Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Ankara's EU chances slipping

By Gareth Jenkins

Turkish courts last week stepped up their campaign against the expression of a Kurdish identity. Ahmet Turan Demir, leader of the main Kurdish party, the People's Democracy Party (HADEP), was sentenced to 10 months in jail for allegedly inciting separatism by referring to some of the inhabitants of Turkey as Kurds. The move came days after the public prosecutor filed charges against Hasan Kaya, the head of the Kurdish Institute in Istanbul, for allegedly organising secret Kurdish language lessons. If convicted Kaya could get a two-year sentence.

The continued restrictions on the right of Turkey's 12 million Kurds to express their identity came just a week after the European Union issued its latest progress report on Ankara's candidacy for membership. The report explicitly stated that Turkey could not become a member of the EU unless it allowed both expressions of a Kurdish identity and broadcasting and education in Kurdish. In the wake of the report, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit promised to ease the restrictions on broadcasting in Kurdish. But Turkish government officials made similar promises in December 1999 when the EU first named Turkey as an official candidate for membership. In the intervening 11 months, nothing has been done.

Despite Ecevit's promises, his coalition partners from the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) have already made it clear they will oppose any lifting of restrictions on the expression of a Kurdish identity.

"It is impossible for Turkey to look favourably upon cultural and ethnic rights which will only serve to fan the flames of ethnic conflict and discrimination," said MHP chairman and Deputy Prime Minister Devlet Bahceli.

MHP State Minister Abdulhaluk Cay went even further. "To demand things such as Kurdish television in Turkey is nothing short of treason," Cay said.

Turkey's failure to fulfil its promises to the EU has again demonstrated a tendency in Ankara to expect the union to change its rules to suit Turkey rather than abide by the same conditions as everyone else. On Saturday, Ecevit warned that Ankara would reconsider its relations with the EU unless Brussels withdrew a requirement that Turkey settle the Cypriot problem and solve its disputes with Greece before it could become a member. This, even though Turkey undertook to do both under the terms according to which it was accepted as an official candidate for membership in December 1999.

Privately, many Turks acknowledge that Turkey has few options. "If we don't look to Europe, where can we look?" asked a Foreign Ministry official.

Last Thursday Turkish diplomats announced that Ankara had allowed 50 Palestinians injured in clashes with the Israeli military into the country for treatment "as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians." While it will undoubtedly anger Tel Aviv, the gesture by itself is unlikely to assuage Arab distrust of Turkey, given Ankara's recent history of cultivating close economic and military ties with Israel. A reported Turkish proposal to settle the dispute between Israel and Palestinians on sovereignty over Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem was also likely to anger Arab countries. Turkey's Foreign Ministry, in contact with both Israeli and Palestinian officials, proposed that Palestinians should be given "administrative control" over Al-Haram Al-Sharif, while admitting Israel's sovereignty over the area. Arab countries insist that Israel must withdraw fully from all territories it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem and the Old City.

There is little doubt that, even if Ankara freezes its relations with the EU, in the long-term its attempts to suppress expressions of Kurdish identity will be counter-productive. In recent years satellite dishes on the roofs of houses have become a common sight throughout the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey as local Kurds tune in to Kurdish language broadcasts from Europe and northern Iraq, including television stations supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

HADEP members claim that forbidding broadcasting in Kurdish increases, not reduces, separatist sentiments.

"Practising democracy, making it more effective and providing different ethnic groups with the means to express themselves all lead to stronger unification, bonding and the ability to live together," said Demir, the Kurdish party leader. "Nobody really wants to form a separate state. The Turkish establishment needs to rid itself of this paranoia."

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