How Dr. Qasimlo Met Erdal İnönü

Rastinews — Social media often shares a newspaper clipping headlined "Erdal İnönü: I may be of Kurdish origin" and seeing it again in recent days brought to mind anecdotes about Erdal İnönü's encounters with Kurdish leaders at Socialist International congresses in the 1980s — chiefly his meeting with Dr. Abdul Rahman Qasimlo, Secretary-General of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI).

Start with the clipping itself. It concerns a remark made by Erdal İnönü, leader of the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) — founded in the second half of the 1980s and later a coalition partner in the Turkish government in the early 1990s — in a 1987 interview with Spain's leading newspaper, El País: "It is possible that I am of Kurdish origin."

When İnönü's remark — made despite the risk of political lynching in Turkey — was still reverberating, his party, SHP, had just been admitted as a "candidate member" of the Socialist International, meeting in Lima, Peru. The only Kurdish leader at the Lima congress was Dr. Qasimlo, since KDPI's application for Socialist International membership had also been approved that year. The secret to Dr. Qasimlo's success lay not only in the peshmerga struggle he waged against the Iranian state in the mountains of Kurdistan, but also in the diplomatic network he skillfully built across European capitals.

Holding a "social democrat" identity while also carrying an armed struggle was a trait unique to Kurdish movements. In that sense, an armed movement taking a seat alongside Europe's ruling social democratic parties was one of the era's exceptions. KDPI would later be followed there by South Kurdistan's parties, the KDP and the PUK, which also secured their place at these congresses.

The Socialist International, which gathered social democratic, socialist and left-wing parties from across the world and was chaired for many years by Willy Brandt, one of the most important figures in modern German political history, held its 17th Congress in Lima. For Kurds, that congress carried an added significance: it was the first time Kurdistan appeared among the represented countries.

Dr. Qasimlo had to wage an extra fight to get his homeland's name placed on the card in front of him, since participants' countries were displayed on nameplates. On the morning of June 20, 1987, the congress's opening day, he took his seat and found the word "Iran" on his card. Angered, he confronted congress officials: "I do not come from Iran, I come from Kurdistan — moreover, we are fighting against Iran, yet you have written Iran here," he objected. A new card bearing the word "Kurdistan" was then issued, and Kurdistan was finally added to the list of participating countries.

But Kurdistan's fight to be recognized within the Socialist International did not end in Lima. A year and a half later, in December 1988, at the Socialist International's council meeting in Paris, Dr. Qasimlo again had "Kurdistan" written on his card — and this time it was Erdal İnönü who came to him.

Dr. Qasimlo later described the encounter with İnönü to his peshmerga comrade Hacî Cindî: "During the break after the first morning session, as everyone rose from their seats to go outside, I noticed Erdal İnönü circling around my table. A few minutes later he came over to me, tapped the card reading 'Kurdistan' with his hand, and opened with: 'I've thought it over, but I can't work out where Kurdistan is. You've written the name of a country that doesn't exist.' I answered, without getting angry, with a smile: 'Hundreds of delegates here have seen this card, yet not one of them came to ask me that question — you're the only one who has. And how strange, since you yourself are said to be of Kurdish origin.'"

Dr. Qasimlo then made a diplomatic move to ease the tension, switching to Turkish, and the conversation deepened. The encounter between Dr. Qasimlo and Prof. İnönü, which had begun so coldly and sharply, was certainly not to end there.

The next day, while talking with reporters, Erdal İnönü avoided being seen speaking with Dr. Qasimlo and Celal Talabani, another Kurdish leader attending the congress with him, in front of the press. Still, after a brief standing conversation of a few minutes, Dr. Qasimlo turned to the journalists and said, "We made contact with the SHP leader for the first time." Cumhuriyet newspaper carried the moment on December 7, 1988, under the headline "İnönü rejects Kurdish leaders' request for a meeting."

In the days that followed, as Dr. Qasimlo and Prof. İnönü each returned to Kurdistan, the story of their acquaintance took on a new dimension. Hacî Cindî — who had crossed from Bakur (North) Kurdistan into Rojhilat (East) Kurdistan during the days of the September 12, 1980 coup and joined the peshmerga struggle in KDPI's ranks — recounted an episode from early 1989, when Dr. Qasimlo had returned to the mountains after his meeting in Paris, that he said still makes him smile whenever he remembers it:

"At one of the points we used for logistics, I came across copies of Cumhuriyet newspaper among packages arriving from the city one day. Puzzled, I asked the peshmerga comrade who had brought the packages, 'What is this newspaper doing up in these mountains?' He told me, 'This paper comes for Kak Doktor [all the peshmerga addressed Dr. Qasimlo this way] almost every day.' So I took the newspaper and went to Dr. Qasimlo's office at the camp, and got straight to the point: 'Kak Doktor, why didn't you tell me this newspaper comes here? Especially since you know I read Turkish and haven't held a Turkish newspaper in years.'

Dr. Qasimlo replied, 'Forgive me, it really slipped my mind to tell you amid everything else; take it, and you read it first.' As I took the paper and was about to walk out, I couldn't help but ask: 'So, Kak Doktor, what is your connection to Cumhuriyet?' He laughed and said, 'Erdal İnönü got me a subscription.'"

He would give his last interview to Cumhuriyet

Dr. Qasimlo met Erdal İnönü once more at the Socialist International's 18th Congress in Stockholm, held June 20-22, 1989 — the last such congress he would attend. In an interview published in Cumhuriyet just days after his death — his final interview with a foreign press outlet — he even mentioned meeting the SHP delegation during the congress. After Dr. Qasimlo was assassinated in Vienna on July 13, 1989, in a plot orchestrated by the Iranian state, Erdal İnönü sent a message of condolence to his family.

Setting aside the contacts Erdal İnönü established with Dr. Qasimlo, his role within the Socialist International was not, in fact, particularly favorable for Kurds. Much like his father, İsmet İnönü, who at the 1923 Lausanne Conference muddied the waters — and produced outcomes unfavorable to Kurds — by declaring, "I too am a Kurd, and this Republic of Turkey belongs to both Kurds and Turks", his son Erdal İnönü would years later take on a similar role.

Şule Bucak, Erdal İnönü's adviser at the Socialist International, would years later state this role openly: "There are certain figures in the world social democratic movement who are widely known and well liked, and Erdal İnönü was one of them. He was respected and admired for his identity as a scientist. In this sense, whenever there were draft resolutions that would go against Turkey, people would inevitably turn to Erdal Bey to ask how that resolution could be amended. And whatever Erdal Bey said was what got done. He had the final word. He made major contributions along these lines. He always tried to prevent negative decisions from being taken about Turkey."

The "negative decisions" Şule Bucak refers to were, without doubt, the position or stance the Socialist International might take on the crimes committed in Kurdistan, the rights violations, the village burnings and the massacres. This is why Erdal İnönü could comfortably tell the world's media, "I may be of Kurdish origin" — because in doing so he was reinforcing the argument that "Look, I too am a Kurd, and Kurds have no problem in Turkey."

Indeed, the CHP and Deniz Baykal, who came after the SHP and Erdal İnönü, made no effort to hide their intolerance toward Kurdish leaders attending Socialist International meetings as delegates. At a 2007 meeting in Geneva, for instance, when Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani took the podium to speak, Deniz Baykal, seated on the board, walked out of the hall.

Whether the meeting of Dr. Qasimlo and Prof. İnönü was, in the end, one of history's ironies is hard to say — but it has remained in memory as the strange intersection of a tradition estranged from its own roots with a will that paid for its fidelity to those roots with its life.

Sources: