By Berivan Tamsen (EMPA ’22)

Recent video footage in January from a Kurdish TV station shows children in Turkey enthusiastically gathering in anticipation of Kurdish language instruction. This change is a recent cultural concession from the Turkish government to the country’s largest minority, the Kurds, who account for 20% of the population. Easing language restrictions is viewed by the government as a historic step in advancing Kurdish rights.

However, this advancement does not resolve the structural inequalities that have persisted since Turkey’s Kurds were the target of forcible assimilation in the 1920s and 1930s. Lingering remnants of discrimination are most evident in sustained Kurdish political oppression.

Pro-Kurdish political parties have consistently been shut down in Turkey’s political landscape since their emergence in the 1990s. The People’s Labor Party was the first in a line of eight successors to be banned. All of them were charged with some form of “terrorism” as a means to outlaw pro-Kurdish democratic parties. These terrorism indictments derived from false allegations of their formal links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK) in Kurdish. Launched in 1984, the PKK is an armed insurgency movement against Turkish authorities that demands greater cultural and political rights for the Kurdish community.

Most recently, in March 2021, a leading Turkish prosecutor, Bekir Şahin, filed a case to close the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) in Turkish. The third-largest party in Turkey’s parliament and similar to its political predecessors, the HDP has faced charges of official links to the PKK and an alleged intent to separate the Turkish state.

The political repression of Turkey’s Kurdish minority is most notable in its persecution of Kurdish parliamentarians and their supporters. Of the first 18 pro-Kurdish party representatives inducted into Turkey’s parliament in 1991, six were forced into exile, four were imprisoned, and one was murdered. Vedat Aydın was the first martyr, taken from his home by so-called “unknown actors” and whose body was found days later in a heap of garbage. According to the Human Rights Association of Turkey, killings by these “unknown actors” peaked in 1993 at 510 people, including Kurdish political and community leaders, human rights activists, and journalists. 

While the magnitude of politically motivated assassinations against Kurds in Turkey’s history deserves recognition, the imprisonment of Kurdish politicians is an even more current and pressing concern. The incarceration of Kurdish leaders dates back to 1991, when Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish parliament, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking Kurdish in the final sentence of her oath. Her desire to speak in her native language and her call for brotherhood between Turks and Kurds served as evidence to her indictment as an alleged separatist and terrorist. Nearly two decades prior, however, Zana was awarded the European Union’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1995 and nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for her commitment to a democratic resolution to the Kurdish-Turkish conflict.

More recently, Kurdish political indictments have seen an upswing following Turkey’s failed military coup in 2016. More than 110,000 pro-Kurdish HDP members were either detained or suspended, including HDP presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş. And despite calls from the European Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament for his immediate and unconditional release, Demirtaş remains in captivity. Demirtaş is one of 451 politicians under threat of political exclusion in the recent 843-page indictment filed by Turkey’s governing party seeking to close the pro-Kurdish HDP.

It’s also worth noting that non-politicians among Turkey’s Kurdish minority also face the threat of incarceration. Zehra Doğan, a prominent Kurdish artist, received a prison sentence of nearly three years in March 2017 for painting the destruction of the Kurdish community in Nusaybin, a town in southeastern Turkey, following clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish insurgents. In May 2021, pro-Kurdish journalist Berna Kisin was targeted with allegations of supporting terrorism because she covered the assassination of seven members of a Kurdish family, despite the murder’s recognition by many as a racist attack.

At the same time, the imprisonment of journalists is a trademark of Turkish society. According to a 2020 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkey ranks second after China in jailing journalists. 

The PKK “terrorist” movement has been Turkey’s trump card to continue relentless political repression of pro-Kurdish constituencies. But, the PKK and pro-Kurdish parliamentary parties represent two different poles of the Kurdish movement and have never been structurally integrated. These groups do, however, reference the same social reality of the Kurdish people. And they have maintained a harmonious relationship overall, positioning the HDP to mediate peace negotiations with the PKK and the Turkish state. The HDP’s pivotal role is a reality that is needed, but the government is not ready to admit it. 

This is not to say that the conflict between the PKK and Turkish security forces has not resulted in unrest. It is commonly estimated that around 30,000 to 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK insurgency’s rise in 1984.

However, an interesting finding emerged in a 2021 report by the Journal of International Humanitarian Legal, concluding that the conflict between the PKK and Turkish security forces qualifies as a non-international armed conflict. In fact, the report notes that in March 2019, the Brussels Court of Appeal discontinued the prosecution of 39 individuals and two media companies affiliated with the PKK on the grounds that it is not a “terrorist” organization. 

The legitimization of pro-Kurdish parties is essential for a democratic Turkish state and a more inclusive society. However, this desire to expand Turkey’s democracy is not a sentiment unique to its Kurdish population. In fact, the opposition bloc in Turkey’s upcoming, tight election has similarly announced its dedication to a more unified and democratic Turkish state. But such a desirable outcome depends on the pro-Kurdish HDP’s support.

In recent commentary, Savaş Genç, a Turkish YouTube news commentator exiled in Germany, remarked that HDP support is not only essential for the opposition bloc to cross the 50% threshold in 2023, but also critical for greater social cohesion. It will ensure the winning party puts Kurdish rights on Turkey’s political agenda. HDP has already affirmed that an alliance without the Kurds will not be an alliance of Turkey's citizenry. In order to advance Turkey’s democracy, the opposition bloc must commit to recognizing HDP as a legitimate political actor. 

While there have been limited developments, including cultural advances through Kurdish language rights, Turkey’s Kurdish population is still the minority group most discriminated against in the country. This reality is most apparent in Turkey’s political arena, where Kurdish political freedoms still have not been actualized. Pro-Kurdish, democratically elected politicians have their calls for greater minority rights pegged as “terrorism” or “separatism.”

The pathway to democracy in Turkey demands a mindset shift — a reframing of the Kurds where they are not second-class citizens who experience political inequality, but rather equals in the eyes of the Turkish Republic. 

Berivan Tamsen (EMPA ’22) is a first-generation American, whose ethnically Turkish mother and Kurdish father emigrated from Turkey. Berivan is an undeniably Kurdish name that the Turkish government banned until the 1990s. Her father grew up in Hakkari, a city in Turkey’s Kurdish region and one of the heaviest areas of the PKK-Turkey conflict.