Gulan: Turkey one week after the elections

The text in Kurdish.

Gülcihan Simsek, Ahmet Türk and Aysel Tugluk in Wan, December 2006. Photo: Kristiina Koivunen

The hot issue of last week was of course Turkey's elections. The Islamic AK Party got almost half of the votes and more than twenty Kurdish DTP politicians entered the parliament.

Last week I wrote about Kurdish internet pages. There is an active virtual Kurdish community discussing daily politics. Internet is like an answer to the needs of the nation which is spread all around the world. But the available technology is just one step in creating Kurdish community in internet. More important is the national awakening process among the people. If the Kurds would not want to communicate with each others even the best technology could not help.

Times are changing in Turkey. Just compare the present situation to the one of last decade. First example: During 1983-1998 Turkish troops went 36 times to South Kurdistan. And now? Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken about a political solution to the Kurdish question. Before the elections his tone became a little bit hawkish but immediately after them the tension on the boarder decreased.

And the second example: the group of Kurdish parliamentarians was crushed down in Turkey in the early 1990s. Mehmet Sincar was murdered 1993 and many other Kurdish politicians were put to prison for ten years. Now it happens the opposite. The new MP Sebahat Tuncel came out from Gebze prison two days after she was elected to the parliament. Mehmet Sincar's widow Jihan Sincar is now the mayor of Kiziltepe and in parliament sits Mrs Pervin Buldan whose husband Savas Buldan disappeared last decade. Internet community follows everything what the Kurdish politicians say and discuss what they should do next.

Kurds have been controlled for decades by the principle of "divide and rule". When there are more and more contacts between the Kurds they notice how they benefit of co-operation with each others. Internet is one method for this, satellite televisions is another, and third is travelling and meetings, also among the Diaspora Kurds.

European people do not understand much about the change process what is now going on both in Kurdistan and in Turkey. Finnish newspapers see it as a paradox that Mr Erdogan speaks for Islamic values and is in Turkey the biggest supporter of EU membership. They think that Erdogan's target is to make Turkey an Islamist state. People here do not understand that Erdogan's main vision is to change Turkish system from the military rule to a democracy. It is a shame that Europeans are afraid of an Islamic country becoming a member in European Union but they have nothing against a country controlled by the army.

What will happen next in Turkey? During this spring and summer it has become clear that Turkey's army is not voluntarily giving up its power. But also Erdogan has strong will. Times are changing not only for the Kurds, but also for the Turkish army. Before AK Party no other political party has been strong enough to stand against the military. The army has to accept that Turks are tired on it and want to return to the pre-Kemalist time when the state and religion were not separated from each others. Now it is time to separate the state and army.