The legal place of ethnic, linguisitc and other minorities in a modern liberal democracy is a puzzling question. The liberal notion of the primacy of the individual and his or her rights rubs uncomfortably up against the demands of minorities to preserve their group cultures within the larger society.
Turkey has been particularly plagued by this issue. After the vast Ottoman Empire shrank to the modern Anatolian, Ataturkian state, "Turkishness" became a strangely compelling value for many Turks, and non-Turkishness was regarded as a threat to national unity.
But Turkey, like all nations, contains ethnic minorities. The largest of these, perhaps 20% of Turkey's population, are the millions of Kurds in the southeast. "Kurdistan," the Kurdish homeland, is not a state, but is a region divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
In Turkey, the Kurdish desire for sovereignty took the form of a violent insurgency led by the PKK, the Kurdish People's Party. A generation-long war of Kurdish terrorism and government repression resulted in thousands of deaths and massive violations of human rights.
Today, the government of Turkey took a step to right the situation. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Interior Minister Be?ir Atalay came to the Turkish parliament. Atalay announced: "We see that democracy is the only solution to the chronic social and economic problems. . . . Our socio-economic as well as political illnesses stem from injustice. A healthy relationship between the state and the citizen exists as long as there is justice. That’s why we are trying to strengthen the feeling of justice."
Among the reforms announced were ending restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language, removing the Turkish names imposed on Kurdish villages and reverting to their Kurdish names, creating an anti-discrimination commission and an independent human rights institution.
Atalay emphasized that this initiative was intended to improve the government's relations with all Turkish citizens, not just Kurds: "The steps taken so far are not enough. We will continue to pursue new measures to ensure the democracy that our people deserve. . . . As we said earlier, it targets the whole country, not a specific group. That’s why the democratic initiative is conducted under the slogan of ‘more freedom for everyone.’ It will not weaken Turkey. On the contrary, it will make Turkey stronger.”
Opposition parties, predictably, opposed the measures. Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal, upholding the old ideal of "Turkishness," complained that the initiative was a "plan to destroy and split Turkey." Erdogan told him, in essence, to drop dead, and the CHP members walked out of the chamber.
Any attempt to strengthen human rights and liberal democracy anywhere should be applauded. Whether this plan will lead to peaceful Kurdish-Turkish relations is a trickier question. Both sides have reasons to like and to dislike the government plan. The Kurds are as deserving of national sovereignty as any currently-stateless people, but perhaps they will content themselves with greater cultural freedom within a freer Turkish republic. (At any rate, the best bet for a Kurdish state remains across the border, in Iraq.) Equally uncertain is whether Turks, nervous about the character of their country, will decisively abandon the use of "Turkishness" as a club with which to beat minorities. Perhaps Turkey's wish to join the European Union, as well as liberal tendencies generally, will carry the day.
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