The town of Sur, part of the larger city of Diyarbakir, is notable both for its historic buildings and for its recent public embrace of ethnic and religious diversity. Now it is more or less a war zone. Its former mayor, Abdullah Demirbas, described its plight in a recent article. “Tanks ram through narrow alleys … residents are trapped indoors for weeks … Those who venture outside risk sniper fire … Their bodies lie in the streets for days.” Many of its people have fled. Its old houses and monuments have been smashed up by shell fire. A 24-hour curfew has been imposed since the beginning of December.
Sur’s leaders pioneered inter-faith and inter-ethnic dialogue in this part of Turkey, reopening and refurbishing its Armenian church and encouraging better relations between Kurds, Armenians, Turks and other ethnic groups. The transformation of this once hopeful place into a battlefield is typical of what has been happening elsewhere in south-eastern Turkey since the breakdown of peace talks between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK.
The resulting violence, at first only sporadic, has intensified ever since, pitting Turkish security forces against PKK fighters and radicalised young Kurdish men. Although a full settlement was proving elusive, the area had come to know peace and to see it as a permanent condition during the years when the government and the PKK were negotiating.It is unclear who bears most responsibilty for the initial breakdown. But what is clear is that the government of Recip Tayyip Erdoğan capitalised on it politically, using it to help drive a narrative of terrorist threats against the state which convinced voters that Mr Erdoğan and his Justice and Development party deserved their support in general elections in November 2015. Many thought that, having more or less got his way, he would then reinstate the peace process. The opposite happened, as he and his prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu pursued the war even more vigorously.
They set their face against the Democratic Union party, or PYD, in Syria even though it was fighting Assad’s forces, because it is in effect a branch of the PKK. They also denounced Turkey’s own legal pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party, or HDP. There was a whiff of revenge about that, because the HDP had denied Mr Erdoğan the super majority he had sought in last year’s elections. There was also a whiff of burning bridges, because the HDP is the obvious mediator with the PKK if talks were to be resumed.Then came the harassment of some of the 1,200 academics and intellectuals who signed a petition last month condemning the brutal methods being used by the security forces in the south-east. Mr Erdoğan has publicly castigated the signatories as traitors. Now there is a danger, as Natalie Nougayrede makes clear elsewhere on this page, that Turkey and Russia may clash over Aleppo.
The Turkish president’s refusal to entertain any doubts about the course he is pursuing, or its human costs, is chilling. It comes at a time when European countries desperately need Turkey’s help in dealing with the refugee crisis. Europe must continue to seek that help, but we should not therefore close our eyes to those Turkish policies which are counterproductive and dangerous. They are undermining Turkey’s already compromised democracy, and they could widen a war which has already half ruined the region.
No comments:
Post a Comment