TURKEY’S KURDS STRUGGLE TO OVERCOME LEGACY OF SEPARATIST STRUGGLE
Nicolas Birch: 1/23/03

While Turkish politicians hosted a January 23 meeting of allies seeking to avoid a war in Iraq, Turkey remains scarred by its own struggle against Kurdish separatists in the country’s southeast region. A Turkish parliamentary commission in 1998 reported that state forces had destroyed more than 3,000 villages and uprooted 380,000 villagers in crushing the separatist Kurdistan Peoples’ Party, or PKK. Nearly four years after the PKK rebellion ebbed, those villages and their returnees pose thorny problems for Turkish policy makers.

According to some estimates, as many as 1.5 million Kurdish villagers fled their homes during the separatist struggle. Most resettled in nearby cities, where many still live in impoverished conditions. In Diyarbakir, capital of Turkey’s southeast region, up to 70 percent of the population has no fixed job. According to a 2002 study of 2,139 displaced families by Turkish migrants’ association Goc-Der, 6 percent of respondents live in tents or sheds. Understandably, more than 95 percent of respondents would like to return home. "These people are farmers, utterly unprepared for life in the big cities," says one Diyarbakir-based journalist who asked to remain anonymous. "Their only hope is for the Turkish government to force them back to their land as efficiently as it forced them to leave."

Unofficially, the Kurdish revolt ended in 1999 with the imprisonment of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. While government sources claiming that several hundred armed PKK members remain in the country, villagers have struggled to resume their pre-war lives. New York-based Human Rights Watch, in an October 2002 study, questioned official figures saying that only 61,000 people had tried to go back to their homes.

"There is no means of ascertaining which villages have returned and how many villages are presently returning," says Serdar Talay, a lawyer who runs Goc-Der’s Diyarbakir office. He believes resettlement plans released by successive governments since 1994 are fillips to Western allies. "I see no evidence of any serious desire to help," he says.

The governor of Diyarbakir, Cemil Serhadli, insists otherwise – with a proviso. "Apart from areas where security problems continue, there is nothing stopping villagers from returning," he says. "Of the 89 villages emptied in this province, 40 are inhabited again." But even villagers who have permission to return often cannot afford to. "I’ll tell you what’s preventing me going back," says Naci Alkan, inspecting the ruins of his house near the town of Bismil. "Money." His village was bulldozed in 1994, he says, after PKK members murdered the local teacher. Under Turkish law, he should receive compensation for forced evacuation. He says he has received nothing. "We barely have enough to buy seed," he says, "let alone repair the house." Serhadli claims that villagers are entitled to compensation.

There is evidence that the government has pressured displaced persons to waive their right to compensation. Mehmet Ilbay, evicted in 1993 from the north of Diyarbakir by soldiers, showed a form that he says he and his fellow villagers had to sign in 2002 before officials let them go home. The document states that the villagers left their homes "due to terrorist pressure... and [would] demand no material compensation from the government." He brandishes a photocopy of the form. "We sent these back without signing them," he says. "If going back means perpetuating a lie, I prefer to stay here." Serhadli admits he drafted it, but insists he "never wrote that last paragraph." He says he doesn’t know who did.

Many displaced villagers never get as far as Ilbay. Ali Kucuksoz has spent eight years petitioning mayors, governors and the Interior Ministry for permission to return to his village near Cinar, 20 miles south of Diyarbakir. He has only received a verbal refusal from the Cinar governor on the grounds that he has not used his fields for a decade. According to Human Rights Watch, this is standard practice: "local governors generally give or withhold permission to return verbally, and thereby avoid committing administrative acts that might subsequently be challenged in court." Kucuksoz says he cannot afford to buy schoolbooks for his children or till his land, much less sue the government. "It is difficult to be an exile so close to home," he says.

Even those who make it home find their villages transformed. During the anti-PKK campaign, the Turkish army offered men the option of joining the government-paid militia. Building local militias with local residents benefited Turkey during the early 1990s, as villagers tended to have better knowledge of local terrain and served as willing fighters. But analysts today say that the southeast cannot stabilize until thousands of militiamen give up their weapons. "The government is still unwilling to accept responsibility for what happened in this region," says Bayram Bozyel, deputy leader of the small Kurdish party Hak-Par, based in Diyarbakir. "These people [militia members] benefited from war," adds Selahattin Demirtas, chairman of the Diyarbakir branch of Turkey’s Human Rights Association. "Their continued presence is an affront to peace."

The story of one family’s return illustrates this idea: On September 26, 2002, the Tekins had authorization to return to their village of Ugrak after nearly nine years. Barely four hours after they arrived, says Munat Tekin, their former neighbors, the Guclus, "attacked us with Kalashnikovs as we were unloading the car," says Murat Tekin. "At first we thought they were just trying to intimidate us." Minutes later, three members of the Tekin family – including Murat’s seven-year-old nephew – were dead and the car was a blazing wreck. "Before the war, these people were poor. War brought them wealth and power," says Sait Tanguner, a relative who says he saw the shooting.

"They preferred to murder us than to give us back the houses and fields they took." Ten Guclu men are currently in prison awaiting trial. The rest of the family remains in Ugrak. "It would be better if they left," says Murat Tekin, straightening up from the foundations of the house he is building. It might be easier for the Turks, too, but such a solution appears unlikely.

Editor’s Note: Nicolas Birch is a journalist specializing in Turkish affairs.

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Posted January 23, 2003 © Eurasianet
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