On planning and disaster: Notes from an earthquake

Source: FLICKR.

by Burç Köstem

It has been nearly two months since February 6th, when two consecutive earthquakes of 7.8 and 7.7 magnitudes originating in the towns of Maraş and Antep took place. The earthquake has had a devastating effect across a large geographical area near the Turkish-Syrian border, that spans the historic lands of Kurdistan and Turkey as well as Northern Syria and Rojava. Officials report that over 50 thousand people lost their lives, tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, and millions of people lost their homes.

In the northern side of the Turkish-Syrian border, the disaster that followed the earthquake has its roots most directly in the governing Justice and Development Party’s (JDP) political economic regime of construction-based growth, social conservatism, and state violence. In the following, I first point to how disasters are political events – that their effects and sources are unevenly distributed. However, I also add that this insight – that disasters are political – is well metabolized in Turkish political discourse and has by itself only further fueled the JDP’s construction-based model of growth. I then sketch the political economic forces behind the recent earthquake, investigating how disasters are baked into Turkey’s current developmental model. I then investigate how this developmental model, premised on intensifying disasters, prevents the current regime from planning against them. Last, I explore what kind of social opposition could form out of the ruins of the earthquake, to help plan against the next set of disasters.

There is no such thing as a natural disaster”

The famous words of Marxist geographer Neil Smith that “there’s no such thing as a natural disaster” remind us of the political stakes of a disaster. Written in response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans and its surrounding areas, Smith’s text reminds us that the destruction and death that follow a disaster are not preordained by God. Neither are they the outcome of inscrutable natural forces. Disasters are instead shaped by a “social calculus” that determines and distributes their every aspect – from the structural causes that lead to the collapse of some buildings and neighborhoods while leaving others intact, to the level of disaster preparedness in different regions, or the effectiveness of the response and the reconstruction that follows. 

In 2013, Erdoğan himself declared that “It is not earthquakes but buildings that kill.”

Yet the February 6th earthquake was foretold many times before it materialized. Scholar Eray Çaylı points out in a prescient piece from 2022 that the idea that an earthquake is a political event is already well-metabolized by Turkish political discourse. In the past 21 years that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s JDP have been in power, there have been many academics and politicians warning of the poor building stock in the areas affected by the earthquake. Even more damning are the assessments of the Turkish state’s own Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), which issued several reports on the history of destructive earthquakes in the region. One 2019 report by AFAD highlights that “the fact that for the past 35 years there have not been any earthquakes to release the tension building in this region, means that the risk posed by a future earthquake is even more grave.” In 2013, Erdoğan himself declared that “It is not earthquakes but buildings that kill.” Moreover, earthquakes have an important role in recent political memory. In 1999, an earthquake centered around the Western town of İzmit near İstanbul killed 17 thousand people, rendering half a million more homeless. The İzmit earthquake was interpreted as a sign of the existing political regime’s incompetence, which helped fuel the currently governing JDP’s rise to power.

And yet, this awareness of the political nature of earthquakes has by itself achieved little. On the contrary, the governing JDP has not been shy about exploiting the memory of the İzmit earthquake to push through urban renewal projects that in the guise of earthquake-preparedness sought to intensify gentrification and urban transformation throughout major cities. When, in 2011, an earthquake devastated the city of Van, this only served to accelerate JDP’s promises to further intensify construction—as Youenn Gouarin observes. The same happened later in 2020 as earthquakes shook İzmir and Elazığ, with hundreds of acres of land sold off to companies and opened for further development. Even after this most recent earthquake, the JDP has conspired with its allies in the capitalist class promising to rebuild the region within a year, while also using its emergency powers to lift environmental protections for forests and meadows.

In Kurdish majority urban centres, this cycle of destruction and reconstruction has also taken place through military intervention. The city of Amed, also known as Diyarbakir, is the unofficial capital of Northern Kurdistan and is home to over a thousand buildings that were destroyed or heavily damaged during the earthquake. Yet even before the earthquake, poor neighborhoods of Amed like Suriçi were first nearly completely destroyed in 2015, through state of emergency powers employed by the Turkish military as part of its war against Kurdish political resistance, only to be then rebuilt. Between 2018 and 2021, real estate prices in Amed are said to have risen by 128%, a reflection of the high levels of inflation and transformation experienced in urban areas throughout the region. Now that the earthquake has made parts of the city uninhabitable, a new cycle of construction seems likely to unfold.

The JDP’s term in power from 2002 till today has been described as the era of “mega-rubble”—a process of constant urban transformation and renewal.

Such destruction and reconstruction have the result of producing huge amounts of rubble and waste, even prior to the earthquake. In this sense, the JDP’s term in power from 2002 till today has been described by various political ecologists in Turkey as the era of “mega-rubble” (mega hafriyat dönemi)—a process of constant urban transformation and renewal. This is why political ecologist Aslı Odman has recently described capitalism in Turkey as a train moving on the dual rails of rubble on the one hand and emergency on the other. Far from being anomaly then, the earthquake is only the latest stop this train passed through.

Disaster as development

An economy that feeds on construction and produces rubble, has become a well-worn growth model not only in Turkey but also abroad. In this model, fast paced growth is generated through finance and realized by construction – creating an asset economy of financial instruments and real estate. In Turkey, between 1989 and 2021 the construction sector has accounted for anywhere between 10-16% of Turkey’s entire GDP. Such construction also took place in the region effected by the earthquake, where the JDP has a significant electoral base and political control. A significant part of this construction takes the shape of infrastructure, mainly airports, roads and electricity generation plants that are funded through public-private partnerships programs. Another significant part takes place through private and public investment in residential housing. Now, in this same region, the airports and roads and the newly built houses created by infrastructural investment also lie in rubble.

Such heaps of rubble are not simply the result of “corruption” or the deterioration of state institutions. Nor are disasters the outcome of a cult of personality built around the persona of Erdogan. Rather, they are the result of a consciously adopted model of economic growth, one whereby ecological catastrophe is tolerated as the price for faster development and economic growth. Fostering GDP growth through megaprojects enables countries like Turkey to renegotiate their participation in systems of financialized development. The construction of a myriad of large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals, bridges, roads, and airports – endearingly called “crazy projects” by Erdoğan – are meant to reroute disaggregated and globalized chains of production and consumption through Turkey.

These political economic conditions are also lived as feelings, morals, aspirations, and fears. In Turkey “economic growth” is not only a social process but a promise, imagined through elaborate infrastructure projects, and often bound up with a civilizational resentment, a desire to “catch up” with and overcome Western powers. The JDP’s tenure in power has relied not only on construction-based accumulation and economic growth, but also on a resurgence of reactionary sentiment and political Islam as well as a renewed social conservatism.

This social conservatism in part arises from JDP’s political roots in the conservatively oriented small to medium business class. This class includes a network of subcontractors and family-owned companies that have grown alongside the dynastic centers of wealth and political influence that constitute the regime’s allies in the construction industry in Turkey. The JDP’s increasingly oppressive policies towards LGBTQ and women mobilizes this conservative and “family values”-oriented base. The JDP has attempted to explain the earthquake to this conservative base as a “plan of fate”, an exceptional disaster that is preordained by god but also perversely may yet hold new opportunities and promises for construction.

Both during the assembling of buildings and infrastructure and subsequently in their toppling, the construction industry has proven disastrous in Turkey. In short, the earthquake has been the logical conclusion of Turkey’s construction based developmental model.

Toward militant planning

What the earthquake demonstrated is the extent to which the state and the market have been inadequate as instruments of planning in the face of disaster. Nothing embodies this inadequacy as much as the collapse of transport and communications infrastructure that would help coordinate aid during the earthquake – airports, roads, telecommunications towers. This collapse of infrastructure had terrible consequences. Of the at least 50,000 people who lost their lives trapped under rubble across Kurdistan, Syria, and Turkey, many are thought to have died from hypothermia, hunger, and thirst. In Turkey, survivors of the earthquake reported days of waiting for excavation equipment, water, blankets, phone reception. Remote villages spent days without any contact or aid from the outside the roads that lead to their village destroyed by the earthquake or cell towers collapsed. Under these circumstances state institutions instead focused on clamping down on and hindering the efforts of volunteers and rescue teams. Days after the initial earthquake the government began restricting and slowing down access to Twitter, to clamp down on dissent, a move that made it harder coordinate rescue.

In 2020, political ecologist Kai Heron proposed that contemporary ecological politics is defined by “capitalist catastrophism”. This condition, he argues, is less a stable regime and more the result of what happens when the global neoliberal order begins to “fray at the edges”. Rather than plan or manage crises, the role of the state in this schema is to let crises unfold in ways that nonetheless are profitable for the capitalists. In this sense, the JDP’s term in power has been marked by historic forest fires, mining disasters, internal and external wars, plagues. The popular narrative around the JDP’s tenure in power is a story of authoritarian backsliding, of an initial stage of liberal pluralism and growth later corrupted by Erdogan and his cronies. Yet from the perspective of capital and catastrophe, an alternative analytic for the JDP is one of intensifying crises, characterized by periods of capitalist accumulation and state violence. In other words, perhaps JDP’s power base conspires against planning and for disaster. 

JDP’s power base conspires against planning and for disaster. In this lacuna of state planning and disaster capitalism, autonomous forms of provisioning and mutual aid in the affected regions have flourished.

In this lacuna of state planning and disaster capitalism, autonomous forms of provisioning and mutual aid in the affected regions have flourished. Many have celebrated the seemingly spontaneous organizational capacity doctors, miners, construction workers, translators have mustered under conditions of emergency using messaging apps and social media platforms. Such displays of social solidarity, altruism, sharing, and mutual aid are characteristic of many different societies in post-disaster conditions. One could argue that the grassroots mobilizations that emerge after a disaster is demonstrative of what planning truly means: not only coordinating knowledge but building the capacity to exercise collective power and self-sufficiency. Drawing on the experiences of the Black radical tradition in the US, authors Stefano Harney and Fred Moten characterize planning as “self-sufficiency at the social level.” Planning “begins…with what we might call a militant preservation.” In the context of intensifying disasters, it is important to retain this militant character of planning, of exercising self-sufficiency both against the bourgeois-state and against capital.

One could argue that the grassroots mobilizations that emerge after a disaster is demonstrative of what planning truly means: not only coordinating knowledge but building the capacity to exercise collective power and self-sufficiency.

Yet while it is true that the post-disaster social mobilization achieved remarkable feats, rescuing, and caring for thousands of people, finding, and deploying excavator trucks, repairing infrastructure, it is also true that this mobilization could not have happened without any prior organization. For the first few days immediately following the disaster, the most organized and effective groups seemed to be ones that had relevant skills and had built self-sufficient institutions – independent miners, doctors and educators associations – what remains of Turkey’s civil society including the much persecuted but nonetheless persistent feminist and LGBTQ+ organizations, a handful of socialist and radical democratic political parties such as the People’s Democracy Party (HDP), the Workers Party of Turkey (TİP), and the Turkish Communist Party (TKP). Maintaining and growing this organizational capacity will be crucial both during and after the elections, no matter the result.

It matters that this social opposition emerging from the Feb 6 earthquake has an explicitly political and liberatory character. Consider how the image of “looters” supposedly “stealing” from supermarkets and shops has become a recurring theme within rightwing political discourse following the earthquake. The charge of looting has been directed at migrants and racialized minorities to invoke feelings of hatred and vengeance. Such feelings have been stoked by far-right groups, mainstream media outlets, as well as politicians both in government and in opposition, leading the government to promise to “crackdown” on looters. In this sense, within the chaos of planning left by the markets and the state, a whole host of reactionary sentiments have flourished. Perhaps the anti-looting rhetoric indicates a fear of self-sufficiency and planning outside the parameters of private property. Perhaps it is a way to register and suppress the outrage of well-stocked supermarkets that existed alongside a disaster zone. In any case, without more explicitly political forms of organization, such racially motivated fears could easily serve to divide the spirit of solidarity that is now flourishing.

If planning is a matter of collective action and self-sufficiency, then the question of who the collective subject of our politics is becomes inevitable. In answering these questions, it is crucial to foreground one’s commitment against the power structures that have created and maintained regimes like the JDP – to be organized explicitly against fascism, against capital and against the heteropatriarchy. Where such political commitments have been weaker or more obscure, the last two months has shown how social opposition can be co-opted and distracted by reactionary forces.

Conclusion

In May, Turkey heads off to the elections, with opposition parties looking to oust Erdoğan and the existing government replacing them both with a broad alliance. Electorally, this alliance stretches from rightwing nationalist breakaways from the regime such as İYİP, to multiple right and left centrist parties such as DEVA and the CHP, to the pro-minority, communist, anti-capitalist and radical democratic alliance EMEP. While there is general optimism about defeating the JDP, it seems likely that even if this were so, such ideologically diverse alliances will not outlast their victory, indeed cracks in them have already begun to show. Therefore, it is important to think through the capacity for collective action that emerged after the disaster and what it teaches us about building a more sustained avenue for emancipatory and working-class politics, both in Turkey and beyond.

Nothing is certain in these elections. Indeed, while Erdoğan has been doing poorly in the polls, there is always wisdom in caution especially when it comes to electoral politics and even more so in an authoritarian context like Turkey. Moreover, no matter the results, there is much work to do for the left. An important priority is building a new coalition across several groups including an expanded working-class resistance that has organized against the capitalist class – miners, construction workers, shipbreakers, waste workers, delivery workers; the movement for Kurdish political autonomy which has been resisting state violence and internal colonialism; and the feminist and LGBTQ movements that have organized both along the lines of social reproduction and against the retrenchment of social conservatism. Such an opposition will become increasingly crucial as the forces of climate catastrophe and capitalism will, at least in the near future, continue to produce disasters in Turkey and abroad. Perhaps this coalition can be one of the instruments that helps plan against the next disaster.

Burç Köstem (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University.

Sur: A neighbourhood of history, hope, and resistance

In this photo taken on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, a family leave the Sur district in Diyarbakir, Turkey. The family are among tens of thousands displaced by fighting raging between Turkish security forces and militants in the southeast after a peace process collapsed in the summer. (AP Photo/Murat Bay)
A family leave the Sur district in Diyarbakir (Amed), Turkey, after heavy assault by the Turkish military. Source: AP Photo/Murat Bay.

by Eleanor Finley

Abdullah Demirbas was born in 1966 in the city of Diyarbakir (or Amed), Kurdistan. From 2004 until 2012, he served as mayor of Diyarbakir central Sur District, which has been largely destroyed in recent months by Turkish military assault.

While news of Sur’s destruction spread globally via social media, its profound cultural and historical significance is less widely known. For thousands of years, Diyarbakir has stood as the cosmopolitan heart of the Mesopotamian region. Sur is the city’s oldest neighborhood, with official records dating the city back over 3,000 years. However, local experts suggest that it is far older. Before its destruction, Sur was a lively and colorful place with narrow streets, cool shade, thick stone walls, narrow passageways, and luxuriant gardens. As a richly articulated living history, Sur shattered the stereotype of the Middle East as intellectually backwards and culturally empty.

During his tenure, Demirbas led social and cultural projects to renew Sur and preserve not only its material and architectural legacy, but also the livelihood and culture of its inhabitants. He helped establish the Council of Forty, a multi-faith forum across Amed’s religious communities, as well as a civil monument to the Armenian genocide, the only one of its kind in Turkey 1. In 2012, Demirbas was forcibly removed from office and arrested for using the Kurdish language in a municipal proceeding. Earlier this year, he relocated from Amed to Istanbul, where he teaches philosophy and politics in a local public school.

In the following interview, Demirbas and I discuss the history of Sur, as well as the recent waves of state violence, repression and the threat of civil war in Turkey. This was conducted remotely over two sessions and with the help of a translator. The text is edited in some places for length and clarity.

Can you tell me about Amed before 2004? 

When we (the BDP) took over in 2004, Amed was not in very good shape. It was actually a devastated, abused place. But during those ten years time, we did much restoration of churches, mosques, and synagogues for example; including an Alevi mosque and a Yazidi temple. We made plans to preserve Sur as a whole, which had never been done by any previous governments or mayoralties. Our plan was to rebuild Sur as it was before the 1930’s, with close resemblance to the original. As part of this merging of Diyarbakir’s many cultural roots, we also constructed multicultural institutions.

While we were doing all of this planning and reconstruction, we also paid close attention to our own democratic values and made sure that people were joining in and giving their opinions on these issues. We asked the people, we asked the NGOs, as well as the architects’ chambers and stakeholders in related fields. So we went to the Council of 40, and we made the plans in full consultation with them.

Say more about the Council of Forty? This is a religious council?  

Yes, that’s right. This is a unique council in Turkey. Gender equality and ethnic and religious equality are its ruling principles: so there are Armenian, Syrian, Kaldani, Alevi, even Turkmen representatives among its different contesting views. If we have to summarize, we were trying to make Sur reflect its own historical roots, because it is estimated that Sur is historically over eight or nine thousand years old and that over thirty-three different cultures have thrived there. Sur is the largest part of Diyarbakir, making Diyarbakir a multi-cultural, multi-identity, and multi-vocal city. But this remarkable diversity was denied at the foundation of the Turkish Republic, which consists only of a single nation, with a single language, and a single religion. So we wanted to rehabilitate all of these diverse fragments which have been under the shadow of destruction and keep them alive for the future.

It is estimated that Sur is historically over eight or nine thousand years old and that over thirty-three different cultures have thrived there, making Diyarbakir a multi-cultural, multi-identity, and multi-vocal city. But this remarkable diversity was denied at the foundation of the Turkish Republic.

The philosophical aspect to this is the belief that the world is a flower garden; and that there are different flowers, different colors, different shapes; that we have to “live and let live” in that world. That’s our perspective, and we wanted to make it a reality. We also wanted to give a model of peace to the Middle East, because the Middle East is constructed of different linguistic, religious, and racial groups. We plan to make Diyarbakir, and especially Sur, the center of Middle Eastern peacemaking.

How did the monument to the Armenian Genocide come about?  

We constructed a monument marking the genocide for the first time ever in Turkey, in 2013. In our opening speech, we declared that we are sharing in the pain of the genocide, to ensure that it won’t be lived ever again. In order to rule, the Turkish state has pushed different religions and different ethnicities one against the other, in an approach based on divide and conquer. However, our view is that there have been mistakes in the past, and we have to face up to these mistakes, apologize for them, and look forwards together.

We know that some of our ancestors, Kurds, during the Armenian genocide, were used as tools in these massacres by the Turkish state. We apologized by constructing this monument, and we asked the Turkish state to apologize to Christians, Armenian Christians, Assyrian Christians, Yezidi Kurds, Jews and Alevi, and also Muslim Kurds as well. If we can face the past correctly together, we can face a true future together, and we can live together. That’s the reason why we built the genocide monument.

How did the municipality address the liberation of women? 

For the first time in Turkey, we introduced female management and a Council of Women as well within the municipality. As we say, women are half of life, so we want to have women joining in life in their freedom. Because women are half the population, we want them to take their rightful place.

For the first time in Turkey, we introduced female management and a Council of Women as well within the municipality. As we say, women are half of life, so we want to have women joining in life in their freedom.

While I was running the administration of Sur, in 2005, we made a decision that if a worker of the municipality is abusing his wife, the city will cut the salary of the man, giving that sum directly to the female partner. If he then continues to abuse his wife, we asked him to vacate the job, replacing him in that post with his wife. If the man has two wives, we fire him and give the position to the first wife. We also gave salary bonuses to parents who educated their daughters in school.

We believe that in order to fully achieve women’s freedom, they must also have their own economic freedom, so we launched projects that brought women into the labour force. One of these projects is the Tandoori house project. In houses constructed by the municipality, women were making Tandoor bread, and they were making a living selling this bread to the market and shops. We also promoted the cultivation of tomato, peppers, and eggplants on the rooftops of people’s houses, where women could harvest them once they were dried in the summertime. We did this in order to introduce a system of organic agriculture, using the original seeds of these products as the basis for a seeding program.

Some of the thousands of people fleeing the historic Sur district of the mainly-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, after authorities, fighting Kurdish militants there, expanded a 24-hour curfew to include five more neighborhoods. The curfew in Sur, in place since December, was enlarged on Wednesday to enable the security forces to "restore public order" in neighborhoods where militants linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, had allegedly dug trenches, set up barricades and explosive devices. Turkey's military said three security force members were killed in an attack in Sur on Wednesday while the Dogan news agency reported heavy fighting in the neighborhood. (AP Photo/Murat Bay)
Some of the thousands of people fleeing the historic Sur district of the mainly-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, after authorities expanded the curfew to include five more neighbourhoods to “restore public order” in neighborhoods where militants linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, had allegedly dug trenches and set up barricades and explosive devices. (AP Photo/Murat Bay)

What is happening now in the war that is raging in Turkey?

The ‘peace process’ came to an abrupt end last April, and as a result there is a huge conflict going on right now. Turkey is on the verge of civil war. Erdogan plans to be not only president but sultan in Turkey, and because the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) 2 crossed the election threshold on June 7, this impeded Erdogan’s path toward the presidency and the sultanate. So he began a war of vengeance. The bombing of the Diyarbakir meeting just before the June election, the bombing of Suruj, and the murder of the two (Turkish) police officers, these were the triggers of the war. Because there were no third-party observers, the two sides do not trust each other and a civil war has broken out in the streets.

But we are now discussing the answer more than the question, and it is worth talking about the question. This is the century-old Kurdish question and the whole challenge for democracy in Turkey. The government’s main strategy for Sunnizing the country, for creating a Sunni Muslim state, depends on expanding the war. Because of his dream of dictatorship, Erdogan has started a civil war.

But we are now discussing the answer more than the question, and it is worth talking about the question. This is the century-old Kurdish question and the whole challenge for democracy in Turkey. The government’s main strategy for Sunnizing the country, for creating a Sunni Muslim state, depends on expanding the war. Because of these dreams of dictatorship, they have inflicted great suffering on the people, on society and the environment. Already, over 300,000 people have had to relocate. Most of the cities’ structures and infrastructure have been destroyed. In Cizre and Diyarbakir, many world heritage sites have been totally demolished. The socio-economic balance, which was already very out of kilter, has been totally upended again. We can sum up: that because of his dream of dictatorship, Erdogan has started a civil war.

Did the PKK set out to break with the peace process and what role did Abdullah Ocalan play in the ensuing conflict?

From the beginning, because there was no third party observer, neither party trusted the other. Now that the process seeking a solution has not only unravelled but become an “un-solution” process, the PKK has increased its attacks and its violence.

Mr. Ocalan has been in solitary confinement since April 2015, such that not even his lawyers can visit him. So he’s out of the picture. And this is one reason for the violence, because he cannot intervene to stop it in its tracks. When Mr. Ocalan was included in the negotiations, all of the violence was stopped. When the Turkish state ceased meetings with him, and isolated him, violence with the state increased. We might well conclude that if he were still involved in the solution process, this violence would not have happened. So it is our wish to see him involved in this process again.

How do the EU and US regard this isolation of Öcalan?

Currently they have not objected to it other than very feebly. Because of public pressure, the CPT delegation (the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Council of Europe) met with him at the end of April, but there has been no press announcement to that effect so far. And they only went to see his conditions, not to involve him once again in the peace process.

The US has not acted as a mediator in this process, yet the US is the only actor who can be effective in this role. The US should step forward, because the development of peace and democracy in Turkey will initiate stability in the Middle East region as a whole, and things will go much better for the different ethnicities and beliefs trying to live together in harmony in the Middle East.

The Kurds and Mr. Ocalan advocate diversity and multiculturalism, multi-racialism, multi-religious-ism, and real secularisim. But the current state in Turkey is radically Islamicized and Turkified. They have supported at various times, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other Islamic extremist groups. This scares the Shia, Armenians, Jews, Christians, and Alevi, who only number 600 of those who are left, as well as other ethnic and religious minorities, because the current Turkish state does not tolerate difference. So our wish is that the EU and US should pressure Turkey into restarting the peace process again.

For the past century, Turkey has had this problem. And the reason for this is Turkey’s official ideology, which holds that everybody in Turkey is a Turk; their language is Turkish, their culture is Turkish, and they are all Sunni Muslim, so that all cultural and racial and religious differences must be obliterated. In the last period of the Ottoman Empire, even Iranians and Assyrians were targets of genocide. After that, in the Republic, they started on Kurds in Dersim and the Republic of Agur, because these were the people who were rejecting this monocultural, unitarian identity. They had to be destroyed, even without any open rebellion, just because they declared that they were not the same. None of these problems have ever been solved.

In your view, what is the solution to the current situation?

First of all, we should have a new constitution which is liberal, democratic, and for universal civil rights in Turkey. In this constitution, all the different ethnic and religious and gender-based differences should be accommodated. Everybody should have the right to be educated in their mother language. All the religions and beliefs in Turkey should have the right to be represented openly. The protectorate system, which is only deployed in Kurdistan, should be abolished, and the state should face up to its past, its bloody history, and apologize to the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Kurds, Jews and Yazidi, as well as the Alevi Turks. In fact, such a new constitution would also be seen as meeting the EU’s constitutional demands.

We ask the intellectual community, academicians, and the whole of international public opinion to pressure Turkey both institutionally and culturally to stop this violent process and return to peace. .

The final thing to say is that we ask the intellectual community, academicians, and the whole of international public opinion to pressure Turkey both institutionally and culturally to stop this violent process and return to peace. We invite them to support our policies of environmentalism and gender and sexual equality, because it is our firm belief that especially female independence is the main bulwark of freedom in society. Moreover, multilingualism should find favor in every state.

Eleanor Finley is a board member of the Institute for Social Ecology. She has a background in feminist activism and was a participant in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Eleanor is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where her research focuses on social movements, environment, and energy in Europe. She is currently conducting action-research within the Spanish anti-fracking movement, and interns with Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

This article was originally posted on openDemocracy.

To receive our next article by email, click here.