Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Turkey by Spyridon Plakoudas

Author:Spyridon Plakoudas
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Stalemate and Reset (2014–2015)

In August 2014, the people of Turkey would elect for the very first time a president by popular vote; in the past, the president was appointed by the parliament. Erdoğan, the obvious candidate for this senior office, essayed to “appease” the Kurds on the run-up to the elections by accommodating some of their demands. In March 2014, the government introduced legal reforms that set free several KCK cadres.52 In July 2014, the parliament voted a new law that invested the government with the authority (and legal protection) to negotiate with the Kurds.53 Apart from the release of their fellow comrades, the HDP and KCK had repeatedly insisted on the imperative of a legal framework. After all, in May 2012, the judiciary (dominated by the Hizmet) had accused Hakan Fidan, head of MIT and main negotiator with Öcalan since 2007, of treason for his involvement in the ill-fated Oslo Peace Process.54

Therefore, Erdoğan expected the HDP to demonstrate roughly the same passivity as during the Gezi Park Protests a year earlier. Much to the disappointment of the strongman of Turkey, Demirtaş challenged Erdoğan with his own candidature. Although Erdoğan won by a landslide (with 51.79% of the total votes) and became the 12th president of Turkey, Demirtaş gained 9.76% of the national vote (just below the psychological threshold for a party’s entry in parliament) and 11 provinces in south-eastern and eastern Turkey.55 These elections testified to one stark reality once again—the division of the country into three distinct sections: a Kurdish one in south-east and east Turkey, a Kemalist one in west and south Turkey and an Islamist one in Anatolia’s heartland.

The opposition of the HDP to Erdoğan terminated the honeymoon between the two sides. Although Davotoğlu (now prime minister) mentioned the peace dialogue in his programmatic statements as head of a new government in September 2014,56 the solution process was in fact tottering. The developments across the border in Syria only worsened the impasse. In the same month, ISIS set siege to the capital of the second PYD canton, Kobani , and by early October, stood on the verge of victory. Incited by the KCK, Turkey’s Kurds protested violently against the apathy of Ankara in the face of the humanitarian crisis just a stone’s throw from the border crossing of Mürşit Pinar.57 The violent riots spiralled out of control as the KCK-affiliated Kurdish youth violently clashed with the police and Hüda-Par—the political wing of Turkish Hezbollah.58 This bloody turmoil ended after an appeal by Öcalan—who accordingly affirmed once again his authority over the KCK and the Kurds.59

These riots, in addition, testified to the PKK’s increasing power in south-east Turkey. The KCK had established a “shadow state” in south-eastern and eastern Turkey (e.g. “people’s self-defence forces”, etc.) which directly challenged the power of the Turkish state authorities. The top military leadership voiced a few times its serious concerns about this issue; however, the army, debilitated critically after the fake trials, could only express its worries and Erdoğan refused to crack down on these parallel structures lest the precarious peace process should collapse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.