Kurdish peace process: The latest phase of de-securitisation politics
The reshuffling of Turkey's domestic and foreign policy over the last decade has finally led to a solution for Kurds.
Conceiving of the Kurdish issue in political terms - rather than
security ones - represents the third and final phase of
de-securitisation politics in Turkey, which is an indication of the
growing normalisation of the country.
Since the beginning of 2013, Turkey's political agenda has been
dominated by the Kurdish peace process initiated through negotiations
between the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) incarcerated leader,
Abdullah Ocalan, and the chief of Turkey's National Intelligence
Organisation (MIT), Hakan Fidan. So far, the process has progressed
smoothly. Some important milestones have been reached. First, a
ceasefire has effectively been in place since the start of negotiations.
Second, on March 21 - a symbolic
day, Newroz, celebrated to mark the beginning of spring in Mesopotamia
and Central Asia - a letter written by Ocalan was read aloud to a crowd
of one million gathered in Diyarbak?r - the largest Kurdish city in
southeastern Turkey - to celebrate the day.
In his letter, Ocalan declared two things: first, the PKK seeks a
solution to the Kurdish issue within Turkey's borders and through
further democratisation. Second, the era of armed struggle has come to
an end. In the new era, the struggle for Kurdish rights will be advanced
through political means. To that end, Ocalan called upon PKK members to
withdraw from Turkey in order to demonstrate their commitment to the
peace process and clear the way for further negotiations and
democratisation steps. The PKK leadership in the Qandil mountains in
Iraq responded positively. They held a press conference on April 25,
2013 in which they declared that the withdrawal would commence on May 8,
2013. Withdrawal from Turkey constitutes the first of a three-phased
process. In the second phase, the government will undertake legal,
constitutional, and democratisation steps, and the third phase will
focus on the reintegration of PKK members into society.
The speed and nature of the process have puzzled many people, both
inside and outside Turkey. That Turkey attempts to solve its most
intractable issue through open political dialogue - and with no serious
public backlash to date - has further surprised many.
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PKK leader calls for ceasefire in Turkey |
To comprehend this thoroughly, one needs to analyse carefully
Ocalan's message and then situate this latest initiative within a
historical context, starting from 2002. Among all of Ocalan's
statements, his pronouncements that the era of armed struggle is over
and that any solution will be sought within the boundaries of Turkey -
effectively renouncing any irredentist claims - are the most important
ones. These two messages alone illustrate Ocalan's transformed mindset
in seeing the Kurdish issue strictly through political, not security,
terms. It is unlikely that Ocalan's view would have evolved unless he
perceived a similar trend of de-securitising the Kurdish issue among
Ankara's political elite. In fact, de-securitisation politics in Turkey
did not begin with the Kurdish issue; rather, it marks the latest phase
of broader de-securitisation politics that have defined Turkey's
political landscape over the last decade. The process began with
geography - the Middle East - and extended later to ideology - Islamism.
With the Kurdish peace process, the de-securitisation process now
extends in its final phase to identity - Kurdishness.
Nation-state building and politics of securitisation
After the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, and the establishment of
modern Turkey, the republican elites embarked on a process of fashioning
a cohesive nation-state. This project required significant social
engineering, and maintenance of it depended on the guardianship of a
military-bureaucracy alliance. The main tenets of this newly crafted
idea of nationhood were Turkishness, laicism, and Western orientation.
From this perspective, Kurds - the largest non-Turkish ethnic group
in Turkey - have been regarded as a potential threat to Turkishness, and
thus to the territorial integrity of the state. Islamist ideology had
been perceived as a central threat to laic-secular nature of the state.
The Middle East, as the geography of both of these respective
identity-ideologies, had been seen as antithetical to country's Western
orientation.
Republican Turkey's policies and approaches pertaining to the Middle
East, Islamism and Kurdishness clearly demonstrate the securitisation of
them. Turkey placed a geographic limitation on its accession to the
1951 Geneva Convention addressing refugees - a clear demonstration of
Turkey's securitisation of Middle East policy. Turkey only accepts
refugees from Europe and does not accord refugee status to anyone from
the Middle East. Moreover, war and instability have been commonplace
both in countries to Turkey's east and southeast, and in countries to
Turkey's west. Yet, while Turkey cast instances of conflict on its
western borders in terms of human tragedy, as with the Balkans wars,
similar events on its eastern and southeastern frontiers - the Middle
East - have been framed in the language of national security.
|
Inside Story - Turkey and the PKK: A chance for peace? |
Over the years, Turkey acquired an infamous reputation as the
graveyard of political parties, having banned a total of 28 political
parties so far. The bans typically cited the secular nature of the state
(read as pro-Islamic political claims) or the territorial integrity of
the state (read as pro-Kurdish claims) as the reasons for closure. Among
the frivolous and tendentious pretexts for party harassment include having a headscarved MP, reciting a poem, and speaking in Kurdish in Parliament. With only intermittent breaks, this security-oriented approach dominated Turkish politics for nearly 80 years.
The era of de-securitisation politics
However, with the rise to power in 2002 of the Islamically sensitive
Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Turkey has witnessed to a
gradual politics of de-securitisation.
The de-securitisation politics firstly started with geography - the
Middle East - and had mainly been economy and energy focused in the
beginning. Soon after the AK Party came to power, Turkey increased its
economic and energy engagement with the countries of the region. Iraq
has served as a prime destination for Turkey's exports, while Iran has
ranked second to Russia in meeting Turkey's energy demands. Trade
relations with other regional countries flourished during the same
period as well. For instance, trade with Iran - which stood at about $1
billion in 2000 - reached about $6.7 billion by 2006. Good relations with regional countries delivered significant economic- and energy-related gains for Turkey.
Unlike the republican project, the de-securitisation of Turkey's
relations with the Middle East did not coincide with securitisation of
any other regional policies. The period marked by de-securitisation of
Turkey's Middle East politics has also constituted the golden era in
Turkey-EU relations. Thus, Turkey did not only improve relations with
Middle Eastern countries significantly, it also started the membership
accession negotiations with the EU during the same period.
The economic and political reforms of the AK Party's early years
yielded stability and economic growth, and the party began in 2005-2006
both to normalise relations between the state and religious segments of
society and to leverage its economic and energy relations for regional
political engagement.
With a more liberal reading of secularism, the government became more
responsive to the needs of religious people. The government enabled
female students to attend universities with headscarves, offered
religious classes as electives within school curricula, and ceased
discriminatory regulations against religious and vocational high school
graduates on the statewide university entrance exam. Instead of casting
citizens' religious claims as politically threatening, the government
treated them as a religious liberty issue. This approach helped improve
state-society relations.
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PKK fighters arrive in Iraq |
In foreign policy, the AK Party discarded previous Turkish
governments' avoidance of Islamic movements, issues, and organisations.
Turkey actively engaged with the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC) and sought a more prominent profile within it. As a result of this
activism, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu became the first Turkish candidate to be
elected Secretary General of the OIC in 2005, and he has been serving
in that capacity since then. When Hamas won the election in Palestine in
2006, Turkey invited Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas' political
bureau, for talks in Ankara.
The government's de-securitisation of Middle East and of Islamism
enabled Turkey to mediate on intractable regional and international
issues. These included mediation between Iran and the West on nuclear
development, between Israel and Syria in 2008, and between Hamas and
Fatah on internal Palestinian reconciliation. At the same time, Turkey
gained observer status at both the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation
Council. More recently, Turkey's new approach has facilitated closer
relations with new Islamist governments in post-Arab Spring countries.
These results would be inconceivable had Turkey not de-securitised its
Middle East policies and its approach to Islamism. De-securitisation has
thus not only improved state-society relations and produced economic
gains, but it has also provided an opportunity for Turkey to occupy a
more prominent role regionally and internationally.
Solving the Kurdish issue
With the AK Party's consolidated power vis-a-vis the military and
bureaucracy and the demonstrated results from earlier phases of
de-securitisation, the government attempted to de-securitise - and
finally solve - Turkey's intractable Kurdish issue. The current peace
process is not the first attempt to solve the Kurdish issue through
peaceful means, but the third attempt. Prime Minister Erdogan's speech
in Diyarbak?r in 2005, in which he publicly accepted the existence of a
Kurdish issue and referred to further democratisation as the solution,
marked the first attempt. The Kurdish opening of 2009, which included
confidential negotiations between PKK representatives and MIT officials,
represented the second attempt.
|
Inside Story - Peace at the end of a long PKK struggle? |
However, a combination of factors - including military and
bureaucracy opposition, mutual uncertainty regarding the parameters of a
solution and PKK's resort to violence on some instances - stifled the
process, which failed to produce the desired outcome. The military's
retreat from the political scene, the emergence of a common framework
between the government and the PKK leadership for solving the conflict,
and shared determination to settle the issue paved the way for the
latest attempt. Its success would not only dramatically transform Kurds'
relations with the state, it would also have major implications
domestically, regionally, and internationally.
Domestically, analysts have described Turkey as possessing a hybrid -
partially democratic - regime. Turkey's democratic political character
was compromised by the existence of military-bureaucratic guardianship.
The securitisation of Kurdish identity - indeed, the very existence of
the Kurdish issue - was the principle justification provided by
non-democratic forces for their own existence within the political
system. In other words, the securitisation of Kurdish identity
facilitated the stifling of free expression, democratic progress, and
economic development. The solution of the Kurdish issue and the
de-securitisation of Kurdish identity will remove an enormous impediment
to further democratisation and economic development.
Regionally, the AK Party govermment has already
achieved partial de-securitisation of Kurdish identity through its
extenive and cordial engagement with the Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG) in Iraq. This relationship has produced economic, energy,
political, and strategic gains for both sides. Though accurate data on
Turkey-KRG trade are difficult to generate, most estimates place annual
volume at $11-13 billion. At the same time, settling the Kurdish issue
domestically will enable better relations between Turkey and the Syrian
Kurds. The largest Kurdish political group in Syria, the Democratic
Union Party (PYD) maintains ideological and organic links with the PKK.
In the context of solving the Kurdish issue domestically, Turkey may
help persuade PYD to join the anti-Assad Syrian opposition. Such a
development could help tip the balance of power in favour of the
opposition. The de-securitisation of Kurdish identity domestically may
thus pave the way for strategic relations with another rising group -
besides Islamists - in the region: the Kurds.
Thus, this process will not only free Turkey from
its domestic chains by eradicating the vestiges of a long-dominant
tutelage system; it will also free Turkey from many constraints in its
foreign policy engagement regionally and internationally, thereby
facilitating more ambitious foreign policy activism. The
de-securitisation of the Middle East, Islamism, and Kurdishness do not
just represent normalisation within Turkey; they also provide grounds
for increasing regional and international prominence.
Galip Dalay works in the political
research department at the SETA Foundation in Turkey. He is currently a
PhD candidate in International Relations at the Middle East Technical
University, Ankara.
Follow him on Twitter: @GalipDalay
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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