Violent clashes between the Turkish security forces and militants from the Kurdish separatist Kongra-Gel are aggravating ultranationalist hysteria in Turkey. Gareth Jenkins reports from Ankara Nearly 40 people were killed in Turkey last week in clashes between the Turkish security forces and members of the separatist Kurdistan People's Congress (Kongra-Gel) in the still troubled, predominantly Kurdish southeast of the country. The deaths look set to further fuel a recent rise in ultranationalist hysteria in Turkey. The clashes have sent books pedalling racism and outlandish conspiracy theories soaring up the best- seller charts, triggered a flurry of fetishistic flag-waving demonstrations and there have even been accounts of far-right lynch mobs taking to the streets of provincial towns to try to hunt down leftists and Kurdish nationalists. From the moment they first step into a schoolroom, Turks are taught that the rest of the world, particularly the West, is conspiring to weaken and divide them; a thesis which is consistently reinforced by the Turkish media and state institutions. As a result, many Turks have always questioned the motives behind the international pressure for Turkey to relax its traditionally intransigent policy towards the divided island of Cyprus and ease its restrictions on the expression of a Kurdish identity. But in recent years they have yielded to foreign pressure in the hope of securing a date from the EU for the opening of official accession negotiations. On 17 December 2004, the EU finally gave Turkey a date of 3 October 2005. In the months that followed, all the resentments and suspicions that had been suppressed in the anxiety to secure have begun to resurface. Nationalist suspicion of the EU has been compounded by frustration at Turkey's inability to influence events in Iraq, where the ongoing insurgency has been accompanied by the consolidation of Kurdish political power in the country. Many Turks believe this will stimulate separatist sentiments amongst Turkish Kurds, particularly Kongra-Gel, which has around 4,000 militants under arms in camps in the mountains along Iraq's border with Turkey. In recent months, Turkish nationalist suspicions have become increasingly irrational. In early March the Turkish Forestry Ministry announced it was changing some Latin names describing fauna and flora in eastern Turkey as "Armenian" or "Kurdish" -- most of them assigned over a hundred years ago when they were freely used even by Ottoman state officials -- on the grounds that they were part of a Western plot to divide the country. Later that month, tens of thousands of Turks marched and hundreds of thousands more hung flags from their apartments and workplaces in response to another alleged conspiracy after Turkish television channels showed an unsuccessful attempt to set fire to a Turkish flag during a 21 March 2005 rally to mark the southwest Asian New Year festival of Newroz; even though the perpetrators -- two boys aged 12 and 14 respectively -- had not even been well- organised enough to douse the flag in petrol first. The Turkish media feasted on a series of increasingly ludicrous conspiracy theories while Hitler's Mein Kampf vied for top place in the Turkish bestseller lists alongside a fictitious thriller called Metal Storm, in which the US bombs Istanbul and tries to occupy Turkey. The ease with which a siege mentality can descend into violence has been clearly demonstrated over the last 10 days as false rumours that Kurdish nationalists were preparing to burn Turkish flags brought ultranationalist lynch mobs out onto the streets in provincial towns across Turkey. Leftists were severely beaten up in the Black Sea city of Trabzon as they handed out leaflets protesting prison conditions. The leftists were then detained by the police for disturbing the peace, while their attackers were allowed to walk away. In such a volatile environment, the upsurge in separatist violence in southeast Turkey has set alarm bells ringing. Ever since the US launched its war against Iraq in 2003, Turkey has been pressing Washington either to move against the Kongra-Gel camps in northern Iraq or allow Turkey to stage its own cross-border operation. Although it has repeatedly promised to take action, the US has done nothing; not least because it is reluctant to antagonise the Iraqi Kurds, who fought alongside the Americans against Saddam Hussein. In the last few weeks, the snows in the mountains of southeast Turkey have begun to melt, allowing both Kongra-Gel militants and the Turkish military greater freedom of movement. Turkish intelligence reports claim that over 1,000 militants have recently entered Turkey from northern Iraq. Most of the casualties in last week's clashes between the Turkish security forces and Kongra-Gel militants came during a three-day military operation in the Besta mountains, which straddle the Turkish provinces of Sirnak and Siirt. Twenty-one Kongra-Gel militants and four members of the security forces were left dead after a single firefight on 14 April. Although Kongra-Gel is nowhere near as strong as it was in the early 1990s when -- then known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- it controlled large swathes of the countryside in southeastern Turkey, it still has the capacity to inflict casualties. Perhaps, more dangerously, any more deaths will further stoke not only xenophobia and anti-Western sentiments, but also ethnic tensions in the towns and cities of western Turkey, nearly all of which have substantial Kurdish minorities. Even if it is not yet a probability, intercommunal violence is at least at risk of becoming a disturbing possibility.
