US embassy cable - 03ANKARA4315

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 004315 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/09/2008 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PHUM, TU 
SUBJECT: KURDS ACKNOWLEDGE CONFLICT BETWEEN HUMAN RIGHTS, 
TRADITIONAL KURDISH CULTURE 
 
Classified by Polcouns John Kunstadter; reasons 1.5 b and d. 
 
 
1. (C) Summary: Leftist Kurdish human rights activists see 
some aspects of traditional Kurdish culture as major 
impediments to growth of individual liberty, human rights, 
and modernization.  They note that the majority of Turkey's 
rural Kurds in the southeast continue to follow traditional 
practices miring Kurdish society in violence and perpetuating 
a feudal system inconsistent with economic development.  Our 
contacts accuse the Turkish State of failing to develop the 
southeast, and of deliberately propping up the feudal system 
as part of its campaign against the PKK.  In asserting the 
need for Kurds to reform their own culture, however, they 
fail to account for the central role religion plays in 
Kurdish life.  Our contacts also criticize the GOT for 
failing to help Kurds displaced from the southeast during the 
PKK conflict return to the region, but believe many of the 
displaced would not choose to return even if the GOT provided 
adequate support.  End Summary. 
 
 
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Kurdish Culture Impedes Human Rights 
------------------------------------ 
 
 
2. (SBU) As Turkey pursues human rights reform in the context 
of its efforts to join the EU, international attention 
continues to focus on the need for the State to normalize 
relations with Turkey's Kurds.  To this end, the U.S., EU and 
others press for the lifting of long-standing legal 
restrictions against use of Kurdish (without distinguishing 
between Kurmanci and Zazaca) and ending of official 
harassment of Kurdish political parties and cultural 
organizations.  At the same time, however, certain aspects of 
traditional Kurdish culture constitute some of the greatest 
impediments to the growth of individual liberty and human 
rights in Kurdish society.  In the Kurdish-dominated 
southeast -- as well as in neighborhoods of Istanbul, Ankara 
and other major cities where migrants from the southeast have 
settled -- a significant proportion of Kurds continues to 
follow traditions relating to "honor killings" (the killing 
by immediate family members of women suspected of being 
unchaste), blood feuds, and the role of women in society.  In 
rural areas of the southeast, the majority of Kurds still 
lives under a tribal/feudal system whereby thousands of 
laborers serve a single landowner (aga). 
 
 
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Kurds Decry "Deep-Rooted" Violence 
---------------------------------- 
 
 
3. (U) Though reluctant at first, a number of leftist Kurds 
active in the human rights field have been remarkably open 
with us on these highly sensitive topics.  "Violence is 
deeply rooted in Kurdish culture," said Sedat Aslantas, an 
attorney, originally from Diyarbakir.  Aslantas recalls 
carrying a gun at age 11, and said one of his uncles killed 
his wife because he suspected her of cheating on him.  Yusuf 
Alatas, an attorney and Human Rights Association vice 
chairman, also cited violence, particularly against women and 
children, as a problem plaguing Turkey's Kurds.  Alatas, 
originally from Malatya, said discussion of internal problems 
among Kurds was taboo during the height of the PKK conflict 
in the mid-1990s.  But he believes these issues must be 
addressed now.  "Kurds want democratization and EU 
membership, but how will we democratize ourselves?" he 
pondered. 
 
 
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Feudal Structure Locks Southeast in "Vicious Circle" 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
 
 
4. (U) Our contacts agree the problems start with what they 
call a "primitive" Kurdish feudal/tribal system incompatible 
with modernization of any kind.  Suavi Aydin, Hacettepe 
University professor of anthropology and expert on Anatolian 
minorities, said this feudal system prevents capital from 
flowing to the economically depressed southeast.  Aydin 
described a vicious circle whereby: a lack of capital mires 
Kurds in primitive agricultural farming; which obviates the 
need for skilled workers; which discourages Kurds from 
seeking education/training; which, in turn, mires Kurds in an 
enterprise that cannot attract capital.  Aydin, who is not a 
Kurd, estimated about 70 percent of Kurds living in rural 
areas of the southeast live under such a system, while those 
living in urban areas have left these traditions behind. 
Like our Kurdish contacts, he believes breaking this circle 
is the key not only to modernizing the economy of the 
southeast, but also to liberalizing Kurdish society. 
 
 
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State Blamed for Exacerbating Problems 
-------------------------------------- 
 
 
5. (C) While acknowledging that these are essentially 
internal, Kurdish problems, our contacts also blame the 
Turkish State for deliberate polices aimed at blocking 
Kurdish progress.  Yavuz Onen, Human Rights Foundation 
president, said the State continues to view the southeast as 
a region to be controlled, not developed.  Though the state 
of emergency in the region was lifted in November 2002, the 
notorious Village Guard -- a 65,000-strong civil defense 
force established to maintain order in the southeast -- 
continues, noted Onen, a Kurd originally from Midyat, Mardin 
Province.  Hasim Hasimi, a Kurd and former mayor of Cizre in 
Sirnak Province and subsequently an M.P. -- and scion of an 
influential family of Naksibendi tarikats shaykhs -- recalled 
that when he was growing up in Cizre there was only one 
school in the region, and there was no transportation 
available for children outside the immediate area.  Onen said 
the State should develop a program of special projects aimed 
a modernizing the region's agricultural sector.  (Note: EU 
membership criteria call on the Turkish authorities to 
"develop a comprehensive approach to reduce regional 
disparities, and in particular to improve the situation in 
the southeast."  End Note).  Aydin said the State propped up 
the feudal system in the southeast in the 1990s as part of a 
strategy to counter the influence of the PKK, by hiring 
feudal leaders as Village Guards for example, and as a result 
revived what had been a dying tradition. 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
Displaced Kurds: How Many Would Choose to Return? 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
 
6. (C) One of the most controversial aspects of the Kurdish 
problem is the question of the right of return for Kurds who 
were forcibly displaced by the State or chose to flee between 
1984 and 1999 as a consequence of the war against the PKK. 
Estimates on the number of IDPs range from 1-3 million. 
Turkish authorities have been widely criticized for a 
secretive return program, dating from before the current 
 
SIPDIS 
government, that international donors have rejected as 
inadequate.  But it is not clear what proportion of the 
displaced population wants to return to the region, or 
whether the region's frail economy could sustain a large 
influx.  Baskin Oran, an Ankara University international 
relations professor who has studied the Kurdish issue, said 
most exiles from the southeast, especially the young, have 
adapted to urban life and would not choose to return even if 
the GOT paved the way.  Alatas disagreed, but still 
acknowledged that as many as half the IDPs would not return. 
Rather than focusing on returns, Oran argued, the State 
should develop programs for creating jobs for Kurds in 
western Turkey, as the southeast no longer holds any hope for 
them.  "Of course, as a human being I want them to be able to 
return," said Oran, who is not a Kurd.  "But to return to the 
southeast is to return to peasantry."  Unfortunately, Oran 
said, the State has different motives for not wanting Kurds 
to return.  Like all our contacts, he believes the State, 
fearful of Kurdish nationalism, wants Kurds to disperse into 
other regions and assimilate. 
 
 
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Kurds Need to Change Mentality 
------------------------------ 
 
 
7. (U) If human rights reform and EU membership change the 
Turkish authorities' approach to the Kurdish question, can 
Kurds reform their own culture?  "The Kurdish mentality will 
have to change.  That might be harder than getting into the 
EU," lamented Aslantas.  Alatas said Kurds must engage 
urgently in an internal dialogue, challenging themselves to 
change.  "Kurds need to change their family relationships and 
interpersonal relationships.  Otherwise we might as well 
close down the Human Rights Association and all move back to 
the southeast," he said.  Onen is confident Kurds will 
change, if the State lifts restrictions on Kurdish culture 
and supports economic development in the southeast.  If 
Turkey's Islamist politicians can adapt their ways, he 
reasoned, so can the Kurds.  "The Kurds are not a retrograde 
people," he said. "They are progressive in general, though 
Islamic ideology is very strong." 
 
 
8. (C) While agreeing that Kurds must adapt, Hasimi and other 
right-of-center Kurdish interlocutors disagree that Kurds' 
strong attachment to Islam inhibits their ability to function 
well in the contemporary world.  At the same time, Hasimi 
attributes the Kurds' ability to survive centuries of Ottoman 
and then Republican Turkish pressure to their attachment to 
traditions our left-of-center contacts call "primitive". 
 
 
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Comment 
------- 
 
 
9. (C) International attention to the Kurdish problem 
focuses, with good reason, on the discriminatory treatment of 
Kurds by the Turkish State.  However, even as we call on the 
Turkish authorities to remove restrictions against Kurdish 
culture, we must remember that elements of that culture are 
incompatible with human rights and social development. 
Kurdish feudal/tarikat/tribal traditions have long been a key 
factor in the Kurds' ability to preserve their distinctive 
identity in the face of the Turkification program first begun 
by Ataturk.  Nevertheless, the Kurds, as our interlocutors 
readily agree, need to change.  Part of the problem lies in 
the prism through which many westerners and western NGOs 
continue to address the problem.  While most such 
organizations are on the left of the political spectrum, and 
thus evince little direct sympathy for "feudalism," their 
representatives have too often have either romanticized the 
Kurds or adopted a qausi-anthropological approach that 
confuses "Kurdishness" with the current state of affairs in 
the region.  Preserving and fostering cultural development is 
a human right and worthy goal; preserving feudalism is not. 
 
 
10. (C) Turkish and international human rights NGOs also 
oversimplify the IDP/returns issue.  It is true that the GOT 
does not have a legitimate returns program, and that 
displaced Kurds should have the right to return if they so 
choose.  But NGO reports give the impression that the 
southeast can be made whole simply by helping the displaced 
return to their homes.  The truth is that the southeast that 
existed before the PKK conflict cannot, and should not, be 
restored.  More than returns, the region needs social reform 
and economic development. 
 
 
11. (C) A final note: our left-of-center Kurdish contacts 
display too ready an instinct to look to the Turkish State, 
rather than private capital -- domestic or foreign -- as the 
engine of economic development. 
PEARSON