If possible, then peacefully: The HDP and the PKK

Fayik Yağızay, HDP Representative to the Council of Europe

The Turkish government's decision to ban the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) was discussed very intensively in the mainstream media. Especially in light of the heavy defeat that the Turkish state had suffered shortly before against the "Kurdistan Workers' Party" (PKK) in Gare, a mountain range in northern Iraq.

In these discussions - which have developed into a political lynching campaign - it is claimed that the HDP represents the political arm of the PKK and that it does not sufficiently condemn the latter. On the platforms where these discussions are held, the HDP is never given the opportunity to represent itself or to participate in the discussions in any way. So this campaign conducted in this way is part of an extrajudicial conviction of our party.

The HDP was founded on the basis of the current law of the Republic of Turkey. It organizes itself nationwide and participates in all democratic elections. In the last parliamentary election, it received almost six million votes, becoming the second largest opposition party in the Grand National Assembly. The HDP looks at the problems within the Turkish state from a different perspective than the other parties and advocates different solutions. It sees Turkey's ultranationalist, not to say racist, structure as a fundamental problem that only exacerbates conditions.

The central issue is the "Kurdish question". The HDP argues that the denial of Kurdish identity and the policy of forced assimilation practiced since the founding of the Republic of Turkey were unjustifiable! The HDP argues that the state must accept Kurds as a different ethnic group, a different people with a different identity; consequently, the party receives broad support from Kurds. This exposes it to constant pressure from the state apparatus, even to the point of current calls for a total ban. The argument used to justify these attacks has always been the HDP's relations with the PKK.

Just as the HDP has a different approach to the "Kurdish question," it also has a different perspective on the PKK than other parties. Unlike the Turkish state, the European Union and the United States, the HDP does not consider the PKK a terrorist organization and it welcomes the ruling of the highest Belgian court that the organization should be considered a party in a non-international armed conflict. The HDP believes that the PKK has emerged as a result of the wrong policies of the Turkish Republic and the international powers. Thus, it is further convinced that there will be a PKK or a similar organization as long as this policy does not change.

Every act of suppression of Kurdish parliamentary politics is a recruiting factor for the PKK. Until something is done to address the "Kurdish question", many who are persecuted on the basis of their Kurdish identity will follow the maxim of the 19th century British Chartists: "Peacefully if we can, violently if we must."

To understand this properly, it is helpful to go back into history. Before the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 under the leadership of Britain and France, Kurdistan had already been divided in two by the Kasr-ı-Şirin Agreement in 1639 between the Ottomans and the Iranian Safavid state. This time it was divided into four, and this division of the land of the largest stateless people in the world is the main cause of the problems we face today. The states that occupied Kurdistan denied the existence of Kurds and pursued assimilationist and repressive policies by denying them identity, language and cultural rights. Kurds who resisted this policy and defended their rights and freedoms were arrested, exiled, executed and massacred.

To gain the support of the Kurdish people during Turkey's war of liberation, Mustafa Kemal promised that the liberated state would be a state for both Turks and Kurds. However, after the establishment of the republic, he denied the existence of Kurds and Kurdistan and established a system based on Turkish ethnic nationalism.

There were uprisings against the created system in many parts of Kurdistan, but they were all put down by massacres and their leaders executed. The Kurdish language, culture, music – in short, every aspect of Kurdish identity – were banned, and the Kurds were officially classified as Turks. The government hoped to make them disappear into oblivion with a policy of forced assimilation. The situation was similar in the other parts of Kurdistan - the parts occupied by the Iraqi and Syrian states, established after the withdrawal of Britain and France, and the part occupied by Iran.

It was against this background that the PKK and several similar organizations emerged. In the 1970s, dozens of organizations emerged, led by students, to try to change the situation through a variety of methods. Most of these organizations were crushed by the military coup of 1980. A brutal state terror prevailed in Kurdistan, especially in the prisons. The PKK managed to withdraw some of its cadres from Turkey to neighboring countries, where it reorganized, and it began a guerrilla war against the Turkish state in 1984. Although its goals, form, and methods have changed, this war still continues.

When the PKK was founded in 1978, its goals were liberation and the establishment of a unified, independent, socialist Kurdistan in the territories occupied by Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the PKK reevaluated its goals.

In response to a request from then-Prime Minister Turgut Özal, the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1993 and announced that it was ready to resolve the "Kurdish question" through dialogue. However, during this unilateral ceasefire, as Özal was preparing his new approach to the Kurds, he was poisoned by the Turkish deep state. His death opened the door to a violent war that caused tremendous destruction in North Kurdistan (Eastern Turkey). However, the PKK's efforts to find a solution based on dialogue with the Turkish state have always continued.

Since his imprisonment as a result of an international conspiracy in 1999, the PKK's leader Abdullah Ocalan has presented detailed projects and roadmaps for a political solution from his prison cell. Today, the PKK seeks a solution to the "Kurdish question" based on a democratic system that allows local autonomy and respect for cultural differences within existing borders. However, the states that occupy Kurdistan do not accept any status for Kurds and are determined to continue their current approach. (In Iraq, the situation has been different since the establishment of the autonomous Kurdish region, but Turkey's determination to crush Kurdish identity is growing stronger).

Since 1990, many political parties have been founded in Turkey with the aim of finding a parliamentary, non-violent solution to the "Kurdish question". The first of them, the "People's Labor Party" (HEP), circumvented the Turkish state's 10% electoral threshold by nominating its candidates for the 1991 parliamentary elections on the list of the "Social Democratic People's Party" (SHP), thus entering parliament with 22 MPs. But these parliamentarians faced incredible attacks. On the first day, when she had to read the nationalist oath, Leyla Zana said in Kurdish: "I read this oath for the brotherhood of the Kurdish and Turkish people," and Hatip Dicle added: "I read this oath under the pressure of the constitution." The parliament hall went into an uproar.

Banning proceedings were initiated against the party, and investigations were launched against most of the MPs. As a precautionary measure, the "Democratic Party" (DEP) was formed and all MPs joined the new party. Within a short time, the HEP was banned, but at the same time, proceedings were initiated to ban the DEP. Then, in September 1993, in an attack organized by paramilitary forces, the MP from Mêrdîn (Mardin), Mehmet Sincar, was killed and the MP from Êlih (Batman), Nizamettin Toğuç, was injured. In March 1994, immunity was lifted for all DEP parliamentary members. Some of them had fled to Europe a few days earlier to avoid detention, but others remained in the parliament building for two or three days in the belief that the police would not enter the parliament to arrest them.

However, the police entered the parliament, arrested all DEP MPs and imprisoned them. Hatip Dicle, Orhan Doğan, Leyla Zana and Selim Sadak remained in prison for ten years. Those who came to Europe are still here and, like thousands of HDP politicians, Dicle and Sadak now have to live with the status of refugees in Europe.

Later, other parties founded along the same lines were banned by the Constitutional Court and their executive boards and many members were jailed. And now everyone can see the pressure that the HDP is currently facing. People elect an MP to represent them in parliament. And normally, parliamentarians enjoy legal immunity while they speak, write, and organize events to address the problems of their constituents. However, as a member of the HDP, their immunity is lifted by a discriminatory ruling, and they are put on trial and imprisoned for anything they have said or done, including speeches made from the parliamentary stage.

Currently, some HDP deputies, including the party's former co-chairs, are in prison, while most others are on trial for their parliamentary activities. Politicians elected by the people as mayors in the local elections are removed from office by the Minister of Interior because of their HDP membership - without a court order - and are sent to prison and a trustee is appointed by the government in their place. Thus, in the last election period, 98 out of 103 mayors were removed from office and replaced by government appointed trustees, many of whom are still in prison or have become refugees in exile.

If parties that were founded in accordance with current Turkish law are treated in this way after they have advocated the democratization of Turkey and the recognition of the fundamental rights of the Kurdish people, what basis remains for complaining about the existence of the PKK? Kurdish society, which is witnessing this treatment, will inevitably fight back using various methods, sometimes including the methods that the PKK is now using. Turkey can continue to accuse the PKK of terrorism and get support for this from international forces and organizations, but that will not even begin to solve the underlying problem.

The HDP emphasizes that the Turkish state and international forces must find a new approach to the "Kurdish question" and democracy instead of condemning the PKK and treating it as a terrorist organization. Thus, the HDP has a clear message to the Turkish government: you can use all the advanced weapons in this world against the PKK and continue this war for many more years, you can ban the HDP as you have banned previous parties, but this will not solve Turkey's problems, it will only make them worse.

This is how the HDP's approach differs from that of the Turkish state and other political parties and international powers.

This article was first published in the May/June 2021 edition of the Kurdistan Report.