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Interview with Mehmet Ali Birand by Kamal Chomani:
‘If Turkey can’t solve the Kurdish problem, she will always be a limping giant’, declared Mehmet Ali Birand, top Turkish journalist, writer and political analyst, in a special interview with Livin Magazine focusing on Turkey’s upcoming General Elections and the Kurdish question. This is an edited translation.
What are your expectations for the 12 June elections?
The general expectation is that the AKP, Erdoğan’s party, will win. However, there are four questions under discussion:
1. How many million votes and what percentage will he get?
2. Will he get more or less than the 45% he got last time?
3. Will the Social Democrats (CHP) get more than 25%?
4. Will the Nationalist party (MHP) exceed the 10% threshold to enter parliament?
In broad terms, Turkish public opinion will choose Erdoğan for another four years.
How do you see the political situation shaping up post-election if Erdoğan wins but with fewer votes than expected?
Erdoğan is not going to lose his majority. He is going to have a majority. He will survive. He will form the government. If he has a strong majority, the problem will be that he can change the constitution however he likes and he might opt for a presidential system.
After the elections, the government’s main problem will be the Kurdish problem as it will have to satisfy the Kurds with changes to the constitution. The more relaxed is the government, the greater the chance that we can develop a better understanding of each other. However, if Erdoğan gets 50% of the votes, he will make whatever changes he likes to the constitution and then the stability of the country could be jeopardised. But, if the government wants to resolve the Kurdish problem, the constitution must change.
Erdoğan has said that he will change the constitution of Turkey after the elections. At the same time, Öcalan from Imrali has said it would be a disaster if the Kurdish issue is not solved. Do you think the status of the Kurds in Turkey will change? In Iraqi Kurdistan there’s a general belief that the BDP, Turkey’s only legal Kurdish political party, could get more seats. What is your view?
Don’t mind what they say now. These are election speeches. Do not believe anything Öcalan or Erdoğan say. This is the election period. Let’s wait until after the elections. The first thing should be to solve the Kurdish problem. Everyone knows that nothing is going to work otherwise and the problem will remain for hundreds of years. What needs to be done is to handle the issue in such a way that terrorism stops. If the Kurdish issue could be channeled into the parliament, the PKK would be challenged. Now the Kurds are going to enter parliament and ask for and fight for their rights. But they do it via blackmail. Both parties play a chess game.
Do you think the elections can be transparent while Kurdish politicians and activists are still detained?
…The situation with the PKK and KCK is something new. Erdoğan is acting mainly against the PKK because he doesn’t want to be seen as a ‘softy’ before the elections. Let’s wait (and see what happens) after the elections.
There is a view that leftist parties, such as the CHP, are making progress. Do you think the leftist parties can get a big vote?
I don’t think they will be able to win this time. But they are getting stronger and in the next elections – in 2016 – they might have a much bigger chance. Especially if Erdoğan ascends to the presidency, their chance of winning will increase.
So you say Erdoğan will win the elections and not the AKP?
Erdoğan will win the elections, not the AKP.
Why do you think so?
Well, his leadership is always very strong and, in our system, the leader decides everything. We vote for the leader, not the deputies. It is a kind of presidential system without calling it one. Like in your country: people vote for Barzani, not for his deputies. The leaders are the symbols.
I want you to talk about the changes that the elections will bring, especially the constitutional changes that Erdoğan has promised. What changes in the constitution would you suggest with regard to the Kurdish issue?
If we want to satisfy the Kurds, we must be much more flexible on the Kurdish language, let them run their own affairs and change the status of local government. This is not a federation and nobody wants independence. But we have to let them have their own say where they live as the majority. Besides, the biggest Kurdish town in Turkey is Istanbul, so the issue is far more complicated than it seems.
If the Kurds get more seats in parliament, might this mean the PKK will lose its popularity in Turkey?
Without PKK backing, the Kurdish party can do nothing. The PKK and the Kurdish party are the same thing. They (the party) are the political voice of the PKK and they listen to it. They also represent millions of people and so we must listen to them and take them seriously. We have to reach them if we don’t want the PKK to take over.
You have mentioned a very important point: you said that, without PKK backing, no Kurdish political party in Turkey can get enough votes to enter parliament. Why won’t the Turkish state accept this fact and solve the Kurdish problem with the PKK? Why does Turkey still want to brand the Kurdish question as a ‘terrorist PKK issue’?
You never solve a problem with a terrorist organisation. If you are a serious state, you close your eyes and you talk with the representatives of the Kurdish legal party. You do not talk with Qandil Mountains and Karaylan, you talk with the leader of the Kurdish legal party. The problem emanates from the fact that we do not know what the Kurds really want in order for them to leave the mountains. We know they want amnesty, and they must have a kind of amnesty. We are aware of the language problem, and that they want to run their own affairs. But that is not the end of it. There are Kurdish voices in Europe, there’s Öcalan and the Qandil Mountains, who are all saying something different. So the Kurds want many things but they can’t decide which ones to bargain on? They have to come up with a common stance … There must be a compromise. Neither from the state side, nor from the PKK side have we seen any compromise. So, after the elections, we expect both sides to come up with something much more flexible. We should not forget – and the PKK knows this – that killing people will get them nowhere. That is an old-fashioned war strategy. Yes, they can make life miserable. Yes, they can kill people. But it only makes a solution even more difficult.
The PKK has not asked for things that are impossible in a country claiming to be a democracy. Do you therefore think that after the elections both the Kurdish issue and the PKK issue will be solved?
If Turkey is not able to solve this problem, she cannot be the star of the region. She will always be a limping giant… The Kurds are right to ask for their rights but sometimes they go too far and ask for more than the moon. They must decide what they can compromise on and then they can let us put pressure on our state.
Mehmet Ali Birand is one of Turkey’s top journalists and TV commentators. He is the author of eight books on Turkish domestic and international policies (on relations with the EU since 1963, the structure of the Turkish army, the 12 September military coup, the Kurdish problem, the 1974 Cyprus intervention and Turkish-Greek relations). His books have been translated into English, German and Greek.
Kamal Chomani is a Kurdish journalist based in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is on the editorial staff of Lvin Magazine and a contributor to other free newspapers in KRG. He can be contacted via:chomani_85@yahoo.com
