Not all Kurds have chosen to pursue their ethnic grievances through radi- cal movements and parties. In the absence of any legal Kurdish parties in Turkey, in the past Kurds have joined existing Turkish parties on the right or left. This section discusses their motivations for joining such parties. The actual views of these parties is discussed in the next section.
Despite the difficulties Kurds have had in expressing nationalist views, they have had a remarkable success in getting themselves elected or repre- sented in mainstream Turkish parties. Over the years, it has been estimated that as many as one-third of the members of any parliament may have been of Kurdish origin. Why have so many sought to become parliamentarians? Two general explanations can be advanced.
The first has to do with the conditions in the southeast: In economically deprived regions, politics offers individual Kurds a means of advancement. In a centralized state such as Turkey, Ankara is the locus of all power and of all decision-making, whether vital or trivial. Hence having a representa- tive in Ankara is of utmost importance. With mainstream parties being the only game in town, access to power could be achieved only through them. Kurdish politicians have not run just for parliamentary seats but also at the local level for positions of municipal councilor or mayor. Some of the prominent tribal families in the east and southeast are expected to run for elected office; this not only validates their preeminent position in their communities but also helps them to perform the crucial intermediary func- tion they have been accustomed to doing for so long. As a result, some of these families in every election will field two or more candidates, often from different parties, in order to spread the risk. Prominent families will also divide the elected offices among them: While one becomes a parlia- mentarian, another gets elected mayor of the town, and a third gets ap- pointed—presumably with the help of the parliamentarian—to run one of the major state-owned installations, such as the district offices of the waterworks or the railroad. Tribal families and aghas have been eagerly sought by all political parties because they can deliver large blocks of votes at election time. This also explains why members of one family will appear on the ballots of more than one party. Irrespective of their position on the Kurdish question, these parliamentarians will seek to bring projects home, to help constituents with their problems, to get them jobs, and so forth.
involvement in politics: For some individual office holders, constituency services and easing the pain of their citizens back home are genuine ways of addressing the problems created by the Kurdish question. Clearly, for others, elected office represents a conduit to a share in the spoils generated by a political system in which patron-client relationships are highly prized. A number of Kurds, especially nationalist ones, have sought to join parties and get elected to protect themselves. They either hope that the party will provide them and their families with some protection from the security officials who may be investigating them, or, if they succeed in getting elected to parliament, that parliamentary immunity will protect them from being charged.38For Kurds who have traditionally maintained ties with
the state and benefitted from state largesse, continued association with mainstream parties offers them protection from the PKK, which they fear.39Similarly, the same motivations also lie at the heart of the frequent
changes in party affiliation.
Some of the MPs of Kurdish origin may elect not to be concerned with Kurdish issues, or to closely align themselves with the central government. Such is the case for the Bucak family or the Cevheris. While for some belonging to the larger Turkish melting pot is perfectly acceptable, for other Kurdish politicians the Kurdish agenda may not always have been the first public goal—even if the Kurdish cause may have been uppermost in their minds. To most Kurdish parliamentarians, it has simply been im- prudent, given existing conditions in Turkey, to openly champion the Kurdish cause—and potentially costly on a personal basis as well.40As re-
gionally elected representatives from Kurdish areas, Kurdish representa- tives, like all politicians, have sought to encourage legislation that economically benefits their regions and their constituents—without any mention of the Kurdish cause per se. Instead, they seek to get their non- Kurdish colleagues to bring up these issues. In general, despite the some- times acrimonious nature of Turkish politics, Kurdish MPs from the region tend to have excellent relations with other members and tend to cooperate among themselves irrespective of party affiliations. This also explains why they have been viewed with suspicion by other parliamentarians and other institutional bodies.41Still, as Hamit Bozarslan points out, ‘‘Kurdish actors
who were traditionally well integrated into the system could not remain indifferent’’ to the radicalization of Kurdish politics and were ‘‘forced to accept the minimum nationalist demands—the end to the state of emer- gency, to stop the destruction of the Kurdish countryside, to respect human rights and to recognize cultural rights.’’42
Which of the mainstream parties to join is a decision that is very much influenced by local conditions, such as historical alliances between individ- ual parties and certain families, internal religious differences and the influ- ence of Sufi religious orders, recruitment drives by parties, and the ability of the parties to deliver benefits or even to ensure success in the elections. Many have been uncomfortable with the violence (and attendant risks of association) that has marked PKK policies for so long, and the political radicalism of Kurdish parties as well. By and large, political ideology has not played much of a role in recent years, as it is not uncommon to see members of parliament switching parties when circumstances make it con- venient to do so. Some of the more radical Kurds were at some point members of left-of-center and even conservative parties. While Ahmet Tu¨rk (a Kurdish MP) could boast membership in both the Justice party (the precursor of the present True Path party) and SHP (the Republican People’s party’s precursor in the 1990s) before becoming one of the lead- ers of DEP, Abdu¨lmelik Firat, the grandson of Shaykh Said, got elected to parliament from Erzurum on the True Path ticket. He subsequently re- signed from the party and became an independent deputy.43
The Republican People’s party (CHP), which until recently was the sole center-left party, has long been detested by Kurds as Atatu¨rk’s creation, and also because of its role during the single-party era, when the state promulgated the key policies that denied the existence of Kurds as a sepa- rate ethnic group. On the other hand, as a left-of-center party, the CHP has also been more active in recent decades on the human rights front and more liberal in viewing Kurdish grievances and opposing state-conducted violence. In its previous incarnation, as the Social Democratic People’s party (SHP), the party at first welcomed many members from the south- east, many of whom were to eventually form the Kurdish-based parties. But SHP/CHP ultimately suffered from its decision to join, as the minor partner, the government coalition with the True Path party. Paradoxically, as the party in charge of the human rights portfolio in the 1991–1995 coalition government, it alienated both Turkish and Kurdish nationalists. By defending Kurdish human rights it incurred the wrath of the security forces and all those who viewed the Kurds as a threat to Turkish unity. By contrast, as far as the Kurds were concerned, the party became associated with Prime Minister C¸ iller’s uncompromising hard-line policies in the southeast. Suffice it to say that despite harboring some of the more liberal members of the parliament on the Kurdish issue, the party succeeded in
alienating the bulk of the Kurdish population in the southeast. This be- came evident in the election debacle of 1995. In recent years, the center- left has been divided between the liberal, but inept, CHP and a nationalist wing led by Bu¨lent Ecevit and his Democratic Left party (DSP), which few Kurds support.
In the case of the center-right political parties, the True Path party (DYP), despite its more uncompromising stand on the Kurdish issue, has regularly managed to elect a number of Kurdish representatives to Parlia- ment. In addition to the deals constructed between party leaders and local aghas,44the DYP is the direct heir of the Democrat party, which in 1950
unseated the long-time oppressors of the Kurds, the RPP. Hence, some of the alliances constructed between certain tribal leaders and these parties have withstood the test of time. Other factors have also helped these cen- ter-right parties: The tendency of CHP to capture the bulk of the Alevi votes has made the conservative Sunni Kurds uncomfortable with the Left. The other center-right party, the Motherland party (ANAP), created by Turgut O¨ zal following the 1980 coup, has attracted and recruited its share of Kurdish politicians. Although responsible for many of the harsher mea- sures initiated in the southeast, O¨ zal eventually earned the admiration of Kurds for his willingness to discuss the issue in public and seek alternative solutions to the military campaign. What is not obvious is whether O¨ zal had long coattails, especially after his death in 1993. Kurds vote or join ANAP for many of the same reasons they join any political parties. As a result, in many of the parties Kurdish nationalists coexist with their Turk- ish counterparts and uncommitted Kurds.
In the final analysis, mainstream parties’ use of Kurdish representatives as ‘‘bulk vote generators’’ has not served Turkish democracy well. It has transformed part of the traditional leadership into a conservative societal force that seeks to prevent the local social order from being disrupted; at the same time, it has failed to articulate the critical needs of the local popu- lation beyond the accepted terms of the state-sponsored discourse. These traditional leaders were willing to limit their requests to safe needs, such as more schools or more services, only partially fulfilling real political and social needs. ‘‘Local traditional voters who gained new importance by de- livering votes to the governments in the multi-party period, became sup- porters of the regime. In this sense, wider representation has come to mean a narrower representation for the Kurdish population.’’45