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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 000447 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/24/2029 
TAGS: PGOV PTER PREL PHUM IZ TU
SUBJECT: IDEOLOGICAL FAULT LINES AMONG KURDS IN SOUTHEAST
 
REF: ANKARA 424 
 
Classified By: Adana Principal Officer Eric Green for reasons 1.4(b,d) 
 
This is a Consulate Adana cable. 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY. The January 2009 launch of Turkey's first government television channel to broadcast in Kurdish, the warming of ties between the GOT and northern Iraq, continued probing of the Ergenekon case, and conferences hosted by intellectuals and media elements to discuss once taboo subjects, represent significant movements forward on the Kurdish issue. Recent conversations with contacts in the Southeast reveal growing ideological fault lines within the Kurdish community created by these political openings. At the heart of the divide are religious identity, the debate over the efficacy of armed struggle to achieve democratic aims, with whom Kurdish loyalties should lie, and what constitutes an appropriate expression of Kurdish identity. The March 29 local election results, viewed as an affirming referendum by both AKP and the PKK, may play an important role in determining the future direction of the debate. END SUMMARY.
 
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RELIGION, THE MAJOR FAULT LINE 
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¶2. (C) On March 7, on the occasion of Prophet Muhammed's birthday, Diyarbakir's 12th-century Ulu Mosque held Turkey's first state-sanctioned Kurdish language sermon. After the event, contacts confirmed media reports that more than 35,000 revelers took to the streets peacefully in a public event organized by Mazlum-Der, an Islamic organization thought to have close ties to Turkish Hizballah and the Gulen movement. Nebahat Akkoc, director of Diyarbakir's most prominent women's rights organization, remarked that this turnout was far larger than the number that had supported Prime Minister Erdogan's February 21 campaign stop in the city )- about 10,000 by press accounts. Born and bred in Diyarbakir, an area known for its staunchly secular Kurdish identity and PKK-sympathizers, Akkoc admitted her shock and disillusionment at this unprecedented display of religious devotion on the part of Diyarbakir Kurds. Diyarbakir Journalist Association President Faruk Balikci echoed her thoughts, pointing to what he and many other Kurds believe is AKP's ongoing assimilation campaign: to silence the Kurdish issue with the muzzle of religion and Islamic brotherhood.
 
¶3. (C) Attorney Sezgin Tanrikulu boiled it down to a simpler paradigm: leftist Kurds versus Islamic Kurds. AKP's continued electoral successes have brought this fault line to the surface in the Kurdish Southeast. The chicken-egg conundrum is clear: does AKP's electoral success provide already devout Kurds with political cover to emerge from the atheist shadow of the PKK? Or are secular Kurds succumbing to an organized effort to spread religion through donations and the strengthening of tarikats (religious brotherhoods)? Tanrikulu observed that the latest Abant Platform conference (Gulen-sponsored, but nominally independent) on the Kurdish issue, held in Erbil on February 15, would have been far more successful had "leftist Kurds" not felt marginalized. The leftists' antipathy, in turn, spurred them to boycott the conference and reject any conclusions as illegitimate. The PKK, anxious to snuff out any voices it does not control, is behind some of this, he said, but so are other Kurds who are fearful of growing Islamist influence. Leftist Kurds often view Islamist Kurds as ethnic sellouts, but also blame AKP and other elements for duping the Kurdish masses with spiritual slogans about Muslim brotherhood and unity.
 
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THE GUN OR THE TONGUE? 
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¶4. (C) Author and intellectual Altan Tan revealed another fault line in the Kurdish community: how violence is viewed as a means of achieving Kurdish objectives. Increasingly, Kurds representing a range of disparate groups -- intellectuals, Islamists, and members of the middle class )- are rejecting bloodshed as a tool in the struggle for Kurdish rights. This poses another challenge for leftists who feel PKK violence against government targets is productive. Tan pointed out some see continued violence as a way of keeping the Kurdish issue on the agenda. This logic is also fed by a deep mistrust of AKP. If the violence ends, AKP can pocket the victory (we disarmed the PKK!) and take no additional steps on Kurdish rights. Tanrikulu dismissed this fear as irrational, underscoring it with the example of DTP leader Ahmet Turk's address to Parliament in Kurdish in recognition of the United Nations' "mother tongue" week. What was more effective in revealing the Turkish state's hypocrisy on the Kurdish issue: Turk's brief remarks that resulted in shutting down the live feed on the Parliament's state-owned TV channel (while TRT-6 continued to broadcast in Kurdish uninterrupted); or the PKK's bloody assault on the Aktutun Jandarma outpost in October 2008 that left 17 soldiers dead and the public outraged?
 
¶5. (C) Kurds who want to retain violence in their quiver of political tools are also boycotting conferences such as the Abant Platform, and the work of TESEV (the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation), which recently published a widely praised and comprehensive "Roadmap for the Solution of the Kurdish Question." In fact, five years ago, it would have been impossible to organize a conference with speakers representing the range of Kurdish and Turkish viewpoints on the Kurdish issue because the government would not have permitted it. Now such conferences are permitted by the government ) but the PKK prevents them from occurring in the Southeast because it wants to protect its monopoly on pro-Kurdish politics.
 
¶6. (C) The suspicion towards AKP is partly self-inflicted, according to President of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, Mehmet Emin Aktar. Aktar stressed that AKP's top-down initiatives )- even those of benefit to the Kurds -- create mistrust and antipathy because they are seen as an ongoing denial of giving Kurds a voice in their own reform process. Marginalizing the very groups who have struggled for three decades as well as denying political legitimacy to the DTP, duly elected Parliamentarians, fuels the fire and keeps violence on the table. Even the very way AKP is leading the thaw in relations with the KRG is boxing out Kurdish stakeholders, Tan said. Tan observed AKP is using only Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucrats and intelligence agents for dialogue with northern Iraq; true political actors are absent. As no parliamentarians, academics, or representatives of the people are involved, this comes off as a secret deal with nefarious motives.
 
¶7. (C) Aktar pointed to the TRT-6 channel launch in particular, a victory Prime Minister Erdogan was eager to publicize in the Southeast, but downplay in Ankara. The all-Kurdish broadcasts are great, he said, and have become a virtual classroom for Kurds all over Turkey as the government-owned channel transmits the most standardized spoken Kurmanji available anywhere ) even trumping the PKK's Roj TV. The problem, he observed, is that introducing the channel without the involvement of DTP or any prominent Kurdish rights activists diluted AKP's achievement and exposed them to the obvious criticism that the gesture was an insincere and impermanent election ploy. Even the content of TRT-6 is viewed with suspicion. Aktar observed increased religious programming, tying the effort to what many Kurds believe is AKP's assimilation campaign.
 
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THE ERGENEKON FAULT LINE 
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¶8. (C) Balikci stressed that Kurdish memories are long and painful, and virtually everyone has experiences with village evacuations, harassment, murdered relatives, missing family members and friends, unjust persecution, or a connection to someone fighting in the mountains. Not surprisingly, he said, Kurds are happy about AKP's push to probe the Ergenekon case deeper. However, dredging up the "deep state's" cruelty, torture and extrajudicial killings also brings to light another unconventional tool Ergenekon perpetrators used to keep the Kurds under control )- wielding religion through religious extremists such as Turkish Hizballah. Decades later, Batman attorneys Sabih Atac and Zekeriya Aydin pointed to AKP's continued use of religion to subvert the Kurdish identity issue. So, while AKP might be dissecting and destroying the Ergenekon gang, whose roots arguably trace back to 1971, the Batman attorneys held the party has also taken notes on earlier techniques to manage the Kurds. Like Akkoc, Atac also pointed to Hizballah's active organization on the occasion of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday as a worrisome development.
 
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WHO SPEAKS FOR THE KURDS: STILL LOOKING FOR AN "ATAKURD" 
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¶9. (C) Much like the divisions over religion, AKP, and the deep state, Kurds are at odds on who should be the "Atakurd" of Turkey's Kurds. Who is the leader of the Kurds? Diyarbakir attorney Tahir Elci said some point to imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, others to Massoud Barzani; some say political leader and human-rights attorney Serafettin Elci and others DTP leader Ahmet Turk. When Kurds see Barzani on Kurdistan TV as he is addressing his political assembly in Kurdish, wearing local garb, Turkish Kurds feel very proud and respectful. But do they want to move to Suleymaniye? "Not a chance," Elci exclaimed. A local businessman in Diyarbakir told us northern Iraqi and Turkish Kurds are like brothers separated at age ten, and reunited at age fifty. Hence, Barzani's sway in the KRG will not spill over the border, he said, but Ocalan's pull is also diminishing. Tan told us the new "Atakurd" would have to be a moderate, Islamist Kurd who has good relations with the left )- and that he's still looking for such a person.
 
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COMMENT 
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¶10. (C) While many contacts billed the March 29 local elections as a referendum on AKP's Kurdish policy, these fault lines suggest the outcome (which is unlikely to give either side a resounding victory in the Southeast) will not bring any more clarity. Is a vote for AKP an embrace of the slogan that "we're all Muslim brothers" or a rejection of PKK violence? Is a vote for DTP an endorsement of continued violence or a plea for more official affirmations of Kurdish identity? Use of Kurdish in Muslim sermons, the Ergenekon investigation, TRT-6, a consideration of opening Kurdish language departments in Istanbul and Ankara, and AKP's warming relations with the KRG, have brought momentum to the Kurdish issue not seen for decades. Instead of uniting Kurds, this progress has exposed deep fractures within the southeast community. Ideally, the AKP-DTP rivalry will evolve into more mature, pluralist politics in which all strains of opinion can compete free from the specter of violence.
 
Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at 
http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Turk ey 
 
Jeffrey