While in Ankara, Aykut and I spent a day try­ing to find the local offices of var­i­ous Iraqi and Kur­dish oppo­si­tion groups includ­ing the KDP and PUK. We were look­ing for var­i­ous offi­cials who might be able to help me when I went to Diyarbakir in the south­east and on to Iraq, but we weren’t hav­ing much luck, and kept dri­ving through twisty neigh­bor­hoods hop­ing the cops weren’t fol­low­ing us.

At one point, the com­edy descended into farce, as we drove into a mil­i­tary res­i­dence area look­ing for the embassies. We found the embassies, but the PUK still eluded us. We drove past the Jor­dan­ian, Syr­ian and Saudi Embassies, but finally stopped out­side the the United Arab Emi­rates while Aykut jumped out of the car and asked a bored-looking secu­rity guard for directions.

“Excuse me, where are the offices for the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan?” Akyut asked while I shrunk into my seat and tried to look invisible.

The guard, a Turk and appar­ently no friend of Iraqi Kurds, looked him up and down, looked me up and down, and then motioned off down the road.

Aykut dropped his bulk into the dri­vers’ seat and smiled at me.

“Don’t do that again,” I said.

He apol­o­gized, but at least the guard’s direc­tions were good. We finally found the rather sad look­ing house that was the office for the PUK. No one was around except for a plain­clothes guy who watched us closely and smoked a cig­a­rette like a fugi­tive. He made me ner­vous, so we left to go meet A. Turan Demir, the deputy chair­man of HADEP, the Kur­dish party in Turkey. The tran­script — from Aykut’s translation — follows:

We’re head­ing to Diyarbakir on Tues­day, and we’re hop­ing to find out what’s been hap­pen­ing there since 1998, how things have changed, how peo­ple are cop­ing with the depressed econ­omy. Are peo­ple get­ting bet­ter or stay­ing the same?
The inte­rior fight­ing has been stopped in Turkey, and we’ve observed peo­ple have par­tially been get­ting bet­ter, all around Turkey but espe­cially in south­east turkey. Because the peo­ple in the region have suf­fered a lot from the fight­ing going on in that area. When the fight­ing was going on for many years, there was mar­tial law and emer­gency rule going on in the area, for 20 – 25 years, either mar­tial law or emer­gency law in the area start­ing from 1980. But the mar­tial law was estab­lished in 1978 even before the mil­i­tary takeover.

Why was it estab­lished in 1978?
Because in 1978, there was fight­ing going on all around Turkey, that was the rea­son why the mil­i­tary takeover hap­pened. The fight­ing all around Turkey at this time was between the left groups and the right­ists. But of course the one which we wit­nessed in the last cou­ple of years was much worse, in the south­east this time. But those days, all Turkey was in fight­ing. That was the rea­son for the mil­i­tary takeover in 1980.

We are opti­mists that the Emer­gency Rule will be fin­ished in two cities and will be fin­ished two months later in the other two cities [Ed. Since this inter­view, emer­gency rule has been lifted in much of south­east Turkey.] We are opti­mists about this. But you see, the habits that have been estab­lished in the area by the local author­i­ties can­not be changed very quickly. They may change the Emer­gency Rule, but prac­ti­cally, we’ll see…

Who are those local admin­is­tra­tors?
They are admin­is­tra­tors and military/police power of the area that are appointed by Ankara. Of course, not [HADEP] may­ors (He laughs). For exam­ple, the gov­er­nor did not even accept the may­ors. There are many exam­ples like this in the south­east. You’ll see it in Diyarbakir. While the local admin­is­tra­tors who wanted to attend the local cer­e­monies on the national days were rejected by the gov­er­nor or the mil­i­tary pow­ers of the area.

So how are the may­ors doing their job?
In dif­fi­cult con­di­tions! But to come back to your ques­tion, when you com­pare it with the old days, there is some opti­mism. It is hard to say that there is a pos­i­tive effect on the eco­nomic and social life of the peo­ple in the area. For exam­ple, in the days when the peo­ple had to live their vil­lages, four mil­lion peo­ple had to leave 3,000 vil­lages. They still can not go back.

Is that because the Army won’t let them?
Yes. The army doesn’t let them. They are accu­mu­lated in the cities in the area, some of them have moved to the cities of the west, Istan­bul, Izmir, Mersin, like those cities.

If the war’s over, why aren’t they being allowed to go back to their vil­lages?
This is the neg­a­tive aspect of the gov­ern­ment. We do not under­stand the rea­sons why the gov­ern­ment doesn’t let the peo­ple back.

What rea­sons have been given?
They don’t give any rea­sons! But some­times, not offi­cially but per­son­ally, when we talk to the local offi­cials, some­times they say we can go back. But they won’t take the first step. In three or five vil­lages, just for pro­pa­ganda, they let peo­ple go back to their vil­lages. Indi­vid­u­ally, when the peo­ple attempt to go back to their vil­lages, they are not let back in, they are pushed back.

Are these vil­lages now aban­doned?
Aban­doned, yes, abandoned.

How many of these vil­lages are there?
Close to 3,000.

Can you show me on the map?
(He points to the east­ern and south­east parts of Ana­to­lia and in around Lake Van, encom­pass­ing vast swaths.) There are many vil­lages like this, we’re talk­ing about all east­ern and mid­dle east­ern parts of the country.

Is that one of the main goals of HADEP, to enable peo­ple to come back to their vil­lages?
Of course. We have been try­ing really hard. We didn’t know how many vil­lages were empty, how many peo­ple left from those places, where did they go, in which con­di­tions they are liv­ing now—

HADEP didn’t know any of this.
We knew it, but we wanted to have it doc­u­mented. There is also an asso­ci­a­tion known as GÃ – Ç-DER [an inter­nal refugee asso­ci­a­tion in Istan­bul], that has been estab­lished to help these peo­ple go back to their vil­lages. This is the sol­i­dar­ity asso­ci­a­tion for those who have been displaced.

There are 50,000 fam­ily appli­ca­tions to HADEP. And also 17,000 fam­i­lies applied to GÃ – Ç-DER. They said, please give our peti­tions to the cen­tral gov­ern­ment in Ankara, please let us go back to our villages.

What’s the time frame on these peti­tions?
They started a year ago, and it lasted about 5 – 6 months, but HADEP has a lot of things to do and couldn’t get too deeply involved. As a result, all of these peo­ple — even though there is no rea­son that all these vil­lages are empty and the fight­ing is fin­ished and the orga­ni­za­tion known as the PKK [Kur­dis­tan Work­ers’ Party] took all their armed forces away from the bor­ders — the rea­son these vil­lages were empty is that these peo­ple were accused of help­ing the PKK. But now there’s no rea­son, since there’s no PKK. At least there’s no armed forces guerilla group.

Turkey is now going through a very big eco­nomic cri­sis, and the rea­son Turkey is going through this cri­sis is this, I think. When the war ended, there was a refugee prob­lem. Of course, the bill of the war is really big. Offi­cial esti­mates are that it’s about $100 bil­lion dol­lars. But you see, all in these areas, the peo­ple who were dis­placed can’t do agri­cul­ture. They are not pro­duc­ing any­thing and they can not do any­thing eco­nom­i­cally. They can’t put any­thing into the econ­omy of the Turkey. Cities are accept­ing these peo­ple and these peo­ple are now liv­ing in the squat­ters’ sec­tions. And they prob­lems of these cities are also grow­ing very fast. Cities like Diyarbakir, Izmir, Istan­bul, Marsin…

What was HADEP’s offi­cial posi­tion regard­ing the PKK?
PKK is out of our orga­ni­za­tion. It’s an ille­gal orga­ni­za­tion, was an ille­gal orga­ni­za­tion. That’s impor­tant. Because there is no PKK exist­ing any­more. They dis­banded. We do not have any organic rela­tion with the PKK. But there is a real­ity and we always say this very clearly, the Kurds who are liv­ing in the east and south­east parts of Turkey, most of them feel close them­selves to the PKK. For exam­ple, more or less, one in three fam­i­lies gave their chil­dren to the guerilla group PKK. And gen­er­ally, they (Kurds) say that since we are sen­si­tive to the demo­c­ra­tic prob­lems of Turkey and espe­cially in the south­east and east, of course they have sym­pa­thy to HADEP as well. This is because all of these orga­ni­za­tions they have a com­mon group of peo­ple and inter­ests. This is the rela­tion. Oth­er­wise, we do not have any organic relation.

[Ed. The term “organic rela­tion” comes up a lot in con­ver­sa­tions, and it’s a result of Aykut’s trans­lat­ing. It’s best thought of as a nat­ural alliance, such as one that might occur between the Green Party and the Sierra Club in America.]

But from the begin­ning of HADEP, we all wanted to stop this fight­ing. And we all spent a lot of effort for that. Even now still we sup­port this idea. From now on Turkey has to fin­ish this fight­ing. There has to be estab­lished con­stant inte­rior peace in Turkey in order to estab­lish this, there has to be a demo­c­ra­tic sit­u­a­tion as well. That’s to say, con­cretely, the gov­ern­ment has to declare an amnesty and PKK has to dis­band all its armed forces that are still kept beyond the bor­ders of Turkey and strug­gle in the legal way.

There are some urgent mea­sures to be taken for the Kur­dish prob­lem in Turkey. Gen­er­ally, all the peo­ple have to expend effort to the solu­tion of the prob­lem. The Copen­hagen Cri­te­ria have to be estab­lished in Turkey.

What is the list of pri­or­i­ties of HADEP?
We want to see a civic life estab­lished under the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights. This demo­c­ra­tic sta­tus that exists in Europe has to be estab­lished in Turkey. The con­sti­tu­tion is a mil­i­tary takeover con­sti­tu­tion and we still use it. This [1980] con­sti­tu­tion has to be demol­ished and writ­ten again. Mostly the NGOs have to give advice for the recon­struc­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion. The con­sti­tu­tion has to be up for debate among all the insti­tu­tions of Turkey.

So you don’t think the recent amend­ments go far enough.
No. [Ed. Turkey recently passed 14 amend­ments that would bring Turk­ish law in line with EU stan­dards, but they fall far short of what Demir is ask­ing for.]

The Kurds make up 20 mil­lion peo­ple in Turkey. This is an eth­nic group with its own his­tory, its own lan­guage. So first of all, they (Turkey) first have to accept the exis­tence of this eth­nic­ity. And as being another eth­nic group, they have to have some basic rights. They must be able to express their iden­ti­ties freely so they can express their feel­ings with their mother tongue in their social life. They must be able to prac­tice their cul­ture freely with­out inter­rup­tion. [Ed. The 1924 Treaty of Lau­sanne, which estab­lished mod­ern Turkey, laid out the rights of eth­nic minori­ties in the new state. Kurds are not listed among them.]

Last year, uni­ver­sity stu­dents applied to their fac­ul­ties to have the right to have edu­ca­tion in their mother tongue. But as a result of this, they were expelled and some of them arrested.

Which schools?
Nearly all uni­ver­si­ties. Every uni­ver­sity! In some uni­ver­si­ties 15, in some uni­ver­si­ties 500 stu­dents were expelled. In their peti­tions, which is their nat­ural right, they didn’t write down that edu­ca­tion has to be done in Kur­dish. They wanted Kur­dish taught as a lan­guage. They didn’t want all edu­ca­tion in Kur­dish. They wanted it as as Eng­lish and French are taught in the high schools as sec­ond lan­guages, they wanted Kur­dish to be taught like this as well.

The other prob­lem here, it is also writ­ten in the con­sti­tu­tion that every­one can give a peti­tion to the gov­ern­ment. If it doesn’t accept the peti­tion, that’s OK. But why are they [the stu­dents] sen­tenced? This shows the qual­ity of this polit­i­cal regime.

The Kur­dish prob­lem can be solved only by giv­ing cul­tural rights to the Kurds but not by split­ting the country.

This kind of intense desire to express your cul­ture, it’s hard to under­stand for Amer­i­cans. Most Amer­i­cans would say why don’t they just blend in, why don’t they just go with the flow? So maybe you can explain and help me under­stand why the intense feel­ings?
The ques­tion is, to the peo­ple of Amer­ica, if some­body for­bids them speak­ing their own lan­guage, tak­ing from them the rights of edu­ca­tion, what would be the response? These are the basic human rights, the val­ues of today’s world. Peo­ple are now talk­ing about Third gen­er­a­tion rights. This is so bad to us, that we have to reject our own iden­tity of a peo­ple. This is the worst thing to us, to reject this identity.

Would HADEP con­sider work­ing with KADEK in a demo­c­ra­tic con­text?
No. This is impor­tant. It seems the PKK has dis­banded itself and it seems KADEK has emerged from the PKK. As far as we know, as a style of orga­ni­za­tion and also the polit­i­cal per­spec­tive, it seems that it’s par­tially dif­fer­ent than the PKK. And as we know, they are not only inter­ested in the Kurds in Turkey, but in Iraq, Iran, Syria, any­where Kurds are liv­ing. This is a dif­fer­ent, new orga­ni­za­tion, but it’s an ille­gal orga­ni­za­tion in Turkey.

Of course, there is no rela­tion estab­lished with these people.

Do you trust them?
It’s quite dif­fi­cult to say any­thing now, as I told you. Our pri­or­ity is that Turkey has to apply demo­c­ra­tic rules and we’re try­ing to estab­lish there are no ille­gal orga­ni­za­tions in Turkey. So we want that every­one has to express them­selves legally in a demo­c­ra­tic sit­u­a­tion. This is our pri­or­ity. This is the solu­tion. Oth­er­wise, these [PKK and KADEK] are very pop­u­lar orga­ni­za­tions. But there are many, many oth­ers minor orga­ni­za­tions. These are not the only ones. Turkey is the grave­yard of polit­i­cal par­ties. In the last 40 years, 40 – 50 polit­i­cal par­ties have been shut down by the Con­sti­tu­tional Court, like HEP, OZDEP and DEP.

HADEP is cur­rently on trial in the Con­sti­tu­tional Court. Very soon, they’re going to make a deci­sion for HADEP, since they opened a case in 1998. We don’t know but it seems all the jus­tice process has been fin­ished and this is the last process now. In our last defense, we demanded the case be dis­missed because the gov­ern­ment had recently changed the law regard­ing polit­i­cal par­ties in Turkey. This last change destroys the rea­son for our party to be closed.

But on July 9, they’re going to debate this demand (for dis­missal.) After they took this demand, it could be a week or 10 days or a month. They don’t have to give a time frame. So this is related to the pow­ers that con­trol pol­i­tics in Turkey.

Does HADEP have a posi­tion on Abdul­lah Ocalan, the head of the PKK who was cap­tured in 1998?
Recently we declared our per­spec­tive, as a party that is pro-democracy. Even though it is applied in your coun­try, we def­i­nitely reject his exe­cu­tion under the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights. In 1994, when we formed this party, we rejected exe­cu­tion. So how can we say this should be applied to Ocalan? This was also declared by the gov­ern­ment before. If Ocalan’s exe­cu­tion is passed by par­lia­ment, it would lead Turkey to chaos. Unof­fi­cially, peo­ple from the gov­ern­ment say this will lead Turkey into war again. When you con­sider the posi­tions of the Kurds, you can imag­ine what would hap­pen in the southeast.

How did you get involved in pol­i­tics? What’s your back­ground?
I was a left­ist (Social­ist) when I was a stu­dent at Izmir Uni­ver­sity study­ing his­tory. I was a teacher after­wards. After that, I worked for left­ist orga­ni­za­tions such as the work­ers unions as a spe­cial­ist and an admin­is­tra­tor. And after­wards, I took part in a polit­i­cal party that was formed in the 1970s, the Turk­ish Social­ist Work­ers’ Party (TSIP.) I worked for the Human Rights Asso­ci­a­tion in Izmir start­ing in 1989 and I was the chair­man of the Izmir branch and also in the admin­is­tra­tion of the whole orga­ni­za­tion in Ankara. So start­ing in the begin­ning, I was in HADEP. I was the local direc­tor in Izmir. In 1998, I was cho­sen as the gen­eral sec­re­tary and I was arrested that year and spent a year in jail.

Why were you arrested?
In 1998, when Ocalan was loose, local chap­ters of HADEP allowed indi­vid­ual Kurds to stage hunger strikes in their offices in cities around Turkey in sup­port of Ocalan. Police came to the head­quar­ters in Ankara and arrested sev­eral peo­ple, includ­ing myself. After four days in cus­tody, I were taken to court and charged with aid­ing the PKK under sec­tion 169 of Turk­ish law [which deals with aid­ing ille­gal organizations.]

I was in prison for eight months while on trial. It was then that par­lia­ment passed a law that allowed for the con­di­tional release of cer­tain pris­on­ers and I was one of them. The trial was never finished.

I con­tin­ued my polit­i­cal activ­i­ties how­ever, and was jailed again for 10 months, being released in Sept. 2001. Today, I face still more charges, but I don’t know how many.

(He rum­mages in his desk and finally slaps down a 2-inch thick stack of indict­ments against him.)

This is democ­racy in Turkey.