The Kurds in Turkey: EU accession and human rights

Abstract

TURKEY Kurds in Turkey: Accession and Human Rights, by Kerim Yildiz. Foreword by Noam Chomsky. London, UK and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2005. xxvii + 149 pages. Notes to 175. Index to 182. $55. Turkish membership in the European Union (EU) holds the potential to democratize Turkey dramatically, along the lines of the Copenhagen Criteria (stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities) and thus help solve longstanding Kurdish problem. Turkish accession would also put the lie to the clash-of-civilizations thesis of inevitable Armageddon between the Christian West and Islamic East, or, as this study puts it, would potentially create 'bridge' between Europe and the wider Muslim World (p. 26). In December 2004, the finally granted Turkey the date of October 3, 2005 for the beginning of candidacy talks. No that has achieved this status has ever failed to eventually become an member. Kerim Yildiz has written an exceptionally useful analysis of the pitfalls along the way for Turkey to achieve these goals. (Noam Chomsky has added rather extraneous foreword critical of US and Turkish policies.) Yildiz's main thesis is that although EU accession offers the Kurds crucial and unprecedented opportunity finally to shake off Turkish oppression, end the cycle of violence and vilification to which they have been subject for so many years, and live freely as Kurds within the of their home ...Turkey's extreme reticence in countenancing greater minority rights protection or constitutional reform ... constitute[s] major obstacles to fulfilment of standards (p. 133). Piecemeal attempts to solve the Kurdish problem through discrete human rights initiatives, fail to get at the root of the problem: Turkey's [continuing] adherence to ethnic nationalism and her consequent attitude to the Kurds which defines them as 'yet-to-be-assimilated'Turks (p. 113). Therefore, a pluralist democracy in which the rights of the Kurds are recognized and enshrined cannot be constituted in Turkey without reform to the official ethnic nationalist ideology of the state (p. 145). Unfortunately, the has effectively sidelined this ultimate and undermined ... the grave need for constructive political dialogue between the parties (p. 144). In the rush to facilitate Turkish membership, the is running the risk of fudging ... the Kurdish issue (p. 148). The Kurdish will not go away unless it is addressed fully, openly, and at its ideological roots; and unless this is achieved, the will find that it is bringing volatile, unresolved conflict within its borders (p. …