The memories haunt Mehmet Sadik Atalmis, a tall, easy-smiling man whose days as a farmer in Turkey’s east have weathered him far beyond his 48 years.
“There, we had our animals, our fields, our houses. Oh, that was a life. Here, we have no life,” said Sadik, who works as a low-paid factory watchman, and lives with his family of six in three tiny rooms in a ramshackle, mostly Kurdish neighborhood far from downtown Istanbul.
A year ago Sadik and the 300 others in his village were told by Turkish army officials that they had to either join the fight against Kurdish guerrillas, or turn in villagers fighting with the guerrillas. If they refused these options, the army said they had a week to pack up and evacuate.
Accepting the second option would have meant turning in his teenage daughter and sister-in-law who joined the rebels some time ago, so Sadik refused. The rest of the village felt likewise, so its residents quickly sold their meager possessions and fled, scattering to the large cities where most of them live in slums, or to farming areas where they live in tents.
The flight of up to 1 million people from Turkey’s eastern area is only one of many humanitarian disasters in the government’s savage 12-year-old war with the PKK or Partia Karkaren Kurdistan.
Nothing today affects Turkey’s future as much as its costly battle with the Kurdish rebels. For Turkey, it is the equivalent of America’s Vietnam War and Mexico’s Zapatista uprising.
It saps a potentially strong economy, forcing the government to spend desperately needed money on full-time military operations. It forces its political leaders to find new answers to a bloody guerrilla war.
It also divides the country, forcing confrontations between the estimated 15 million Kurds–who claim a different ethnic heritage–and the rest of Turkey’s 65 million people. So, far, the battle has been waged between Turkey and its Kurdish rebels. Kurds in Syria, northern Iraq, and Iran have largely kept out of the fight.
What the Kurdish rebels want is unclear. At times they have talked about an independent state; other times, they have advocated giving Kurds the right to speak and study Kurdish in Turkey, and more government financial aid for the economically deprived Kurdish areas in the east.
But there has never been a dialogue between the guerrillas, whose bases are located in Syria and Kurdistan in northern Iraq, and the government. The government has refused to speak with the guerrillas, who hold far more militant leftist views than those held by most Kurds in Turkey.
Determined to stay in power after becoming the first Islamic party ever to rule modern Turkey, the two-month-old Refah or Welfare Party has taken several steps to find its own answer to the Kurdish problem. Part of the reason for this is that it had strong support among Kurdish voters in last December’s elections.
Saying they recognize the corrosive effect of the exile on the Kurdish migrants, and the places where they have flocked, Refah’s leaders vow to begin reversing the tide.
Party officials said they will propose legislation to lift the special military control for the eastern region, and set up a new program to compensate displaced villagers for their destroyed homes and fields.
But a number of Turkish officials, human rights experts and Western diplomats are skeptical that such a massive and costly effort will take place and doubt whether the government can afford it. Many also doubt whether the government has a working plan.
Also questioned is whether the government will be able to restore security, the main reason that residents of nearly 2,700 communities fled the region.
A similar return program was proposed by the government last year, but little was accomplished, according to Algan Hacaloglu, the former state minister for human rights, and a current member of the Turkish Parliament.
The fury over the Kurdish struggle goes so deep that when Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan raised the possibility recently of negotiations through third-parties or ultimately with the PKK, a loud roar went up from the army and political leaders.
Within days, Erbakan backed down.
What makes the quest for a solution all the more frustrating is that as the fighting persists, the emotional wounds and grudges pile up, pulling at the nation’s seams.
The PKK regularly kills government workers and villagers who cooperate with the government. It has also set off bombs in public places, killing and injuring Turks and tourists alike. Meanwhile, the army enforces a brutal regime that forces families to turn on each other. It also arms poorly trained villagers, often putting them in the front lines of the battle against their own kin, according to human rights groups and Western diplomats.
The uprooted Kurds, who normally are politically and religiously conservative, find themselves radicalized and their moderate views muffled by militant leftist Kurdish groups.
It is easy to understand why some of Turkey’s Kurds, as well as those pitted on the other side of the battle, resort to militancy.
By most accounts, at least 19,000 people have died in the last 12 years–the greatest number of victims borne by the guerrillas, followed by residents and then the army.
Many Turks were outraged earlier this summer when a female rebel, whose body was packed with dynamite, disguised herself to appear pregnant and then dashed into a military parade, killing nine soldiers and injuring 30 others.
On the other hand, when Mehmet Sadik Atalkis gathers with other villagers who live in Istanbul, the talk of the one-time farmers is full of rage about being harassed by the army, their despair over their new lives, or it is about villagers who have mysteriously disappeared, allegedly killed by other villagers who serve with the army or the army itself.
“Here, look at this bruise,” said one man, who like the others in the room was afraid to give his name, explaining that he feared the government would punish him for being a PKK sympathizer. “I went back to my village, and soldiers stopped me on the way and beat me.”
“That’s nothing,” grumbled another middle-aged man, his feet crossed on the floor as he sipped tea from a small glass. “Where we used to live any official is king, even the garbage collector. You should see the smack I got in the face from this guy,” he said.
A young villager, who clearly sided with the PKK’s political views, sat shaking his head. “We have bled enough already,” he said angrily, looking around the room. “Enough.”
