Kurdish policy: Massacre highlights difficulties in closing damaging rift

By Pelin Turgut
Published: June 8 2009 17:03 Last updated: June 8 2009 17:03
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On a Sunday evening in early May, as a sandstorm whirled over the village of Bilge in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east, a lively engagement party wound to a close. After a feast of steaming meat and rice, trays of sugary baklava and Turkish coffee, the several dozen guests retired to two rooms, men and women, to say a final prayer.
That was when five men, armed with machine guns and hand grenades, stormed the house and opened fire, killing 47 people, including six children as well as the bride and groom.
It was the worst civilian attack republican Turkey has ever seen and prompted national soul-searching. Details of the massacre paint a picture of a region where 25 years of fighting between Turkish troops and Kurdish separatists have left a bitter and complicated legacy; one the government hints it may finally be ready to tackle.
Initial reports suggested an “honour killing” – the bride was promised to another man – or a blood feud between two families, but neither explain the scale or style of the attack.
“There has never been anything like this before,” says Mazhar Bagli, a sociologist at Dicle University in the south-east. “To be sure this is a traditional region where relationships are governed by traditional rules, but to kill a group of women and children indiscriminately, while praying – that’s unheard of.”
It subsequently emerged that the men detained for the attack were “village guards”, local Kurds armed by the government to help in the fight against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and their weapons were official issue.
“The reason for the massacre wasn’t a blood feud, honour, ignorance or a land dispute,” the Human Rights Association says in a report. “The only reason was the village guards, armed and paid for by the state, and the system that this has created.”
That system dates back to 1985 – a time when Turkey denied that Kurds existed. As the PKK grew from a ragtag bunch of insurgents into an armed movement, attracting recruits by the thousands, Turkey’s military introduced village guards as a counter-insurgency method. They helped troops navigate local terrain, were often used on the operational front line, kept tabs on possible rebels and frequently took over land abandoned by people who were deemed PKK sympathisers and forced to flee.
In time, they became local overlords and now number around 60,000. “When you arm a group of people in an environment where the rule of law isn’t very well applied to begin with, you destroy any natural balance,” says Mr Bagli.
Human rights groups have long accused the guards of using their power to settle scores and engage in smuggling. “The failure of successive Turkish governments to hold accountable members of the security forces and village guard for abuses has created a climate of impunity,” US-based Human Rights Watch has said.
The debate over the guard system comes at a time when a solution to the larger Kurdish conflict could finally be in sight. Both politicians and the PKK have recently made peace overtures. President Abdullah Gul said that this year offered a “historic opportunity” for resolution, while the normally hawkish opposition leader Deniz Baykal suggested an amnesty for PKK fighters who surrendered their weapons. For its part, the PKK has extended a unilateral ceasefire until July 15 and dropped demands for independence in favour of greater autonomy and cultural rights.
In Ankara, extending Kurdish cultural rights is on the cards. Since January a state-run Kurdish language TV station has been on air, and ministers are debating reinstating Kurdish place names and recruiting Kurdish-speaking health care workers to posts in the region.
The US is also pushing for change. President Barack Obama is keen to smooth Turkey’s relations with the Kurdish regional government in Iraq – which Ankara accuses of supporting the PKK – before hoped-for troop withdrawals by 2010.
The peace process could, however, easily be derailed and its opposers are many – Turkish ultra-nationalism has grown stronger in recent years, the powerful military has thus far ignored PKK ceasefires and courts are pursuing the handful of Kurdish MPs in parliament for alleged separatism.
“It’s a negotiation period,” says commentator Mehmet Ali Birand. “Both sides are trying to calculate how far they can retreat.” Turkey has said it will not negotiate with terrorists.
Even if the conflict ends, the Bilge massacre indicates how complicated building peace will be. Tens of thousands of village guards, for instance, would need to be decommissioned, rehabilitated and alternatively employed in a region that is already desperately poor. They will also have to be protected from retaliatory attacks.
“It’s going to be a tough process, and very fragile,” says Mr Bagli, who suggests the guards could be retained on the state payroll but used in agriculture instead. “It’s not impossible. I’m more hopeful about a solution than I’ve ever been.”