Note: This piece was written in July of 2015, after I had the chance to participate as an international observer in the general election in Turkey. I wrote the piece as part of a report on the delegation, and delivered a version of it in the British Parliament in Westminster. I originally intended to have it published with a magazine Red Pepper, but I guess it was too hot for red pepper!
Much has changed for the worse in Turkey since the moment of hope captured in the report. Most significantly, the NATO forces seem to have given the green light to the Erdogan government and the Turkish state to crack down rather indiscriminately against the Kurds, in exchange for access to a Turkish military base. For his part, President Erdogan has taken advantage, hoping to ride the tiger of Turkish nationalism to a better result in the upcoming snap election, likely to take place later this Fall. The cease-fire with the PKK is broken, and hostilities and violent repression have been the order of the day. The Kurdish region teeters on the brink of Civil War. Yet the HDP and the Ocalan model of democratic confederalism remain the country’s , and the region’s, greatest hope for peace.
For these reasons, I am happy to get the chance to finally publish this report. I hope it can contribute to an understanding of the stakes of the on-going struggle for democracy and for the rights of the Kurds, and of all peoples, in Turkey and throughout the region.
The Election in Turkey
The recent election in Turkey marked a historic turning point for the country. As a member of a delegation from Britain of lawyers, academics, human rights advocates and journalists, I had the opportunity to witness this vital election in the cities of Diyarbakir and Gaziantep. During our five-day trip to these cities, our delegation spoke with Human Rights activists, representatives of trade unions, and met with and accompanied activists and candidates of the HDP in visits to hundreds of polling stations on election day.
Political tensions ran high across the Republic during the campaign, in the run-up to an election that was interpreted by many as a referendum on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions to further tighten his grip on power by introducing a new constitution to convert the Parliamentary Republic into a Presidential regime. The stalling economy, and rising unemployment, certainly did not help Erdogan. Even more damage was done to the President and his ruling AKP by the influx of Syrian refugees, not to mention the role played by the Erdogan government in destabilizing the neighboring Syrian state.
Perhaps even more important than all of these highly salient issues, the election constituted a critical juncture for the fate (1) of Abdullah Ocalan, (2) of the long-stalled peace process with the PKK, and (3) of the prospects for political compromise on the main grievances articulated by the Kurdish movement.
The Kurdish movement in Turkey has evolved dramatically since the arrest of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1998. Spurred on by Ocalan himself, the movement has officially renounced its commitment to an independent Greater Kurdish nation-state, and has come to embrace a program of “democratic confederalism” in its place. It has at the same time come to express a clear and firm commitment to a peace process, despite substantial and ongoing violent provocations by the Turkish state.
The leadership of the Kurdish movement had a lot riding on this election. In past elections, they had opted to run candidates as independents in particular districts only in Kurdish strongholds in order to avoid having to cross Turkey’s extremely high 10% threshold for representation (established by the military after the 1980 coup). However, this time around, they decided to run the risk, hoping to pass the threshold and presenting candidates as a party throughout all of Turkey, by joining forces in coalition with the Turkish left as well as with other marginalized groups and ethnic minorities including Alawites, Alevis, Armenians, Arabs, Assyrians as well as the lesbian and gay community, feminists, and labour and environmental movements, all under the umbrella organization of the HDP.
The heroic defense of Kobane in the Kurdish region of Syria did much to boost the image and morale of the Kurdish movement, especially in and around the Kurdish capital, Diyarbakir, but also to a certain degree even throughout the rest of Turkey. Simultaneously, Erdogan’s open hostility to the plight of the Kurds in neighbouring Syria has done much to sour his popularity among devout Kurds, who had previously sympathized with him as a fellow Muslim.
The corresponding surge in popular support for the HDP has been responded to with intimidation and violence on the part of the Turkish state and the AKP government. The prospects that HDP representation in the Turkish Parliament would block Erdogan’s ambition to introduce a new presidentialist constitution helped fan the flames of this animosity, resulting in a climate quite unpropitious for freedom of expression as well as widespread concerns about the possibility of electoral fraud.
Throughout the campaign, HDP election offices, bureaus, and activists were the targets of harassment, intimidation and violence on over 170 occasions. Indeed, during our brief stay in the country, we witnessed murderous provocation up close in Diyarbakir twice: first, at the HDP’s final election rally on Friday, where bomb explosions killed 3 and wounded over a hundred; and second, two days after the election, when 3 HDP supporters were gunned down at a coffee house that had been used as an election bureau during the campaign.
Despite the climate of intimidation and violence, the Human Rights’ activists, trade union representatives, and HDP members with whom we met over the course of our stay displayed consistent courage and restraint, while repeatedly expressing their commitment to both a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish question as well as to a deepening and strengthening of democracy throughout Turkey, even in the face of murderous provocations.
Fortunately, we witnessed no serious incidents on election day, though in many districts of the mixed city of Gaziantep a climate of tension and hostility was palpable even to the outsider. As Osman Demirci, one of the HDP candidates whom some of our members accompanied on visits to polling stations, remarked: “People here are like bombs ready to go off. You have to know how to defuse them.” Our delegation itself was received with a good dose of suspicion, especially among pro-government and Turkish nationalist stalwarts involved in running the election, one of whom angrily commented to Demirci upon witnessing our members enter a room where citizens were voting: “How dare you bring foreigners with you to come and audit me in my own country.” To which Demirci responded smoothly by offering his hand and saying: “We wouldn’t ask for them to be here if we weren’t rightly concerned about the possibility of electoral fraud. But this is a festival of democracy, and they have only come to witness it. Let us stand here together to show the world that we know how to govern ourselves, that we all can get along.”
In the end, the HDP scored a great victory in the election, surpassing the 10% threshold by a wide margin, winning more than 12% of the vote and 80 delegates in the 550-seat Turkish parliament. The result was received with elation – though tensions still ran high in its wake. The atmosphere in Diyarbakir the day after the election – where close to 80% of the electorate had come out in support for the HDP – was festive, to say the least. Yet much tension remained, and was clearly on display even at the official post-election celebration, attended by tens of thousands, and held at the same venue where the annual Newroz celebration has taken place ever since its legalization in 2000. Attendees at the post-election celebration had to pass through fully three security checks – one controlled by the police, two by the HDP – in order to access the venue. Amid all the singing and the dancing, barely suppressed by all the elation, more than a hint of nervousness could still be detected, and surfaced for example when a sudden loud boom among the crowd probably caused by a drum was confused for a bomb, causing many to jump.
The murder of 3 HDP members the very next morning only confirmed that the election result does not mean a miraculous end to the continuing climate of intimidation and violence. Erdogan has been stymied for now in his ambition to increase his grasp on power, but the AKP remains the number one party in Turkey, with over 40% of the vote. Perhaps even more disturbingly, the country’s third most-voted party was the far-right Turkish-nationalist MHP, which managed to capture close to 17% of the vote. What’s more, it remains unclear whether the AKP will be able to form a stable governing coalition, and so there is talk of new elections in as soon as three months’ time.
Nevertheless, the election result on June 7th was a great victory for democracy in the country. The representation of the HDP in the Turkish Parliament significantly strengthens the prospect of achieving a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question, at the same time that it constitutes an important step in the reconstruction of a united Turkish left.
The Urgency of Transcending National and Sectarian Divides
Writing from his lonely prison cell on the Island of Imrali in the South of the Sea of Marmara, Ocalan has been consistent, clear and unambiguous over the past decade with respect to the need for a peace process that would entail sacrifice and transformation on all sides. As part of this process, Ocalan has called on all Kurds to abandon the utopian dream of a Greater Kurdistan, and on Kurds in Turkey to participate in and indeed protagonise the reconstruction of a united Turkish left. However, such reconstruction does not depend upon the will of the Kurds alone. In fact it requires a self-critical attitude towards deeply-ingrained tendencies of chauvinism on both sides of the “national” divide. Along such lines, Ocalan has insisted: “[W]e must fight to overcome the sectarian rhetoric of the classical Turkish left as well as the provocative and deceiving nationalist rhetoric of the Kurds” (Prison Writings, p.124).
Ocalan remains a symbol of the Kurdish nation for many Kurds, as the ubiquitous images of his face on flags, shirts, and posters, not to mention the sound of his name ringing out in the enthusiastic chants of the crowd at the post-election rally, all rendered abundantly clear. Because of this charismatic appeal, his words carry a lot of weight, exercising a powerful influence over the contours of political subjectivity amongst his many followers. Nevertheless, his call for the Kurds to abandon the goal of a Greater Kurdistan remains controversial – especially off the record – even within the rank and file of the Kurdish movement itself.
Because the leadership of the HDP has been so meticulous in its advocacy of this crucial programmatic point, a failure to surpass the 10% threshold would almost certainly have jeopardized the party line. A thread on the Facebook wall of a Kurdish “friend” of mine on the morning of election is quite indicative in this regard. In outrage over the bombing at the campaign rally in Diyarbakir, this “friend” of mine announced: “It’s time for the Kurdish people to realize the forced marriage with the Turkish nation must end.” To which another Kurdish “friend” replied: “Tell that to the idiot Demirtas [in reference to the co-chair of the HDP] or to the narrow-minded one in prison,” before concluding: “[t]hey should stop siding with the Turkish state against their own people.”
The electoral success of the HDP has certainly strengthened the official party line against such dissenting views, though by no means has the dream of the Greater Kurdistan been abandoned or transcended among all nationally-conscious Kurds. As another member of the British delegation, Austin Reid, observed:
“On my last day in Gaziantep I met a Kurdish lecturer from the university who said: “Look, the world situation is perfect for us Kurds to grab the opportunity for nationhood now, Iraq has ceased to exist as a state, northern Syria is where we the Kurds are gaining a little territory from ISIL, in Turkey we have shown our power; so now is the right opportunity for nationhood” I think he is mad, but clearly the view that the Kurds are all amenable to democratic processes within Turkey is not a done deal!”
An Inflection in Broader Regional and Global Dynamics?
The lecturer with whom Reid spoke certainly has a point – in some ways the dream of the Greater Kurdistan is closer to fulfilment now than it has been since the Ottoman Empire was carved up by the Imperialist victors at the end of the First World War.
The virtual collapse of the state in Iraq and the civil war in Syria has led to a power vacuum, filled partly by ISIS, and partly by Kurds. But the Kurds in Iraq and the Kurds in Syria are pursuing two very different political projects, rarely distinguished in mainstream press in the West. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, dominated by the “feudal” Barzani clan, maintains close ties with the Western powers. The sight of American flags in taxi cabs or on bumper stickers is not uncommon in the KRG capital, Erbil, and dozens of bulging new skyscrapers have been erected in honour of the great phallic idols of global capitalism. Indeed, before the offensive of ISIS last summer scared off investors, many had even taken to calling it the “New Dubai.”
In striking contrast, a full-fledged social revolution is under way in Rojava – one directly inspired by Ocalan’s model of “democratic confederalism,” protagonised by the PYD (Democratic Union Party), and defended by the militias of the YPG (Peoples’ Protection Units) and the YPJ (Women’s Protection Units). All of these groups have organic links with the PKK, which remains on the U.S. Department of State’s list of “terrorist” organizations, despite ongoing close military collaboration between the Pentagon and the revolutionary forces in Rojava since the defense of Kobane.
The successful defense of Kobane constitutes the most important defeat suffered by ISIS in its otherwise meteoric assent over the course of the past year. The discipline and willingness to sacrifice and die for the cause of the revolution by YPG and YPJ forces was something that ISIS had not come up against before. The struggle between the forces of ISIS and those of the revolutionaries from Rojava pits two sides with willing “martyrs” in abundance. Unlike the Iraqi military, the YPG and YPJ cannot be easily intimidated or convinced to run. This makes them most useful partners for the Americans in their otherwise flailing attempt to contain ISIS.
The revolutionary forces have undoubtedly been helped by American airstrikes in the short term; but the viability of their revolution ultimately depends upon its ability to spread beyond the Kurdish heartland, radiating out across much of the so-called “Middle East.” In this respect, the strategic alliances between the revolutionary forces in Rojava and the Western Imperialist forces could well prove fatal for the reputation of the Kurdish revolution across the Arab world, especially among Sunni Arabs in war-torn Syria, not to mention Iraq, Lybia, and beyond to Palestine, many of whom have suffered quite directly from the criminal behaviour of the United States and its NATO and Zionist partners-in-crime in the Orwellian “War on Terror.”
The revolutionaries in Rojava are of course aware of the dictum that “my enemy’s enemy is not necessarily my friend”; but the brutal logic of violence seems to impel them nonetheless towards the tragic role of pawn in a broader geopolitical game-cum-scramble, triggered initially by the greed and stupidity of the Masters of War at the Pentagon, who through a combination of malice and lethally incompetent bumbling managed to destroy the state – not just the regime – in Iraq, unleashing a human catastrophe and Hobbesian nightmare, and initiating a polarizing dynamic threatening to set the entire region in flames. Which is not to excuse the conduct of the tyrannical states that have already been dissolved in the process, nor that of the West’s petro-kingdom allies in the region, who are, after all, ultimately the source of the reactionary interpretation of Islam working to channel anti-colonial and post-colonial subjectivities in a decidedly reactionary and sectarian way across the region and even beyond.
There does remain a distinct possibility that the revolutionary, “democratic confederal model” could spread to Turkey. This is the kernel of rationality at the root of the Turkish authorities’ aggressive reflexes and deep-seated fears about the military alliance between their NATO partners and the revolutionary forces organically linked with the PKK. But if it seems certain that the Turkish authorities are concerned about this alliance of the Pentagon’s, the Pentagon is likely to be at least equally concerned about the complicity of their NATO partner (not to mention that of their petro-kingdom allies) with ISIS, for whom the emergent Caliphate is seen as a lesser evil and buffer against expanding Iranian influence in the region. ISIS, too, despite its millenarian and apocalyptic ambitions, seems nevertheless propelled to play a tragic role of pawn in a farcical and thoroughly this-worldly geopolitical game-cum-scramble for a region cursed for the secular sin of having too much oil.
The Turkish authorities responded belligerently to the news that the revolutionary forces in Rojava, with the help of American airstrikes, had managed to rid the band separating the autonomous cantons of Cézire and Kobane from one another. Erdogan even threatened to invade to create a military buffer zone in “the north of Syria.” To which the representatives of the revolutionary forces responded with significant rhetorical flare, warning sagaciously that a “military intervention in Rojava would have grave repercussions locally, regionally and internationally,” that “it would threaten peace and security, and finally it would add to the complexity of the already dire situation in Syria and the broader Middle East.”
At the same time, like their counterparts in the HDP in Turkey, the representatives of the PYD were careful to point out that it is their intention “to respect and maintain the internationally recognized borders,” emphasizing that they “work to consolidate our democratic project” and “advocate it as a model for the whole of Syria.” Indeed, they insist in no uncertain terms: “Syria needs to establish a political system based on democratic pluralism. We are a part of Syria and external forces have no right to intervene in our internal affairs.” This before appealing to NATO forces to restrain their partner from wreaking more havoc in its war-torn neighbour.
All of which seems impeccable from both a pragmatic and principled “democratic confederal” point of view. But then there is the issue of the insidious rhetoric of the “war on terror” which the revolutionary forces deploy in making their appeal to Turkey’s NATO partners. The co-chairmen of the PYD insist in their right to be respected as “an active partner in the international coalition and the fight against global terrorism,” reminding their allies explicitly that they have “fought bravely” against ISIS’s “terrorist gangs.”
The PKK has long been branded a “terrorist gang” itself. No doubt the paramilitary training of many of its cadres has come in handy in the war against ISIS. But as the Kurdish revolutionaries are surely aware, one person’s terrorist is always another’s “freedom fighter,” which is why it’s always intellectually best to avoid such a provocative and ideologically contaminated term.
Moreover, if the spiralling flames of violence currently engulfing the region are to be extinguished, the legitimate grievances of many who currently sympathise with ISIS cannot be simply ignored or beaten into submission. Instead, they are going to have to be engaged in a dialogue about the roots of imperial pillaging and plundering. And in this vein, the visionary “democratic confederal” agenda of Ocalan can again offer crucial guidance. Though Ocalan is staunchly committed to the cause of gender emancipation (and the accommodation and toleration of all religious and ethnic minorities), he has also come out in favour of a “search for the real Islam,” and has even insisted that “the Kurdish Movement is not atheist or materialist,” rejecting the “dichotomy of secular versus religious” altogether, on solid anti-Eurocentric grounds that “Islam should not be interpreted using Western concepts”[1]. At the same time, Ocalan has consistently argued that the “democratic confederal model” provides the only alternative to state tyranny and/or chaos not only for Turkey but throughout the broader “Middle East.” This model may indeed represent the region’s, and the world’s, last remaining hope against the barbarism so ruthlessly pursued by the war-mongerers, the plutocrats, their puppets, and their pawns.
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