Since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Ankara has demanded that the Kurds within the new state’s borders remain loyal and obedient. Their identity was of course denied and authorities mounted a ceaseless campaign of forced assimilation to their preferred language, customs and history. State ideologues maintained that everyone in Turkey was Turkish, insisting that “Turkish” referred to their citizenship and not their ethnicity. Nonetheless, the mandated language, history and cultural practices of “Turkish citizens” looked very much like that of ethnic Turks. A number of Kurdish revolts were then dismissed as the banditry of a people “who just refuses to accept civilization and the benefits the state wants to bring them.” At the same time, the Turkish public and Turkish state authorities kept the fate of non-citizen fellow Turks, whether in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Germany or elsewhere, close to their hearts. While they appeared curiously uncaring about the situation of many of their own “so called citizens” who spoke languages other than Turkish at home, leaders in Ankara ceaselessly spoke up for Turkic minorities across the world. When in the 1960s and 70s Greek Cypriot militias and death squads threatened the Turkish minority in Cyprus, the Turkish public and state authorities demanded that something be done. In 1974 they finally sent a massive invasion force to the aid of the Turkish Cypriots and took over one third of Cyprus, where Turkish troops remain to this day. The insurgency of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which began in earnest in 1984, eventually forced a change in official policy towards the Kurds, however. It grew increasingly difficult to fight the PKK while maintaining that Kurds do not exist in Turkey. If Turkey had no Kurds, the word “Kurdistan” in the PKK name should not have caused so many conniptions in Ankara. By 1991, Turkey finally admitted that there were indeed Kurds in the country (in fact they consist of up to twenty per cent of the population). The capture and imprisonment of the PKK’s leader in the late 1990s brought a lull in the PKK insurgency, but by 2005 the insurgency resumed. It was thus under the watch of Prime Minister Erdogan and his Sunni Muslim Justice and Development Party (AKP) that Ankara looked for additional ways to end the violence. Erdogan offered limited Kurdish language rights and some other reforms, including limited Kurdish broadcasting and Kurdish language publications. He publically recognized the existence of his “Kurdish brothers” and promised to make the Kurds feel like equal citizens. A peace process begun in 2007 held a lot of promise, but when the first group of PKK fighters disarmed and arrived at the Turkish-Iraqi border, the throng of Kurdish supporters (some of the “so called citizens” of Turkey) waiting to welcome them embarrassed the government so much it backed out of the whole process and started arresting the Kurds again. A few years later Mr. Erdogan announced another big push for peace, and in March 2013 the PKK agreed to stop its insurgency and withdraw its fighters from Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan. They withdrew in return for unspecified government commitments to further the peace process. Unfortunately, Mr. Erdogan’s government appeared more interested in achieving a peace process than actually achieving peace. None of the Kurdish demands were met. Instead thousands of non-violent Kurdish journalists, civil society activists, student leaders and politicians were arrested and imprisoned (where many are still awaiting charges). It is at this point in the story that ISIS launched its biggest offensive against the Syrian Kurdish canton of Kobane, which sits right on the Turkish border. Kobane is not, however, equivalent for the Kurds to what Northern Cyprus was for Turks. It is instead much more dear, as Kurds never really recognized the imposed border that separates Kobane from Kurdish towns like Suruc on the Turkish side of the line – they have close kin and friends on both sides. Yet somehow the same state that demands Kurdish loyalty and assures Kurds that they are equal citizens blockades Kobane even as its residents are attacked. The city’s defenders run short of ammunition for their light weapons, their backs pushed right up to the border by the most bloodthirsty, heavily armed band of terrorists the world has ever seen. The Kurds do not even ask for Turkish military intervention as occurred in Cyprus, but rather only permission to supply and relieve their brethren themselves. Ankara refuses, however, as its Prime Minister claims that the PKK he supposedly entered into a peace process with in 2013 is “the same” as ISIS. For good measure Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister this week ridiculed the month-long heroic fight of Kobane’s Kurds against a much better supplied Jihadi force, a force that in a few days in June sent half the Iraqi Army scurrying to Baghdad. As Kurdish demonstrations now rock cities across Turkey, leaders in Ankara and some of the Turkish public appear bewildered, wondering why the Kurds are so angry. They have yet to understand that they can not have their cake – in this case loyal Kurdish citizens at peace with Ankara – and simultaneously try to feed it to hungry Jihadis. If Mr. Erdogan insists on treating the Kurds as his greatest enemy, even in the midst of his vaunted “peace process,” then that is precisely what they will be. David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
