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Analysis
Summary: The launching of TRT-6,
the first Kurdish language television channel on January 1, marked
a historic turning point in Turkey’s
official stance toward the Kurds.
However, many claim that the
state-run station is merely a ploy by
the ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) to lure Kurdish votes
in the run-up to the March elections. A key test of the new Kurdish
channel’s success will be the extent
to which it airs dissenting views. On
the one hand, TRT-6 should avoid
reducing its coverage to anti-PKK
propaganda. On the other hand, it
might for instance allow Kurds who
advocate greater political autonomy
for their kin to say so on screen.
While much else needs to be done
to woo Kurdish hearts and minds, if
Turkey handles its TV card correctly
it may just win the battle on the
airwaves if not on the ground with
the PKK.
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Winning Kurdish Hearts and Minds:
The Battle Shifts to the Airwaves
by Amberin Zaman*
ANKARA — “May TRT 6 be auspicious.” With these words uttered in
Kurmanji, the main Kurdish dialect,
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan launched the country’s first
state-run 24-hour Kurdish language
television channel on January 1.
Opening numbers included a long
proscribed tune from the exiled Kurdish nationalist bard, Shiwan Perwer.
“It would not be far-fetched to say this
is…a historical step,” wrote Salih Akin,
in the liberal Turkish daily Taraf. His
views are being echoed across a broad
spectrum of Kurds and Turks, but not
everyone agrees. Many claim that the
station is nothing more than a ploy
by Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to lure Kurdish votes in the run-up to nationwide
municipal elections that are scheduled
for March 28. Main opposition leaders
say that these broadcasts will lead to
the dismemberment of Turkey, and the
decision to permit them runs counter
to archaic laws that proscribe the use
of Kurdish even in a person’s name.
For example, in June 2008, a sevenyear-old boy named Welat, the son
of Kurdish migrant laborers working in Germany, was denied entry at
Istanbul’s Ataturk airport because
his name began with “W.” The letters
“W,” “X,” and “Q” are not part of the
Turkish alphabet and have therefore
been deemed subversive. Set against
this background, the inauguration
of TRT-6 or “Shesh” (the Kurdish
word for six) marks a turning point in
Turkey’s official attitude to its estimated 14 million ethnic Kurds. It may
even presage the beginning of a concrete plan to resolve the long-festering
Kurdish problem. Why else would the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK), the militant group that has
been waging a terrorist campaign for
autonomy since 1984 in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, sound so
rattled? It has delivered thinly veiled
threats to Kurds participating in the
new channel, labeling them “traitors.”
Mountain Turks
For decades Turkey denied that the
Kurds’ existed at all, dismissing them
as “mountain Turks.” Led by various
Kurdish tribal chieftains and religious leaders or “sheikhs,” sporadic
rebellions following the inception of
modern Turkey by Kemal Ataturk in
1923 were ruthlessly crushed. When
the army seized power in its last direct
coup in 1980, one of its first actions
was to ban all use of the Kurdish
language. Those who violated this
rule were promptly hauled off to jail,
joining thousands of Kurdish dissidents. Many ended up in the notorious
prison at Diyarbakir, also a Kurdish
city. Abuses against Kurdish inmates
Amberin Zaman is the Turkey correspondent for The Economist and writes a weekly column for the Turkish daily Taraf. The views
expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the German Marshall Fund of the United
States (GMF).
*
Analysis
ranged from brutal beatings and sodomy, to prolonged
bouts of sleep deprivation and prisoners being forced to eat
their own excrement. Not surprisingly, Diyarbakir prison
became a prime recruiting ground for the PKK. It was not
until April 1991, some eight years after the generals had
transferred power back to the civilians, that the ban on spoken Kurdish was eased. Yet its use in schools, government
offices, and prisons remains a criminal offense.
subtitles, thereby preventing live broadcasts. Meanwhile, a
swath of liberal-minded bureaucrats was dispatched to the
mainly Kurdish regions. In a bid to reduce rampant illiteracy, cash subsidies and free school textbooks were distributed
to poor families along with wheat, flour, and coal. Police
were instructed to treat citizens with respect. The common
bond of Islam was emphasized over ethnicity. And a statefunded program to repatriate displaced Kurdish villagers
was accelerated. These and other changes persuaded the
EU to start long-delayed membership talks with Turkey in
2004. A year later, Erdoğan became the first Turkish leader
to acknowledge that the state had committed “mistakes” in
its treatment of the Kurds. All of this bolstered the AKP’s
standing in the southeast, where it clobbered the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in the 2007 parliamentary elections in many of its strongholds.
The “Kurdish reality”
As PKK violence spiraled in the 1990s, so too did state repression of the Kurds. By the parliament’s own reckoning, at
least 800,000 Kurdish civilians were forcibly evacuated from
their villages, their homes razed and livestock slaughtered
during the army’s scorched earth campaign against the PKK.
Many migrated to Western cities, such as Istanbul and Izmir,
where a new generation of angry, jobless Kurdish youths
provided fresh cadres for the PKK. Meanwhile, the power
vacuum in northern Iraq resulting from Saddam Hussein’s
loss of control over the breakaway Kurdish region during the
1991 Gulf War allowed the PKK to establish strategic bases
there. It used these to launch increasingly effective attacks
against Turkish military outposts across the border. Turkey’s
failure to stamp out the insurgency despite the capture of the
PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999 reinforced the growing realization among political and army leaders alike that
military tactics were not enough to defeat the PKK. Successive Turkish prime ministers began talking of a “Kurdish
reality.” Yet, little was done to address the Kurds’ grievances.
An increasing number tuned into the PKK’s glitzy news
channel Roj (the word for “Sun” in Kurdish) broadcast via
satellite from various European capitals which bombarded
them with a steady stream of propaganda about the glories
of Ocalan and his Kalashnikov toting “freedom fighters.”
The PKK strikes back
Unnerved by its receding influence, the PKK ended its fiveyear truce declared in 1999, agreed to by Ocalan who was
desperate to elude the death sentence he was handed by a
Turkish court. (Capital punishment has subsequently been
taken off the books in line with EU demands). If the PKK’s
calculation was to draw the army back into the fight and to
provoke the government—already fearful of a nationalist
backlash—into abandoning its reforms, the gamble apparently worked. A string of bloody PKK attacks that killed
scores of Turkish soldiers cowed the government into accepting the army’s clamors to resume cross-border attacks
against PKK targets in northern Iraq. These began (with the
agreement of the United States) in December 2007. Erdoğan
espoused increasingly hawkish language against the Kurds
and shunned DTP lawmakers. Meanwhile, court cases
against DTP officials for “crimes,” such as issuing invitation
cards in Kurdish, started and continue to pile up. The Constitutional Court is expected to deliver its verdict soon on a
closure case filed against the DTP on the thinly supported
charge that it is threatening the unity of the Turkish state.
Not a single AKP official has uttered a peep even though
their own party narrowly escaped closure on similarly specious grounds last year. And in an alarming turn, reports
of unprovoked attacks against Kurdish civilians in Turkey’s
western provinces are on the rise.
Enter the EU and the AKP
The elevation of AKP to overwhelming majority in the
2002 parliamentary elections gave fresh impetus to Turkey’s
efforts to bolster its shaky democracy. Erdoğan pledged early
on to make EU membership his party’s primary goal. This
began a blizzard of reforms, among them laws that eased
restrictions on publishing and broadcasting in the Kurdish
language. Kurdish language courses were permitted for the
first time. Private television channels were authorized to air
Kurdish programming, albeit for a maximum of four hours
per week and on the strict condition that it carries Turkish
The army’s surprise response?
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Analysis
General Ilker Basbug, who became Turkey’s chief of general
staff last August, is very much in keeping with his determinedly
pro-secular predecessors. And he is every bit as hawkish when
it comes to the Kurds, but with a twist. Although Turkish
fighter jets continue to pound rebel camps in northern Iraq
General Basbug has long espoused the view that it will take
more than guns to beat the PKK. Indeed, it is widely assumed
that his blessings played a part in the establishment of the new
Kurdish language channel. If so, that is good news, for the
army has long stood in the way of any explicit overtures to
the Kurds. A key test of TRT-6’s success will be the extent
to which it airs dissenting views. On the one hand, it should
avoid reducing its coverage to anti-PKK propaganda. On
the other hand, it might for instance allow Kurds who
advocate greater political autonomy for their kin (naturally
through peaceful means) to say so on screen. This would
vastly enhance its credibility, not least because the competition, be it ROJ or other Kurdish TV stations, are nothing
more than mouthpieces for their respective sponsors. To
be sure this is a tall order for a government-run enterprise.
That is why the next step should be to loosen restrictions
on private TV channels. While much else needs to be done
to woo Kurdish hearts and minds—a reasonable amnesty
law for PKK fighters not implicated by violence would be an
enormous step—if Turkey handles its TV strategy correctly,
it may just win the battle on the airwaves rather than on the
ground.
Amberin Zaman, Correspondent, The Economist
Amberin Zaman is the Turkey correspondent for The Economist and
writes a weekly column for the Turkish daily Taraf.
About GMF
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a
nonpartisan American public policy and grantmaking institution
dedicated to promoting greater cooperation and understanding
between North America and Europe. GMF does this by supporting
individuals and institutions working on transatlantic issues, by
convening leaders to discuss the most pressing transatlantic themes,
and by examining ways in which transatlantic cooperation can
address a variety of global policy challenges. In addition, GMF
supports a number of initiatives to strengthen democracies. In
addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, GMF has seven
offices in Europe: Berlin, Bratislava, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara,
and Bucharest.
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