US embassy cable - 05ANKARA5393

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 005393 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/15/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PHUM, PINS, TU 
SUBJECT: CONTACTS FORESEE CONTINUED CONFLICT IN SOUTHEAST 
DIYARBAKIR 
 
REF: A. ANKARA 5109 
 
     B. ANKARA 5115 
 
Classified By: (U) A/DCM Tim Betts; reasons: E.O.12958 1.4 (b,d). 
 
1.(U)  This is a Consulate Adana Cable. 
 
2. (C) Summary:  Longtime contacts expressed deep concerns 
about the ongoing ethnic violence and protests in southeast 
Turkey and generally foresee little likelihood of a near-term 
change in the regional dynamic of continuing clashes between 
the new, pro-PKK Democratic Society Movement (DSM) and GOT 
security forces.   Human rights contacts welcome PM Erdogan's 
August "Kurdish Question" comments but saw little prospect of 
any follow-up implementation.  No one in the region, 
including Diyarbakir's governor has any information about how 
the Prime Minister intends to follow through on his speech, 
although many have ideas on what they would like to see from 
the government.  For their part, AK party officials in 
Diyarbakir said they had formed a working group with small 
local NGOs to make suggestions to the Prime Minister's 
office.   DSM officials in Batman and Diyarbakir emphasized 
that any democratization which did not encompass the release 
of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and an amnesty for the PKK 
would not satisfy their new party's membership.  End Summary. 
 
REGIONAL CONTACTS DOWNBEAT 
 
3. (C)  AMCONSUL Adana officers traveled to Diyarbakir and 
Batman September 6-9 to discuss regional developments with 
GoT, municipal and NGO contacts, and recently-selected DSM 
members.  The mood of all but the DSM members was downbeat. 
Longtime consulate contact and prominent veteran human right 
activist Sezgin Tanrikulu, president of the Diyarbakir Bar 
Association and its Human Rights Foundation chapter, said 
that the security situation "scared" him for the "first time 
in fifteen years of living in southeastern Turkey."   Bar 
Association colleagues concurred, adding that they saw the 
DSM, which has announced that it would seek formal party 
status in the next week, as even more radical and pro-PKK 
than the previous Kurdish DEHAP, HADEP and DEP parties. 
They also warned that, should the GOT not crack down on 
illegal DSM rallies and marches, a lynch mob mood could 
overtake the country, much like it had during the Mersin 
flag-burning frenzy.   They also mentioned that many moderate 
Kurds had concluded that the execution-style killing in July 
of Hikmet Fidan, a relatively moderate Kurdish rights 
activist widely believed to have been slain by the PKK, had 
been a warning to them not to pursue democratization at the 
expense of the PKK's primacy in the southeast Kurdish 
political scene.  This view was supported by other contacts, 
including Sahismail Bedirhanoglu, leader of the influential 
Southeast Businessmen's Association, and  Diyarbakir 
municipal official Seyhmus Diken.  Tanrikulu said that this 
trend was compounded by fragmentation of the PKK and the loss 
of what he claimed was DEHAP's moderating influence on the 
region's rural populace, which he described as customarily 
more pro-PKK than urban dwellers.  He said that Diyarbakir's 
police chief had observed to him recently that, since the PKK 
had fragmented into smaller factions, the TNP has no one to 
which to reach out through quiet back channels to defuse 
crisis situations. 
 
EXPECTING MORE DEMOCRATIC STEPS FROM PM ERDOGAN ? 
 
4. (C)  Asked what democratization steps they expected after 
PM Erdogan's speech, Tanrikulu and his colleagues said that 
they expected little, but gave the PM credit for "putting the 
Kurdish question in the public vocabulary."  They said that 
the PM was so vague in its speech that they did not think 
that Erdogan had any follow-up implementation in mind. 
 
5.(C)  On democratization, the Bar Association suggested a 
six-step plan: 1) The removal of all Kurdish language 
obstacles, both in broadcast and in political speech in 
public (asked whether this would extend to all mother tongues 
in Anatolia, they agreed it would); 2) the ability of all 
Turkish citizens to be able to see their children educated in 
their mother tongues; 3) university-level linguistic research 
for non-Turkish languages spoken in Anatolia (mentioning Laz 
and Arabic as examples); 4) revision of the Political Parties 
Act to lower the election threshold below its current 10 
percent mark; 5) a billion dollar or more endowed southeast 
Turkey development fund for village reconstruction, rural 
infrastructure and re-stocking livestock; and 6) an economic 
incentive program to attract capital investment to southeast 
Turkey.   The group emphasized that this democratization 
should be started immediately and unconditionally.  They saw 
dealing with regional security issues as a separate question 
which should not have a bearing on further democratization 
steps. 
 
6. (C)  Asked what the GoT's next steps would be, Diyarbakir 
governor Efkan Ala said that he had no information on the 
subject and was interested in learning himself.  He stated 
that he was open to hearing U.S. suggestions and added that 
the "EU has not been shy about offering suggestions."   He 
said that he had heard positive local reactions to PM 
Erdogan's speech, but that he sensed more was needed to 
convince the region that "change is coming."   Asked about 
recent clashes between security forces and protestors, he 
said that police, answerable to the interior ministry through 
regional governors, such as himself, were "taking one line 
while the Army sees things a different way and is harder on 
these things."  (Comment: While human rights contacts agree 
that police in several SE provinces such as Diyarbakir, are 
being relatively restrained, most regional police are still 
almost as hard line as their Jandarma and Army counterparts. 
End Comment.) 
 
7.(C)  Diyarbakir AK Party officials told AMCONSUL Adana 
officers that they did not have any details on PM Erdogan's 
next steps, but had formed, along with many other Diyarbakir 
NGOs, a working group to develop a plan which would embrace 
"mother tongue freedoms, assembly, religious freedom, 
infrastructure and human development as next steps" in the 
region's democratic development.  They emphasized the need 
for the details of the plan to be developed as widely as 
possible and not be seen as a top-down AK Party-driven 
exercise lacking broader legitimacy.  Diyarbakir NGOs 
reflected cautious enthusiasm about the initiative to us and 
said that it could be both a "way to develop a plan to take 
eventually to Prime Minister Erdogan" and a bulwark to rally 
around as a moderate platform alternative to the "one-sided, 
hard line views of those sympathizing with Imrali and the 
forces in the mountains who are opposing peace."  They noted, 
however, that AK cooperation with broader elements in Kurdish 
society in Diyarbakir is untested and the AK party's staying 
power on the democratization agenda is undemonstrated. 
(Comment:  We concur.  End Comment.) 
 
WHY THE CLASHES NOW ? 
 
8. (C)  Asked why the clashes had increased in the wake of PM 
Erdogan's much-heralded speech on the "Kurdish Question," 
many human rights contacts commented that neither the PKK nor 
many Turkish government and military figures favored Turkey's 
start of the EU accession process because it would "leave 
them outside the process, on the margins where they do not 
want to be."  These groups therefore saw the period between 
now and October 3 as the moment to try to derail the Turkey's 
EU accession process.  While most contacts did not see an end 
to clashes should the Oct. 3 accession process begin as 
scheduled, one contact postulated the clashes' frequency and 
intensity could abate after October 3.  None of the contacts 
alleged a conspiracy between the government and PKK elements, 
but most said that the different groups opposed to Turkey's 
progress on the path toward the EU were driven to 
complementary steps, as well as a cycle of action and 
reaction, by the converging timeline. 
 
WHAT DOES DSM WANT ? 
 
9. (C)   New DSM members in Diyarbakir and Batman told 
AMCONSUL Adana PO that, even with the fullest imaginable 
implementation of a southeast democratization program, like 
the six-step plan outlined above in para.4, "that would only 
meet half of our demands."  Asked what would comprise the 
other half,  several DSM members called for Abdullah Ocalan's 
release, a general amnesty for PKK members and the immediate 
return of former PKK members to political life in Turkey. 
Some mused about bringing Turkish Army members to justice as 
well.  Another DSM member said, "it is unthinkable to imagine 
the problems of the Southeast solved without Ocalan's 
release."  Several DSM interlocutors insisted that the PKK 
was the only "interlocutor who could resolve the problems of 
the southeast." 
 
WILL DSM'S EMERGENCE HELP OR HINDER PROGRESS ? 
 
10. (C)  Diyarbakir human rights contacts told us that they 
saw DSM as "radical" and  "unlikely to bring anything 
constructive to the discussion about reform in the region." 
Bedirhanoglu said that he could not trust any group which 
could not spell out its end goal.  He claimed DSM,s end goal 
is &confederacy, independence, constitutional change in the 
context of the existing republic."   (Note: AMCONSUL Adana 
found this a fuzzy topic with DSM members in recent meetings 
as well, with one member encouraging us to read  Ocalan's 
books on the matter.  End Note.)  Diken said that DSM was an 
umbrella group of more radical former DEHAP/HADEP/DEP 
members, former PKK, recently-released PKK or rural political 
novices.  He said that,  in the short run, DSM was too 
immature, ill-focused ("they only think of what Imrali says," 
he said - a reference to Ocalan's place of incarceration), 
and ill-led to contribute much constructive to the regional 
political directive.  He mused that, in the long run, at 
least their existence might convince "those in the mountains 
that there is some place for them in the Turkish political 
world to some day return." 
11.(C)  Comment:  We share contacts' concern about the 
direction in which Turkey's southeast region seems headed. 
(Note: People in the southeast have been saying this for 
years. End Note.)  It is, at best, unclear as to whether the 
fits and starts of the GOT's EU-linked democratization 
process can produce a dynamic that will fulfill the demands 
in the region.  End Comment. 
 
12. (C) Comment (cont.): Meetings with new DSM players 
revealed a novice grass roots group resolute on pressing the 
pro-PKK agenda seemingly regardless of the clashes and 
violence such a tack would likely bring.  This appears to be 
upping the ante from DEHAP, whose members may have harbored 
some of the same sentiments but did not openly tout them. 
DSM now does not seem focused on electoral outcomes and 
formal politicking.  It is unlikely to attract even as many 
votes as DEHAP in 2006-7 polling absent a surge in first-time 
rural voters.  Moderate Kurdish voters, especially some urban 
groups, are likely to look elsewhere, such as AK, ANAP and 
CHP (as in Tunceli), or a new party.  However, their presence 
on the electoral scene could well fragment the Kurdish vote 
and may increase the alienation from the Turkish mainstream 
of the rural Kurdish vote and urban PKK loyalists beyond the 
reach of hoped-for democratization progress. End Comment. 
 
MCELDOWNEY