Turks and Kurds showed solidarity after the earthquake in Van. But with the violence over the border with Iraq and now the arrests of prominent Kurdish figures, what are the chances of a political resolution to the long Kurdish conflict?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been on a roll for two months now: Turkey’s prime minister visited Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and was received in Washington. He has continued to take on Israel (“the West’s spoiled child”), backed the Arab uprisings, told the Arab League to vote for Palestinian statehood at the UN (“not a choice but an obligation”), delighted the Arab street and confounded Egyptian Islamists by defending secularism. His regional policy is all the more robust for the solid support it enjoys at home.

But behind the panache, there is prudence and pragmatism: Erdogan has reassured the US over Iran with his agreement to host a radar system for Nato’s missile shield; broken with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for failing to heed his advice on reform. Although Turkey may have suspended military ties with Israel, Erdogan hasn’t frozen economic ones. He even took part in the talks over Hamas’s release of reservist Gilad Shalit and welcomed into Turkey 11 Palestinian prisoners, released by Israel but banned from returning to the occupied territories.

At the same time, Erdogan faces domestic challenges that demand equal prudence and pragmatism. In the last few months there has been renewed violence by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with kidnappings, bombings, and shootings of civilians, to which the Turkish authorities have responded with a campaign of mass arrests. Even if this is not, for now, a return to the murderous 1990s, more than 200 people have been killed since June.

This violence follows the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s Democratic Opening in 2005, which eased conditions for Kurds (15-20% of Turkey’s population) and gave them a share in the country’s new prosperity. With the development of the Southeast region came the first lifting of the ban on Kurdish: 24-hour television programmes and electoral campaigning in Kurdish, the encouragement of culture and graduate-level Kurdish language programmes. Torture stopped in prisons, and the government began secret talks with the PKK to find a way to end the conflict, with an amnesty and a relaxation of the conditions under which PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is imprisoned (perhaps just to house arrest).

This progress was marked in October 2009 with the return from Iraq of eight PKK guerrillas and 26 sympathisers. But what should have been a key moment of peace turned into a public relations disaster: as tens of thousands of jubilant Kurds mobbed the returning heroes, who were in traditional combat gear, an unprepared Turkish public watched the televised scenes in consternation.

Erdogan, fearing more unpopularity, allowed the initiative to falter. But talks between the government and PKK continued as was revealed this September when a recording of a meeting held in Oslo between 2009 and 2010 was leaked to the media. The parliamentary speaker, Cemil Cicek, indirectly confirmed the talks: “The Turkish Republic is doing the same as Britain, Spain and other countries that suffered from terror have done in the past with ETA and the IRA” (1). A few days later a senior deputy from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Serafettin Elci, said that a protocol meeting all major Kurdish demands had been approved both by Ocalan and the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT), and submitted to Erdogan for signature (2). Within days of the leak, there were new PKK attacks, including a car bombing in downtown Ankara.

Was Turkey negotiating in good faith? Did a hardline faction within the PKK try to sabotage the negotiations? Or was Syria again using its Kurdish card to counter Turkey’s new hostility to the Assad regime? Whatever the reason, the attacks forced Erdogan to call a halt to the talks. Then, on 19 October, in the most serious co-ordinated attacks since the 1980s, 24 members of the army and police were killed in the province of Hakkari. As Turkish commandos crossed the Iraqi border in pursuit, Erdogan called for calm.

Many in Turkey are not ready for Kurdish autonomy. The sinister military-mafioso alliance known as the “deep state” which Turks accuse of pulling political and economic strings (3) remains in place, and vested interests (arms, drugs) on both sides profit from the conflict. Equally, some in the PKK do not want the normalisation that many Kurds would now like, which would end its power to disrupt the Turkish state and decrease its control over the Kurdish population.

‘Our Kurds want to look west’

Umit Firat, a moderate Kurdish intellectual not linked to any political movement, explained the evolution in Kurdish thinking: “We used to see self-determination as the only solution. But under [prime minister] Turgut Ozal [1983-93] and democratisation, we started thinking, why aren’t we part of a democratising Turkey? With the prospect of joining the EU, it became a real factor. The utopia of a united Kurdistan became less attractive, and less achievable. Indeed, a Turkey in the process of democratisation is a comfort to the neighbours in Iraqi Kurdistan.”

“Now our Kurds want to look west,” he added. “Both for economic benefits and because of the regional conjunction, Kurds here see their future in a democratising Turkey that recognises their rights.” Those rights mean an end to ethnic discrimination, full recognition of Kurdish identity with the right to teach Kurdish at school and a decentralisation that will lead to a form of autonomy. For this, constitutional reform is needed.

“We need a new constitution which is inclusive and speaks of citizens and democracy, and gets rid of all ethnic references to Turkish identity,” said Gulten Kisanak, the BDP co-chairman and ex-deputy for Diyarbakir. “Our identity has been disregarded since the first constitution of 1924; that explains the absence of peace.”

Kisanak, like other Kurds, believes that constitutional reform must be independent of the decommissioning of arms. She says that only with a new constitution can difficult questions like autonomy be discussed. “Everyone must be able to express their opinions despite disagreements. It is not easy to discuss things freely in Turkey; that shouldn’t be the case.” The existing constitution, drafted after the military coup in 1980 and amended many times, badly needs rewriting or, failing that, major amendment.

The AKP’s resounding victory on 12 June puts it in a good position to work towards this reform. The AKP entered its third term with 49.8% of the vote (326 seats out of 550) in the highest voter turnout since 1987 (86.7%). Since the start of multi-party politics in 1946, the AKP is the first party to have won a third consecutive term, and an increasing share of the vote.

But, great though it was, Erdogan’s victory fell short of the “super-majority” some 360 seats which would have allowed him to draft a new constitution without consulting parliament or introduce a presidential system. However, he reassured Turks that his party would “be humble” and seek a broad consensus on constitutional reform. If it will be hard to make common cause with the far-right National Movement Party (MHP, with 13% of the vote and 53 seats), the AKP will need to work with the main opposition, the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP, 25.9% of the vote and 135 seats) (4), and with the BDP (35 seats held as Independents).

However, from June the BDP boycotted parliament as a protest against the detention of six of its elected members; its return to parliament on 1 October was crucial to any hope of constitutional reform. But, despite solidarity after the Van earthquake, that hope seemed more fragile with the escalating violence over the border with Iraq, civil disobedience in the big cities and, at the end of October, a wave of arrests of prominent Kurds, including the respected academic Busra Ersanli.

Closing act in demilitarisation

Turkey’s transition to a civilian-led state was quietly concluded this summer. On 29 July the chief of general staff and heads of the army, air force and navy suddenly resigned. This would once have signalled a major crisis but now was met calmly, almost with indifference. Erdogan swiftly appointed a new, more apolitical chief of staff. The markets didn’t flicker.

The resignations marked the closing act of Turkey’s demilitarisation. There had been a 10-year struggle between the military and the AKP. Attempts to ban the AKP for seeking to impose religious rule backfired; its popularity increased. The military were also weakened by charges of involvement in coup attempts and plots against the AKP, which are being slowly prosecuted as part of the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer conspiracies (5). At the same time a political transformation had already begun: EU accession required a dismantling of the “national security state” through which the military had exerted power, especially during the weak political leadership of the 1990s.

Why did the military leaders resign? The chief of staff, Isik Kosaner, whose term was not due to end until August 2013, said it had become “impossible…to continue to serve” because of the “unjust” detention of his colleagues. His words reflected widespread concern in Turkey that the legitimacy of the Ergenekon trial is being undermined by inadequate evidence, random arrests (including many journalists) and interminable slowness. With almost a third of all generals and many retired officers caught up in the trials, Kosaner wanted to freeze the ranks of some 250 officers pending their trials; the government wanted to retire them.

Turkey’s armed forces are now likely to be restructured as a lighter professional corps to fit the needs of a modernising, civilian-led Turkey. There may be a change in the status of the chief of staff who answers to the prime minister and ranks above government ministers (6). Erdogan signalled the need for change in August at a meeting of the Supreme Military Council (YAS) three days after the resignations. Symbolically, rather than sit next to his chief of staff as in the past, he sat alone of the head of the table.

Military tribunals could be ended and the military budget opened to parliamentary scrutiny. The most crucial reform is to article 35 of the Internal Service Law, which has been the legal pretext for all coups and attempts, giving the military the “duty” to protect the republic from “danger”. There is cross-party backing for its amendment so the armed forces can no longer identify such a danger but only assist the government, if requested.

After a decade in office Erdogan and the AKP are now at the height of their power. They have overseen Turkey’s transition to a civilian-led state, and built a prosperous country with ambitions to become the dominant power in the Middle East. Though not easy, constitutional reform and the recognition of Kurdish rights are for them a crucial next step.