Republican Turkish History and Kurdish Self-Determination

Article one, section two of the Charter of the United Nations states that the purposes of the UN include:

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

Since the first Gulf War, US relations with Turkey have been occasionally strained. The principal issues causing tension have been those of Turkish cooperation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and US support for Kurdish nationals in northern Iraq. The creation of a Kurdish state in the ethnically Kurdish regions of Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq is quite clearly an issue of self-determination. Since the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Kurds have been crying out for the right to form an independent and autonomous government. Those demands were originally "suppressed" by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder and monolithic icon of the Turkish Republic. Today, they are suppressed by a lack of engagement of the issue by mainstream Turkey. Kurds are also essentially prevented from participating in parliament because the Kurdish Nationalist Party is incapable of garnering the 10% of the popular vote needed to be represented as a party. Because of its support for the creation of an independent Kurdish state, the friendly relations that the US is attempting to cultivate with Turkey right now, are, in fact, based on the principle of self-determination.

The government policy-makers in the US have formed the stance of supporting Kurdish nationalism through strategic calculations aiming towards creating stability in northern Iraq, but they have inadvertently taken the more morally justifiable stance. Even when it is merely coincidental, Washington deserves praise for taking a stance in line with the most noble aims of the United Nations.

To say that Kurds should be allowed their own state, one must base the argument on the principle of self-determination alone. This is because the PKK, the Kurdish Nationalist Party, has committed despicable acts of terrorism throughout its existence. When I have heard mainstream (non-Kurdish) Turks discuss the issue of a Kurdish state here in Ankara, they object with violent emotion to its creation because the PKK is seen as a terrorist organization. The Kurds need not conduct their quest for self-determination in such a fashion. For an example of a group being denied its right to self-determination that is keeping pressure on the relevant government without the use of violence, they need only look a thousand or so miles to the East, to the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. The Tibetans get more and better press internationally than do the Kurds, partly because of the popularity of the Dali Lama, but also because of their strictly non-violent approach rooted in Buddhism. That exposure allows them to put more pressure on the Chinese government to accede to their demands of an independent and autonomous Tibet. Conversely, every time a PKK terrorist commits an act of terrorism, the Turkish government is only encouraged to dig in its heels and not be seen as giving in to terrorists.