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December 9, 1998 By JONATHAN
POWER Ideally, as the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer has observed, there should be an effort to remove the issue from the courts and legalisms and use the opportunity to open discussions leading towards a broad political settlement of the Kurdish issue. Yet the Germans have almost totally forsaken the credibility they used to have with Turkey. Under chancellor Helmut Kohl, in his last two years of office, Germany led the effort to thwart Turkey's long promised membership of the European Union. Now with its new Socialist/Green government in power, Germany has brazenly refused to request extradition of Mr Ocalan from Italy, even though it is Germany--and no other country in Europe--which has an arrest warrant out on charges of terrorism. Much of liberal opinion in Europe, not least in Italy, is aghast at the idea of Italy sending Ocalan back to Turkey where he will face capital charges whose punishment is execution. Indeed, Italian law, as in the rest of western Europe, will not allow extradition to a country where capital punishment is still on the statute book. Yet while it may be right for the Italian government to seek a promise from the Turkish authorities that the death penalty will not be applied, there should be no question in principle that Italy should refuse an extradiction request. The evidence that Ocalan is a murderer is compelling. This is why liberal opinion is dangerously flawed. What is good for Pinochet is, apparently, not good for Ocalan. Yet whatever one thinks about the justice of the Kurdish cause--which outsiders for too long have tended to evaluate as a simple South African type struggle- -and the injustices of successive Turkish governments towards it, two wrongs do not make a right. Either Europe believes terrorism is wrong in a democracy--and Turkey, however flawed its political and justice system is, is a fairly democratic, reasonably free society--or it does not. What the European Union needs to do, and rather quickly if it is to dampen the quite dangerous passions that have been raised in Turkey by Ocalan's arrest, is to re-define its policy towards the issue of Turkey's future membership. If it has the last few months moved away from Kohl's "nein" it still has a policy that is essentially stick-- unless Turkey reforms its legal system, its prisons, its use of torture, its hostility towards a settlement in Cyprus and settles its Kurdish issue peacefully it will not be considered for entry. This has always been to put the cart before the horse. Turkey has made tremendous strides, economically, socially, judicially and politically since the demise of military rule in 1983. What it needs to know is that there is a promise of entry in 2002 (or more likely 2005) along with the most developed east European countries, as long as its house is in order. The terms are the same, but the presentation changes from stick to carrot. Then the horse knows what it has to do, where it has to go and what kind of load it can carry. The Kurdish problem IS difficult and complex. But it is not a monolithic blank wall, unsurmountable. There are ways to bore through it, especially so if the U.S. more actively than hitherto uses the immense advantage that its long-standing military relationship with Turkey gives it. Most Turkish Kurds are not automatic followers of Ocalan. A majority is as appalled by his murderous and, until fairly recently, uncompromising, methods as any other Turk. Turkish Kurds have not in the past, when given the chance, even overwhelmingly voted for the Kurdish People's Democratic Party, the softer political front of Kurdish nationalism. Particularly in the cities, they prefer to vote for the mainstream parties. Most Turkish Kurds do not want an independent Kurdistan (which anyway would only speak to the needs of Turkish Kurds, not Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian or Armenian ones who have profound, probably unbridgeable, differences with their supposed Turkish "brethren".) What they would like, some militantly, others more passively, is something like what the Welsh have won in recent years in Britain--local language schools and Welsh-orientated television and radio. Even Ocalan has suggested that if there was rapid progress towards such goals, guerrilla war would no longer be such an imperative. The main impediment to progress are the omnipresent, still politically omnipotent, Turkish generals. With excessive zeal, verging on inflexibility, they uphold the values of Ataturk's secular state, the foundation of modern Turkey. The army brings down its firepower on Kurdish nationalism as if it were defending the very heart of the motherland. Yet Kurdish unrest has never been a country-wide, nation-threatening problem. It is highly localised in the south east. And now that Syria has expelled Ocalan from his base in that country (the origins of his recent bouncing around Europe from Russia to Italy that led to his arrest) PKK activity is bound to shrivel. Italy, once it has won assurances that there will be no use of the death penalty, must extradite Ocalan. For the U.S. this is the time to use its leverage. And the European Union must re-engage with Turkey in a positive, even beckoning manner. Cleverly combined, this should lead the Turkish horse to water, and make it drink.
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
 
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