A Road Unforeseen

by Meredith Tax

  Suddenly, in the middle of the congress, delegates heard that the US-led coalition was preparing to attack Saddam Hussein’s forces, and they would have to leave immediately to avoid being caught in the war. Sener stayed behind; ten days later he was put under arrest by the PKK. Eventually he and Sari Baran, who was about to be arrested himself, escaped and fled to the mountains, where they decided to form a new group called PKK-Vejin (Revival). They sent out a call to PKK members to cut their ties to Ocalan and join the new party.8

  Besides having been a member of the PKK executive committee, Sener had additional prestige from having led hunger strikes and rebellions in the harsh conditions of Diyarbakir prison. He had many contacts among former prisoners, while Baran knew a lot of the PKK cadres. “Our idea wasn’t to break off from the PKK, but to persuade people of our ideas and turn the organization in the right direction,” Baran later told Aliza Marcus. But their arguments got little traction and they could find few recruits for their new party in 1991.

  Baran stayed in northern Iraq, under the protection of Masoud Barzani, but, for unknown reasons, Sener crossed the border into Syria and went to Qamishli, where the PKK was strong. On November 1, 1991, he and a woman companion were executed by the PKK in the apartment where they were staying. Baran eventually made his way to Europe and joined with other dissidents—including Ocalan’s ex-wife Kesire Yildirim—to try to keep PKK-Vejin alive.9

  But while the party was focused on its internal struggle and Ocalan was looking for traitors and dissidents, back home in Turkey the Kurdish people were starting to change. Women in particular were becoming radicalized and politically active, seizing on opportunities offered by civil resistance to break out of confining gender roles.

  A 1990 uprising in Nusaybin, a small town in Turkey near the Syrian border, sparked several years of popular protests usually called the Serhildan, the Kurdish word for uprising. It began when thirteen PKK guerrillas were killed in a border skirmish. It was PKK policy to ask villagers to claim the bodies of guerrillas who had been killed in fighting and whom they considered martyrs, but normally people were reluctant to do so for fear of arrest. This time, however, one of the murdered fighters was twenty-year-old Komaran Dundar, who came from a prominent Nusaybin family with nationalist politics, and his father went to the police to claim his body. But the police would not give the body up, and Dundar remained in the police station for hours, arguing with them. During this time a crowd began to gather at his house, waiting for news and fearing the worst. When Dundar finally got home at four in the morning with his son’s body, hundreds of people were waiting for him, tearing their hair and crying.

  The police had ordered that the funeral be over by seven that morning, only a few hours away, but adding to the impossibility of holding such an early ceremony, the boy’s mother was in Izmir and could not get back home until afternoon. The police had also stipulated that only family members could attend, but people who had been at the house all night spread the word, and thousands showed up for the funeral, marching in a vast cortege to a mosque at the other end of town, then to the cemetery. On the way back from the cemetery, some of the crowd began to throw stones at the police. When the police tried to cordon them off, a shot was fired, nobody knew by whom, and the funeral procession became a free for all, with many injured on both sides and hundreds arrested.10

  The next day the protest spread to Cizre, a much larger town. This time 15,000 people—half the town—demonstrated. At least five were killed, eighty were injured, and 150 were arrested. Similar demonstrations spread to other towns and cities in southeastern Turkey throughout the spring of 1990, particularly during the forbidden Newroz holiday.11

  As the Mayor of Nusaybin told reporters, the demonstrations were a spontaneous response to intolerable repression: “There didn’t even have to be a leader of the protests. Everything has come to the point of explosion from the inside, because of bad policies, state terrorism, and torture.”12 Protestors were also inspired by the Palestinian intifada, which had been going on since 1987 and seemed to finally be resulting in negotiations. Many Kurdish demonstrators wrapped keffiyehs around their heads, Palestinian style.

  Trying to cool things down, the Turkish government made a few cosmetic concessions—allowing people to speak Kurdish in private conversations, listen to Kurdish music at home, and even celebrate Newroz—but the struggle continued to heat up, particularly when police turned Newroz celebrations into bloodbaths by firing at the crowds. Clashes between police and protestors continued to take place throughout 1991, some involving the PKK and some not.

  In fact, although the police and government papers blamed the uprising on the PKK, the party was as surprised as anyone. It had little organizational strength in the cities and towns where the demonstrations took place and had done nothing to organize them. Still focused only on armed struggle, the PKK saw the Serhildan mainly as a chance to recruit new fighters.13

  In April 1991, the Turkish government announced rigid new censorship laws that allowed the governor general of a province to close any publishing house that revealed things he didn’t want people to know. The state also reinstated the policy of emptying rebellious towns and razing them; between August and November over 80,000 people were left homeless.14 The Serhildan was one reason for these measures; another was the growing number of Kurdish refugees coming into Turkey to escape the war in Iraq. The last thing the Turkish government wanted was more Kurds. In June, police were filmed by members of the international press using truncheons to beat back hundreds of refugees trying to cross the border.15

  In a process that sociologist Ali Kemal Ozcan called “the massification of the PKK,” people in southeastern Turkey were becoming increasingly restive, especially the young.16 Some went to the mountains to join guerrilla encampments. Others searched for a legal way to do political work as Kurds. They found it when a group of Kurds who had been elected to the Turkish parliament as members of the Social Democratic Party decided to found a new left-wing party and make Kurdish civil rights part of its program.

  The People’s Labor Party (HEP) announced its existence on June 7, 1991 and immediately began to organize in the towns and cities of the southeast. It was not officially a Kurdish party—that would have been legally impossible—but soon was one in effect because most of the left-wing Turks who had been involved initially dropped out, not wanting to be associated with something that would be focused on Kurdish rights.17

  Though the PKK itself was still anathema to most Turks, for the first time the Kurdish problem was actually being discussed in the press. The Social Democratic Party even published a report on conditions in the southeast, containing what David McDowall described as “startling recommendations to ease the situation: free expression of identity and linguistic freedom of expression; abolition of the village guards, the governor general and state of emergency; and a major programme of regional development.” Kurds saw the report as electorally motivated—the Social Democrats did not want to lose their share of the Kurdish vote.18 But there was a widespread sense that something needed to be done as repression grew and unrest mounted.

  Increasing numbers of Kurdish activists were disappearing or were found dead after being arrested. Just one month after HEP’s inception, its chairman, Vedat Aydin, was arrested and a few days later his body was found in a garbage dump, showing signs of torture. Twenty-five thousand mourners attended his funeral, where they shouted PKK slogans. The police attacked, leaving twelve dead and 122 wounded.19

  International human rights organizations noted the growing number of violations of Kurdish life and liberty by “the deep state”—the government, the secret police, and the paramilitary groups that worked with them. A 1994 Helsinki Watch report summarized the toll: “Kurds in Turkey have been killed, tortured, and disappeared at an appalling rate since the coalition government of Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel took office in November 1991. In addition, many of their cities have been brutally attacked by security forces, hun
dreds of their villages have been forcibly evacuated, their ethnic identity continues to be attacked, their rights to free expression denied and their political freedom placed in jeopardy.”20

  Researchers were beginning to reveal the extent to which the deep state’s development involved the CIA, which had set up secret counterguerrilla units in various NATO countries after World War II. These were supposed to swing into action in the event of a communist invasion. They were run by the CIA’s Office of Project Coordination, the charter of which called for “propaganda, economic warfare; preventative direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anticommunist elements in threatened countries of the free world.”21

  In Turkey, the secret police set up with CIA help were called the Special Warfare Department or the contra-guerrillas. Members of the Special Warfare Department received training from the CIA at the School of the Americas, a notorious US program for exporting subversion, as well as at various Turkish centers and US bases in Germany. They were taught “assassinations, bombings, armed robbery, torture, attacks, kidnap, threats, provocation, militia training, hostage-taking, arson, sabotage, propaganda, disinformation, violence, and extortion.” They were also trained to counter peaceful movements for social change, which were seen as subversion. The Special Warfare Department had its own prisons, torture centers, and special “State Security Courts,” separate from the normal judicial apparatus.22

  In addition to help from the CIA, the Turkish secret police had another ally in their war against the Kurds—Kurdish Hezbollah (KH), an Islamist group financed by both Saudi Arabia and Iran, which in the early nineties began to penetrate the Kemalist state and work in league with its death squads against the Kurdish Left.23 Although KH shares a name with the Lebanese Hezbollah, the two are not connected; Kurdish Hezbollah is Sunni and the Lebanese organization is Shia.24

  Martin van Bruinessen described the relationship between Kurdish Hezbollah and the PKK as a blood feud: “The Hizbullah (‘army of God’), most of whose members are also Kurdish, was originally firmly opposed to the existing political order, though for other reasons than the PKK. The section that came to clashes with the PKK, however, appears to have offered its co-operation to counter-insurgency operatives in the police and/or gendarmerie force. Turbaned, bearded and in baggy trousers (the conservative Muslim outfit), and armed with sticks and butcher’s knives, they frequently attacked meetings of young Kurdish nationalists and raided cafes and other gathering places. Many persons in these towns were assassinated with the butcher’s knives, which were [seen] almost as a signature; nevertheless Hizbullah members were rarely arrested, even those whom witnesses said they had recognised in broad daylight. Public opinion became convinced that these Hizbullah killers acted with connivance or even on instructions from the cloak-and-dagger departments of the counter-insurgency forces, popularly known in Turkey as ‘Kontragerilla’.”25

  Despite the murder of its activists and officials, the newly-formed HEP ran candidates for Parliament in the general election of October 1991. They ran on the slate of the Social Democratic Party (SHP), since, under the 1980 Turkish constitution, a party could not be officially represented in Parliament until it received 10 percent of the national vote. But the Kurdish candidates did very well, particularly after the PKK told people to get out and vote for them. They won 22 seats; the election of so many Kurds gave the Social Democrats a stronger caucus and both parties hoped for a relationship which would be mutually beneficial.

  But the honeymoon was brief. One of the new HEP members of Parliament was Leyla Zana, who had won 84 percent of the votes cast in her home district of Diyarbakir. She was the first Kurdish woman ever elected to the Turkish Parliament. On entering Parliament, each deputy had to take an oath of office which contained a phrase about upholding Ataturk’s principles. The Kurds of course hated this since Ataturk’s principles meant their own cultural extermination. So Zana said the words of the oath as usual, but added a sentence in Kurdish, saying she did so only as a formality and would “fight for the fraternal coexistence of the Kurdish and Turkish people within the context of democracy.” Her fellow deputy Hatip Dicle did the same—this in a government space where the Kurdish language was illegal. Immediately, all hell broke loose.26

  “It created a scandal,” said Zana. “The ceremony was broadcast live by television. All the deputies yelled out comments like: ‘We have a terrorist in the parliament,’ ‘Dirty Kurd,’ and ‘Get out, this is not your place.’ The next day they forced me to resign from the SHP [Social Democratic Party].”27

  It didn’t help that Zana had worn a headband in the Kurdish colors: red, yellow, and green. The idea that there could be something like a separate Kurdish identity, or any identity beyond the homogeneous ethno-nationalism of Ataturk, was intolerable to most Turks at the time, including the Social Democrats. Soon the State Security Court announced it was investigating whether Zana and Dicle could be tried for treason.

  As members of parliament, they were immune from prosecution as long as their term lasted. But they had to operate in a very hostile environment. The other deputies did not want to hear from them, some refused even to look at them, others pointed fingers and yelled insults. Whenever they brought up human rights issues, they were accused of protecting the PKK.28

  But even though the Kurdish deputies were unable to have much impact on Parliament, the fact that they were there, in a period that coincided with two years of popular uprisings, made Ocalan feel that the situation was changing and opening up new possibilities for the Kurds. He began to rethink the idea that the only way forward was through armed struggle and to put out feelers for negotiations with the government.

  As early as March 1991, at the height of the Serhildan, a PKK spokesman said the party might welcome a federalist solution—that is, they were willing to discuss democracy within Turkey rather than pushing for an independent Kurdistan—an idea that Ocalan had dismissed scornfully in the past. That November, when a journalist asked Ocalan about a federation, he replied, “Unquestionably, this is what we see.” A month later, he offered Ankara a ceasefire and negotiations if the state would release PKK prisoners; end its secret war in Kurdistan, including disappearances and unexplained deaths; permit free political activity; and adhere to its own ceasefire.29

  But the government did not respond and the war continued. In early 1992, Ocalan wrote a letter to the Turkish Daily News calling for mass uprisings throughout the country on March 21, the day Newroz was celebrated. The military took this as an invitation to attack anyone who celebrated Newroz. The civilian death toll that day came to at least 102, including many journalists. Despite the fact that the military said they fired only in self-defense, there were no reports of military casualties.30

  Eric Lubbock, Lord Avebury, a member of an international delegation that investigated the Turkish human rights abuses during Newroz, reported, “In Cizre, the security forces opened fire on unarmed revellers singing and dancing in the streets, killing an estimated 12 people and injuring many more. In Sirnak also, the military fired on civilian crowds and individuals, killing 22 and again injuring dozens more. The governor of Sirnak, Mustafa Malay, told a visiting delegation on April 19, 1992, that it was said that between 500 and 1,500 armed guerrillas had entered the town on March 21, but he conceded that ‘the security forces did not establish their targets properly and caused great damage to civilian houses’. . . . In Sirnak, the armed forces and police went on the rampage over a period of some 22 hours from March 21 to 22, bombarding houses, shops, and offices, and causing civilian casualties.”31

  In retaliation, the PKK staged more attacks on the military. The situation escalated and Turkey put heavy pressure on the Iraqi Kurds to rein in the PKK or kick them out of Qandil. Worried about Turkey, both Barzani and Talabani tried to persuade the PKK to
move to a different part of Iraq. Not only did the PKK refuse to oblige, in September 1992 it organized a huge raid into Turkey, involving hundreds of guerrillas.

  That was the last straw. Yielding to Turkish pressure, Barzani sent five thousand KDP peshmerga to attack Qandil. He coordinated with Turkey, which bombarded the PKK base from the air. PKK commanders in Qandil were unprepared for such a massive attack. Most of their experienced fighters were still in Turkey after the raid. Half the people in the camp were new recruits. The PKK felt they could not abandon Qandil because winter was coming and all their supplies were cached nearby. When Turkey moved ground troops into the mountains, while continuing bombing raids, PKK losses mounted and supplies began to run out. Unable to reach Ocalan in Damascus, his brother Osman, who functioned as a second-in-command, decided he had no choice but to make a deal with Barzani before everyone was killed. The PKK had already lost 161 fighters, with three hundred more wounded. So Osman Ocalan signed an agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government, saying the PKK would withdraw from the border region and stop using Iraq as its entry point for raids on Turkey. In return, the Iraqi Kurds gave the PKK a new camp at Zeli, near the Iranian border.32

  But the PKK did not remain in Camp Zeli for long. After a few months, cadre started to filter back to Qandil, from which they could again infiltrate guerrillas into Turkey. By this time, the futility of seeking a purely military solution to a political problem should have been evident to the Turkish government. As Aliza Marcus pointed out, “In this war and in subsequent large-scale Turkish crossborder raids in 1993 and 1997, the Turkish military always faced the same insurmountable problems. First, the mountains and ravines that made up the border formed natural defenses that were hard to breach. By the time they were breached, the rebels were long gone—after the 1992 war, the PKK never again tried to defend territory and instead relocated fighters as necessary. Air campaigns were only of limited success, thanks again to the rough terrain and the difficulty of pinpointing the caves where rebels took shelter. And even if the military raid did manage to disrupt PKK camps and operations, this ended the minute the troops withdrew. Then the rebels were free to relocate themselves back near the border.”33