A Solution Can Be Found by Promoting the Right to Peace!
Öztürk Türkdoğan
27 August 2021
I have always advocated peace as a human rights defender working to promote human rights and the value of labor while I have kept on talking about how important the right to peace was. While talking about human rights at İHD’s Human Rights Academy, I have always underlined the fact that “human dignity, freedom, equality, justice and peace” were the fundamentals of human rights.
I have been serving as the co-chairperson of İHD since November 2008. At every opportunity I, too, reiterate İHD’s point that Turkey has a democracy and human rights problem and the most important part of it is the Kurdish issue. I should, however, note how saddening it is to keep on saying the same things on the 35th anniversary of İHD’s foundation because it does not seem possible for a country that failed to achieve conflict resolution (failed to resolve the Kurdish issue) to democratize itself and raise its human rights standards, as is the very case with Turkey too.
One of the most significant problems we face in Turkey proves to be the political power’s denial of the Kurdish issue and reluctance to do what is necessary for its resolution along with the political and social dissidence’s insufficient adoption of a stand for its resolution. Let me put it more simply. One should look into countries that went through conflict resolution: The United Kingdom and France, permanent members of the UN Security Council, case of Spain, South Africa and Nelson Mandela, case of Philippines for which Turkey was among the mediators, and of course the latest case, Colombia.
As we all know, Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe having become a member right after the establishment of the council. Turkey is also a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and recognized the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Let me briefly explain the process of conflict resolution in three of the above-mentioned European countries.
Spain voted in favor of a constitution with quite advanced democratic values in 1978 ending the dictatorship of Franco. Basque and Catalan regions were granted partial autonomy in 1979 through the powers vested in this constitution, thus, Spain took quite important steps for conflict resolution.
The United Kingdom, successor to the “empire on which the sun never sets” and the seat of the Commonwealth, took a historical step to solve the Northern Ireland problem through the Good Friday Agreement done with guarantors and the parties to the problem, including the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1998.
France started solving the Corsica problem in 1982 by producing decentralist solutions and recognized its autonomy through a special legislation introduced in 1991.
European countries that went through conflict resolution started acknowledging and solving their problems as of 1978. In Turkey, on the other hand, the Kurdish issue even further deteriorated with no solution in sight. Let alone a solution, the policy of denial is maintained through non-democratic methods by even seizing even mayors’ offices voted for by the Kurdish people while elected mayors and members of the parliament are imprisoned.
We, human rights defenders, have long been criticizing and complaining about the official ideology in Turkey. But what is this ideology? It is the ideology of a nation-state that denies the founding principles of the Republic of Turkey (social realities at the time of the inauguration of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the representation of these groups, the Constitution of 1921) and one that was established with the Lausanne Treaty! This nation-state is based on Turkish ethnicity and adopts the version of Sunni Islam that became statified by way of the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Governments and a significant portion of the political and social dissidence in Turkey have been avoiding facing this ideology for years and unfortunately most of them feed on it. Political parties in Turkey keep harping on democracy. But are they acting in line with democracy? We underline pluralism, openness and participation principles of democracy when we explain what democracy is. What is meant by pluralism is the recognition of all communities. In other words, it is the official recognition of the existence of ethnic and belief groups, linguistic groups in Turkey. But it is not limited to these. It is also the recognition of disadvantaged groups and guaranteeing their rights; like the recognition of gender identity rights of the LGBTI+. Participation refers to free association and the enjoyment of the right to participation through these associations without any restraints and limitations, or thresholds. Parties, which were involved in the plight of the Kurds and the Alevis and established to defend their rights, and communist parties have been closed down, stonewalled and denied taking part in the elections for years in this country. Their involvement in political representation has been blocked through high election thresholds (10%). Participation signifies enabling everyone to participate in administrations where they live. In other words, it is the actualization of the decentralization principle. What is the case in Turkey though? Elected Kurdish mayors are removed from office and replaced by state-trustees. There is not even a trace of participation. What do we mean by openness? We no longer want to be a country run by a secret constitution, as it were, via the National Security Policy Document drafted by the National Security Council. Openness is a principle within the framework of which politics can be held accountable, all kinds of government spending can be controlled and checked, and politicians answer to the public. It is transparency. Are we transparent? We can list more…
Now, if you are against the arguments in the above paragraph, you cannot be a democrat. You may find shortcomings or overstatements but you cannot solve any problems in any event if you object to fundamental principles and say “our nation-state, our unitarian state will be like this or that.” Turkey is now in such state of affairs. Besides, conflict resolution brings along facing the past. Yet Turkey has always been avoiding facing its past and pushing its problems into the future.
We have lots to say about human rights but at least we have rights guaranteed by the ECHR, by the Constitution, by the case-law of the ECtHR, rights guaranteed by the UN international conventions and covenants on human rights and by resolutions passed by committees established based on these conventions and covenants. We can list more… I believe no one will object to these. Then there cannot be a more natural right for an individual and community to get education, receive and offer public services in their own mother tongue. No one can object to an individual’s or community’s establishing a place of worship in line with their faith and live that faith. The latest wildfires and the devastating floods have shown once again that a significant portion of public powers must be transferred to local administrations and decentralized solutions must be adopted. In other words, all obstacles before everyone’s participation in administrations from where they live must be lifted. The way things stand, there will not be a habitable environment (nature) any more in Turkey where the powers of the central government have been rendered absolute using the Kurdish issue as an excuse.
I believe most of us would agree with the issues raised in my article so far. But how will we make it happen?
We can do it by building peace, promoting the right to peace and always standing up for peace. We say peace, peace, peace. What are peace and the right to peace?
Peace can also be defined as the absence of conflict and war, living in peace and wellbeing. It can be understood as the absence of fight between two persons or communities. Yet we qualify this definition as an incomplete approach within the context of the human rights field. İHD comprehends peace based on rights and freedoms as is defined in human rights documents.
UN General Assembly approved and proclaimed the “Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace” with resolution 39/11 on 12 November 1984. The General Assembly also proclaimed the “Declaration on the Right to Peace” with its resolution (71/189) on 19 December 2016. This declaration is quite comprehensive and one should recall other UN documents it refers to on the right to peace. The preamble to the declaration thus refers to many documents such as “The purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, the Declaration on the Right to Development, the United Nations Millennium Declaration, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals, and the 2005 World Summit Outcome; the Declaration on the Preparation of Societies for Life in Peace, the Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace, Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace and other international instruments relevant to the subject of the Present Declaration; the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples; the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.”
Quite comprehensive and enlightening documents have been produced on the right to peace. UN General Assembly adopted the resolution on the Promotion of the Right to Peace on 22 June 2017. For instance, Article 3 of the resolution defines peace as “not only the absence of conflict but also requires a positive, dynamic participatory process where dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understand and cooperation, and socioeconomic development is ensured.”
Now we must ask everyone in Turkey: Why do you ignore the right to peace and accuse those who do not in spite of all these UN documents? Wasn’t this country’s foreign policy based on “peace at home, peace in the world”? What made you give up on peace?
As a human rights activist, I believe that I am among the activists who have been the closest witnesses to the last 13 years about efforts for peace. I was a witness to the Khabur process in 2009, indefinite and non-alternate hunger strikes in prisons in 2012, the latest peace and resolution process between 2013 and 2015 as a member of the “wise people” delegation along with many others including the incidents in the release of captured civilians, soldiers and police and public officers; curfews and urban conflict process; post-coup state of emergency, indefinite and non-alternate hunger strikes in prisons in 2019, hunger strikes in 2020 and others. In brief, I lived and witnessed many political, social, legal, cultural and sociological events concerning peace and human rights. We analyzed examples of conflict resolution from the world with many bodies, most notably the DPI, in the national and international arena and took very important lessons from these processes. We learnt fundamental conflict resolution principles like: You shall make peace with whoever you were fighting against! Parties shall not demonize one another during peace processes! Processes shall be tied to legal guarantees! Processes require a decisive political will! Political leaders’ positions are very important!
The Wise People Delegation assumed very important duties in the socialization of peace by conducting fieldwork during April-June 2013 between 2013 and 2015, which we call the peace and resolution process but the views presented by the delegation to the government have remained on dusty shelves. Should these recommendations put in place, maybe we would not be talking about the Kurdish issue by now.
People of Turkey conveyed this message in the general elections held on 7 June 2015: I give AKP and HDP a chance for democracy and peace. The political parties with a group in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT), however, could not do what was necessary to put into effect people’s open message. The price for the failure of the resolution process and the failure of the political parties to cooperate despite the Dolmabahçe Declaration of 28 February 2015 proved to be quite heavy in the end. Suruç and Ankara Train Station massacres committed on the way to the reelection process of November 2015, cities’ turning into a war zone using ditches and barricades as an excuse under the name of curfews and devastating deaths, forced internal migration of hundreds of thousands of people, declaration of state of emergency after the attempted coup and civil death forced upon hundreds of thousands of people, incarceration of hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of people going to Europe as refugees, constant repression on political and social dissidence, seizure of Kurdish mayors’ offices over and over again, imprisonment of Kurdish mayors in the persons of Gültan Kışanak and Adnan Selçuk Mızraklı, intentional imprisonment of Kurdish politicians in the persons of Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ seen as political rivals; investigations, trials, arrests and detentions of human rights defenders, and threats thereof, in the person of Osman Kavala; repression of the right to defense in the person of Selçuk Kozağaçlı, the attempted message that seeking justice would have a heavy price to pay as exemplified by the assassination of Tahir Elçi, further challenging attempts to claim rights by banning peaceful sit-ins by Saturday Mothers, Peace Mothers and relatives of the disappeared; refusing people to talk about peace at universities through the conduct against Academics for Peace; imprisonment of journalists critical of the government, most notably Kurdish journalists, to curb people’s right to information and constant threat of investigations and prosecutions against them; pursuing endless freedom of expression trials in the persons of Eren Keskin and Hüseyin Aykol; demonizing the right to claim one’s rights by arresting numerous human rights defenders, myself included, as exemplified by the Büyükada case; the dissolution lawsuit against HDP and the crackdown on political dissidence by subjecting HDP executives to constant arrests and detentions for the last six years; subjection of political and social dissidence to lynching through hate speech; paving the way to racist attacks by hate speech; constant building of prisons founded on isolation and the imprisonment of dissidents by increasing the number of prisons; endless practices against the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment and degrading treatment; investigation and prosecution grip on executives of the Confederation of Public Employees’ Trade Unions (KESK) and other trade unions affiliated with the confederation; efforts to make bar associations dysfunctional, exclusion of the Turkish Medical Association despite the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to make the Union of Turkish Engineers’ and Architects’ Chambers (TMMOB) dysfunctional, bans on protests and strikes by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK) to claim workers’ rights, perpetual spread of fear on Alevis, enabling paramilitary structures and groups terrorize the public by not eliminating them, and other repressive policies of the political power can be added to this list.
At this stage, we see a quite severe state of affairs pertaining to those who lost their lives because of the impasse in the Kurdish issue and the restart of the armed conflict within the 6-year data collected by İHD covering the years between 2015 and 2020. According to İHD’s data, 90 civilians were killed while 302 were wounded, 1,322 soldiers/police officers/village guards were killed while 2,702 were wounded, 2,599 armed militants were killed while 194 were wounded in the conflict zone due to armed conflict. In addition, 1,055 civilians were killed while 1,255 were wounded in summary executions and 184 people were killed while 1,258 were wounded in attacks. 523 people were killed while 2,786 were wounded in illegal organization attacks. The total number of people who were killed was 5,773 while the total number of the wounded was 8,497. These figures do not include those killed in armed conflict in Syria and Iraq (except 2020) and in cross-border military operations. Even the figures released by the Minister of National Defense lay bare how alarming the situation is. These figures point to a mid-sized war.
Conflict and war along with the overall climate of oppression made it inevitable for violence to stand out and bring along poisonous hate speech. The failure to prevent femicide, increase in the number of rape cases and harassment against women can also be explained by this climate of violence. Increasing number of racist attacks that are motivated by hate and the people killed.
Irredeemable heavy losses sustained by the economy because of this process.
The regime change and the authoritarian understanding of government that Turkey has been dragged into by this process.
An immigrant/asylum-seeker/refugee problem involving millions of people because of the Middle East policy developed on anti-Kurdish sentiments.
A complete break away from the EU full-membership perspective.
Peace can eliminate all these problems. The Kurdish issue must be recognized. Armed conflict and state of war must be ended. Permanent deconflict must be established. Isolation imposed on Abdullah Öcalan and other prisoners held in İmralı Prison must be lifted. All political prisoners must be released. All kinds of oppression over political and social dissidence must be ended. Obstacles before the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly must be lifted. Then, parties to the problem must engage in dialogue and discuss. What kind of a peace do we want? What kind of a solution do we want? Then they must find ways to reconcile through negotiations. Political and social groups must be allowed to take part in these processes. Legal guarantees must be granted for these processes and, finally, constitutional and legal solutions must be found through a settlement.
I believe that the way for a novel peace process will absolutely be paved for if political parties and social dissidence of Turkey focus on peace. Provided that they save themselves off of the chains of official ideology and convince themselves of a resolution based on modern democratic values and human rights.
Am I being clear? The situation is just this simple. I have always been telling politicians too: In countries like Turkey, assuming that one can solve problems merely by carrying democracy (elections) into effect without taking steps for peace shows that one has not learnt enough from the period between 2013 and 2015.
This question can also be asked: Is a new conflict resolution possible within the current political structure? As is known, there are political alliances in Turkey. “Cumhur” alliance is in power that is formed by AKP and MHP along with the seen and unseen constituents of the state. Dear professor Baskın Oran calls them the “four horsemen of the apocalypse.” The opposition, on the other hand, is formed by the “Millet” alliance incorporating CHP, İyi Party, Saadet Party and Democratic Party, and separately HDP. I think that HDP maintains its existence as the 3rd alliance, in other words, the very democracy alliance. Apart from these, there are the newly founded DEVA and Gelecek parties, formed by those who had left the AKP. To the best of my knowledge, the parties that claim that they would resolve the Kurdish issue are HDP, CHP, Saadet, Gelecek, and DEVA. Of course, parties like TİP and DBP that have deputies in the GNAT are clear on the resolution of the Kurdish issue. As is seen, there is no guarantee given by the “Millet” alliance as a whole, which might win a possible snap election, when we study these alliances. What can be achieved by the newly established parties are not clear either. Only if a pro-peace candidate wins the presidential elections, a novel process can be paved for since the president has extraordinary powers in this new authoritarian regime. Therefore I would like to state that solutions can be found by promoting the right to peace and elections can merely be a means for this. I personally believe that the best way out of the current impasse is the union of political and social dissidence that will oblige the government to hold snap elections and making this union develop a clear anti-war and pro-peace stand.
I do believe that the path to democracy can be opened up by achieving peace.
Öztürk Türkdoğan
İHD Co-Chairperson