Crisis in Turkey: Kurd Terrorists and Corrupt Parties
The arrest of the Kurd leader Abdullah Ocalan in Rome has caused a complicated international row involving several European nations, among them NATO partners Turkey, Italy and Germany as well as Russia. Meanwhile in Ankara a political crisis has evidenced the weakness of the Turkish democracy.
Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish Communist Party (PKK) is suspected of having ordered and personally committed terrorist acts in Turkey and Germany. The German government, however, isn't willing to ask its Italian counterparts for the extradiction of the Kurdish leader due to the fear of internal disorders. The Turkish government, on the other hand, won't renounce its struggle for getting hold of their public enemy no.1. After strong reactions in Turkey, Italy wants to get rid of its problematic guest, but extradiction into a country where the death penalty is still applied, is denied by the Italian constitution. The dispute about the presumed terrorist Ocalan is now going to represent, to the European public opinion, one of the most complicated problems on Europe's borders, the drama of the Kurd nation divided between four states.
In Ankara meanwhile the Turkish government of the conservative prime minister Mesut Yilmaz has been defeated in parliament. Shaken by corruption scandals and threatened by the growing strength of the Islamic Fundamentalists Virtue Party, the Turkish democracy risks falling into turmoil once again. The new government of Bulent Ecevit should prepare the country for the next general elections in April, but the Turkish military stands ready to defend its Kemalistic tradition and interests.
Among the many nations without country or state on this planet, the Kurd people are one of the biggest. They live on their mountains in Kurdistan on the territories of four states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. None of these states has recognized their cultural or political autonomy and even their language, an Indo-European idiom spoken by about 25 million people, is not recognized as an official language in any of these states. The Kurdish people have been fighting for their rights or independence for a long time; centuries ago against the Ottoman Empire, which punished them together with the Armenian during WW I, then against the Schah-Empire in Persia and in the last two decades against Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein, against the Ayatollah's regime in Iran and against the precarious democracy in Turkey. Ankara has not been treating the Kurd people much better than the others. The Turkish constitution doesn't even recognize the existence of a Kurd nation and has simply renamed the people in Kurdistan "Mountain Turks".
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