Turkey: Domestic Security OutlookPublished on EGF: 25.06.2009 by EGF Editorial Special operations continue in Turkey’s south east Sporadic clashes between the Turkish military and the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) are taking place in Turkey’s south east at present, a region which has been plagued by conflict between the Turkish state and pro-independence Kurdish insurgents for decades. Earlier this week (June 22) two Turkish soldiers were wounded in the explosion of a landmine planted by Kurdish rebels in Hakkari Province, while another soldier was killed (June 20) in clashes with militants in the eastern province of Tunceli, according to the Turkish armed forces (TSK). The soldier’s death occurred as security forces launched an operation after Kurdish militants kidnapped two people three days earlier. Last week (June 14), another Turkish soldier was killed in a clash with PKK militants in Yuksekova town in the south eastern border province of Hakkari, who fled across the border into northern Iraq after the clash. These clashes come after the PKK reportedly announced in early June that it would halt its armed attacks against Turkish targets until July 15. Clashes have continued nonetheless and TSK sources report that dozens of their security forces have been killed in attacks carried out by the organization within this period. Further security operations are currently under way in the region In late May Turkish soldiers killed four Kurdish guerrillas in a clash in the Lice district of Diyarbakir Province, during a military operation which targeted militants believed to be among those responsible for an attack on a military vehicle at the end of April in which nine soldiers were killed. Two of the rebels were women. Kalashnikov assault rifles, ammunition, hand grenades and PKK documents were seized in the aftermath of the clash, according to TSK sources. TSK aircraft had already bombed Kurdish separatist positions in the Zap and the Avashin-Basyan regions of the Kurdish-run semi-autonomous territories of northern Iraq at the start of May, in response to the above mentioned attack which killed nine Turkish soldiers. Those deaths took place as a result of a powerful bomb blast, blamed on the PKK, whilst another soldier was shot dead close to the town of Semdinli, near the Iraqi border. Two further soldiers were injured in Tunceli Province as they tried to defuse a bomb planted by the PKK in Eğriyamaç village. These clashes were amongst some of the most violent in recent months and followed a lull in fighting amid heavy bombing raids by Turkish warplanes on Kurdish separatists’ rear bases in Northern Iraq, prompting some experts to presume an escalation in the long-standing conflict. As hit-and-run attacks by Kurdish separatists across the largely unprotected Turkish border with Iraq have become increasingly evident in recent years, the TSK has obtained parliamentary authorization to strike back at separatist bases in northern Iraq as of October 2007. The parliamentary mandate was extended by Ankara for another year in October 2008. PKK conflict taking on a more complex character Turkey’s war against Kurdish separatists in the country’s south eastern border regions has been ongoing since 1984. At that time the militant PKK organisation took up arms in a struggle aiming to establish a homeland for the Kurds in the mainly Kurdish-populated areas of Turkey’s south east. Up to 40,000 people are deemed to have been killed in the ongoing insurgency since then. Although the mainstream PKK is thought to be comprised of around 2,000 fighters, the remoteness of their hideouts in the Candil Mountains in Northern Iraq and the brazen nature of their attacks against military as well as civilian targets, ensures a lingering threat of ominous proportions for the Turkish authorities. Last summer the PKK was linked to a double attack in Istanbul, killing 17 people and wounding scores more in two explosions in the Gungoren shopping district (July 27) and a further 6 deaths resulted when gunmen attacked the US consulate (July 9). A number of similar deadly attacks have taken place during Many detained in domestic crackdowns The Turkish military and government, for their part, have maintained an uncompromising position towards the militants on the one hand (earlier this month TSK Chief of Staff, General Ilker Basburg, stated that Turkey was determined to eradicate the PKK) and are hardening their stance towards other governments which allow their territories to be used as a sanctuary by “PKK terrorists”, on the other (a reference to Iraq with its largely autonomous Kurdish zones in the north, the US for failing to prevent Kurdish empowerment in that country, and some European countries where PKK members or sympathisers live freely and engage in activities supportive of the PKK). Turkey, the US and a number of other Western countries, however, nevertheless regard the PKK as a terrorist organisation. Turkey is increasingly trying to mobilise international support for its efforts to root out the PKK presence from northern Iraq, arguing that it is a threat not only to Turkey’s security but that “(PKK) terrorism is a threat to the entire region”. Despite its overwhelming might, this is a task in which the TSK has not yet been able to succeed. The Turkish authorities are also cracking down on pro-Kurdish political parties and any other suspected supporters of the PKK inside the country. Earlier this week Turkish security forces arrested 23 people during a wide-scale search operation of houses of members of the pro-Kurd Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Tunceli, South Eastern Turkey. At the end of last month, more than 30 others were detained in simultaneous crack downs on suspected PKK supporters in five provinces across the country, including the cities of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Manasia and Van. Teachers and trade union officials were amongst those detained in the operations, creating a backlash against the government from labour groups. State-sponsored Kurdish militias involved in massacre Like Pakistan’s Taliban infested tribal belt, Turkey’s south east has become a particularly difficult part of the country to govern. This is not simply due to the ongoing conflict with the PKK but also resultant from Ankara’s persistence of employing Kurdish clans loyal to the Turkish state to “protect local villages” (from the PKK) and help maintain order. Although a system of “village guards” protecting villages from armed gangs active in Turkey’s Kurdish regions has its roots in Ottoman times, the present system was founded in the A close link has developed in the region between the state, organized crime and the Kurdish militias loyal to the Turkish state. Such links were notoriously exposed in the Susurluk case: a car accident resulting in several deaths and involving a high-ranking police head, a right-wing extremist mafia gang-member and the conservative parliament delegate and clan boss, Sedat Bucak. At the start of May, 44 people were killed in a horrific massacre carried out by unidentified gunmen, armed with machine guns and hand grenades, in the small village of Bilge, in the south eastern Mardin Province. Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, initially explained away the tragedy as the result of “(local) customs and habits”. It soon emerged, however, that both the assailants and the victims came from different clans of Kurdish village guards and that both the automatic weapons and the hand grenades used in the bloodbath had been provided by the state to the assailants. The assailants were deemed to have been on a government payroll and had the benefit of virtual immunity from prosecution from the Turkish state. Despite their ruthlessness, the Turkish government has not advocated the dissolution of the village guard system due to the fear that forcing thousands of such individuals into “unemployment” would leave them little choice but to concentrate on their armed criminal activities or possibly be recruited by the PKK or other armed groups. Islamic threat to secular elite deemed real A tense relationship does not only exist between the government and the pro and anti-government Kurdish paramilitary groups in Turkey’s south east. It goes all the way to the heart of the Turkish state: its secular foundations; the self-proclaimed guardians of Turkey’s secular system (the constitution and the state), namely the military establishment; and the ruling AKP government, which has its roots founded in political Islam. Turkey’s current Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a protégé of Necmettin Erbakan, 1990s leader of the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party, who served as Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister from June 1996 to June 1997, when he was deposed by pressure from the Turkish military. The Refah Party was subsequently banned in Turkey and the AKP emerged as Refah’s Although the AKP has sought to tone down an Islamic agenda since it has been in government, its rise to political prominence has created shock and anger amongst Turkey’s traditional secular elites. According to a recent study by the Open Society Foundation, Turkey’s traditional Republican elites fear that the slow and silent rise of a new religious elite class in Turkey is undermining their authority and infringing on the values of Turkey’s Kemalist system. It is also leading to a new polarisation in society unseen in Turkey in the past. It should be remembered that mass protest rallies in support of Turkey’s secular-Kemalist system, involving hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens, took place in all the main Turkish cities in spring 2007. Government hardens position on secular elites Although the AKP sees itself as pro-Western (it is credited with the commencement of Turkey’s formal negotiation process to join the European Union in October 2005) and has distanced itself from the traditional line of the Turkish Islamist movement (the so called “national view” doctrine) since taking power, it has likewise strengthened the position of Turkey’s Islamic oriented elites whilst weakening segments of the secular classes. The government has recently hit out at Turkey’s leading media group (the Dogan Group, owned by Aydin Dogan, whose media holdings include the daily newspapers Hurriyet and Milliyet and the television channel CNN-Turk) by accusing it of major tax fraud and issuing fines of up to 332 million Euros against it. Turkey’s tax authorities have stated that the Dogan group delayed payment of tax on a transfer of capital to Germany publishers Axel Springer and the fine comes after repeated tax audits of the group. Criminal charges against Dogen could yet follow. The Dogan group’s media outlets have been amongst those critical of the AKP, fearing that the Islamist-rooted government is trying to undermine the secular basis of Turkish society. Last September, Dogan newspapers reported on a German court’s conviction of three men for siphoning off millions of Euros from Deniz Feneri (The Lighthouse) charity to non-charitable causes, fuelling speculation that the money went at least indirectly to AKP accounts. If such speculations would have been proven, they would have with most certainty provoked a fresh bid to ban the party and send the government into crisis. Behind the scenes, the government has been empowering MUSIAD, Turkey’s Islamist businessmen’s association, which has lobbied the Turkey signing a new standby credit arrangement with the International Monetary Fund, and thereby blocking the ability of Turkeys’ secular capitalists’ ability to reschedule their debt with international creditors. Similarly, the activities of Turkey’s Gulen Movement (a Sunni religious sect inspired by the Turkish Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gulen, who has links to Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood), have become more evident during the period of AKP government, introducing “creeping Islam” into many spheres of Turkish society. Clandestine plot to overthrown Turkish government Under conditions of rising social polarisation between Turkey’s traditional secular and newly-rising Islamic elites, tensions appear to be deepening below the surface. Earlier this month the Turkish press became dominated by allegations of a clandestine plot, allegedly engineered within the Turkish military establishment, which aimed to discredit, destabilise and ultimately overthrow the ruling AKP. The plot was based on a document, “The Plan of Action for Combating Fundamentalism”, which describes carefully set out measures to discredit the AKP through a media campaign, stir up party divisions, foment nationalist opposition to the government and plant weapons and drugs in houses used by associates of Fethullah Gulen to suggest the religious movement is involved in militant activities. The document, which was published in the mainstream Turkish press, was signed off by Naval Forces Senior Colonel, Dursun Cicek, and submitted to a department of the General Staff. Cicek is allegedly a member of Ergenekon, a clandestine, ultra-nationalist organisation, composed of retired generals, top bureaucrats, mafia members, leading members of the Kemalist-Maoist Workers Party, and some journalists. Popularly known as the “deep state,” its aim is to topple the government. The government has taken legal action in response to the allegations, which are seen by many in Turkey as a putsch to stop the AKP and an influential religious movement from “destroying Turkey’s secular order and replacing it by an Islamist state”. Ergenekon is already undergoing separate criminal investigations. There is substantial debate taking place in Turkey at present as to whether the signature on the Action Plan document – signed by Dursun Cicek – is real. Earlier today, it was announced that the Turkish military prosecutor’s office completed its investigation into the Action Plan and decided that the document was not prepared at the General Staff headquarters, and, as far as it is concerned, “there is no such document”. Therefore at the moment, it appears that Cicek and other Corruption not the key obstacle in Turkey’s EU accession talks Turkey’s latest domestic scandal of clandestine plots to bring down the government and further risk of political crisis will do little to improve the country’s chances of joining the European Union (EU). Neither will the difficult security environment in the country’s south east, allegations of illegal funds being channelled into AKP accounts in Dogan Group newspapers, or the government’s heavy-handed response against the press group – which many see as a politically motivated attempt to stifle press freedoms. Turkey’s EU accession negotiations have been faltering in recent months and in May proposals by France and Germany to replace the country’s planned EU accession with a “privileged partnership” were met with stiff Turkish opposition. At the end of last year the European Parliament published a highly critical, annual report reviewing Turkey’s progress towards EU membership, in which it warned that the momentum for undertaking internal reforms which the Turkish government is required to enact in order to draw closer to the Corruption remains an obstacle to furthering Turkey’s EU negotiations process and Brussels “regrets that the Turkish government has not presented any comprehensive anti-corruption strategy”. The European Parliament’s report underlined that Turkey still needs to strengthen parliamentary oversight over public expenditure and likewise underscored the need for new legislation on the Court of Auditors. However, while corruption is an obstacle, it does not appear to be a key obstacle. While cronyism is widely perceived to be part of daily life in Turkey’s high-level government-business affairs, the country rated fairly in last September’s corruption perception index rankings published by Transparency International. Turkey ranked as the 58th most corrupt country on a scale of 180 countries, faring marginally poorer than mainstream EU members Italy (55th) and Greece (57th) and equal to new EU members Lithuania and Poland, who were also ranked 58th. In the European Parliament’s | Security |
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