
December 15, 2009 19:50
Signature story
Worldfocus
USA
Turkey’s longstanding conflict between ethnic Kurdish minority and the Turkish government flared this weekend after demonstrations erupted when the high court outlawed the main Kurdish political party. The Kurds see themselves as an oppressed minority, while the Turkish government sees them as dangerous separatists.
Correspondent Gizem Yarbil and producer Bryan Myers recently traveled to the Kurdish enclave of Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey for a closer look at the allegations that the Turkish government had engaged in a so-called “dirty war” against the Kurds.
Photos and interview of Abdulkadir Aygan is courtesy of Hakan Akçura of the blog Open Flux.
Ruling threatens reconciliation between Turks and Kurds
Gizem Yarbil
Gizem Yarbil is a producer at Worldfocus and recently reported, along with Bryan Myers, the Worldfocus signature video Turkey’s Kurds Seek Justice for Unsolved Murders. Gizem grew up in Turkey and writes of her experiences covering the story of Kurdish grievances, which remain a polarizing political issue in Turkey.
It was a blistering morning in early June and we were driving in the southeast of Turkey. Worldfocus producer Bryan Myers and I were traveling to Diyarbakir for a story about the Kurds and the latest developments in their often tragic plight. We had already shot and produced two stories around Turkey, but this one was especially important for me. Surrounded by golden fields that were illuminated by the scorching southeast sun, I was traveling to a region, which, up until a few years ago, was a no-go area in my country.
The southeast of Turkey is a predominantly Kurdish region, which has witnessed a three-decade long armed ethnic conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish separatists. The separatists have been fighting for the region’s independence from Turkey since the early 1980s, although now they claim they would accept basic cultural and political rights. According to many sources, the conflict has claimed more than 30,000 lives, most of them Kurds.
I didn’t know what to expect from the trip in Diyarbakir, the main city in the Turkish southeast and the capital of Kurdish political and cultural life. I had heard stories about journalists who had had their tapes confiscated and erased, and been subject to aggressive behavior from the Turkish police. The local journalist who accompanied us said that the situation was slightly improved from the time when the conflict was at its most intense a decade ago, but he also warned that filming police, military personnel and official buildings was out of the question.
When I was growing up, everything I heard from Diyarbakir involved death and tragedy. Turkish media has covered the conflict extensively through the years, but generally only from the Turkish military’s point of view. Visuals of crying mothers of dead soldiers, coffins and military funerals on the evening news often accompanied our family dinners. But I don’t remember ever seeing a crying Kurdish mother or anything about the other side of the story on the news. For many of us, Kurds were the enemy, the “Other” that existed to destroy the Turkish people and the nation.
But, later in life, as I dug deeper into the subject (and especially during our trip to the region) everything was very different from what I’d been told growing up in Turkey.
The story we’ve produced in Diyarbakir is about two men, whose family members went missing in the 90s, during the height of the conflict. They long suspected that their loved ones have been kidnapped and murdered by a secret paramilitary group that is directly connected to the State security forces.
A former member of the paramilitary group, who now lives in Sweden, came out a few years ago and confessed to taking part in some of these kidnappings and murders. Now, he is leading state authorities to find the sites that may hold the remains of some people who went missing in the 90s. So far several sites have been excavated and hundreds of bones have been dug up and sent for DNA testing.
These developments would have been a quixotic dream for many Kurds only ten years ago. But now things are changing. Several government and military officials have been arrested and put on trial in connection with human rights violations in the region among other crimes.
These positive developments certainly had an impact on the people of the region. Before we left, we went to eat at a beautiful restaurant with a view of an ancient bridge just outside of Diyarbakir. As we were admiring the view, our driver pointed to the landscape spreading out before us and whispered into my ear. “A lot of bodies used to be dumped around here,” he said. When I asked him how Diyarbakir was nowadays, and how people were feeling, the waiter serving our table immediately jumped in, “Everything is great in Diyarbakir. Everything is perfect!” he exclaimed.
To my eyes, there was a more peaceful atmosphere, and people seemed to feel more hopeful and more secure. There was more investment in the area, especially in tourism. I even heard Hilton was planning to build a hotel very soon.
But that was several months ago. Recent developments have stirred up the region once again, reminding us of the turbulent days of the 1990s. After a top Turkish court banned the main Kurdish political party from parliament, violent clashes between frustrated Kurds and the Turkish police erupted across the southeast including in Diyarbakir.
This move by the judiciary will undoubtedly stall the reform process the leading political party initiated. Without more concrete steps to make peace with the Kurdish minority, tranquility will continue to elude the region.
Gerçekler bilinsin yeter / It is enough that the truth comes out
(Üç ayrı kimliğiyle Abdülkadir Aygan’ın ya da Türkiye’nin karanlık 22 yılının portresi)
Hakan Akçura / 210.35 dakika
Stockholm, Haziran 2008
Abdulkadir Aygan was one of the PKK (Workers Party of Kurdistan) guerrillas, between 1977 and 1985 in Turkey. He was a kontr-guerilla working in Turkish Armies special gladio team called JITEM between 1991 and 1999 too. This recording include all his confessions from this 22 years. Aygan is now a refugee in Sweden and living with his family under the Swedish Secret Police security. Hakan Akcura found and conviced him for this long interview and talked with Aygans three identities when he was sitting on three different chairs with three different clothes, facing three different angles.
Author Archives: omosis
Hakan Akçura: "Her şey geriye her an sarabilir."
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Ben neredeyse sadece göründüklerimim zaten. Şunlar da eklenebilir, siz oralardan göremediğiniz için: Baba, eş, kültür emekçisi, politik aktivist, liberter sosyalist, göçmen, işsiz, egeli, melez, oğul, kardeş, arkadaş, yoldaş.
Sizin Stockholm’e yerleştikten sonra oradaki sistemle ve yabancılarla ilgili çok ciddi ve ses getiren bir çalışmanız oldu. Bize bu çalışmanızdan söz edebilir misiniz?
Birden çok çalışmam oldu göçmen politikasıyla ilintili. Üçü burada anılmaya sanırım değer:
Hurriyet Daily News: "Democracy is a fixed menu" (Cengiz Aktar)
“Inscription for Confronting Turkish Racism”
My 617 cm. long visual artworks clickable preview image which is being formed with 33120 words from turkish racist readers published supportive comments on turkish news portals in only 4 days after the racist attack against to kurdish Democratic People Parties (DTP) convoy in Izmir.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Hürriyet Daily News
The amenable have been saying for years that a solution to the Kurdish question is Turkey’s number-one democratic issue.
It is not that other problems are secondary or unimportant, but the Kurdish question has spread around the country and spoiled the human, political, economic and social chemistry of Turkey by all means.
We have a historic opportunity, an incredible worksite ahead of us. The solution process is a litmus test for the entire country. This is a process turning all mindsets upside down and involving all people and institutions. An extremely sensitive, fragile yet hopeful process, this has the potential to carry the country into durable stability and a democratic atmosphere.
Those who see every single democratization move by Turkey as an attempt to ruin the Turkish nation-building process should see that the process is taking a completely different turn now. This is not, however, as they believe, a division or separatism, but a quest for a social contract to be shaped around a new Constitution.
This is what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan means when he utters the words “national unity” when describing initiatives.
Turkey is now at the beginning of substituting an outdated model of unity with a new one. It will not be easy at all, and division may actually occur if this quest for a new model of togetherness does not work. Here is a link to artist Hakan Akçura’s blog on “Inscription for Confronting Turkish Racism,” where you can watch what may happen if.
[This link leads to my 617 cm. long visual artworks clickable preview image which is being formed with 33120 words from turkish racist readers published supportive comments on turkish news portals in 4 days after the racist attack against to kurdish Democratic People Parties (DTP) convoy in Izmir. HA]
More freedom for every citizen
The government’s wording of “democratic initiative” and Interior Minister Beşir Atalay’s statement regarding “more freedom for every citizen” are placing the target in the right direction and telling us about the dimensions of the works ahead of us.
What is meant by this is that difficulties that could emerge because of a perception that the initiative is limited to only one group of people should be overcome by future initiatives in all other problematic areas. Therefore, the initiative approach would influence all painful issues and all segments of society. This is, without doubt, an incredible worksite.
Although the Kurdish question is the main reason that has triggered the democratization process, limiting it to the Kurdish case only may affect the future of the Kurdish opening, not alone by causing unease elsewhere. You cannot expect empathy from a civil servant deprived of the right to strike, a non-Muslim who does not have citizenship rights, a student who fails to attend university just because she wears a headscarf, a man who cannot find a restaurant selling alcoholic beverages or an Alevi resisting conversion attempts to become a Sunni. And you cannot duly explain to any of these people the solutions to be found to the Kurdish issue.
Likewise, the government terming the atrocity that took place in Dersim years ago as the Dersim massacre cannot remain reluctant to address the great catastrophe Armenians faced in the past and still face today due to lack of justice.
An initiative that fails to entertain all individual freedoms cannot have a bright future; on the contrary, this could give some trump cards to those who are against all initiatives. In fact, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, has already started to exploit the negative response given by the government to civil servants who demand the right to strike.
On the other hand, Kurdish politicians’ demands for regional freedoms may be misinterpreted in a country such as Turkey that gathers many different ethnicities and groups if devolution is not applied across the board. Not only Kurds, but people of all regions, need good governance and effective administration through decentralization and devolution. Thus the goal should be the removal of all obstacles and prohibitions.
The new mindset will touch upon all taboos not only inside, but also outside of the country. The hand reaching out to Armenia; the decision lifting visas to Syria, Albania and Libya; the claim behind the idea of embracing the entire world cannot consider the Armenian diaspora an eternal enemy, as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu put it. Neither can it have close ties with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
With the initiatives and new openings today, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, unavoidably becomes the main actor in a mission to pave the way for Turkey, as well as the entire region. Groups questioning how a rightist conservative party can make so many changes should know that the politicians who founded the European Union were mainly Christian Democrats, not Social Democrats.
Initiatives are a turning point for Turkish politics, not only for the AKP, a point on which the CHP and the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, will shift to extremes and disappear eventually as the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP, will have to become a political party of the whole country. The DTP should join the democratization process, but only if it manages to defend the rights of all people living in Turkey, not just of Kurds.
A historic opportunity and incredible worksite awaits us ahead.
Cengiz Aktar'ın cevabı: "İlerde kullanmak niyetiyle kestim."
06 Aralık 2009 19:27
Sevgili Hakan Akçura,
Aşağıdaki metni her ne kadar bana hitaben yazmadıysanız da size bir cevap borçluyum. Yazıtla ilgili bölüm sansür değil, Vatan’da böyle bir uygulama yok. Ama tam olarak otosansür de değil. Yazılarımı yer hesabı yapmadan yazarım, ardından yerim ölçüsünde kısaltırım. Bu yazı için de aynı şey oldu ve kendi tasarrufumla yazıtla ilgili bölümü, başka birkaç cümle ile birlikte, ileride türk ırkçılığı ile ilgili kenarda tuttuğum bir yazıda kullanmak niyetiyle kestim. Yazılarımı yolladığım okur/dost grubuna ise her zaman olduğu gibi makalenin tamamını yolladım. Mesele bundan ibarettir. Ayrıca makalelerimin ingilizcesi ertesi gün Hürriyet Daily News gazetesinde yayımlanır. O mecrada yer sıkıntım yok ve yazıtınıza referans yerli yerinde duruyor.
Baki selamlar.
Cengiz Aktar
Cengiz Aktar: Demokrasi fiks mönüdür [sansürlü? otosansürlü? HA]


Cengiz Aktar’ın bu ilginç makalesini önce DurDe! sitesinden okudum. Tanımıyordum. Benim cahilliğim. Kimdir, diye araştırınca Vatan yazarı olduğunu öğrendim. O zaman da bu makalenin gazetede yayınlanıp yayınlanmadığını merak ettim. Buldum, iki gün önce yayınlanmış. Ama tek bir cümle eksiğiyle… Benim yazıtımdan sözettiği cümle… Altta kırmızıyla çizili.
Sorum tek: Neden?
İlk ihtimal, o cümlenin Vatan yönetimince silinmiş olması ve Aktar’ın bu sansüre boyun eğip, yazının eksiksiz halini DurDe’nin sitesinde yayınlaması.
İkincisi, Aktar’ın o cümlenin, “Vatan’da yayınlanmaması gereken ama DurDe sitesinde yayınlanası” olduğunu düiünmesi.
İkisi de kötü ama ilkini yeğlerim. O sansür demek çünkü. İkincisi otosansür.
Hakan Akçura
Ek: Cengiz Aktar’ın cevabı
Makale:
Demokrasi fiks mönüdür
Aklı başında olanlar onyıllardır Kürt meselesinin çözümünün Türkiye’nin önündeki öncelikli demokrasi sorunu olduğunu söyler dururdu. Diğer meselelerin ikincil veya önemsiz olduğundan değil. Kürt meselesinin boyutları bütün ülkeyi kuşatmış olduğundan. Beşerî, siyasî, iktisadî, içtimaî her anlamda ülkenin kimyasını bozduğundan.
Önümüzde tarihî bir fırsat, muazzam bir şantiye var. Açılımlar, ülke çapında bir turnesol kağıdı. Bilinçlerin altını üstüne getiren, hiçbir kişi ve kurumu ilgisiz bırakmayan, bırakmayacak bir süreç bu. Son derece nazik, kırılgan ama bir o kadar da umut vadeden, ülkeyi reşit bir demokrasiye ve kalıcı bir istikrara taşıma potansiyeli olan bir süreç bu.
Her demokratikleşme hamlesini Türk uluslaşma sürecini yolundan çıkaracak girişimler olarak algılayanlar, bu sürecin artık bambaşka bir mecraya girdiğini görmeliler. Ama sandıkları gibi parçalanma demek değil yeni anayasada vücud bulacak bir toplumsal kontrat arayışı bu. Başbakan’ın, açılımları tarif ederken ‘millî beraberlik’ten kastettiği de bu.
Türkiye artık tefessüh etmiş beraberlik modelinin yerine bir başkasını ikame etme sürecinin başında bulunuyor. Hiç kolay olmayacak, ama olmazsa esas o vakit parçalanma gündeme gelebilir. Sanatçı Hakan Akçura’nın Türk Irkçılığı ile Yüzleşme Yazıtı’nı adresinde ibretle inceleyebilirsiniz.
Herkes için daha fazla özgürlük
Hükümetin ‘demokratik açılım’ tanımı ve İçişleri Bakanı’nın ‘her yurttaş için daha fazla özgürlük’ açıklaması hem hedefi doğru koyuyor, hem önümüzdeki şantiyenin boyutlarını söylüyor.
Bundan kasıt açılımın tek bir grup ile sınırlı kaldığı hissinin yaratacağı sıkıntının tüm diğer açılımlarla bertaraf edilmesi ve böylece açılım yaklaşımının tüm kesimlere tesir etmesi. Bunun muazzam bir şantiye olduğu konusunda şüphe yok.
Kürt meselesi genel demokratikleşme sürecinin ana tetikleyicisi olsa da açılımın bu meseleyle sınırlı kalması, sıkıntının ötesinde Kürt açılımının da bekasını etkiler. Grev hakkından yoksun memura, vatandaşlık haklarından men edilmiş gayrimüslime, üniversiteye türbanla giremeyen öğrenciye, içkili lokanta bulamayana, sünnîleştirmeye direnen Alevîye, nükleer ve barajdan bunalmış çevreciye Kürtlerin sorunlarına bulunacak çözümleri anlatamaz, onların empatisini sağlayamazsınız. Keza Dersim’de yaşanan zulme gerektiği gibi Dersim Katliamı diyen hükümet Ermenilerin yaşadığı, adalet zaafından ötürü de yaşamaya devam ettiği Büyük Felâket’e duyarsız kalamaz.
Bireysel özgürlüklerin tümünü kucaklamayan açılımın akıbeti iyi olmaz, açılım karşıtlarına koz verir. Nitekim CHP kamu çalışanının hak talebini ve buna verilen fevrî cevabı sömürmeye başladı bile. Diğer taraftan, Kürt siyasetçilerinin talep ettiği bölgesel hakların sadece Kürt bölgelerine uygulanması Türkiye gibi çok farklı kimliklerin toplandığı bir coğrafyada yanlış anlaşılır. Çünkü sade Kürtlerin oturduğu bölgelerin değil tüm bölgelerin adem-i merkezî yapılara, iyi ve etkin yönetime ihtiyacı var. Amaç tüm engel ve yasakların kalkması olmalı.
Yeni zihniyet, içeride olduğu gibi dışarıda da tüm tabulara değecektir. Ermenistan’a uzanan elin, Suriye, Arnavutluk, Libya’ya vizeyi kaldıran iradenin, dünyalara kucak açan iddianın sahibi, Dışişleri Bakanı’nın dediği gibi Ermeni diyasporasını ilelebed düşman farzedemez, Sudan’da el-Beşirle düşüp kalkamaz, Yunan dünyasıyla yaşanan karşılıklı eziyetleri tek taraflı ele alamaz.
Bugün AKP, başlattığı hamle ve açılımlarla, kendisini ister istemez tüm Türkiye’nin ve belki tüm bölgenin önünü açma misyonunun baş aktörü haline getiriyor. Muhafazakâr ve sağ bir partinin bu kadar değişime nasıl imza atacağını sorgulayanlar AB’yi inşa eden siyasetin de sosyal demokrat değil hıristiyan demokrat olduğunu bilmeli.
Açılımlar AKP’nin olduğu kadar tüm siyasetin dönüm noktası. CHP/MHP’nin siyasî yelpazede uçlara yerleşerek eriyeceği, DTP’nin ise bir Türkiye partisi olmasını dayatan bir dönüm noktası. DTP’nin bu süreçte yerini alması elzem; ama bunun koşulu salt Kürtlerin değil tüm Türkiyelilerin hakkını savunabilmesi.
Önümüzde tarihî bir fırsat, muazzam bir şantiye var.
4 Aralık 2009 – Vatan
DurDe.org