Resolving Turkeys Kurdish Issue

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The assembly included people, from different backgrounds and several representatives from other leftist organisations. This was followed by a Turkish government crackdown against the organisation. On 18 March , Haki Karer was assassinated in Antep. During this period, the group was also targeted by the Turkish ultranationalist organization, the Nationalist Movement Party 's Grey Wolves.

During this congress the 25 people present decided to found the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The Turkish state, Turkish rightist groups, and some Kurdish landowners continued their attacks on the group. Here it was decided that the organisation would return to Turkey to start an armed guerilla war there for the creation of an independent Kurdish state.

Meanwhile, they prepared guerilla forces in Syria and Lebanon to go to war. The prison became the site of much political protest. On 13 April , a day hunger-strike started in Istanbul. During these attacks 1 gendarmerie soldier was killed, 7 soldiers, 2 policemen and 3 civilians were injured. It was followed by a PKK raid on a police station in Siirt , two days later.

The president's death on 17 April led to the postponement of that meeting, and the plans were never presented. To counter the growing force of the PKK the Turkish military started new counter-insurgency strategies between and Most of these villages were evacuated, but other villages were burned, bombed, or shelled by government forces, and several entire villages were obliterated from the air. While some villages were destroyed or evacuated, many villages were brought to the side of the Turkish government, which offered salaries to local farmers and shepherds to join the Village Guards , which would prevent the PKK from operating in these villages, while villages which refused were evacuated by the military.

These tactics managed to drive the rebels from the cities and villages into the mountains, although they still often launched reprisals on pro-government villages, which included attacks on civilians. He first went to Russia , then to Italy and Greece. After the unilateral cease-fire the PKK declared in September , their forces fully withdrew from the Republic of Turkey and set up new bases in the Qandil Mountains of Iraq [] and in February they declared the formal end of the war.

After AK Party came to power in , the Turkish state started to ease restrictions on the Kurdish language and culture. From to there was a power struggle inside the KONGRA-GEL between a reformist wing which wanted the organisation to disarm completely and a traditionalist wing which wanted the organisation to resume its armed insurgency once again.

Through the cease-fire years , , and , some people were killed according to the Turkish government. On 1 June , the PKK resumed its armed activities because they claimed Turkish government was ignoring their calls for negotiations and was still attacking their forces. As result, the PKK reduced the size of its field units from 15—20 militants to 6—8 militants. It also avoided direct confrontations and relied more on the use of mines, snipers and small ambushes, using hit and run tactics.

On 25 August two coordinated low-level blasts targeted a bank in Adana , on 27 August a school in Istanbul was targeted by a bombing, on 28 August there were three coordinated attacks in Marmaris and one in Antalya targeting the tourist industry [66] and on 30 August there was a TAK bombing in Mersin. Minor clashes, however, continued in the South East due to Turkish counter-insurgency operations.

In total, the conflict claimed over lives in In May , there was a bombing in Ankara that killed 6 [] [] [] [] and injured people. The outpost was overrun and the PKK killed 12, wounded 17 and captured 8 Turkish soldiers. They then withdrew into Iraqi Kurdistan, taking the 8 captive soldiers with them. The Turkish military claimed to have killed 32 PKK fighters in hot pursuit operations, after the attack, however this was denied by the PKK and no corpses of PKK militants were produced by the Turkish military.

This major cross-border offensive, dubbed Operation Sun , started on 21 February [] and was preceded by an aerial offensive against PKK camps in northern Iraq, which began on 16 December The PKK however denied any involvement. On 1 May the PKK declared an end to its cease-fire, [] launching an attack in Tunceli that killed four and injured seven soldiers.

Another major attack in Hakkari occurred on 20 July , killing six and wounding seventeen Turkish soldiers, with one PKK fighter being killed. In November the cease-fire was extended until the Turkish general election on 12 June , despite alleging that Turkey had launched over 80 military operations against them during this period.

The cease-fire was however revoked early, on 28 February This then resulted in major Kurdish protests across Turkey as part of a civil disobedience campaign launched by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party BDP , [] during these protests 2 people were killed, injured and 2, arrested by Turkish authorities.

However the Turkish army avoided the trap by destroying the heavy weapons from the air and using long range artillery to root out the PKK. The Turkish military declared operation was ended successfully on 11 August, claiming to have killed guerrillas and lost only six soldiers and two village guards. While negotiations were going on, there were numerous events that were regarded as sabotage to derail the talks: The letter called a cease-fire that included disarmament and withdrawal from Turkish soil and calling an end to armed struggle.

PKK announced that they would obey, stating that the year of is the year of solution either through war or through peace. Second phase which includes constitutional and legal changes towards the recognition of human rights of the Kurds starts simultaneously with withdrawal. On 6 and 7 October , riots erupted in various cities in Turkey for protesting the Siege of Kobane. Protesters were met with tear gas and water cannons.

Violence soon spread throughout Turkey. Many Kurdish businesses were destroyed by mobs. The spring of saw the seasonal uptick in combat activity. The Serhildan, or people's uprising, [] started on 14 March , Nusaybin during the funeral of [] year-old PKK fighter Kamuran Dundar , who along with 13 other fighters was killed by the Turkish military after crossing into Turkey via Syria several days earlier.

Dundar came from a Kurdish nationalist family which claimed his body and held a funeral for him in Nusaybin in which he was brought to the city's main mosque and people which held a march. On the way back the march turned violent and protesters clashed with the police, during which both sides fired upon each other and many people were injured. A curfew was then placed in Nusaybin, tanks and special forces were brought in and [] some people were arrested.

Protests are often held on 21 March, or Nowruz. Over people were injured [] and another were arrested. However, he conceded that "the security forces did not establish their targets properly and caused great damage to civilian houses. The Democracy Party, was however banned on 16 June for promoting Kurdish nationalism [] and four of the party's members: Zana was the first Kurdish woman to be elected into parliament,. In the party became a member of Socialist International. After surviving a closure case in , HADEP was finally banned on 13 March on the grounds that it had become a "centre of illegal activities which included aiding and abetting the PKK.

Independents won 1,, votes or 5. The BDP called on its supporters to boycott the Turkish constitutional referendum on 12 September because the constitutional change did not meet minority demands. Nor will we vote in favour of the amendments and support a new fascist constitution. Tunceli, however was the only Kurdish majority province where a majority of the population voted "no" during the referendum.

According to figures released by the Anadolu Agency , citing a Turkish security source, from to August , there were 36, deaths in the conflict.

Solution to Kurdish problem (2): Revitalizing peaceful coexistence

This included 6, civilians, 7, security forces 5, soldiers, 1, village guards and policemen and 22, PKK fighters by August Contrary to the newest estimate, earlier figures by the Turkish military put the number of PKK casualties much higher, with 26, PKK dead by June , [58] and 29, by March Between the start of the second insurgency in , and March , 2, PKK militants were claimed killed.

Both the PKK and Turkish military have accused each other of civilian deaths. Since the s, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Turkey for the thousands of human rights abuses against Kurdish people. According to human rights organisations since the beginning of the uprising 4, villages have been destroyed, [] in which between , and 1,, Kurdish villagers have been forcibly evacuated from their homes, mainly by the Turkish military.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program recorded 25,—30, casualties to date, 22,—25, of which having died during the first insurgency, — during the cease-fire and 2,—4, during the second insurgency. Casualties from to , according to the UCDP are as following: The conflict's casualties between and March according to the General Staff of the Republic of Turkey, Turkish Gendarmerie, General Directorate of Security and since then until June according to Milliyet's analysis of the data of the General Staff of the Republic of Turkey and Turkish Gendarmerie were as following: The protesters denouncing Ankara position during Islamic State's siege of Kobani.

This is the main incident out of the ceasefire period. As of July Turkey has lead strikes and several ground operations in Syria and Iraq, in order to attack PKK-related groups.

Accordingly, only a minor part of these operations casualties were from Turkey forces vs YPG forces. The Turkification of predominantly Kurdish areas in country's East and South-East were also bound in the early ideas and policies of the modern Turkish nationalism, going back to as early as the manifesto of Turkish nationalist Ziya Gokalp "Turkification, Islamization and Modernization".

Nobody else has such a right".

It created a complex pattern of interaction between state of society, in which the regime favored its people in a distant geography, populated by locals marked as hostile in this regard, according to Prof. Caroline Elkins, the policy of governing a distant land to send settlers in order to reshape demographics there to resemble homeland is named 'settler colonialism'. Joost Jongerden, Turkish settlement and re-settlement policies during the s period were influenced by two different forces — the desire to expand administration to rural areas and an alternative view of urbanization, allegedly producing "Turkishness".

Both Turkey and the PKK have committed numerous human rights abuses during the conflict. Former French ambassador to Turkey Eric Rouleau states: According to the Ministry of Justice , in addition to the 35, people killed in military campaigns, 17, were assassinated between , when the conflict began, and An additional 1, people were reportedly assassinated in the first nine months of According to the Turkish press, the authors of these crimes, none of whom have been arrested, belong to groups of mercenaries working either directly or indirectly for the security agencies.

The Turkish government is held responsible by Turkish human rights organizations for 3, civilian deaths in the conflict between and In , Mehmet Ogut, his pregnant wife and 7 children were burned to death by Turkish special forces soldiers.

The Turkish authorities blamed the PKK and refused to investigate it. After 20 years, the investigations were started and they eventually came to an end in late with sentences of life imprisonment for three gendarme officers, a member of the special forces and nine soldiers. On 26 March the Turkish military planes F's and a helicopter circled two villages and bombed them, killing 38 Kurdish civilians. The European Court of Human rights condemned Turkey to pay 2,3 million euros to the families of victims.

In , Human Rights Watch reported that it was common practice for Turkish soldiers to kill Kurdish civilians and take pictures of their corpses with the weapons, they carried only for staging the events. Killed civilians were shown to press as PKK "terrorists". In , The European newspaper published in its front page pictures of Turkish soldiers who posed for camera with the decapitated heads of the Kurdish PKK fighters. Kurdish fighters were beheaded by Turkish special forces soldiers.

In , Amnesty International AI reported that, "'Disappearances' and extrajudicial executions have emerged as new and disturbing patterns of human rights violations" by the Turkish state. In it was stated by the former ambassador Rouleau that the continuing human rights abuses of ethnic Kurds is one of the main obstacles to Turkish membership of the E. In August , Amnesty International reported that the Turkish government airstrikes killed eight residents and injured at least eight others — including a child — in a flagrantly unlawful attack on the village of Zergele, in the Kandil Mountains in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Hans Baumann, a German expert on photo forgeries investigated the authenticity of the photos and claimed that the photos were authentic. A forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the allegations. He said that he did not need to emphasize that the accusations were groundless.

He added that Turkey signed to the Chemical Weapons Convention in , and Turkey did not possess chemical weapons. In response to the activities of the PKK, the Turkish government placed Southeastern Anatolia, where citizens of Kurdish descent are in the majority, under military rule. The Turkish Army and the Kurdish village guards loyal to it have abused Kurdish civilians, resulting in mass migrations to cities.

The PKK was responsible for a number of civilian deaths, even though this number is lower than those perpetrated by the government. The number of total civilian deaths perpetrated by the PKK between and was determined as 1, by the independent Uppsala One-Sided Violence Dataset. In the early s, the PKK executed bakers that delivered bread to army bases, burnt down and killed the owners of fuel stations that served the authorities in the areas they were active in. They forbid the distribution of Turkish newspapers and the watching of Turkish television channels, forcing the inhabitants to remove their antennae.

The inhabitants were banned from joining any Turkish political party and were forced to get the approval of the PKK if they were to run for local offices. The PKK attacked schools as they were seen as "emblems of Turkish imperialism" that belonged to the "colonial assimilation system"; 47 teachers were killed in alone.

A justification for the killing of teachers was that they taught Turkish to Kurdish children. Dozens of Kurdish civilians have been abducted and killed because they were suspected of being collaborators or informers. Seven of the victims were members of the local village guard forces". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Kurdish—Turkish conflict disambiguation.

Kurdish rebellions in Turkey. Timeline of the Turkey—PKK conflict. Kurdish villages depopulated by Turkey. Human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey and Kurdish villages depopulated by Turkey. Archived from the original on 20 December Tribe of 65, pledge to stand up against PKK".

Retrieved 7 December Retrieved 17 April Archived from the original on 2 April Retrieved 13 April Turkish Accession to the EU: Satisfying the Copenhagen Criteria. The Turkish establishment considered the Kurds' demand for the recognition of their identity a threat to the territorial integrity of the state, the more so because the PKK was supported by countries hostile to Turkey: Syria hosted the organization and its leader for twenty years, and it provided training facilities in the Beka'a Valley of Syrian-controlled northern Lebanon.

Greeks supplied Kurdish rebels". Retrieved 21 July Understanding Turkey's Kurdish Question. Russia provided money for PKK". Retrieved 17 October Archived from the original on 22 September Retrieved 23 July The Middle East Military Balance, From Bullets to Ballots: Violent Muslim Movements in Transition. Council on Foreign Relations. Cairo allegedly gave the PKK delegation funds and weapons after the second meeting, the report adds.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The named reference arabforce was invoked but never defined see the help page. PKK leader calls halt to armed struggle". Retrieved 21 March Archived from the original on 16 June Retrieved 15 April Archived from the original on 5 November Retrieved 15 January Archived from the original PDF on 27 March Retrieved 29 August Federation of American Scientists. Retrieved 17 April — via www. Retrieved 10 November Retrieved 25 December Everyday occupations experiencing militarism in South Asia and the Middle East 1st ed.

University of Pennsylvania Press. The Kurdish nationalist movement: Archived from the original on 2 January Retrieved 27 December Characteristics of Turkish Hezbollah: Implications for Policy and Programs. Archived from the original on 14 January Archived from the original on 14 September We will not withdraw our autonomy demand". Archived from the original on 31 January Retrieved 2 July During and After the Cold War. It is estimated that the number of marriages between Turks and Kurds is above 1 million. These marriages mixed the Kurds and Turks and complicated the social relations between these groups.

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Economic integration is at an advanced level. Kurds have secured substantial economic resources in almost every part of Turkey and made huge amounts of investments. In economic terms, there are countless partnerships between Turks and Kurds. Their interests are interrelated. On the other hand, while there are problems with regard to political and cultural rights, the Kurds enjoy equal status as citizens.

A substantial number of Syria's Kurds, however, are not even citizens yet. As such, even determining the boundaries of an ethnic federation would pose a great challenge. For all these reasons, nobody would consider a population exchange, by which Kurds and Turks alike would be displaced. Those who promote the idea of a federation in Turkey assert that such problems could be resolved by recognizing the democratic rights of the ethnic groups other than the Kurds in the Kurdish areas within the borders of the federation and of the Kurds in western Turkey. This method, which could work out partially in Iraq, Syria and Iran, would cause serious problems in Turkey and probably wouldn't even resolve the matter.

Instead of resorting to this option, which would inevitably lead the country into serious clashes, controversies and turmoil, it is obvious that it will be wiser to seek the solution in the democratization of the entire country. Democratizing all of Turkey is a shortcut. Everybody should be able to receive the lessons they want. The most realistic path to resolving the Kurdish problem in Turkey is to revitalize the project of coexistence. Other approaches will make the issue more complicated, rather than resolving it, and cause greater pains. The successful experience of coexistence over the last 1, years -- with the exception of the Republican era -- is our historical reference.

Islam is an important common denominator.

If there is no serious hatred between these two peoples despite the fact that 40, have died as a result of the conflict in the last three decades, the most important factor behind this is the religious unity between Turks and Kurds. But it should also be noted that continuation of the policies of denial, repression and assimilation followed since -- in short, the current status quo -- is not possible. The will and eagerness for coexistence should be renewed and confirmed with a new social contract. For a resolution based on coexistence, the following economic, political and social measures should be taken:.

A new civilian and democratic constitution should be made. In this constitution, the borders and flag of Turkey should be preserved and the official language should be Turkish. The expression, "Everybody is Turkish," in the current Constitution should be changed and the definition of citizenship should be revised.

Either everyone in the Republic of Turkey should be considered a citizen or Turkishness should be redefined. The rights of all differences, such as like religion, sect, ethnicity and language, to exist and be sustained should be taken under constitutional protection.

Education in Kurdish should be made possible. To this end, the provision in the current draft constitution that reads "Education in languages other than Turkish is regulated by law" is positive. As a start, optional Kurdish language courses should be offered.

The ultimate goal should be to ensure that everyone has the opportunity of receiving education in their native languages. Also, Kurdology institutes and philology departments should be opened at universities.

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