Kurds pin hopes on election bloc victory

By Laura King
Times Staff Writer

5:29 PM PDT, August 3, 2007

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- Mehmet Adiyaman's eyes filled with tears of joy as he watched newly elected Kurdish lawmakers clasp hands with villagers who had come from miles around to offer their congratulations.

For more than a decade, Kurds, who make up roughly one-fifth of Turkey's population, have had no bloc of representatives in the nation's legislature. But when the new parliament convenes Saturday, 23 members of the Kurdish-rights Democratic Society Party are scheduled to take their seats.

That prospect has caused rejoicing here, along with hopes for reduced tensions, both within Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast and across the border with Iraq, where Kurds control a quasi-independent region.

"I feel that my happiness has given me wings," said Adiyaman, who lost several family members to Turkey's bloody 23-year conflict with Kurdish rebels. Virtually every family in his village, he said, had suffered the loss of land, or loved ones, or both.

For years, Turkey's Kurdish region has been the scene of violent clashes between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military. Thousands have died on both sides. This year, alone, the military has lost more than 225 troops to skirmishes with Kurdish guerrillas based in the mountains of Southern Turkey and Northern Iraq. In recent months, senior Turkish army generals have been pushing hard for a major incursion into Northern Iraq to chase them down.

Kurdish hopes were buoyed not just by the success of their elected representatives, but by the overall results of the July 22 balloting, which was widely viewed as a rebuke to the military establishment.

Many Kurds believe Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is now in a better position to keep the powerful army in check. Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials, AKP, was the big winner in the vote. The party, an offshoot of the nation's Islamist movements, has tense relations with the military leadership, which is secular.

Kurds believe Erdogan views their cause with sympathy. Nearly two years ago, the prime minister traveled to Diyarbakir and delivered a groundbreaking speech saying Turkey needed to "face up to its past" regarding the Kurds.

"More democracy, not more repression, is the answer to the Kurds' long-running grievances," he said in the first such declaration ever by a Turkish leader.

Firat Anli, mayor of a district of Diyarbakir, the principal city in the southeast, said he thought the election results would strengthen Erdogan's hand.

"A big cross-border action seems less likely now -- the military was putting so much pressure on the government, but then the government got the people's vote of confidence," he said.

The United States, too, has been pressing Turkey to refrain from a major incursion. But Turkish public sentiment is inflamed by each new casualty report -- three more soldiers died this week -- and funerals occasionally turn into anti-U.S. rallies.

For the moment, the military tensions appear to have eased. Driving east out of Diyarbakir, in the direction of the Iraqi border, motorists encounter almost no checkpoints over the course of several hours -- a barometer of the threat level perceived by the army.

Local officials also disputed reports of a major buildup in recent weeks. Turkey keeps about 50,000 soldiers in the border region, but officials here say the comings and goings at area military bases, including tank convoys and air traffic, have appeared routine.

For Kurds, the military situation is not the only concern. Many are hoping that the election results will heighten external pressure on Turkey to ease repressive measures against them, including restrictions against use of the Kurdish language in public forums and in broadcasting.

Erdogan's party has been the prime mover behind Turkey's efforts to join the European Union, and the Europeans have made clear that the bid cannot move forward without the Kurds being granted greater cultural and political rights. Turkey's checkered human-rights record, another red flag for the Europeans, is deeply entwined with the Kurdish conflict.

But the newly altered political landscape holds peril as well as promise for the Kurds. Also to be represented in the parliament after a one-term absence is the far-right National Action Party, which won almost 15 percent of the vote.

The Kurdish cause is anathema to the nationalists, who believe the Kurds' insistence on a separate cultural identity threatens the foundations of the Turkish republic.

Some fear that when the new parliament holds its inaugural session, there could be a replay of the disastrous swearing-in of 1991. As that session opened, a Kurdish parliamentarian, Leyla Zana, caused an uproar by speaking Kurdish in the chambers -- forbidden under Turkish law -- and by wearing a hair ornament with the Kurdish colors of red, green and yellow. She and several other Kurdish lawmakers were accused of aiding the guerrillas of the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, lost their parliamentary immunity and served long jail terms. By 1994, their party had been outlawed and the Kurdish parliamentary foothold had been lost.

This time, the incoming Kurdish parliamentarians have signaled they will take a more conciliatory stance, and some have said they welcome the presence of nationalists alongside them.

"We believe it is possible for different political views to co-exist," said Gultan Kisanak, a former journalist who will take her seat with the Kurdish contingent. "It's part of democracy."

But nationalists are likely to be inflamed by the mere presence of Kurdish lawmakers like Aysel Tugluk. She was a member of the defense team of Abdullah Ocalan, who is considered the architect of the Kurdish armed struggle and blamed by Turkey for tens of thousands of deaths. Captured in 1999, Ocalan was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to a life term.

Another incoming Kurdish lawmaker has charges of aiding the PKK pending against her, but was freed from prison in order to take her seat.

Among the Kurds, many leading figures believe that unless Turkey makes a fundamental decision to accept pluralism in its society, the conflict will rage on.

Abdullah Demirbas, a district mayor in Diyarbakir, recently was fired from his position by Turkish authorities for printing Kurdish-language brochures and organizing Kurdish-language public forums on such topics as domestic abuse. His entire local council was dismissed as well when they protested his firing.

"There is a notion that any kind of different culture is a threat to the state," said Demirbas. "They are ruling by fear, and it can't work -- in the long run people will insist on their own identity."