ISTANBUL: As I type there are massive Turkish flags being sold outside on my street and anti-PKK protests (read: pro-war) going on all around the city. Yesterday “24 martyrs [şehit] were killed,” as every single newspaper's headline read this morning. People are chanting about the need for revenge (intikam) and at least 10,000 Turkish soldiers are launching a new offensive into Iraq and against Kurdish societies on both sides of the border. As a regular contributor, one of my goals is to bridge the gap between the rhetoric surrounding the AKP in Egypt and Tunisia and across the Arab world and the rhetoric one hears in Turkey. In Egypt, any criticism of the AKP appears to come mainly from the right, as with Tayyip Erdoğan's statement that Egypt needs to be secular. In Turkey there is vociferous and fierce opposition to the AKP, all from the left. In fact that same statement made news here in Turkey because there are few people from either side of the divide who believe that Tayyip believes the same for Turkey. As Tayyip rips out the nightlife from Taksim and greatly increased taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, defending these cuts by urging people to smoke and drink less anyways and lifts the ban on headscarves at universities secularists see themselves in a war with the regime to prevent Turkey from becoming, as they see it, like Iran. While my own opinion is more measured than the majority of the Turkish left, I believe that the AKP is a party concerned almost exclusively with lining the pockets of the government, and more important with lining their own pockets as a result. But I'm far from convinced that a regime with well-known ties to corruption (ie the “green money” scandal), ties to one of the world's largest missionary networks, and the world's worst record on freedom of the press is a regime that Egypt should emulate. Back to the present war, the country at the moment is in uproar over the loss of these 24 martyrs, and the need for revenge. This again provides a convenient opportunity for the current operation, and for the continued suppression of both Turkish and Iraqi Kurds. Turkey has the largest share of foreign investment in northern Iraq with between $7 – $9 billion in trade, including many companies run by AKP members. Just as the American-led Iraq war, though a horrible burden on the country as a whole, was less than disastrous for individual government members with ties to big international business, the current war on “Kurdistan” is hardly a burden for a government with more ties to big Turkish business than any previous Turkish government in history. The nationalist fervor in the country is also rallied in a way against the PKK in ways that are comparable, in my own experience, to only Israel. Not surprisingly, lost amidst the cries for the 24 dead Turkish soldiers are the countless (International Crisis Group puts the figures between 1200-1300 in the past three years, or 2% of the total population) numbers of Kurdish “rebels” killed, not to mention women and children who are of course “regrettable,” but never “martyrs.” The notion that it is requisite upon Turkey to exact intikam for their actions rather than the other way around is equally problematic. Of course, it only makes it sadder to think that none of the deaths could possibly have been prevented by the dead themselves. Made to stand directly in plain view on a hill directly on the Iraq border, these are 24 youths who were victims of a policy of full conscription. This regime has been launching operations into Iraq since 2008, and I have a difficult time placing the blame for their deaths at any other than the regime that started a war and then plucked kids from their lives to join this fight that can only exacerbate tensions between Kurds and Turks. While the protests around Istanbul continue it's not so difficult to empathize with the anger, though I find it harder to empathize with that anger being directed at either Kurds or the PKK. BM
