The 'New Peace Process' Through World Examples: Part 5

Rastinews — This is the final part of the series: the overall assessment. The previous four installments outlined, in broad terms, the world examples most often cited as models for resolving identity-based conflicts. That background information is available in many sources and was presented there objectively. This installment, by contrast, is largely my own opinion — which is, after all, what an "assessment" is.

A look at these world examples shows that security policy alone cannot resolve identity-based conflicts. Unless the political, cultural and legal demands at the root of the problem are met, conflict persists in one form or another — and even when suppressed, it tends to resurface over time.

Meeting violence with more violence, paramilitary structures, unsolved killings and extrajudicial executions produced no lasting solution in any of the cases examined. These methods delivered short-term results in places, but over the long run they deepened social polarization, fed mutual distrust and generated new dynamics of conflict.

Among the cases studied, the clearest examples of a lasting, comprehensive settlement are Northern Ireland and the Basque Country. In both, democratization, wider political participation, stronger local government and guaranteed basic rights proved decisive.

Europe's democratic institutions, human rights standards and international monitoring mechanisms also played a major part in producing these outcomes.

The record shows that a lasting settlement is not simply a matter of talking to armed groups. Successful processes widened the space for democratic politics, empowered civil actors and brought different segments of society into the process. What actually diminishes an armed group's influence is democratic politics becoming a legitimate channel that delivers results.

Another striking feature of the successful cases is that the parties focused on the root of the problem instead of getting stuck on preconditions. Where peace has held, the causes of conflict were addressed realistically, and reforms were carried out to remove them.

Political leadership matters enormously. Leaders such as Adolfo Suárez and Zapatero in Spain, Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia took real political risks to keep the search for a settlement alive. Leadership that can win public backing and look past short-term political calculations has repeatedly proved decisive in resolving long-running conflicts.

International support and monitoring mechanisms also helped these processes along. International commissions played that role in Northern Ireland, the United Nations in Colombia, and third-party mediators in several other cases.

Outside involvement alone is not enough, though. What ultimately decides the outcome is whether the parties themselves show the will to reach a settlement and follow through on what they agree.

Public support is critical in every case. Peace processes become durable not simply through agreement among political actors, but through the backing of a substantial part of society.

In Northern Ireland, the strong public legitimacy secured through a referendum was central to the agreement's success. In Colombia, by contrast, limited public support made implementation harder.

A settlement becomes more complicated when the issue spans more than one country. State security concerns, regional rivalries and clashing geopolitical interests can all complicate the process.

Lasting settlements did more than end conflict — they contributed to the economic and political development of the countries involved. As Spain and the United Kingdom show, stability supported economic growth, boosted international standing and reinforced social peace.

Where processes were left half-finished or agreements went unimplemented, the problems persisted. In Colombia, the failure to carry out certain provisions of the accord led some former FARC members to take up arms again. In Sri Lanka, military victory left the conflict's underlying causes unresolved. These cases show that implementation matters just as much as the negotiations that produce an agreement in the first place.

In every case, negotiations dragged on for years, were repeatedly interrupted, faced provocations and weathered serious crises. Yet where a lasting outcome was achieved, the parties kept searching for a settlement despite those crises.

In sum, global experience shows that lasting peace comes neither from military means alone nor from the negotiating table alone. What the successful cases share is democratization, the expansion of rights and freedoms, stronger political participation, public support, and genuine steps to remove the causes of conflict.

The road to a lasting settlement does not run through the total victory of one side. It runs through building a democratic, sustainable order in which broad segments of society can see themselves as stakeholders in a shared future.

2. ASSESSMENT FROM TURKEY'S PERSPECTIVE:

In every one of these world examples, an established nation-state contains a regional population that forms a majority in its own area. The size and political consciousness of that population create the capacity to resist denial, assimilation and repression. Because the organization rests on the population itself rather than on ideology or fighters, military or political defeat does not resolve the problem — new forms of organizing, armed or unarmed, can always re-emerge. The Kurds are a case in point: strong in numbers and in political consciousness, they have proven resistant to state assimilation, and repression has produced no solution either. The only remedy is to guarantee, in law and in the constitution, rights broad enough that Kurds no longer need a separatist struggle. That is exactly what the successful world examples did — nothing more, nothing less.

In Turkey, ever since the republic's founding, the Kurdish struggle for identity has persisted — through revolts, legal and illegal organizing — even when interrupted from time to time. The state, for its part, kept up denial for as long as it could. The PKK is unquestionably the most disciplined, durable and powerful organization to emerge from that struggle; it pushed guerrilla warfare to its peak in the 1990s, becoming very hard to contain. Both that struggle and the methods the state used against it politicized the Kurdish population and raised its consciousness. Ordinary Kurds began asserting their identity in every sphere; rallies drawing millions and millions of votes at the ballot box turned the issue, for the state, into something far bigger than fighting an armed organization — yet the PKK, too, held fast to armed struggle.

The PKK did not just hold fast to arms — it moved into urban warfare, a shift that cost it public support. I would compare that strategic error to the split led by Tamil commander Karuna, who broke away from the Tamil Tigers with 6,000 fighters. Other cases show what insisting on arms and failing to make a timely move can lead to. ETA is the clearest example of that, but the outcome in Turkey was worse: the Kurdish cause, just as it was reaching the height of its mass appeal, lost that quality — and handed the government a pretext for even greater authoritarianism.

Perhaps in the 1990s, the state's contacts with the PKK stemmed from the PKK's fighting capacity having reached a scale that worried the state, and indeed it was mostly senior military officers who acted as intermediaries then. But the searches after the 2000s were a result of the Kurdish people rising up. In other words, the state entered into solution-seeking not because it struggled to fight the PKK, but because it did not know how to handle a politicized Kurdish population. This approach overcame the denial of Kurdish existence, but it failed to secure recognition of rights based on that acknowledgment. The PKK, for its part, interpreted the state's search for solutions solely through the lens of its own military strength and successes, and it acted on the premise that the masses were needed only to be called out to squares and to the ballot box. Both the state and the PKK focused on preserving their own central power, and this caused the solution-seeking efforts to lack sincerity and to be perpetually blocked.

Because the focus was on preserving central power, no autonomous democratic politics like that in Northern Ireland was ever built; democratic politics was tasked only with opening space for Öcalan, with making him the interlocutor. Kurdish civil politics spent all its energy on this. Political cadres could not be trained; because of the guardianship system, political cadres could never voice their own views, and only waited to be told what they were supposed to say. No mechanisms for common reasoning or joint decision-making were developed.

In none of the world's armed movements is there an absolute leadership like the PKK's; instead, there is a body of political aims. What holds them together is not leadership but political purpose. Öcalan, however, after building one-man rule within the PKK, repeatedly changed the political aim on his own, and the organization (with rare exceptions) adapted to the new politics. Öcalan may have assumed this would make him an easier interlocutor and ease a solution, but his one-man rule evolved into the exact opposite of what he may have assumed: a point that drained the organization's strength and rendered the people irrelevant.

Öcalan's bargaining with the state always proceeded on the logic of "making an offer that cannot be refused," and he also acted with the confidence granted by his one-man rule within the organization, operating on the premise that his power over the organization would be attractive to the state. In this way, the people's removal from the position of subject, and the fact that organized struggle draws its strength from common reasoning and joint decisions, were both eliminated — and this caused Öcalan's leverage, in the processes initiated by the state, to be used in the manner of Oriental cunning.

For this reason, the processes in Turkey resemble those in Sri Lanka, because there is no genuine will or search for a solution. If the state's sole aim is the PKK's disarmament, then, since that moment has long since passed, it will either happen through the organization's own decision without any negotiation, or the process will serve only that purpose.

The actors on both sides of the process being carried out in Turkey present a bold and resolute image. As seen in world examples, bold leadership is an important element in conflict-resolution processes. But what is decisive here is the actors' intent. When there is no will to produce a lasting, democratic solution to the problem, discourse and behavior that look like courage turn into tactical moves aimed at forcing the other side to accept one's own terms, upsetting the political balance, and leaving the public will without direction. For this reason, I hold that what looks like courage in Turkey's process is in reality nothing but Oriental cunning.

For the state, the launch of a new process rests on both domestic and foreign political needs. In foreign policy, the aim is to prevent the Kurds in Rojava from gaining permanent status; in domestic policy, it is to build a political equation that ensures the continuation of its rule. Had there been no process, the picture that has emerged in Rojava today might not have emerged, and the pressure and interventions against the CHP — which carries the potential to be an alternative to power — would not have been this easy. In this respect, the aim of the process in Turkey differs from most world examples. Even though it is said that the Sri Lankan government was not sincere in the talks and never truly sought a solution, it can be argued that a more genuine process was carried out there, given that Tamil was recognized as an official language and partial autonomy was granted.

What distinguishes the new process from the one in 2014 is the message the government has given to the Kurdish side: "Turkey's democratization is not a precondition for solving the problem." At the same time, it reacts to the raising of rights claims stemming from Kurdish identity, warning against "maximalist demands." The Kurdish side, by contrast, defines the process as a "peace and democratic society process" and expects concrete steps toward democratization. With the two sides' understandings of a solution this far apart, and with no single common denominator, meeting on common ground is extremely difficult. It is clear that an environment in which both sides focus primarily on preserving their own political position resembles none of the world's examples.

World examples show that solution processes are long-haul affairs. Given that the first contacts in Turkey date back to the 1990s, it can be said that the process already has a long history. Yet despite the time that has passed, it is hard to say that meaningful progress has been achieved. In essence, like the previous process, this one too will be extended, frozen, or left to languish according to Erdoğan's needs. In the previous process there was at least some will, however partial, to resolve the Kurdish question; now, according to Erdoğan, the Kurdish question has been resolved through TRT Şeş and the opening of Kurdology departments at some universities. According to Bahçeli, there is no Kurdish question and there never has been. For the state, the process consists solely of the organization's disarmament, and this stance is clear. That the Kurdish side overlooks this is not easy to understand, but the contradictory state of affairs arises largely because the Kurdish side acts not through common reasoning and decision but solely bound to Öcalan.

While overcoming the denial of Kurdish existence is an important threshold, it cannot be presented as a solution on its own. In fact, acknowledging a people's existence while denying its rights can sometimes lead to even graver consequences. What kind of solution can the understanding "Kurds exist, but they have no rights" mean, and for which Kurds? Overcoming denial can play an important role only in removing the ground of legitimacy for armed struggle. Moreover, it is now accepted by nearly everyone that armed methods cannot solve the problem. Looking at world examples, the IRA and ETA, though never directly treated as interlocutors, laid down their arms and dissolved themselves once political solutions were found. In Turkey, by contrast, the requirement that the organization, together with all its affiliated organized structures, first be dissolved and liquidated shows that the aim is to ensure no organized structure remains at all, even an unarmed one.

World examples show that lasting solutions are achieved mostly through legal and civilian actors, because peace is not made with generals. When searches in the opposite direction fail, they carry the potential to deepen polarization in society and generate hatred. That the process in Turkey is conducted as though the Kurdish side consisted solely of Öcalan gives the impression that the aim is to exploit the opportunity to command an entire movement through a single person. But this creates a serious problem of legitimacy and social consent. Whereas a government would normally need to care about public support and the ballot box, and thus about legitimacy and social consent, the Turkish government's disregard for this is reason enough to doubt its intentions.

World examples show that resolving identity-based problems concerning more than one country becomes easier when there is a democratizing aim, and harder when authoritarian tendencies prevail. The Spain-France relationship in the ETA case is one of the best examples of this. In the Tamil case, the exact opposite holds. Given that the Kurdish question is a multidimensional matter concerning not only Turkey but also Iran, Iraq and Syria, and that none of these countries has a strong regime based on human rights and democracy, achieving a lasting solution to the problem becomes all the more difficult.

Taking world experiences into account, the likelihood that the process being carried out in Turkey will reach a lasting solution appears quite low. When the names given to the process are weighed together with the developments taking place in the country while it continues, there is neither a strong will toward democratization nor a sincere approach to a solution.