Attempts of the Turkish government to reach out to the Kurds have reached an impasse with the banning of the DTP, says Gareth Jenkins On Friday, Turkey's Constitutional Court voted unanimously to outlaw the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) on the grounds that it had become "a centre of activities aimed at damaging the independence of the state and the indivisible integrity of its territory and nation." In announcing its decision, the court also criticised the DTP for failing to condemn the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been waging a violent 25-year campaign for greater Kurdish political and cultural rights. A total of 37 leading members of the DTP were banned from politics for five years, including two of the party's 21 representatives in parliament. The banned MPs included Ahmet Turk, the current leader of the DTP. The verdict triggered violent street protests across the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. The 19 former DTP MPs, who are now officially classed as "independents", have announced that they will withdraw from all parliamentary activity. Sources close to the DTP leadership have indicated that the 19 MPs are considering resigning from parliament in order to force by-elections. However, under Turkish law, resignations from parliament have to be approved by the majority of the assembly and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has already made it clear that it will block any attempted resignations. The DTP is the fifth pro-Kurdish political party to be banned in Turkey in the last 16 years. Since the application for the DTP's closure was first filed in November 2007, the general expectation both inside and outside the party has always been that the party would eventually be banned. In May 2008, DTP supporters founded the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) as a potential successor to the DTP if and when it was closed down. "The Turkish Treasury seizes the assets of an outlawed political party," explained a leading member of the DTP. "So we have been renting or borrowing everything, including our offices, vehicles and even our office furniture, to make sure that there is as little as possible that can be confiscated." Nevertheless, there were some in the DTP who had hoped that this time a Kurdish political party would be allowed to remain legal. In July 2008, when the Constitutional Court issued a verdict in a closure case against the AKP, accused of trying to undermine the principle of secularism enshrined in the Turkish constitution, it found the party guilty but allowed it to remain above board, fining it $20 million. In June 2009, the AKP launched what it initially called its "Kurdish Opening", a process of consultation which the AKP promised would eventually lead to the lifting of some of the restrictions on Kurdish cultural and language rights and put an end to the PKK insurgency. The process triggered a storm of protest from Turkish ultranationalists, which accused the AKP of bowing to the "terrorist PKK", but it was warmly welcomed by the DTP. However, the DTP then began to try to take credit for the "Kurdish Opening" by portraying it as a response to its own lobbying efforts. The AKP had originally calculated that, even if the "Kurdish Opening" lost it some Turkish ultranationalist votes, it would more than compensate by increasing its electoral support amongst the country's Kurds. But, when the DTP began to use the process to boost its own popularity, the AKP's enthusiasm for the "Kurdish Opening" started to fade. Several DTP supporters have already commented that Hassan Kilic, the head of the Constitutional Court and thus the one who decides when it examines cases and issues verdicts, is regarded as being sympathetic to the AKP. "When they saw that we were increasing our support at their expense, the AKP got Kilic to close us down," claimed one prominent DTP member. There is currently no evidence to support the accusation but such claims have reinforced the feelings amongst many Kurds that the AKP's main motivation in launching the "Kurdish Opening" was not to increase Kurdish rights but merely to steal votes from the DTP. Such sentiments have been reinforced by the AKP's warning that it will block by-elections in the 21 constituencies previously held by the DTP for fear that a new Kurdish party, such as the BDP, will win them all with a resounding majority. Significantly, despite their vociferous protests when their own party was threatened with closure, leading members of the AKP have been slow to condemn the Constitutional Court's banning of the DTP. President Abdullah Gul, who served as AKP foreign minister from 2003 to 2007, even issued a statement calling on the DTP to respect the court's decision and blaming the DTP leaders for not respecting the Turkish constitution. In the days following the court verdict, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan failed to issue a statement at all. PKK supporters have been quick to seize on such inconsistencies as justification for the organisation's campaign of violence and proof that Kurdish nationalists will never be allowed to struggle for their rights by peaceful means. There is widespread concern that the weeks and months ahead will see an upsurge in violence as Kurdish nationalists seek to vent their frustrations by taking to the streets in protest. Most worrying is that, unlike when the four other pro-Kurdish parties were closed, the social context in which street protests take place has changed dramatically. In recent years, the easing of some of the restrictions on Kurdish rights and Kurds' increasing confidence in expressing their own identity have fuelled a rise not just in Turkish nationalism but in a confrontational anti- Kurdish racism. On Sunday, there were clashes between ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds on the streets of central Istanbul. Although nobody was killed and the rival groups were eventually separated by the police, there is now a genuine fear that the fighting could be a harbinger of much worse clashes to come.
