Producing nationalism from the Kurds

It can easily be said that the point we have reached in Turkey's ten-year democratization process is an original revolution that could serve as a model for political scientists or historians. A revolution is of course not an event that carries a country from one world to another overnight, but it is quite clear that in 2002 Turkey was in a world entirely different from today's. It is also clear that the new world has many problems of its own that need to be solved, problems either inherited from the past or produced by this new world itself. Yet no one can ignore the change experienced in these ten years. No analysis that ignores this change can have any validity.

The part of Turkey's democratic transformation that concerns the Kurds in particular has received its share of the same revolutionary transformation. In the report titled Turkey's Democratic Transformation by the Foundation for Strategic Thought, Hüseyin Yayman evaluated what has been done in the ten years in the field of democratic transformation concerning the Kurds, taking as a baseline and comparing it with the 23-point demands voiced by the HEP deputies in 1992.

Truly, although it presents an interesting picture for a comparison, there is no need to take those points as a baseline for the identification and resolution of the Kurdish issue. For the picture of the Kurdish issue drawn by the HEP deputies contains, beyond expressing the Kurds' demands for rights, a "nationalist" demand for the Kurds, as the text abundantly shows. The HEP deputies, who accept the Kurds as a "nation" and voice these demands in the name of this "nation", or the politicians who would later continue under other names, are not content with improving the Kurds' rights, continuing their lives in this country as equal citizens, and improving their conditions. Beyond that, they demand to create a national consciousness and existence out of the Kurds and to exercise authority and will in the name of that nation.

The demands that Yayman says were met in the AK Parti period among the demands of these deputies in fact comprise improvements that accept the Kurds as equal citizens and also recognize their cultural rights stemming from being Kurds.

Sedat Yurtdaş, the esteemed politician among the deputies who signed those demands, for his part says in his article in the daily Radikal, looking at this comparison of Yayman's, "unfortunately, we are quite far from the change from HEP." Truly, I too agree with Yurtdaş, but I agree because I do not share the essence of those HEP demands for change in the first place. For the sum of those demands, or at least the part that has not been met, already expresses demands aimed almost entirely at "constructing the Kurds as a separate nation."

As for the AK Parti, when it is expected to keep its distance even from Turkish nationalism, how can it be expected to give such a bonus to Kurdish nationalism? On the contrary, it knows that a bonus given to Kurdish nationalism at this level would bring the Kurds the greatest oppression, the greatest assimilation and the greatest evil.

By not granting a people national status, one does that people good rather than harm. Moreover, the "sociology of granting national status" to the Kurds means inflicting on the Kurds an elitist group that will exercise tutelage over them and is utterly alien to them. Just as Turkish, Arab or other nationalisms have worked by inflicting similar elitist groups on the respective peoples.

When we say this, some people can get up and ask: so, do you not accept the Kurds as a nation? Evidently there is a serious ignorance about how the national identity or phenomenon emerged historically. Let us pass over that ignorance; evidently, the true worth of the practices carried out in the name of the nation since the moment the national actor emerged is also not sufficiently seen. Evidently, the obvious connection between the notion of the nation and the oppression that led to the denial and assimilation of the Kurds as a language, culture and people is being ignored.

Yet if one compares even a little of the literature on nationalism, the obvious truth that will be seen is that it is not nations that give rise to states, but the opposite is true. That is, it is states that give rise to nations, and have always done so. States, for their part, are subject to a somewhat more complicated process of formation.

The Turkish identity of the Republic of Turkey, and the "nation" constructed as its basis, were also shaped after this state was founded. Even when Turkish was chosen as the mother tongue of that nation, its existing form was not liked, and a new language was fabricated with the invention and promotion of all kinds of words, a new history was written, a new ethnography was written, new racial components were constructed biologically. The nation-building process is like that. Some people tell you that you are a nation, whip you up, and appoint the state-organization apparatuses they themselves have built as guardians over the masses they have whipped up. With this tutelage they govern you for a lifetime.

Being aware of this and not wanting the Kurdish nation to go through a similar process is the most important and most beneficial warning of the Islamic solution concerning the Kurds. In doing so, we never neglect to say that the story concerning the Turkish or Arab nations rests on the same superstition. To the Kurds too, instead of a nationalist identity, we offer a solution in which the Turks and Arabs also shed their nationalist identities but everyone can maintain their cultural existence side by side with dignity.

Solving the Kurdish issue does not mean doing what the BDP members or Kurdish nationalists want; frankly, their demands would give rise to far more problems. They would lead the Kurds to complete catastrophe. That is why what the AK Parti offers or promises to offer the Kurds is not, and cannot be, exactly meeting what the HEP members demanded in the past or exactly meeting what the PKK/BDP demand today. Neither the AK Parti's diagnoses regarding the Kurdish issue nor its solutions can be reconciled with those of these Kurdish nationalists. The AK Parti's diagnoses and proposals regarding the problem are entirely its own.

The PKK and BDP, on the other hand, try to present all the steps taken by the AK Parti as the success and gain of their own struggle. With this they deceive the Kurds whom they are trying to turn into a "nation", yet it has no basis. Let us explain in the next article why it is not so.