Communal violence between ethnic Turks and Kurds is on the rise, warns Gareth Jenkins Tens of thousands of Kurds took to the streets in Turkey last week, clashing with police in demonstrations across the country amid rumours that Abdullah Ocalan, the 60-year-old imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), was being ill-treated. The claims were vigorously denied by Turkish Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin, who claimed that they were being spread by PKK militants in order to increase social tensions. "They started this as a rumour and now they are spreading it," said Sahin. "I call upon everyone to show some common sense." Sahin was probably telling the truth. No evidence has emerged to suggest that there has been any recent change in the treatment of Ocalan, who is being held in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara. But the resultant riots were nevertheless an irrefutable demonstration of the PKK continuing ability to mobilise its supporters. The most violent protests occurred in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of the country as police tried to break up demonstrations organised by the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), which is regarded by many of its opponents and supporters as being close to the PKK. Scores of demonstrators were arrested. On Monday, a 20-year-old youth was shot and killed by police in the eastern town of Dogubayazit as the DTP attempted to stage a protest march. The violence also spread to Istanbul, which has long been a magnet for Kurdish migrants seeking to escape the impoverished southeast of the country, where stores were firebombed and over 60 vehicles set alight. On Monday, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan travelled to Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeast Turkey, at the beginning of what is likely to be a long and bitter campaign by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to try to wrest control of the city from the DTP in the local elections of March 2009. In a scene reminiscent of the PKK's first insurgency during the 1990s, Erdogan was greeted with empty streets and shuttered shops as shopkeepers responded to a call from the PKK to close their businesses for the day in protest at Erdogan's visit. Speaking at Diyarbakir's Tigris University, Erdogan described the protests as a sign of the PKK's impending collapse. "The more we have democracy, the more they panic," Erdogan declared. Erdogan's words will have convinced no one. In recent months there have been increasing signs that, if it is moving at all, the democratisation process in Turkey is going backwards. Nor could even the AKP's most diehard supporters claim that there has been any progress on the Kurdish issue. Indeed, once the AKP had secured the opening of official accession negotiations with the EU in October 2005, its few tentative attempts to ease the restrictions on Kurdish political, language and cultural rights simply ground to a halt. "State television now has a programme in Kurdish once a week," said Selahattin Demirtas the chair of the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association. "But they do things like translate Turkish ultranationalist marching songs into Kurdish or show some documentary about the flowers of the region. What language rights do we have? When my son was born, I wanted to call him Robin, which is a Kurdish word. The officials refused to register him. It took me eight months fighting with the judges in the courts in order to be able to name my son. And I am a lawyer by profession. What chance do other people have?" Since the beginning of October, the PKK has killed more than 35 members of the Turkish security forces. The death toll is expected to decline as the winter snows in southeast Turkey block the mountain passes and put an end to the PKK's campaigning season. But, for many Kurds, the organisation's continuing ability to inflict casualties is proof that the Turkish state can never destroy it by armed force. Until recently, unlike in the 1990s, there has only been a patchy response to any PKK calls to shutter shops and close down businesses. It is unclear how many of those who responded to the PKK's call in Diyarbakir last Monday did so out of sympathy or out of fear of reprisals. But, whatever the case, there is no doubt that the extent of the response is a sign of the PKK's strength, not its weakness. The Turkish authorities still appear unaware that even totally destroying the PKK completely would not solve the country's Kurdish problem. "I don't like the PKK," said one shopowner who asked not to be named. "But I am a Kurd. Why can't I have my rights? And why should I love a state which refuses to give them to me?" But, if the shuttered shops in Diyarbakir were a depressing reminder of how little some things have changed, what was most alarming about the unrest was another example of a phenomenon which was almost unheard of during the 1990s -- namely clashes on the streets between rival groups of Kurds and Turks. In early October, Turkish ultranationalist youths rampaged through the western town of Altinova, torching Kurdish-owned shops and homes amid reports that an ethnic Kurd had driven a pickup truck into a gang of Turks, killing two. Last Friday night, in what is becoming a common occurrence, a group of Kurdish migrants who attempted to stage a demonstration in the eastern city of Adana were attacked not by the police but by ultranationalist Turkish youths. Although the situation is far from hopeless, there is now a very real fear that Turkey's failure to address its Kurdish problem will further fuel an already dangerous rise in ethnic tensions between Turks and Kurds. This will only result in the main focus of violence moving down from the mountains and onto the streets.
