Diyarbakir, March 2007

One tends to noticed bombs in places he’s been. A few weeks ago there was a bomb in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan which I’d recently visited. Today, although unsurprising, there’s been a bombing in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkish Kurdistan.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – A bomb exploded at a bus station in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir on Friday, injuring four civilians and a soldier, security officials said. The bomb targeted the mainly Kurdish city’s busiest street and a bus station used by army and civilian transportation. Tensions are running especially high amid mounting clashes between Turkish troops and separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas in southeastern Turkey.

The clashes have fuelled talk of a possible major Turkish army incursion into northern Iraq to attack PKK bases there. In recent weeks dozens of soldiers and civilians have been killed in suspected attacks by the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Turkey.

While the PKK has been a longstanding problem for the Turkish state, the liberation of Iraqi Kurdistan has provided a safe haven for the group who has recently been stepping up attacks. Started in 1970s, it began an armed conflict with Turkey in 1984 which has since claimed around 37,000 lives. Globalization and immigration have helped expand the group internationally with operations all over Europe. Yet despite ceasefires in 2004 and 2006, fighting always flares back up.

Pro-PKK protest at Diyarbakir’s university, March 2007

Both the Turkish government and the PKK maintain hardline stances yet the Kurds of southeastern Turkey fall somewhere in between. My visit revealed widespread support of the PKK and overwhelming support for independence. Yet, in the same conversations, many remarked that they would be happy with equal rights and official recognition of being Kurdish (as they are still considered Turks by the government). As development crawls along in the East and tourism starts spreading from Western resorts into the less explored eastern regions, there would seem to be a bit more room for compromise. Yet, Turkey’s paranoid nationalism prevents it from even recognizing ethnic minorities like the Kurds, which are one of several. While a country’s territorial integrity is clearly a top security issue, one of the reasons Turkey downplays the Armenian massacres of the early 1900s, legitimate concerns have become an unhealthy obsession preventing it from pursuing more productive policies.

While in Istanbul last month, I took the time to visit the Turkish Military Museum. Aside from the many treasures it contained, there were two exhibits which went far beyond ridiculous and which anywhere else, I would have written off as the delusions of a third world dictatorship. The first was the “Hall of Armenian Issue with Documents” which was indicative of the myopic view Turkey takes with regard to its minorities. Emphasizing the fact that the Armenians were Ottoman citizens, albeit without equal rights and not of their own free will, it stressed the fact (with capital letters and bold) that the Armenians “betrayed their state,” naturally, the Turks are unable to see that Ottoman turkey wasn’t the Armenians state and in fact, they had aspirations towards their own. The same goes for the Kurds, also deprived of a state. While Balkan states managed to break free a few years earlier than the Armenians attempt for similar reasons, it seems the Armenians weren’t comparable.

Next, I came upon the “Internal Security Operation Section,” an interesting yet vague name. Most striking wasn’t the silly exhibits like “typewriter seized from terrorists” or the assortment of modern weapons behind glass but that the entire exhibit didn’t even mention “PKK” or “Kurds.” Not one single time. Instead, the PKK was continually referred to as “the terrorist organization” or “the separatists” (usually with an extended version such as “the terrorists who want to separate Turkish state and kill women and children”). While any such exhibit would likely be biased, the unwillingness to even refer to their enemy by name was disturbing. Until the Turks can see Kurds as a group with specific political goals and not “separatists” the government and military will remain unable to address the underlying causes of violence. Turkey’s denial is the US equivalent of “they hate our freedom.”

With the entrance of a safe, successful and largely independent Iraqi Kurdistan on the world stage, real competition has emerged for the Turkish state. While previously independence was a unrealistic dream and those wanting a future were forced to integrate and being “Turkicized”, an alternative future has emerged with which the Turks will not be able to compete and will be forced to rely on force and that, ironically, may be what ignites the outcome they so fear.

For more information, read my accounts of traveling Kurdistan this March.

Day 2 in Diyarbakir
Day 3 in Diyarbakir
Day 4 in Diyarbakir

More are available in the travel section of the archives, including my time in Iraqi Kurdistan.

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