After he had attended the funeral of victims of Monday's terrorist car bombing in Gaziantep, Turkey's president Abdullah Gul said the best answer to such outrages was unity among all Turks. He is quite right. The coming together of every section of any nation, regardless of their political differences, is indeed the only response in the face of terrorist attacks. However for Turkey, with its Kurdish minority, this is a particular challenge. For years, the Kurdish identity was denied by governments in Ankara. No books could be printed in Kurdish and indeed, at one point , even the speaking of the language was a crime. The irony is that it was Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan early in his first government, who began to roll back this discrimination and encouraged the expansion of Kurdish political parties within the Turkish parliamentary system. Indeed, only this June, Erdogan went further and permitted the teaching of Kurdish in schools. Erdogan's argument has been that repression of the Kurds has only encouraged the PKK terrorists, who want an independent Kurdish state in eastern Turkey. Unfortunately, in the last three years, the PKK, operating from bases in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, has stepped up its campaign of violence against the Turkish security forces. It has also resumed its murder of Kurds who are deemed to be cooperating with the authorities. especially local mayors and village guards. Syria is also having an impact on the insurgency. As the power of the Assad regime wanes, Syrian Kurds are also looking for autonomy in the new Syria. Links between Iraqi and Syrian Kurds are already strong. Moreover, at one time, the PKK was using Syria as a base to launch terror attacks into Turkey. This stopped when the Turkish government persuaded the late Hafez Assad to stop his covert support for the terrorists, in return for improved trade and diplomatic links. Ankara's good relations with Tehran have also resulted in little or no involvement in the PKK insurgency by Iran's Kurds, who anyway are mostly from a rival Kurdish faction. Yet long-term, the possibility exists that Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds will seek to form some cross-border federation that might lead to claims for a sovereign Kurdish state. This is something that Ankara could not tolerate. Indeed, it is the nightmare scenario that has underpinned the Turkish military's insistence that an iron fist be used to crush the PKK, and that the Kurdish identity be ignored and where possible, extirpated. Erdogan argued plausibly that 30 years of such uncompromising and often brutal tactics, had not worked. Indeed, the harshness with which Kurdish communities were treated, had probably boosted support for the separatists. Yet the chaos in Syria and the rising tide of PKK terror attacks, would seem to be undermining the Turkish leader's policy, as well. Yet Erdogan is right, that cooperation and negotiation provide the only lasting solution. However, at this crucial moment, he needs help from Turkey's largely peaceable and industrious Kurdish community and their politicians. There have been individual condemnations of PKK savagery from them. Now there needs to be a Kurdish community-wide proclamation, rejecting violence as the way in which Turkish Kurds can build themselves a better future.
