Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05ANKARA5393
2005-09-15 14:51:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Ankara
Cable title:  

CONTACTS FORESEE CONTINUED CONFLICT IN SOUTHEAST

Tags:  PGOV PREL PHUM PINS TU 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

151451Z Sep 05
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 005393 

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/15/2015
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM PINS TU
SUBJECT: CONTACTS FORESEE CONTINUED CONFLICT IN SOUTHEAST
DIYARBAKIR

REF: A. ANKARA 5109


B. ANKARA 5115

Classified By: (U) A/DCM Tim Betts; reasons: E.O.12958 1.4 (b,d).
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 005393

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/15/2015
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM PINS TU
SUBJECT: CONTACTS FORESEE CONTINUED CONFLICT IN SOUTHEAST
DIYARBAKIR

REF: A. ANKARA 5109


B. ANKARA 5115

Classified By: (U) A/DCM Tim Betts; reasons: E.O.12958 1.4 (b,d).

1.(U) This is a Consulate Adana Cable.


2. (C) Summary: Longtime contacts expressed deep concerns
about the ongoing ethnic violence and protests in southeast
Turkey and generally foresee little likelihood of a near-term
change in the regional dynamic of continuing clashes between
the new, pro-PKK Democratic Society Movement (DSM) and GOT
security forces. Human rights contacts welcome PM Erdogan's
August "Kurdish Question" comments but saw little prospect of
any follow-up implementation. No one in the region,
including Diyarbakir's governor has any information about how
the Prime Minister intends to follow through on his speech,
although many have ideas on what they would like to see from
the government. For their part, AK party officials in
Diyarbakir said they had formed a working group with small
local NGOs to make suggestions to the Prime Minister's
office. DSM officials in Batman and Diyarbakir emphasized
that any democratization which did not encompass the release
of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and an amnesty for the PKK
would not satisfy their new party's membership. End Summary.

REGIONAL CONTACTS DOWNBEAT


3. (C) AMCONSUL Adana officers traveled to Diyarbakir and
Batman September 6-9 to discuss regional developments with
GoT, municipal and NGO contacts, and recently-selected DSM
members. The mood of all but the DSM members was downbeat.
Longtime consulate contact and prominent veteran human right
activist Sezgin Tanrikulu, president of the Diyarbakir Bar
Association and its Human Rights Foundation chapter, said
that the security situation "scared" him for the "first time
in fifteen years of living in southeastern Turkey." Bar
Association colleagues concurred, adding that they saw the
DSM, which has announced that it would seek formal party
status in the next week, as even more radical and pro-PKK
than the previous Kurdish DEHAP, HADEP and DEP parties.
They also warned that, should the GOT not crack down on
illegal DSM rallies and marches, a lynch mob mood could

overtake the country, much like it had during the Mersin
flag-burning frenzy. They also mentioned that many moderate
Kurds had concluded that the execution-style killing in July
of Hikmet Fidan, a relatively moderate Kurdish rights
activist widely believed to have been slain by the PKK, had
been a warning to them not to pursue democratization at the
expense of the PKK's primacy in the southeast Kurdish
political scene. This view was supported by other contacts,
including Sahismail Bedirhanoglu, leader of the influential
Southeast Businessmen's Association, and Diyarbakir
municipal official Seyhmus Diken. Tanrikulu said that this
trend was compounded by fragmentation of the PKK and the loss
of what he claimed was DEHAP's moderating influence on the
region's rural populace, which he described as customarily
more pro-PKK than urban dwellers. He said that Diyarbakir's
police chief had observed to him recently that, since the PKK
had fragmented into smaller factions, the TNP has no one to
which to reach out through quiet back channels to defuse
crisis situations.

EXPECTING MORE DEMOCRATIC STEPS FROM PM ERDOGAN ?


4. (C) Asked what democratization steps they expected after
PM Erdogan's speech, Tanrikulu and his colleagues said that
they expected little, but gave the PM credit for "putting the
Kurdish question in the public vocabulary." They said that
the PM was so vague in its speech that they did not think
that Erdogan had any follow-up implementation in mind.

5.(C) On democratization, the Bar Association suggested a
six-step plan: 1) The removal of all Kurdish language
obstacles, both in broadcast and in political speech in
public (asked whether this would extend to all mother tongues
in Anatolia, they agreed it would); 2) the ability of all
Turkish citizens to be able to see their children educated in
their mother tongues; 3) university-level linguistic research
for non-Turkish languages spoken in Anatolia (mentioning Laz
and Arabic as examples); 4) revision of the Political Parties
Act to lower the election threshold below its current 10
percent mark; 5) a billion dollar or more endowed southeast
Turkey development fund for village reconstruction, rural
infrastructure and re-stocking livestock; and 6) an economic
incentive program to attract capital investment to southeast
Turkey. The group emphasized that this democratization
should be started immediately and unconditionally. They saw
dealing with regional security issues as a separate question
which should not have a bearing on further democratization
steps.


6. (C) Asked what the GoT's next steps would be, Diyarbakir
governor Efkan Ala said that he had no information on the
subject and was interested in learning himself. He stated
that he was open to hearing U.S. suggestions and added that
the "EU has not been shy about offering suggestions." He
said that he had heard positive local reactions to PM
Erdogan's speech, but that he sensed more was needed to
convince the region that "change is coming." Asked about
recent clashes between security forces and protestors, he
said that police, answerable to the interior ministry through
regional governors, such as himself, were "taking one line
while the Army sees things a different way and is harder on
these things." (Comment: While human rights contacts agree
that police in several SE provinces such as Diyarbakir, are
being relatively restrained, most regional police are still
almost as hard line as their Jandarma and Army counterparts.
End Comment.)

7.(C) Diyarbakir AK Party officials told AMCONSUL Adana
officers that they did not have any details on PM Erdogan's
next steps, but had formed, along with many other Diyarbakir
NGOs, a working group to develop a plan which would embrace
"mother tongue freedoms, assembly, religious freedom,
infrastructure and human development as next steps" in the
region's democratic development. They emphasized the need
for the details of the plan to be developed as widely as
possible and not be seen as a top-down AK Party-driven
exercise lacking broader legitimacy. Diyarbakir NGOs
reflected cautious enthusiasm about the initiative to us and
said that it could be both a "way to develop a plan to take
eventually to Prime Minister Erdogan" and a bulwark to rally
around as a moderate platform alternative to the "one-sided,
hard line views of those sympathizing with Imrali and the
forces in the mountains who are opposing peace." They noted,
however, that AK cooperation with broader elements in Kurdish
society in Diyarbakir is untested and the AK party's staying
power on the democratization agenda is undemonstrated.
(Comment: We concur. End Comment.)

WHY THE CLASHES NOW ?


8. (C) Asked why the clashes had increased in the wake of PM
Erdogan's much-heralded speech on the "Kurdish Question,"
many human rights contacts commented that neither the PKK nor
many Turkish government and military figures favored Turkey's
start of the EU accession process because it would "leave
them outside the process, on the margins where they do not
want to be." These groups therefore saw the period between
now and October 3 as the moment to try to derail the Turkey's
EU accession process. While most contacts did not see an end
to clashes should the Oct. 3 accession process begin as
scheduled, one contact postulated the clashes' frequency and
intensity could abate after October 3. None of the contacts
alleged a conspiracy between the government and PKK elements,
but most said that the different groups opposed to Turkey's
progress on the path toward the EU were driven to
complementary steps, as well as a cycle of action and
reaction, by the converging timeline.

WHAT DOES DSM WANT ?


9. (C) New DSM members in Diyarbakir and Batman told
AMCONSUL Adana PO that, even with the fullest imaginable
implementation of a southeast democratization program, like
the six-step plan outlined above in para.4, "that would only
meet half of our demands." Asked what would comprise the
other half, several DSM members called for Abdullah Ocalan's
release, a general amnesty for PKK members and the immediate
return of former PKK members to political life in Turkey.
Some mused about bringing Turkish Army members to justice as
well. Another DSM member said, "it is unthinkable to imagine
the problems of the Southeast solved without Ocalan's
release." Several DSM interlocutors insisted that the PKK
was the only "interlocutor who could resolve the problems of
the southeast."

WILL DSM'S EMERGENCE HELP OR HINDER PROGRESS ?


10. (C) Diyarbakir human rights contacts told us that they
saw DSM as "radical" and "unlikely to bring anything
constructive to the discussion about reform in the region."
Bedirhanoglu said that he could not trust any group which
could not spell out its end goal. He claimed DSM,s end goal
is &confederacy, independence, constitutional change in the
context of the existing republic." (Note: AMCONSUL Adana
found this a fuzzy topic with DSM members in recent meetings
as well, with one member encouraging us to read Ocalan's
books on the matter. End Note.) Diken said that DSM was an
umbrella group of more radical former DEHAP/HADEP/DEP
members, former PKK, recently-released PKK or rural political
novices. He said that, in the short run, DSM was too
immature, ill-focused ("they only think of what Imrali says,"
he said - a reference to Ocalan's place of incarceration),
and ill-led to contribute much constructive to the regional
political directive. He mused that, in the long run, at
least their existence might convince "those in the mountains
that there is some place for them in the Turkish political
world to some day return."
11.(C) Comment: We share contacts' concern about the
direction in which Turkey's southeast region seems headed.
(Note: People in the southeast have been saying this for
years. End Note.) It is, at best, unclear as to whether the
fits and starts of the GOT's EU-linked democratization
process can produce a dynamic that will fulfill the demands
in the region. End Comment.


12. (C) Comment (cont.): Meetings with new DSM players
revealed a novice grass roots group resolute on pressing the
pro-PKK agenda seemingly regardless of the clashes and
violence such a tack would likely bring. This appears to be
upping the ante from DEHAP, whose members may have harbored
some of the same sentiments but did not openly tout them.
DSM now does not seem focused on electoral outcomes and
formal politicking. It is unlikely to attract even as many
votes as DEHAP in 2006-7 polling absent a surge in first-time
rural voters. Moderate Kurdish voters, especially some urban
groups, are likely to look elsewhere, such as AK, ANAP and
CHP (as in Tunceli),or a new party. However, their presence
on the electoral scene could well fragment the Kurdish vote
and may increase the alienation from the Turkish mainstream
of the rural Kurdish vote and urban PKK loyalists beyond the
reach of hoped-for democratization progress. End Comment.

MCELDOWNEY