In early May (1997) I traveled to Ankara to attend a peace conference on Turkey's 13-year long war with Kurdish guerillas in the southeastern part of the country. This tragic struggle, which has taken over 20,000 lives--many of them civilians, well demonstrates the need for both a "code of conduct" on U.S. and other suppliers' arms exports to the Turkish government, as well as curbs on the illicit market sustaining the guerillas' fighting.

For several years, FAS has sought to limit and condition American arms exports to Turkey due to that country's abysmal human rights record. The litany of abuses--well documented by non-governmental and governmental monitors--includes the widespread use of torture, "disappearance" of thousands of journalists, intellectuals, and activists, and indiscriminate military attacks on civilian populations. These abuses center around the war against the Kurdish insurgents, known as the PKK, but include many repressive measures aimed at the general Kurdish population, as well. Click here for background on the Kurds in Turkey.

Unfortunately, at the behest of the military-dominated Turkish National Security Council, the government banned the peace conference two days before it was to open. The banning order said that the meeting threatened "the indivisible integrity of the state," a clear reference to the aspirations of some of Turkey's Kurds to have an independent homeland. This was clearly not a goal of the conference, which, according to the invitation letter, sought to "silence the guns and seek through dialogue a solution that would allow both peoples [Turkish and Kurdish] to live in peace within the same state, with due respect for each other's identity and culture." The conference planners invited the participation of all the legal Turkish political parties, as well as professional organizations and human rights groups.

Despite the banning order, several dozen international participants came to Ankara and held a series of informal meetings. At the state-run hotel where the conference was to have taken place, we were met by a phalanx of security police, who monitored us and filmed our activities for the next three days.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, when questioned about the banning of the peace conference, said the U.S. Government "strongly back[s] the objective of this conference....We regret very much the decision by the Turkish Government.... [W]e think that that kind of open dialogue builds cooperation."

Official U.S. policy supports a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish "problem"--code for Turkey's repressive policies toward the general Kurdish population. But the administration in no way encourages Turkey to negotiate an end to the war with the PKK guerillas, whom the State Department has labeled as "vicious terrorists." The PKK has committed many abuses against Turkish civilians, principally Kurdish Turks cooperating with the military. But the U.S. government's rigid opposition to a negotiated end to this war is inconsistent with its past support for peace talks in other conflicts where both sides were guilty of abuses (e.g., El Salvador, Guatemala). Moreover, an end to the political repression of the general Kurdish population is unlikely while the war continues.

The United States has long been Turkey's principal military backer. Since 1984, when the war began, successive administrations have given the Turkish military $6 billion in "security assistance" to buy American-made weapons. In addition, the U.S. has provided Turkey with hundreds of free surplus tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers and attack helicopters from Pentagon stocks. Congress is currently considering the Clinton Administration's request of over $220 million in military loans, cash transfer, and military training for Turkey next year.

In a 1995 report, the State Department acknowledged that "U.S.-origin equipment...has been used in operations against the PKK during which human rights abuses have occurred. It is highly likely that such equipment was used in support of the evacuation and/or destruction of villages." Despite this finding, the arms flow continues largely unabated. The State Department did, however, hold back last year on a sale of 10 'Super Cobra' attack helicopters to Turkey, largely because of concerns that Congress would not support the deal. This helicopter had been specifically identified by the State Department in indiscriminate attacks on villages.

The rationales for close U.S. military ties with Turkey are manifold. During the Cold War, the U.S. establishment supported arms and aid to Turkey in order to strengthen its membership in NATO and thwart communist expansion. Since 1991, arms transfers have been justified as necessary to counter aggression from "rogue states" bordering Turkey--Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Such aggression is highly improbable, given that Turkey is a member of NATO, and an attack against it would result in a collective response. Moreover, it is Turkey which has repeatedly invaded northern Iraq in the past several years, in assaults on PKK guerilla camps and Iraqi Kurdish villages. Turkish military spokesmen have hinted that assaults on Syrian and Iranian territory might be necessary, if those countries don't cease providing support and shelter to PKK fighters.

Some arms-sales-to-Turkey proponents hint darkly that if the United States restricts the weapons flow, the U.S. might "lose Turkey," a reference to the growing role of Islamic political parties. Testifying in March, Secretary of Defense William Cohen scolded Congress for holding up the sale of major weapons systems to Turkey, suggesting that such actions could strengthen anti-Western Islamic factions. The logic, let alone the wisdom, of such claims is far from clear. The main Islamic party, Refah, gained strength in Turkey during a time of unrestricted U.S. arms supply. In fact, the 1995 election which brought Refah to power occurred just weeks after a major sale by the United States of 120 Army Tactical Missile Systems. The sale (the first ever export of this short-range ballistic missile) was timed to bolster Washington's favorite--Tansu Ciller--in the elections, but it failed to do so.

Another principal rationale given for weapons aid is that, although about 97 percent of the population is Islamic, Turkey is a "secular democracy" and a model for other Muslim-dominated states in the region. Of late, however, the defense of secularism has come at the expense of democracy in Turkey.

Elections are held in Turkey but, as has been made clear by recent events, the government serves at the pleasure of the military, and not vice versa. In mid-June the military pressured the elected Islamic-party Prime Minister into resigning by threatening a coup if he did not curb certain policies immediately. Largely cosmetic reforms that Refah sought to implement (e.g., allowing--not compelling--women to wear headscarves to government jobs) were viewed as signs of the impending de-secularization of Turkey and, therefore, as justification for the military to short-circuit democracy in Turkey.

Features of democracy taken for granted in America simply do not exist in Turkey. Public speech is controlled, as evidenced by the closure of our conference, and the heavy police surveillance of those who came to attend it. In addition, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, more journalists were killed or imprisoned in Turkey last year than in any other country. Human rights monitoring organizations are shut down, and dozens of human rights workers have been murdered. Many Kurdish parliamentarians have been imprisoned in recent years for "crimes of opinion"; others have fled into exile.

The local host of the "non-conference" was the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD in Turkish), a nation-wide membership organization, with 16,000 members in 48 chapters. The association documents abuses in the war in the southeast, as well as elsewhere in the country, in a monthly bulletin. The government has closed down 18 of its chapters--including all of its branches in the southeast--and recently instituted proceedings to shut down IHD's Ankara headquarters.

While in Ankara, I also visited the offices of the Foundation for the Research of Societal Problems (TOSAV in Turkish), a promising new NGO initiative launched by Dou Ergil, a professor of political science at Ankara University. Throughout 1996, Ergil brought together a handful of establishment Turks and Kurds to discuss reconciliation and resolution of the Kurdish crisis. The two sides were eventually able to reach agreement on many points about the root causes of the conflict, and on political reform, peace, and economic development measures necessary to address those root causes. The publication of this consensus document in Turkey was quite extraordinary, and Ergil was measuredly optimistic: Two years ago, he said, the subject of Kurdish-Turkish peace was taboo, and he would not have been able to open his foundation.

Given the high level of sensitivity in Turkey to outside pressure on human rights (especially around the Kurdish war), I asked how concerned foreigners could most constructively engage the issue. He suggested that we focus on disarmament and demilitarization of both the Turkish military and the PKK insurgents, rather than just the military, because the military is widely supported in Turkey. "An attack on the beloved army [alone] will be seen as an attack on the state," he said.

The PKK has apparently had little difficulty finding weapons. In January of this year, the leader of the insurgency, Abdullah Ocalan, spoke of an international arms supply network that extends "from Afghanistan to Central Europe." He added that PKK arms purchases occur in Istanbul, as well.

In May, the PKK shot down two Turkish military helicopters in northern Iraq using Russian-made shoulder-launched missiles. U.S. intelligence reportedly has identified organized crime networks in Russia, as well as smugglers in Poland and Bulgaria, as the likely source of supply. These networks have reportedly sent small shipments of 150-200 weapons at a time--including small arms, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and anti-aircraft missiles--through two principal routes, one along Turkey's northeastern border on the Black Sea, and the other on the Bulgarian border in Thrace.

The Turkish military routinely accuses neighbors with whom it has bad relations of supporting the PKK. A Turkish military spokesman recently named Syria, Greece, Cyprus, and Armenia as suppliers of weapons and training to the insurgents. All have denied the allegation.

Following two days of meetings in Ankara, I traveled with several other "non-conference" participants for three days in and around Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish region. A road sign leading in to the city stated the population at about 400,000, but the city, swollen with refugees from near-by demolished villages, is estimated at about 1.5 million.

The differences from Ankara are striking from the moment you step off the plane. First of all, the airport cohabits with a military aircraft base. Soldiers in camouflage patrol the runway with assault rifles, while armed and armored jeeps drive by. Military and police are omni-present inside the terminal.

Murat Bozlak, the chairman of HADEP (the main Kurdish political party), arrived in Diyarbakir on our flight. A crowd, reportedly 30,000 people strong, gathered to welcome him home from an Ankara prison, where he had been held since June 1996. Bozlak and many other party members were arrested following a party congress, when a HADEP "supporter" took down the Turkish flag and put up the PKK flag in its place. The man has recently confessed to being an agent provacateur in the pay of the police.

We waited patiently for the parade of supporters to leave the airport. I shared a taxi to the hotel with a Kurdish speaker, who was able to talk with our driver. We asked whether life in this city had improved recently, under the Refah (Islamic) government, in particular. He emphatically said no, that Refah--as with all of the major political parties--were out for themselves, that they were not developing the economy in the Kurdish part of the country. Our driver openly expressed strong Kurdish nationalist sentiments.

A group--comprised of nationals from Germany, France, Russia and America--set out to reach the village of Tepe, in Diyarbakir province. According to local human rights workers, the village had been blockaded for the past two months by Turkish military forces in reprisal for the PKK murder of a State-paid village guard. No food or medicine was allowed in, and no people were allowed out. We were turned back at a paramilitary checkpoint "for security reasons."

We then headed to Mardin, about 90 km south of Diyarbakir. The decade-long state of emergency which has existed in all nine southeastern provinces was recently lifted in Mardin, the area having been thoroughly "pacified." Nevertheless, Mardin still has a large military presence. We ate at a restaurant on the main street which displayed a sign saying that it was approved (by the local authorities) for soldiers to eat there. Sitting at tables all around us were boy-soldiers in camouflage, guns slung over their shoulders.

We caught a bus to a small town, Kiziltepe, a couple kilometers further south, near the Syrian border. We stopped for a drink, and the proprietor and several other men joined us. They were all refugees from surrounding villages that had been destroyed by the Jandarma, a paramilitary police force, several years prior. There was quite a bit of construction going up, and I asked who the housing was for. The police and military, they replied.

We were escorted to a refugee community. The houses were built out of concrete blocks, mud, bricks, tin. There was no water or electricity. We met a 40-ish man who invited us into his courtyard for tea. A brood of children loitered around shyly, and his wife came up and welcomed me with a kiss on each cheek. She spoke no Turkish, as is the case with many Kurdish women. Several other men joined us. They spoke freely about politics and about their difficult lives. Our host told me that he had eight children and was not able to send any of them to school. The oldest, a boy ten years old, must work to help the family stay afloat.

The next day the delegation was flying back to Ankara. After going through the thorough inspection and body search required when leaving Diyarbakir, we boarded the jet. We waited for a long while on the runway in the sweltering heat. Finally the stewardesses allowed the restive passengers to disembark back into the airport. A squadron of bombers flew in, and we eventually flew out.

Two days later the Turkish military launched a major cross-border assault on PKK fighters based in northern Iraq. As of this writing, a month and a half later, Turkish troops are still in Iraq.