The Kurdish Question in Turkey

Abstract

One of the greatest obstacles to the consolidation of democracy in Turkey has been the country’s treatment of its Kurdish citizens. Although Kurdish is the mother tongue of as many as one in five inhabitants of Turkey, the government prohibits the teaching of Kurdish in schools and the broadcasting of Kurdish radio and television programs. These restrictions attest to a continuing refusal on the part of the Turkish state to recognize the cultural identity of its Kurdish citizens, a policy that has generated widespread discontent among the country’s Kurds. Although about half the Kurdish population of Turkey now lives in other parts of the country, the rest are still concentrated in their ancestral region in the southeast, where they predominate. This region has had a long history of Kurdish insurrections, but none so deadly as the struggle waged during the past two decades by the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK), led by Abdullah O≠alan. Though precise figures are difficult to come by, there is little doubt that more than 30,000 people have lost their lives in clashes between government security forces and PKK militants. Turkey’s inability to come to grips with its Kurdish citizens’ demand for cultural recognition not only prevents a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish problem but also impedes the country’s acceptance by, integration into, and identification with Europe and the West. The European Union (EU), which Turkey would like very much to join, has consistently maintained that improvements in Turkey’s human rights Dogu Ergil is professor of political sociology at Ankara University in Turkey and president and director of the Center for the Research of Societal Problems (TOSAV), an Ankara-based nongovernmental organization created to address the tensions between Turks and Kurds. The author of numerous books on Turkish-Kurdish relations and reconciliation, including Turkey’s Encounter with Herself (1997) and The Eastern (Kurdish) Question (1995), he was a visiting fellow at the International Forum for Democratic Studies in 1999–2000.