When a senior Iranian official recently claimed that Tehran had captured a top Kurdish guerrilla leader, observers in Turkey feared the Kurdish insurgency had just taken an ugly turn.
Turkey has long hoped the Southeastern Anatolia Project, known as GAP, could act as an engine for economic development in a majority Kurdish area. The question now is whether the project can get into gear fast enough to save the region from an agricultural crisis.
Turkey's newly re-elected Justice and Development Party had hoped that parliament’s recent vote of confidence in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s cabinet would be a powerful reminder of its landslide victory in last month’s general election. Instead, it has become a symbol of a deepening political crisis that could hinder constitutional reform.
Before Turkey’s parliamentary elections in June, many Kurdish politicians saw the government’s constitutional reform initiative as a chance to advance their community’s decades-long struggle for broader cultural and political rights. Now, with six elected Kurdish candidates barred from taking their seats in parliament, Kurds are reconsidering the need for changes in Turkey’s constitution.
Turkey’s June 12 general election saw the pro-Kurdish movement score its biggest-ever parliamentary victory, with an increase from 20 to 36 seats in the country’s 550-member parliament. Ironically, though, the triumph comes as hopes for a peaceful solution to meeting Kurdish demands are fading.
Tens of thousands of Kurds are taking part in an increasingly potent act of civil disobedience that has become a focal point of an increasingly bitter election contest between the governing Justice and Development Party and Kurdish nationalists in Turkey’s restive Kurdish southeast.
With just weeks to go before Turkey’s June 12 parliamentary vote, discontent among the country’s ethnic Kurdish minority is fostering political uncertainty for the governing Justice and Development Party.
Turkish election officials on April 21 approved the bids of seven out of 12 mainly Kurdish-backed candidates who were earlier disqualified from running in the country's upcoming June 12 general elections.
Amed cannot recall the day 19 years ago when the Turkish army drove his family from their burning village, but the Kurdish teenager has many other memories to explain his anger.
Have Turkey's Kurds discovered the power of Gandhi and Rosa Parks?
It certainly looked that way in mid-September as thousands of school children across Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast stayed away from school to protest the lack of Kurdish-language education in Turkish state schools.
