Turkey: As Local Elections Approach, Governing Party's Popularity Appears to be Slipping

The village of Yatir is a dusty outpost along Turkey's southern border where political promises are measured in buckets, donkeys, and sweat.

After a spike in natural gas prices sent electricity costs soaring nationwide last summer, Mehmet Altan, the local leader, cut power to Yatir's only pump station. Donkeys were dispatched to nearby irrigation canals to haul water for the 110 families under Altan's watch. "We didn't pay the electricity bill so they cut the electricity," Altan explained as he sat surrounded by a dozen or more village men under a scorching midday sun. "The state doesn't really care about the villagers," Altan said through an interpreter. "They don't care about us."

When Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) won reelection in the 2007 parliamentary voting, promoting economic and cultural reforms in the country's rural Kurdish southeast was a cornerstone of their platform. Seventy percent of Yatir's voters cast ballots for the AKP, Altan says.

But as the March 29 local elections approach, Kurds in this impoverished village -- and elsewhere in the southeast -- say support for Turkey's ruling party is eroding with every power problem, washed out road, and shuttered school. An October 2008 survey of possible outcomes of spring voting indicated that while the AKP will retain its hold on power in western and central regions, it could lose ground in the south and east.

Now, as inconvenience turns to frustration amid growing economic hardship in Turkey's Kurdish heartland, some experts fear frustration will turn to violence. "They got the votes," a villager attending Altan's meeting piped up, without offering his name. "After that they started to be invisible in the village."

Relations between leaders in Ankara and Turkey's southeast -- from the Kurdish enclave of Diyarbakir to nearby villages like Yatir -- have long been marked by cycles of calm and deadly violence. Ankara often suspects Kurdish politicians -- particularly those belonging to the Democratic Society Party (DTP) -- of offering covert support to the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, labeled a terrorist organization by the United States. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Kurdish leaders, meanwhile, are anxious to see cultural freedom and rights extended under Turkey's constitution. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Many Kurds thought a turning point had occurred in 2005, when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the regional center Diryarbakir and spread a message of hope. Acknowledging Turkey's "Kurdish problem," Erdogan vowed that his party would bring "more freedoms, more democracy, more welfare, more rights and justice" to the region. He also pledged to support non-Turkish language broadcasting.

The impact of Erdogan's gesture was promptly felt, as Kurds in Yatir and elsewhere rewarded the AKP at the ballot box in 2007.

Unfortunately, like previous cycles in the tenuous relationship between Turks and Kurds, promises and hope gave way to doubt, frustration, and anger. While Kurdish broadcasting has commenced, many Kurds say they continue to suffer repression and illegal arrests. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"The government forgot all the speeches and totally changed all the policies back to what it was like before," said Mehmet Kaya, chairman of the Diyarbakir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a trade group.

Egemen Bagis, an AKP deputy chairman, contends that the governing party's popularity remains strong in a region that has traditionally been the domain of Kurdish-rights-oriented parities. Bagis said that residents of the region are well aware that the AKP has promoted local irrigation projects, new roads, and greater access to healthcare. People will vote for the party "that serves their daily needs ... rather than the party that exploits their ethnic identity," he said.

There is no disputing the evidence of economic progress in the impoverished southeast. Women and children are being educated in growing numbers; blue collar workers have access to free healthcare; and the much ballyhooed Gap Action Plan (or Southeastern Anatolia Project) aims to improve the region's agriculture, industry, and transportation infrastructures with national government assistance.

But Western experts -- and many Kurds themselves -- say dollars alone will not bridge the cultural divide between Turkey's ruling party and its Kurdish minority. What's needed, experts say, are genuine governmental reforms that recognize Turkey's Kurdish diversity without jeopardizing state unity. Finding the right formula has so far proven elusive for the AKP government, according to a report issued in 2008 by the International Crisis Group.

"The AKP has so far failed to make good on promises which could secure its place as a national party of choice for the moderate new Kurdish middle class," the Crisis Group report stated.