Turkish democracy is on the brink

Was the US deal with Turkey on 24th July a master-stroke, a game-changer in the US-led war against Islamic State (IS)? Or was it a catastrophic blunder which has cost hundreds of lives and plunged eastern Turkey back into violent civil conflict in just a few days, something the Independent called “America's worst error in the Middle East since the Iraq War?”

The American government and its allies seem certain that it was the former. In the wake of the announcement Turkey’s leaders reported receiving a stream of congratulations from the likes of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, the European Union President Jean Claude Juncker, and David Cameron.

Western leaders assume that in the very near future allied fighter jets and drones will be taking off from Incirlik Air Base near Adana, only a very short hop from northern Syria. That has not happened yet, so far as we know, but in the middle of last week, Turkish artillery bombarded points in northern Syria and the country’s air force flew a sortie attacking IS targets. Just what damage they did has yet to be announced, but IS itself, probably inevitably, claims that there was none. "Only empty places were struck," a spokesman told a Turkish journalist.

Whether or not the US negotiators anticipated it (and they surely ought to have done) the agreement precipitated a much larger series of air-strikes against the PKK, the Kurdish nationalist terrorist movement which fought a bloody campaign against the Turkish government since 1984 until, two and a half years ago, it signed a cease-fire and peace process agreement with the government.

The cease-fire was already tottering before the Turkish-American deal. The air-strikes which followed it inevitably plunged eastern Turkey into internecine fighting. Around 10 Turkish police and soldiers were murdered. An overall picture cannot yet be formed: the impression is of something like the violence in Ireland in 1919.

The peace agreement was the result of years of discreet behind-the-scenes diplomatic prodding on the two sides by Western diplomats eager to stop the conflict. It ended a struggle which cost 40,000 lives. For admirers of Turkey’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government, it was that government’s most remarkable achievement.

Out of that deal then sprang something even more remarkable—the HDP (Peoples Democratic Party) a pro-Kurdish peace party which aspired to be a leftist democratic Turkish national party and which was studiously non-violent and conciliatory. Until this spring the HDP acted as go-betweens for the Turkish government and PKK leadership in their negotiations. That role ended abruptly when the HDP entered the general elections and overcame Turkey’s 10 per cent national electoral barrier. Unexpectedly it won 13 per cent of the vote and 80 members in parliament in the June general elections. This was after a campaign in which its offices were bombed, its election buses attacked and a driver burned to death. Who you think was responsible for that depends on whom you talk to. On the eve of the election the HDP leader SelahattinDemirta had to cancel his final election rally after two bombs exploded within two metres of him, killing four people. They seem to have been planted by a local IS supporter who had been released from police custody only the day before.

Caught in a battle of words with the AKP leadership, Demirta was also facing pressures from the guerrillas on the mountain to resume the armed struggle. In earlier times, the government would have dealt with this by allowing instructions from the jailed PKK chief, Abdullah Öcalan, to be leaked from his island prison in the Sea of Marmara. Öcalan, who wants to be released, would undoubtedly have ordered a cease-fire. This spring and summer however he has been held incommunicado—a decision which had obvious consequences.

Could Demirta and the newly elected HDP parliamentary contingent join him there sometime soon? Unfortunately the answer is yes. On Tuesday the Turkish government announced that it is prosecuting the HDP leadership on terrorist charges. This is a rerun of events in 1994 when Kurdish MPs were stripped of their immunity, charged with contacts with Öcalan, and jailed for 15 years. The government now says the peace process is dead, no more rights will be granted to any Turkish citizen, regardless of background. “Self-styled politicians and self-styled intellectuals” are blamed by the president for the growing number of murders of officials in the east. Parliamentary immunity does not apply to the HDP members—who in any case are renouncing it, ready to fight their corner in court.

It is surely the biggest disaster in Turkish history for many years. What lies behind it is almost certainly domestic politics and a concern by Turkey’s acting government (it no longer has a majority but prudently gave itself full war powers last October) to win a second general election this year with a big nationalist majority and quell the spectre of renewed investigations into corruption. Polls suggest that this could be a bad miscalculation.

As for the United States, its ruthless short-termism (if so it be) also seems to derive from domestic politics, more an administration desire to be seen to be doing something, than a real expectation of smashing IS, which only last week an American general admitted may take many years.

In Washington, however, the official line is still that the negotiators had no idea of the coming attack on the PKK. Turkey is entitled to attack terrorists, seemingly regardless of proportionality, and the timing was just a coincidence. Hearing this, journalists at Tuesday’s State Department press briefing were unsurprisingly skeptical. Pace Juncker, Mogherini, Cameron and all the Western leaders who lined up to offer naïve congratulations, it is Turkish democracy rather than IS which is currently shuddering.