PKK ended its five year ceasefire a couple of days ago. This is very significant, and very terrible.
There’s been a lot of progress in Turkey, but the kind of moderation and impovement of the Turkish attitude and treatment of its Kurdish minority that would put the conflict completely to an end was several years away. Unfortunately, I believe those things, and democratic reforms in general, are now less likely. And of course, new hostilities will be very, very very bad for the poulation of eastern Turkey.
It’s likely the Turkish military will committ atrocities, which will make the prospect of opening negotiations about EU membership more remote, which will make the forces of reform weaker, which will make EU membership even more distant, etc ad infinitum.
One good thing is that a lot of reforms have already been implemented in the last year, most lately the military was stripped of their considerable political power, but the reforms need to be implemented on the ground, not just on paper.
As far as I can tell, the media hasn’t paid much attention to this story, which is sad and also odd since, unlike say the war in Congo, another (scandalously)underreported story, it has obvious geopolitical ramifications, even short-term ones, since, as Tacitus has pointed out it might further destabilize Turkey’s neigbour Iraq.
I’m hardly an expert on Turkey. I will look for quality analysis on the subject and update this post if I find something.
And the Congo has “trivial” geopolitical ramifications?
Just because a conflict has no immediate bearing on your own parochial interests doesn’t make it “trivial”, Mr. Weman.
Not trivial, but relatively unimportant for countries not in the neighbourhood, at least in the short run. When I say non-trivial, I don’t mean ‘not trivial’ but ‘the opposite of trivial.’
But it was extremely poor phrasing. I did not mean that the situation is unimportant, in fact I regard it more important than Iraq or Turkey, because of the immense human suffering.
I have railed several times on my blog about the lack of attention to Congo, which is why the comparison came to mind.
I thank you for bringing this to my attention.
For the record, I have now altered the post in this fashion: I added “another (scandalously) underreported story” and substituted obvious for non-trivial.
Thank you for rephrasing that – no offense taken.
Just a thought David.
I noticed the story, but it may be too early yet to really read the result. There may be a fair amount of brinkmanship going on here, since the Kurds on the other side of the border now feel safe and confident, and the PKK may feel Turkey is vulnerable, since there would be a lot of pressure from the EU and the US. I think we have to wait and see what happens.
Turkey is a bit like Spain emerging from the Franco years, and there will be pushing and shoving on both sides, just as there was here.
I don’t know if you noticed, but economically Turkey is looking quite good at the moment, and this has to put wind in the sails of the reformers. If you look at the demography, (here I go again) you will see Turkey is entering the ‘window of opportunity’ phase (as is Brazil). This may give grounds for optimism. But we still need to wait and see.
BTW Thanks for Blogrolling me. I’ve just returned the compliment.
“As far as I can tell, the media hasn’t paid much attention to this story,”
But what stories ARE covered by traditional media in a thorough fair and balanced way?
Related to this issue: I was disappointed – to say the least- in the media-attention for what this and the previous Turkish government announced before Iraq was attacked. (if the Iraqee Kurds would make a move towards independence they openly threatened to occupy the North of Iraq.)
So strange too that the EU did not point out that this was a perfect example of what has to be changed before Turkey can join the EU.