Insistence on Conflict in the Kurdish Issue Deepens the Humanitarian and Economic Crisis
6 May 2022
The fact that Turkey often launches cross-border air operations based on the mandates it has passed at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT) authorizing it to use military force with respect to Syria and Iraq, and that it deploys ground forces especially in these two countries while launching military interventions under new names each year render the issue stay at an impasse.
In Turkey, these cross-border military campaign mandates started with the Iraq mandate in 2007 and have been extended every year while Syria has been included within their scope since 2014 when a joint mandate for Syria and Iraq was granted. Within this context, a war mandate for Syria and Iraq was tabled at the GNAT on 20 October 2021 in the previous legislative term, and this time, authorization was extended to 2 years. This presidential mandate, which the opposition parties HDP, CHP, DBP and TİP declared that they would not support, authorized the political power with a majority vote in the parliament. We have previously shared our views with the public that these resolutions were against Article 91 of the Constitution, and that there would be grave legal consequences to launching de facto attacks into the territory of other countries without a UN Security Council resolution and to deploying soldiers therein.[i]
On 18 April 2022, the Turkish Armed Forces announced that the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government had launched a new military campaign against the PKK in Zap, Metina and Avashin regions. According to information made available to the public and reported by the press, there have been casualties from both the members of the organization and of the armed forces while civilian settlements were damaged, and the operation was ongoing.
The political power in Turkey has been claiming that it would solve the Kurdish issue through the method of conflict since 24 July 2015 and has not only been exacerbating this problem (controlled regions in Syria and Iraq) but also been implementing authoritarian methods (authoritarian presidential model via constitutional amendments) to extend its own political power by carrying out repetitive military campaigns every year. The deadlock in the Kurdish issue has quickly turned Turkey into an authoritarian and anti-democratic country. So much so that the conviction sentences and the detention rulings handed down in the Gezi Trial reveal that the political power will further increase its oppressive policies through the judiciary not only against the Kurdish dissidence but also against all dissident groups in Turkey. In this process, the appointment of state trustees to municipalities was maintained, judicial harassment against Kurdish politicians continued uninterruptedly, and the pressure on the Constitutional Court was also exacerbated in addition to filing a lawsuit for the dissolution of HDP. Actual attacks and threats against HDP’s central office as well as its local offices were carried out continuously while no effective measures were taken to prevent such attacks.
Millions of Kurds and their political representatives once again gave messages of peace during the Newroz celebrations held this year demonstrating that Turkey must choose methods of dialogue and negotiation in order to resolve the Kurdish issue through democratic and peaceful means. However, the fact that the political power is not willing to receive this strong message and opts for deepening the conflict with pro-security policies and solving the problem with violence bring about a serious war.
When we look back on the last 38 years regarding the deadlock in the Kurdish issue, we see that we have witnessed various periods of armed conflict and the times when these periods ended with a pursuit for peace. Armed conflict started in 1984, March 1991 witnessed for the first time a quest for peace, and the last time a long period of non-conflict was seen was between March 2013 and July 2015. For the last 38 years, the current one has been the longest period of uninterrupted conflict while the size of the conflict extended geographically with all social groups harmed. We would, therefore, like to note that it is inevitable to turn to the quest for peace at the end of a period when the human and economic costs of conflict are so great.
Researcher İzzet Akyol noted in an assessment report drafted for the Democratic Progress Institute that 230 billion dollars perished directly due to conflict between 1985 and 2021; that the Turkish economy lost 4.5 trillion dollars as per the dollar index updated according to 2022 figures while Turkey’s national income could have grown by 36% if such loss had not been incurred.[ii] We would like to state that insisting on this policy is futile and has driven Turkey into bankruptcy as the deadlock in the Kurdish issue or the search for a conflict-based solution has such a terrible economic cost as well.
According to data provided by the TurkStat, the annual CPI was 69.97% as of April 2022, and according to the calculations of the Inflation Research Group (ENAG), made up of independent academics, the annual CPI was 156.86% as of April 2022. These figures reveal the necessity to oppose policies of war in the face of inflation that will further go up according to the PPI rates.
According to data collected by İHD’s Documentation Center covering the period between 2015 and 2021, 6,019 people lost their lives while 8,562 people were injured (not including the majority of those who lost their lives in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq) due to armed conflict in these seven years. These figures alone unearth how great the human cost of the conflict is.
We, human rights defenders, once again, call on the democratic people of Turkey to reflect on and take steps towards a democratic and peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue.
In the face of Turkey’s mediation in Russia’s military offensive and its invasion of Ukraine and its declaration that it will support peace, we cannot understand why Turkey insists on conflict in a problem like the Kurdish issue that has become an international one, one that directly concerns especially the Kurds, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran as well as the international military and economic unions these countries are involved in along with the UN and the Council of Europe. The Kurdish issue cannot be resolved with policies of conflict and war.
İHD defends the right to peace against war. We would like to remind all of the UN Declaration on the Right to Peace, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 19 December 2016, and the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 35/4[3] of 22 June 2017 on the Promotion of the Right to Peace[iii] and underline that defending the right to peace is our top priority. We reiterate our call on the government of Turkey to implement policies of peace instead of those of war.
We will persevere in our defense of peace for human rights and democracy, and to oppose the high cost of living and for social justice.
Human Rights Association
[i] https://ihd.org.tr/en/ihd-statement-on-the-bid-to-extend-the-governments-mandate-in-iraq-and-syria/
[ii] https://www.democraticprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Impact-of-Four-Decades-of-Conflict.pdf
[iii] https://ihd.org.tr/en/un-on-the-right-to-peace-and-right-of-peoples-to-peace/