asking for support.
There were also instances where a PKK group would come at night asking for food, then the same people would come the next day dressed in Army uniforms evacuating and burning the village for giving support to PKK. In the cities, there were many murders, never solved, of Kurdish politicians, intellectuals, journalists, or anyone of some significance. Now it is clear that many of these murders was done by either organizations covertly sponsored by the state, or by the military and police forces directly. After the 2000s, the situation got much better, at least visibly. The fight between the Army and PKK has moved away from population centers to the mountain regions mostly in the border region with Iraq. There are very few instances of torture by the police and the military, and many of the villagers who had to migrate are allowed to return. In 2009, Priminister Erdoan introduced the “Kurdish opening to democracy”, an abstract idea that aims to solve the “Kurdish problem” with democracy, more of a discussion topic then a plan. However, there is still a division between Kurds and Turks, much more visible in the Kurdish region than big western cities such as stanbul. In the Kurdish region, even in small villages, the usual TV channel that is always on is Roj TV, the semi official channel of PKK. It is banned in Turkey, but broadcasts through satellite from Denmark. In Turkish TV channels, PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah calan is referred to as “The Head Terrorist calan”, while in Roj TV as “Leader of the Kurdish People the Honorable Mr.calan”. Roj TV airs videos of militant kurdish music, many videos featuring PKK fighters in the mountains. In many families, boys of age has a dilemma, they either have to join the Turkish army, which is mandatory, or join the PKK. There are many families where one son in doing his military service while another inn the PKK. Mothers deeply worry about the possibility of the two coming across in combat.
