After many years of repression, lots of Turkey’s Kurds are hopeful that their lengthy battle for primary rights could lastly be nearing a breakthrough. That hope is fueled by newly launched talks between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist coalition and the imprisoned chief of the Kurdish Staff Social gathering (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan. The talks have already produced the historic declaration by the PKK to disband and surrender armed battle. Professional-Kurdish politicians have praised Erdogan’s efforts to pursue a peaceable resolution.
However each precedents in different international locations and Erdogan’s personal document recommend a special end result. We all know from case after case that autocrats—whether or not they’re precise dictators or strongmen on the head of flawed democracies—not often resolve ethnic conflicts. They typically freeze or suppress them, sidestep root causes, and instrumentalize the unresolved battle as an excuse to tighten their grip on energy. The result’s not often peace—simply postponed instability.
For a cautionary story of how such leaders handle ethnic battle, take Sri Lanka’s army defeat of the separatist Tamil Tigers (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE). Because the Nineteen Eighties, the LTTE had fought for a Tamil homeland in response to deep-rooted discrimination by the nation’s Sinhalese majority, and significantly the suppression of language and faith. The brutal battle claimed greater than 80,000 lives. In Might 2009, the federal government declared victory, and the LTTE introduced that it was laying down arms.
Although the weapons fell silent, repression persevered. The postwar interval noticed continued threats and abuses towards then-Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s critics—each Tamil and Sinhalese. Rajapaksa used the victory to consolidate energy, elevate his Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist picture, and erode democracy. He received early reelection in 2010, scrapped presidential time period limits, and crammed key ministries with relations.
Emergency wartime powers had been repackaged into everlasting instruments of authoritarian management. Media, civil society, and the opposition got here underneath assault, and the rule of legislation weakened. Whereas some Tamil grievances had been superficially addressed, discrimination endured. Regardless of Tamil being an official language, state communication typically remained solely in Sinhala. The federal government didn’t launch any credible investigations into warfare crimes, disappearances, or main human rights abuses. As a substitute of making impartial oversight our bodies, it dismantled judicial autonomy—most notably by impeaching the chief justice.
No significant steps have been taken towards a long-lasting political resolution to the ethnic battle, equivalent to devolving energy. In the meantime, the army continued to grab land with out due course of or avenues for attraction. Within the Tamil-majority north, safety forces routinely cracked down on peaceable protests, detained college students on flimsy expenses of LTTE ties, and harassed Tamil politicians with impunity. As one among Rajapaksa’s brothers put it: With the LTTE’s defeat, “an period of ruler-king” had begun. Greater than 16 years on, the Tamil survivors of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil warfare nonetheless reside in concern and disempowerment.
An identical destiny could await Turkey’s Kurds as they enter what they name a “peace course of” with the nation’s strongman. The framing alone alerts hassle: Erdogan portrays the talks with Ocalan as a counterterrorism measure, whereas pro-Kurdish leaders see them as a path to fulfill democratic calls for. The disconnect mirrors Sri Lanka, the place Rajapaksa used the so-called peace to consolidate energy, not share it. Erdogan is utilizing talks with Ocalan to not resolve the Kurdish concern, however to tighten his grip on energy.
The Ocalan talks have already served one among Erdogan’s key aims: dividing the opposition. Many former supporters of dialogue with the Kurds now see the talks as Erdogan’s closing transfer earlier than locking in full-blown autocracy. They accuse the pro-Kurdish occasion of enjoying into his fingers, eroding assist for Kurdish democratic calls for even amongst liberals.
Certainly, all through his rule, Erdogan has repeatedly exploited the Kurdish query to centralize authority. In a landmark speech given in 2005 in Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest Kurdish-majority metropolis, Erdogan acknowledged that Turkey had mishandled its Kurdish inhabitants. He declared that nice nations should confront their previous and that the reply to Kurdish grievances was extra democracy, no more repression. On the time, Erdogan was courting liberal and Kurdish assist to sideline his important rivals, the secularist army elite.
In 2009, Erdogan launched the primary “Kurdish opening” amid secret peace talks between Turkey’s intelligence company and the PKK in Oslo. The initiative was launched simply as Erdogan was looking for the backing of Kurdish voters for a constitutional referendum geared toward weakening the army and judiciary, two bastions of the previous elite’s resistance to Erdogan’s rule.
Framed as a democratic reform initiative, the Kurdish opening’s acknowledged objective was to ease cultural restrictions and acknowledge Kurdish identification. In response, the PKK declared a cease-fire, and a small group of its members crossed from northern Iraq, house to the PKK’s headquarters, into Turkey as a goodwill gesture. Their celebratory welcome by many Turkish Kurds sparked nationalist outrage, and opposition events accused Erdogan of legitimizing terrorism.
Dealing with backlash, Erdogan halted the opening, and the Turkish Constitutional Court docket quickly banned the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Social gathering. Erdogan had reached his objective: The Kurdish concern helped him go constitutional reforms that reshaped the judiciary in his favor and pushed the army additional out of politics.
By 2012, Erdogan had neutralized his secularist opponents and returned to the desk, this time with larger ambitions—reworking Turkey right into a presidential system with none significant checks and balances. As soon as once more, this required Kurdish voters. And so a second Kurdish opening—one other peace course of and guarantees of restricted cultural rights—grew to become a car for his plan to centralize energy.
“Are we able to construct a brand new Turkey, undertake a brand new structure, shift to a presidential system, and resolve the Kurdish concern? Give us 400 seats and we’ll resolve it peacefully,” Erdogan advised a crowd after launching the peace talks. What he needed was clear: a parliamentary supermajority to rewrite the structure and set up a strong presidency—with the Kurdish vote because the essential lever.
Talks resumed with Ocalan in jail, and the PKK once more declared a cease-fire. In 2013, a letter from Ocalan was learn to an enormous crowd in Diyarbakir, calling for peace, a withdrawal of PKK fighters from Turkish soil, and disarmament. The federal government responded with a reform invoice and dispatched commissions to advertise the peace course of nationwide. Symbolic steps adopted: Kurdish-language broadcasting expanded, Kurdish grew to become an elective in faculties, and a few Turkified place names had been restored to the unique Kurdish. The controversial pledge recited by college students in the beginning of every college day, “How joyful is the one who says I’m a Turk,” was abolished.
By spring 2015, nevertheless, it was clear that Kurdish politicians and voters wouldn’t assist Erdogan’s push for one-man rule. They’d grown too assured to just accept the president’s restricted provides. Erdogan’s refusal to open the border to Syria when the Islamic State threatened a bloodbath within the Syrian Kurdish stronghold of Kobani—close by of the border—solely deepened Kurdish mistrust, making it even tougher for him to win their backing for his presidential ambitions.
On March 17, 2015, Selahattin Demirtas—the chief of the Peoples’ Democratic Social gathering (HDP), a pro-Kurdish political occasion—delivered a defining blow, declaring: “So long as the HDP exists, we is not going to allow you to turn into president.” Simply hours later, Erdogan dismissed reconciliation efforts fully, claiming, “There isn’t a Kurdish downside.”
Within the June 2015 basic elections, the HDP received 13 % of the vote and entered parliament in power. It blocked Erdogan’s path to a presidential system and helped strip his Justice and Improvement Social gathering of its majority for the primary time in 13 years.
The coalition that Erdogan had hoped would usher in his government presidency had collapsed. Erdogan shut down the second Kurdish peace course of and struck an alliance with the ultranationalist Nationalist Motion Social gathering—a celebration fiercely against Kurdish rights. What adopted was an unprecedented crackdown not simply on the PKK, but in addition on reliable Kurdish political actors and civil society. Parliament swiftly lifted HDP lawmakers’ immunity, triggering a wave of prosecutions. Demirtas and different HDP leaders had been hit with tons of of court docket expenses over alleged PKK ties. Inside two years of defying Erdogan, Demirtas was in jail, and earlier reforms that had granted Kurds restricted cultural rights had been rolled again.
Erdogan’s anti-Kurdish alliance delivered precisely what he needed. With the Nationalist Motion Social gathering’s assist, Erdogan regained his parliamentary majority and pushed ahead his long-sought presidential system. In 2017, Erdogan claimed a slim win in a controversial referendum—tainted by fraud allegations—that vastly expanded his powers and tightened his grip on the state.
For years, Erdogan has exploited the Kurdish concern as a political instrument—typically dangling the promise of peace, at different occasions waging warfare. Resolving the battle was by no means the objective; consolidating energy was. The core of the Kurdish query—Turkey’s democratic deficit—has been persistently ignored.
Right now, Erdogan stands at one other crossroads. Years of battle helped him construct an autocratic regime, however the present structure bars him from working once more in 2028. His resolution? A brand new structure that might take away time period limits. And to make it occur, he wants the pro-Kurdish votes in parliament. That’s the actual motive behind renewed talks with Ocalan.
Erdogan’s clear monitor document ought to go away no room for illusions. But HDP politicians appear hopeful that this spherical of dialogue will lastly yield democratic progress. They view the ruling bloc’s push for a brand new structure and renewed talks with Ocalan as an opportunity to lastly press for core Kurdish calls for—equivalent to Kurdish-language schooling and a extra inclusive civic—somewhat than ethnic—definition of Turkish citizenship.
That hope is dangerously misplaced. Erdogan isn’t looking for peace—he’s looking for permanence. His jailing of the Republican Folks’s Social gathering presidential candidate and strongest opposition contender, Ekrem Imamoglu, makes clear the place he’s headed: a Russian-style autocracy the place elections are hole rituals, a tame opposition is handpicked, and critical rivals are imprisoned. Even when Erdogan agrees to incorporate some Kurdish calls for in a brand new structure, there’s no cause for anybody to consider that he’ll honor them as soon as he will get what he needs.
World examples—equivalent to former Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa’s defeat of the LTTE—show that authoritarian leaders not often resolve the foundation causes of ethnic battle. Extra telling is Erdogan’s personal document: For years, he’s dominated by decree, routinely ignoring the structure. Why ought to we anticipate him to behave otherwise now? If Erdogan pulls off his plan with Kurdish assist, then the long-term price for Kurds might be steep: deeper isolation and a renewed backlash towards their reliable calls for, even after Erdogan ultimately exits the stage.
Kurds and Turks face a defining second. Erdogan’s final objective is to strip away even probably the most basic democratic proper to decide on by whom we’re dominated. Kurds have lengthy fought for a democratic Turkey. To remain true to that battle, they have to see Erdogan’s renewed overture to Ocalan for what it truly is—a calculated energy seize.
