On my last night in Hasankeyf I was invited by two of the few people who had not yet eaten – the cooks from a local restaurant – to join them for dinner. Sharing chicken Tawah and sat next to the ever-friendly barber with whom there’d been the earlier communication breakdown, one of the cooks explained that the inhabitants of the town were largely Arabs, with Kurds being a relative minority. Now I understood why I’d seen the locals greeting each other with As-salaam allaykum as opposed to the traditional mehraba.
Unsurprisingly, the only people in the town who didn’t have an Arab or Kurdish background were the policeman with whom I’d had tea the previous day, the teachers and local government officials. This of course is no coincidence in a region which has had a sometimes bloody relationship with the Turkish state. Paranoid about aspirations for a greater independent Kurdish state, the central government ensures that there is a constant presence in the region loyal to Ankara, and promotes a secular Turkish identity in schools. A consequence of this has been that these officials have been viewed as agents of the state, and as such have been the target of attacks over the years by militants.
Reaching its most bloody point in the 1980s, the region has become calmer since the capture of the PKK’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999. This however has not stopped concerns about the threat posed by a Kurdish identity to the Turkish state, as shaped by Ataturk following the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
In 2003, Turkey refused access to the coalition in using the country as a point through which to invade Iraq, to the annoyance of the United States; a long term ally in NATO (in which Turkey has the second largest armed forces) and source of much military aid over the years. Fearing that it would destabilise the region and, with an emboldened autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq, encourage the idea of Kurdish state, Turkey massed troops on its border.
More recently, in response to what Turkey stated was the northern Iraqi administration’s failure to tackle separatist militants, Turkish troops made incursions into Iraq’s mountainous border regions in early 2008. The skirmishes that ensued during the following two weeks cost the lives of twenty seven Turkish soldiers and according to some sources, one hundred and fifty PKK fighters. The incursion arguably had a negligible impact on the guerrilla network past temporary disruption, yet the actions likely served to underline an ulterior message. Having taken a slightly more tolerant approach towards the Kurdish identity, these actions went some way in assuaging the Army’s suspicions that the mildly Islamist Turkish government weren’t willing to tackle the ongoing problem of separatist militancy.
This issue serves to illustrate the tightrope that the present government finds itself treading. On the one hand, it must show Turkey to be more accepting of its ethnic diversity if it wishes to one day join the EU. On the other hand, it must balance this with the Army’s constitutionally bound duty to defend the Turkish state – a duty which the Army has used to justify its assumption of power in numerous coups over the years.
The cook explained to me that his father was a truck driver transporting oil between Iraq and Turkey – a highly dangerous occupation even now. He’d recently finished his national service and proudly showed me the photos of his time in the army.
One of the quirks of the national service system is the way in which young men are stationed throughout the country. From my experience, those who are from the more troublesome regions ironically quite often enjoy their compulsory service, the length of which varies according to the individual’s level of education. The reason for this is that they are usually moved from the more rural areas and stationed in western Turkey – coincidentally an area presenting more opportunities for recreation. In contrast to this, those from western Turkey often loathe being moved to a comparatively dangerous area, in which entertainment is thin on the ground.
