The PKK Is Truer to Ataturk’s Vision than Erdogan

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

Turks revere Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. The Anıtkabir, his mausoleum that doubles as a museum in his honor, dominates central Ankara. Turkey also preserves the Dolmabahçe Palace, Atatürk’s residence, as a shrine to their founding father. Atatürk’s face dominates Turkish coins and currency, and his portrait hangs in every public office. Turkish schools still teach his speeches and force Turkish students to memorize his quotes.

Atatürk was a war hero, helping the Turks to repel the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landing. As Turkey’s first president, he was a dictator rather than a democrat, but his goal was less self-aggrandizement than using his absolute power to remake society. He ushered in a series of reforms to tie Turks to the West and liberalism. He remained antagonistic toward Turkey’s Kurds, though this had more to do at the time with the Kurds’ comparative religiosity than it did with their national aspirations.

Today, of course, another dictator dominates Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan is easily the most consequential figure in Turkey’s history after Atatürk. He claims to be the steward of Turkish national interests, though his adulation of the Ottoman Empire and his promotion of not only Islam but also a Muslim Brotherhood exegesis foreign to Turkey make him the opposite of Turkey’s founding father. Today, Erdogan systematically seeks to tear down what Atatürk built.

Syrian Kurdish female YPJ/YPG fighters, which are considered to be the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), deploy outside Gweran prison, which is housing ISIS fighters, in the northeastern city of Hasaka in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), January 26, 2022. Photo: AFP

Erdogan perverts Turkish nationalism to distract from his agenda and the failure of his financial management. Turkey’s economy today sits on a rotting foundation, with inflation eating away at whatever remains of ordinary Turks’ dreams for a better life. This, and hatred of Kurds for rejecting his own Islamism, motivates Erdogan to target the Kurds, both in Turkey and in Syria.

Erdogan’s approach toward the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its intellectual offshoots in Syria is a manifestation of such irrationality and desire to distract. He knows that after decades of brainwashing through schools, mosques, and a media bubble he controls, many but not all Turks are brainwashed to despise any manifestation of Kurdish cultural and political expression that the Turkish state does not control.

The irony is that a comparison of the positions between Erdogan and the PKK show that the PKK today embraces a policy closer to the vision of Atatürk than does Erdogan. Atatürk, for example, said, “Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight.” Yet Erdogan has described the Turkish Army as “the Army of Muhammad” and himself as the “servant of Sharia.” He has targeted not only Christian churches and property, but also Alevi houses of worship. When he campaigned for Istanbul to host the Olympics, he justified the bid with the need for Muslims to host.

In the first years of Erdogan’s tenure, the murder rate of women increased 1,400 percent due to the impunity that religious conservatives felt to act outside the law. Likewise, child marriage rates remain alarmingly high. Meanwhile, Erdogan has systematically purged women from the upper ranks of government. Turkey ranks among the lowest of industrialized states in gender parity.

Atatürk also said, “My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth, and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him [to] act against the liberty of his fellow men.” Here, too, Erdogan is an affront to Atatürk’s legacy. Erdogan promotes superstition over science, imprisons opponents, and treats democracy with disdain, famously likening it to riding a streetcar to a specific destination and then stepping off.

Kurdish Fashion show in Qamishlo city, Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), March 14, 2017. Photo: AFP

Contrast this with the Syrian Kurds in the autonomous zone whom Erdogan dismisses collectively as terrorists. The Kurds transformed the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria into a haven in which Christians, Muslims, Yezidis, and Jews each could worship freely. Women are equal not only in theory, but also in practice. They fight as equals in the local militias, serve as co-presidents, and co-head departments.

Those who most fiercely criticize Syrian Kurds in Washington and Ankara are those who, despite every opportunity, have never visited the region or seen its governance in action. The area is an island of progressivism wedged between radical Islamists in Turkey and Syria and backward tribalism in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Syrian Kurds pivot to the West, rather than root themselves solely in the Middle Eastern morass.

Should critics visit, they might find that, its Kurdish patina aside, what exists today in Syrian Kurdistan is closer to the vision of Atatürk than what Erdogan has built in Turkey. Perhaps, then, it is Erdogan who should be in prison on İmralı Island for his corruption and treason to the Turkish state, and PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan who should be free.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at aei.org

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.