TURKEY: SOUTHEAST PERSPECTIVE: KURDISH OPENING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 001749 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SCE E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/09/2019 TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREL PTER TU SUBJECT: TURKEY: SOUTHEAST PERSPECTIVE: KURDISH OPENING BURIED UNDER SELF-INTEREST AND INSINCERITY Classified By: Adana Deputy Principal Officer Leyla Ones, for reasons 1 .4(b,d) This is a Consulate Adana cable. ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: On a December 1-4 trip to southeast Turkey, a range of Kurdish contacts representing the intelligentsia, political elite and civic activists gave surprisingly similar observations on the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) "democratic opening," citing selfishness and insincerity on the part of all actors, in particular the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and its leader Abdullah Ocalan. Interlocutors pointed to the following factors as sabotaging the nascent democratization movement: Ocalan's obsession with his own wellbeing; DTP's unwavering loyalty to Ocalan that trumps the Kurds' greater good; AKP's perceived hypocrisy and relentless vote-hunting through political Islam; the legal system's allegiance to protecting the state over serving justice; and opposition party intransigence. As the PKK continues to incite street violence, a struggle that was once chiefly in the military and political domains threatens to pit community against community, as friction in western Turkey has a lready demonstrated. Now all eyes are on the DTP closure case that begins on December 8, which Kurds view as the ultimate test of government sincerity in upholding democracy. END SUMMARY. NO KURD HAS THE COURAGE TO CONFRONT OCALAN'S SELFISHNESS -------------- -------------- ¶2. (C) Privately in meetings with Adana Deputy Principal Officer and Ankara PolOff, intellectual, Islamic/conservative and mainstream Kurds pointed to Ocalan as an intractable obstacle to progress on the democratic initiative. Ocalan's former attorney, Hamza Yilmaz, told us the PKK leader's top concerns were amnesty for himself and using his personal power to move eventually to a more palatable prison arrangement such as house arrest. Yilmaz said Ocalan, realizing the democratic initiative was not working in his favor, ordered the PKK to begin inciting street violence to illustrate his influence and to compel the GOT to improve his confinement conditions. Yahya Munis, conservative Kurdish leader of Mersin's GOC-DER, an association championing rights of Kurdish migrants, noted neither the PKK nor the DTP have an interest in the Kurdish community as a whole; they are interested only in one person - Ocalan. No Kurd has the courage to tell Ocalan to bow out of the picture so politics can focus on the greate r good, Munis said. He added that most Kurds only grudgingly support the PKK, whose communist and anti-religious philosophy is "contrary to their nature," because it is the only vehicle to "seek revenge" to address decades of torture, deprivations, harassment and humiliation. APO'S AMBASSADORS FROM THE MOUNTAINS -------------- ¶3. (C) According to Diyarbakir human rights attorney Arif Altunkalem, it is unquestionable that Ocalan is calling the shots from his cell, and Ocalan's selfishness makes the democratic opening not about securing Kurdish rights but about his personal comfort. Altunkalem pointed to the 26 civilians and eight former PKK members who returned to Turkey among Kurdish fanfare, noting they are now "Apo's Ambassador's" (Note: Apo is a nickname for Abdullah Ocalan. End note). The group, now in Diyarbakir, gave a press conference on November 30 urging immediate improvement in Ocalan's cell conditions and pushing for his release as leader of the Kurds. DTP AND PKK FEAR DEMOCRATIC OPENING -------------- ¶4. (C) Prominent Diyarbakir human rights attorney Sezgin Tanrikulu said the PKK is afraid of the democratic opening and views it as a government tool to weaken or even annihilate them. The DTP and PKK's encouragement of violent ANKARA 00001749 002 OF 003 street protests, shop closures and rallies is a way to squeeze AKP between opposition parties' stinging criticisms that AKP is negotiating with a terrorist and accusations that AKP is easily manipulated by PKK-orchestrated popular sentiment. Former Sanliurfa Bar Association president Sabri Cepik agrees with Tanrikulu, pointing to DTP's insistence that Ocalan be accepted as the Kurds' primary interlocutor as evidence of its unwillingness to solve the Kurdish issue. Cepik said Ocalan as an interlocutor was a nonstarter that the Turkish public would not accept. Cepik said if the PKK were truly interested in disarmament, it would not shout the slogan "Freedom for Ocalan, Peace for the Kurds!" Is Ocalan's freedom a precondition, Cepik asked rhetorically, adding "as if the Kurds were f ree!" AKP MISCALCULATIONS EAST OF THE EUPHRATES -------------- ¶5. (C) Tanrikulu said AKP had failed to recognize the importance of Ocalan east of the Euphrates. The AKP's populist rhetoric raised expectations in the southeast, but through a series of missteps - like PM Erdogan's public statements blaming Kurds on the recent Izmir attack on a DTP convoy - lost the confidence of Kurds in the southeast. DTP's Diyarbakir Provincial Chairman Firat Anli said Kurds view AKP's sincerity in calling for real democratic change with suspicion. DTP's Adana office went a step further, calling AKP two-faced and a party of opportunistic vote-hunters trying to politicize Islam to appeal to conservative Kurdish voters. Anli noted the DTP was disappointed to be sidelined by AKP, dismissed as a legitimate participant in the democratic opening, and not consulted when major statements were issued to the press. Anli said even if the message were bad, meeting with DTP could help soften its interpretation among Kurdish listeners. He observed the PKK had no problems recruiting hundreds of new fighters during the four-month democratic opening. Acting Mayor of Diyarbakir Ali Simsek was angry about AKP tactics in Northern Iraq - courting Barzani now and attempting to fracture Kurdish unity. "America, the KRG and the Turkish state cannot decide the fate of Kurds in Turkey," said Simsek. ERGENEKON AND JUSTICE -------------- ¶6. (C) Cepik criticized AKP for diluting the legitimate and serious Ergenekon case with thousands of pages of baseless accusations and legally dubious detentions. He pointed out neither DTP nor PKK had made any effort to bring cases to light - because of what he alleged was their deep involvement in Ergenekon. Seymus Ulek, former vice president of Mazlumder, an Islamic human rights organization, said the biggest impediment to ending Ergenekon is the judiciary itself, as only "judges brainwashed in state ideology" are appointed. He and Cepik cited a poll conducted at the Ministry of Justice in which judges were asked whether the state or justice had priority. About 75 percent of respondents said defending the state was more important than delivering justice. Ulek said constitutional reform was the vital component of the democratic move, pointing out the DTP argument for taking Ocalan as an interlocutor was immaterial. "You don't need Ocalan to change the constitution," he said. OPPOSITION SABOTAGING PROCESS -------------- ¶7. (C) The Republican People's Party (CHP),viewed as the sentinel of Kemalism and the state, has criticized AKP's democratic opening as a method of boosting terrorism and has refused to meet with any AKP members to discuss the plan. National Action Party (MHP) rhetoric has accused AKP of dividing the country, playing ethnic politics and appeasing separatists. Anli and others said both opposition parties have undermined the Turkish-developed plan by claiming "foreign powers" were involved in the democratic opening. Cepik called the oppositions' antics "absurd" and said they ANKARA 00001749 003 OF 003 should be working for constitutional change instead of playing obstructionist politics. COMMENT -------------- ¶8. (C) At the end of our December 1 meeting with Anli, he warned almost presciently "the next ten days will be critical." The PKK is instigating street violence throughout the southeast, leading to increasing numbers of Kurd vs. Turk confrontations. All our Kurdish interlocutors mentioned with great concern the recent incidents in Izmir (nationalists' attack on a DTP convoy),Canakkale (a dispute at a bus terminal resulted in a mob trying to lynch four Kurdish teenagers),and Balikesir and Bursa (Kurdish-owned stores were stoned and set on fire). The DTP-led rallies and protests will likely continue until the government directly and publicly addresses Ocalan's prison conditions, which have become a rallying point for Kurdish demonstrators (reftel). The closure case against the DTP that began December 8 will be a critical test of the government's commitment to democracy. At the heart of the issue is a chasm of past grievances and three decades of violence that have torn the Turkish and Kurdish communitie s apart and made them completely unable to understand the other's point of view. As one Kurdish contact said, the two communities must construct a "bridge of empathy" between them. Silliman "Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.intelink.s gov.gov/wiki/Portal:Turkey"