ONE MAN'S VOICE - YUSUF ALATAS, HUMAN RIGHTS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 001769 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/04/2022 TAGS: PGOV PHUM PTER TU SUBJECT: ONE MAN'S VOICE - YUSUF ALATAS, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, PESSIMISTIC ON TURKEY'S POLITICAL PROSPECTS Classified By: PolCouns Janice G Weiner, reasons 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (C) Summary and Comment: In a recent conversation, Yusuf Alatas, a long-time Embassy contact, independent thinker and outgoing president of Turkey's Human Rights Association (IHD),was pessimistic about the current political situation and enormously skeptical as to whether the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) is capable of playing a constructive post-election role. He also focused on what he sees as many Turkish Kurds' main desire: respect for their ethnicity, culture and language. He is worried about the military, worried about ultra-nationalism, and worried about the state of democracy in Turkey. For a person who calls himself an optimist, he is currently downbeat, perhaps natural for someone who has worked incessantly to try to improve the situation and now sees his country as taking two steps back rather than ONE forward. This cable represents one free-thinking man's view. End summary and comment. A Pessimistic View of the Political Scene -------------- ¶2. (C) Yusuf Alatas, a long-time human rights activist and attorney who defended the Kurdish DEP deputies in the 1990s and recently stepped down as head of the IHD for HEALTH reasons, believes that more, not less, openness and democracy are the solution for Turkey. Accordingly, he takes a pessimistic view of the current situation, both domestically and externally. In his view, traditional state forces (the military, the courts) and the secularist opposition have created a siege mentality by trumpeting relations with the EU and US as weakening Turkey. Yes, the US has made mistakes and people have the right to be critical, but that is no reason to try to ruin relations. The establishment is trying to sabotage relations by tying the US to the AKP's perceived failure to deal effectively with the PKK. In fact, there has never been a good solution to the PKK and the Kurdish problem; Turks have tried cross-border operations (CBOs) and failed. But if "they" (the state, the military, the secularist opposition) succeed in undermining Turkish-US relations, they will not be so easy to repair. ¶3. (C) Similarly, both the EU (Sarkozy, Merkel) and forces in Turkey are responsible for the downturn in Turkey's relations with the EU, according to Alatas. Every step toward further democratization causes the military and state to lose power, anathema to those sectors of society. He sees the judiciary and many other state organs as firmly in the hands of the "State" (including the Constitutional Court, most of whose judges were appointed by President Sezer). What kind of democracy is it, he asked, when the PM cannot ax a Chief of the Turkish General Staff (CHOD) - or even a Lieutenant Colonel - without the signature of the President? Nonetheless, Turkey is neither totalitarian nor a dictatorship and ONE must use the democratic tools at hand. Despite his belief in who controls the judiciary, he noted, he continues to fight as an attorney for justice and rule of law using all the legal means at his disposal. The Military, Constantly Reinventing Itself -------------- ¶4. (C) Alatas described the military as constantly renewing itself, reaching out to use new tools and technologies, as evidenced by its recent e-memoranda. He believes the Turkish General Staff (TGS) has also taken to heart the EU's emphasis on civil society, funding a variety of such organizations, often behind the scenes, and parachuting retired generals and colonels in to run a number of them. In his view, the military used certain NGOs to help organize the massive "republic" rallies on secularism. He fears that if AKP wins big in the July 22 general election, the military would not hesitate to draw on these NGOs to mobilize millions against the government in a "red and white revolution" -- Turkey,s own version of Ukraine's orange revolution. ¶5. (C) Alatas believes the military has been preparing for this contingency for 3 or 4 years. He cited the military's meticulous preparation for the 1980 coup, and buttressed his argument on current preparations with the so-called coup ANKARA 00001769 002 OF 003 diaries (published in "Nokta" magazine earlier this year), which he judges 100% credible. He also singled out CHOD Buyukanit's outspoken public warnings, as early as February, that Turkey is facing ONE of the gravest dangers ever from Islamists. "We scoffed when we first heard it; but they are deadly serious and we need to take them seriously." An Ultra-nationalist, not an Islamist, Threat -------------- ¶6. (C) Is there really a threat of Turkey turning into Iran or imposing Sharia law? Alatas adds up the number of (staunchly secular) Alevis, the CHP voters, those who are religious but don't want the state to tell them what to do and concludes that perhaps 1 million, maximum, out of 73 million want it. In his view, hardly a threat. ¶7. (C) He pointed, though, to a widespread and diffuse ultra-nationalism as a potential threat. In the past, nationalistic violence was more controlled and concentrated. In the 1970s, when people were dying daily at the hands of the far right, Alparslan Turkes could issue an order and followers would obey; and in the 1990s, the state cracked down on Turkish Hizbullah, after cultivating it, when it decided the organization was out of control. Today, in contrast, no ONE is in control and all sides are stoking feelings of ultra-nationalism. This has created a "blind patriotism" where someone could burn his neighbor's home, thinking it is an act of defending the Turkish state. How Independent are the DTPers? -------------- ¶8. (C) Alatas was highly skeptical that DTP-linked independent candidates running for parliament would indeed by independent. For the most part, the DTP has parachuted inexperienced candidates into election districts to ensure that they are beholden to the organization that put them there -- the PKK. "They don't want experience, they want obedience." He is convinced that the first DTP MP who decides to act truly independently will, the next day, trigger a statement -- or worse -- from the PKK. ¶9. (C) He also believes that the PKK's stepped up attacks, combined with the government's crackdown on DTP by arresting scores of members who used the honorific "Sayin" when referring to imprisoned PKK leader Ocalan, does not augur well for a smooth integration of DTP into parliament. The first MP who utters the words, "and we would like Sayin Ocalan freed from prison and a general amnesty" will be an instant pariah and the experiment will come crashing down. What The Kurds Really Want -------------- ¶10. (C) Alatas linked his views to impressions he garnered at the July funeral in Cizre (in the southeast on the Iraqi border) of former pro-Kurdish DEP deputy Orhan Dogan. He estimated some 100,000 attended, and he was struck by several factors: --How truly dirt poor most of the people are; --How oppressive the security situation is there now; --How politicized the people are; --Although there were pro-Ocalan and pro-PKK chants, no ONE said a word against Turks -- any Turk could have gone into that crowd and been 100% safe; unfortunately, he couldn't say the same for an openly Kurdish Kurd who might have wandered into the large "secular" demonstrations; and --Many people in the southeast remain openly pro-PKK because they see the PKK as always having represented them. It doesn't mean they condone violence, want a separate state or want to be part of northern Iraq; they don't. They are sick of the violence. But they are also sick of being ignored (or only paid attention to in a negative way). Why would they choose the PKK if violence continues to flare? Because of the two evils, they choose their own. ANKARA 00001769 003 OF 003 ¶11. (C) What do they want, really? In Alatas' view, they want respect and recognition. If every politician who tried to recognize the Kurdish reality were not immediately shoved back into his/her box; if officials, for example, were required to learn Kurdish to serve in the region (so they can talk to everyone, not just some, and as a mark of respect); if there were 24/7 quality broadcasting in Kurdish (even the pro-state village guards now watch Roj TV because it's in Kurdish) -- those would be signs of respect. These people are proud to live in Turkey, but they want others to be proud that the Kurds are here, too. And Are Unlikely to Get -------------- ¶12. (C) Does any government have the commitment or the nerve to deal with this? Perhaps AKP did, but entrenched military beliefs tied their hands from the start, Alatas said. For example, continued and heightened military presence in the Southeast had doomed the well-intended Koydes project to help villagers by paving the roads to villages and providing them running water. If in the end, however, people perceive the roads as having been built to facilitate the movement of tanks and APCs, good intent will have been buried by military action. Despite AKP,s setbacks and his disagreement with some of its policies, Alatas said he will support AKP for the sake of democracy in Turkey -- and for the sake of continuing, not rolling back reforms. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ WILSON