TURKEY: BATMAN SEES LOCAL POLITICAL TENSIONS RISING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 003051 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/02/2017 TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREL OSCE TU SUBJECT: TURKEY: BATMAN SEES LOCAL POLITICAL TENSIONS RISING Classified By: A/Princial Officer Layla Ones, reasons 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (U) This is a Consulate Adana message. ¶2. (C) SUMMARY: Two prominent Batman Bar Association leaders in southeast Turkey told us during a recent visit that local political tensions between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) have increased in recent months. They said Batman residents increasingly resent AKP's aggressive national and local political ambitions and believe there is a growing perception among southeastern Kurds that, since July elections, AKP has morphed into the state itself. They charge that police abuses are rampant, and that last year's amendment of the detention law invites police to deny citizens, primarily Kurds, access to legal representation. For successful resolution of the "Kurdish issue," the Bar pins all hope on the EU accession process, which it hopes will promote changes to the Turkish constitution, rendering it a more inclusive, democratic document that will pave the way for expanded Kurdish cultural rights. END SUMMARY. -------------- DTP MAYOR AND GOVERNOR AT ODDS -------------- ¶3. (C) Batman Bar Association President Sedat Ozevin (former IV program participant) and attorney Zekeriya Aydin told us local political tensions between the AKP and DTP, long simmering before the July 22 elections, have now come to a full boil. In the past few months, a growing feud between DTP Mayor Huseyin Kalkan and Batman Provincial Governor Recep Kizilcik (who assumed the governorship early in 2007 from his popular predecessor) has escalated. According to the Bar, Kalkan's municipality brought charges against the province for denying education funds to Batman city. The provincial directorate for water and electricity returned the favor and sued the municipality for unpaid bills. The Bar believes the ongoing disputes may have a significant political dimension -- while the centrally-appointed governor (a civil servant under the Interior Ministry; generally truly apolitical) is supposed to be apolitical, the public perceives him to be in cahoots with the AKP. (In fact, Batman governor Kizilcik has been a civil servant since long before AKP came to power and is a relative newcomer to Batman who has expertise on the EU; Mayor Kalkan hails from DTP's more radical, pro-PKK wing.) -------------- -------------- BATMAN POLICE USE LEGAL LOOPHOLE TO PERSECUTE KURDS -------------- -------------- ¶4. (C) Batman citizens turned out in the thousands to support DTP's November 19 "Enough" rally, organized to demonstrate Kurdish solidarity in the face of Ankara's efforts to shut down the party. The Bar representatives said police used excessive force when detaining 28 youths during the rally, including many minors. Eleven remain in prison, three of whom are minors. The Bar maintains police in Batman routinely use excessive force in dealing with Kurds, and recurrently abuse the December 2006 amendment in the law allowing police the discretion to waive a detainee's right to an attorney if the alleged offense carries a potential sentence of less than five years. In their view, this discretionary power means the police now have, in effect, free rein to persecute Kurds and DTP supporters. The lawyers said this further fuels political tensions and nurtures a growing resentment against "the state." -------------- THE "STATIFICATION" OF AKP -------------- ¶5. (C) Ozevin and Aydin are of the opinion that recent military operations in the Southeast and an overall increase in nationalist rhetoric have led the Southeast's Kurdish population to increasingly identify AKP with the state, including the military. This "statification" process has been facilitated, they believe, by the EU's cold-shoulder treatment and opposition parties' potshots emphasizing AKP's inability to protect the Turkish people. Both led AKP to adopt a more nationalist posture, and allow the flexing of the country's military might to quash accusations of ANKARA 00003051 002 OF 002 weakness. To survive politically, AKP found a common thread with the military - the Kurdish issue. Meanwhile, Kurds in the Southeast, Aydin said, are seeing how hard ethnically Kurdish AKP politicians in Ankara are trying to prove their "un-Kurdishness," making them ethnic sell-outs. The two attorneys believe these factors, together with the continuing military offensive, will translate into a significant erosion of AKP's political sway in Batman province, where it received some 70,000 votes in the last election. -------------- -------------- EU ACCESSION PROCESS PROBABLY STILL THE ONLY VIABLE HOPE -------------- -------------- ¶6. (C) The Bar representatives posit the only hope for resolution of Turkey's Kurdish issue is EU accession, but they question the government's sincerity in seeing it through. Ozevin noted AKP no longer speaks about the importance of pushing the military back into their barracks and out of politics, and resolving the Kurdish issue. He added the military clearly has no interest in seeing constitutional changes that would diminish its status as the patron and protector of the motherland. The attorneys acknowledged DTP's failure to do anything beyond complaining and chanting slogans about freeing imprisoned PKK leader Ocalan and a general amnesty for PKK fighters. Still, DTP is fulfilling a democratic role necessary to the process, they said, even if it sings with disparate voices. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶7. (C) The frustration expressed by Ozevin and Aydin has been echoed by other Kurdish contacts in Sanli Urfa and Diyarbakir. While the March 2009 local elections are still far off, if AKP does not make good on its promises of palpable progress on the Kurdish issue, it could lose ethnically Kurdish votes to a DTP bent on capitalizing on any disenchantment in the region. Several Consulate contacts in the Southeast believe DTP is actively agitating for closure in order to turn this disenchantment into sympathy for both the party and the PKK in advance of the March 2009 elections. In the face of these political power plays, AKP may continue one strategy that some contacts say was successful last July -- use of the religious card to target young Kurdish voters who privately hold the PKK responsible for the loss of life and home, yet openly blame the government for continuing poverty and economic hopelessness. Some contacts claim the AKP will continue to work secretly through Turkish Hezbollah, the Gulenists and the Nurcu tarikats in the Southeast to form financial and social networks that capitalize on the tribal structure in villages -- where, when you win the heart of the "aga" or chieftain, you win the votes of the village. END COMMENT. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ WILSON