US embassy cable - 05ANKARA4458

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 004458 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/01/2015 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PINS, PHUM, TU 
SUBJECT: TURKEY'S SOUTHEAST: POLITICAL TRENDS, PKK, KURDISH 
CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 
Classified By: (U) Polcounselor John Kunstadter; reasons: E.O. 12958 1. 
4 (b,d). 
 
1. (U) This is a Consulate Adana cable. 
 
2. (C)  Summary: Southeast Turkey human rights contacts and 
likely post-DEHAP Kurdish political activists paint 
different, but equally discouraging, pictures of the region's 
political trajectory.  Longtime Diyarbakir human rights 
contacts said that they were proud to be able to see the use 
of more Kermanji (the main form of Kurdish) in public life, 
but said that the visuals of the mother tongue debate were 
undermined by a clear AKP government disinterest in any 
further democratic reform.  Meanwhile they said that they saw 
little at work in the region's ever more polarized political 
dynamic which could bring about an end to clashes before 
winter storms arrive.  Initial meetings with newly-elected 
Democratic Society Movement members revealed an entrenched, 
outspoken pro-PKK sympathy with strong familial and cultural 
links to the terrorist group.  End Summary. 
 
3. (C)  AMCON Adana PO met July 26 with Sezgin Tanrikulu and 
members of the Diyarbakir Bar Association.  The group 
displayed a new banner written in Kermanji (the main form of 
Kurdish in Turkey) calling for regional residents to come and 
report cases of past abuse, mystery killings and unexplained 
disappearances.  They explained that the banner and many 
posters like it were being put up with an EU grant which also 
would underwrite a group of ten lawyers and about 20 staff to 
document such cases for systematic investigation.  They said 
that the effort had encountered no resistance from the AKP 
government.  They acknowledged that few could actually read 
the Kermanji text, but that "everyone will know what it says 
and that it is important that the Bar Association, a 
semi-governmental organization, has been allowed to use 
Kermanji like this."  Asked about the closing of most Kurdish 
language schools in the SE region, the bar association 
members said that the schools were financially insolvent and 
most of those who wanted their children or family to study 
could not afford the tuition.  They also said that government 
insistence not to recognize the schools' diplomas as 
educational accomplishments had undermined their value.  "The 
real answer is teaching Kurdish in public schools here, not a 
TRT broadcast or something from these small schools.  Public 
life has to be conducted in Kurdish, in municipalities, 
schools, government offices, police stations and businesses," 
said the bar association vice president. 
 
4. (C)  The bar association members said that the AKP 
government was not interested in further democratic reform, 
such as mother tongue issues, or enforcing most of the 
recently-passed laws.  They said that torture cases had 
diminished significantly and lawyer access was much improved, 
but that procedural changes were not used in practice.  They 
pointed out that police, rather than prosecutors, still 
conduct post-arrest investigations, judges do not listen to 
defense cases, Kurdish cannot be used in electoral periods 
and police insist on attending client-attorney meetings in 
some cases, particularly national security cases.  Worse yet, 
they argued, was new draft "counter-terrorism" criminal law 
that would extend "some of the worst legal practices from the 
emergency law (OHAL) period of southeast Turkey in the 1990's 
to the entire country with almost no systematic checks and 
balances on police and prosecutor authority." 
 
5. (C)  Asked about increasing clashes and regional political 
trends, the bar associations contacts said that there was 
much discouragement in the air.  They repeated the 
disinterest of the government in reform, said DEHAP was 
expected to be banned soon, offered that the membership of 
the new Democratic Society Movement (DTH) was "even more 
radical than DEHAP and supports the PKK closely," and there 
was little which could be done to check the dynamic of force 
and counterforce in the provinces in SE Turkey outside 
Diyarbakir.  They also said that "many people in the country 
are going back to the hills, saying it is their duty to do 
so.  It is very discouraging," Tanrikulu said.  Asked about 
the impact on the community of the killing of former PKK 
official Hikmet Fidan, the bar association members said that 
it had been very unsettling to many in Diyarbakir, they felt 
that the police sensed this and, opportunistically, were 
being slow to investigate the case, sensing how it was 
keeping the community on edge.  All said that it was still 
unclear who may have killed Fidan, but that, were 
investigations to suggest the PKK, DTH and the former DEP 
deputies who started the DSM movement were unlikely to 
denounce the act. 
 
6.  In Adana and Sanliurfa meetings, AMCON Adana PO met with 
five new DTH members to sound out their political agenda. 
Discussions on the margins of the DTH meetings with DEHAP 
figures confirmed PO's impressions that the new group 
members, admittedly just five of what they say are 400 who 
have been elected nationwide, are politically inexperienced, 
very pro-PKK, stridently demanding of mother tongue rights, 
fuzzy about market economics and unclear about their actual 
electoral ambitions.  One new DTH member in Sanliurfa even 
proudly boasted to PO that he would soon travel to northern 
Iraq with a Kurdish intellectual and "visit with friends and 
countrymen in Kandil mountain (the PKK's main base area in n. 
Iraq)."  Meetings with both DTH and DEHAP also made clear 
that they consider the banning of DEHAP inevitable and likely 
in the near future. 
MCELDOWNEY