THE murder of three Kurdish women activists in Paris last month and the beginning of an unprecedented peace process have drawn the world’s attention to one of the Middle East’s most intractable problems – the Kurdish insurgency, which has cost over 40,000 lives since it began in 1984. At the same time, one of the less known and disturbing developments of the Syrian war is the lengthening of Turkey’s ‘Kurdish border’.

The Kurds populate the border regions of four states — Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, the largest concentration being in Turkey. Their numbers, though, are controversial. While the Kurds say they are between 20 and 25 million, independent observers put it at 14m, which accounts for 18 per cent of Turkey’s population. In Iraq they number about seven million, in Iran between seven and eight million and in Syria about two million, besides a sprinkling of Kurds in Caucasus and Russia, in addition to a Kurdish diaspora of 1.5m, with 800,000 in Germany alone. There are also 150,000 Kurds of Jewish faith in Israel. With population estimates varying, the Kurds are considered the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of their own.

Syrian Kurds do not live in a contiguous area. However, in the present anarchy they have occupied a strip of territory bordering Turkey, thus lengthening Ankara’s ‘Kurdish border’ from 800km to nearly 1,000km. If Syrian Kurds manage to strengthen their grip over the ‘liberated’ territory and establish a ‘Syrian Kurdistan’, Turkey will have to deal with a ‘greater’ Kurdistan stretching all the way from Iraq to a Syrian territory that could, by further expansion, touch the Mediterranean.

In Iran, the Kurdish story is no different from that in Iraq and Turkey. Ayatollah Khomeini declared that Islam did not recognise a community on ethnic lines, and no special constitutional safeguards were made for the Kurdish minority spread over four provinces – Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam and (Iranian) Azerbaijan. Mohammad Khatami, however, took steps to pacify the Kurds and included several of them in his cabinet. Those steps were largely undone by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While separatist tendencies exist among all Kurds, the bastion of Kurdish separatism and militancy is in Iraq.

Persecuted by Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Kurds are today better off. A Kurd, Jalal Talabani, is Iraq’s president, and Kurdistan, south of Turkey, enjoys a measure of autonomy. Oil is a source of conflict, because Baghdad resents the Kurdistan regional government’s direct contact with Western firms. It is Kurdistan-based Kurds, led by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who have been Ankara’s scourge.

Until the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power in 2002, Kurds enjoyed little cultural rights. The word ‘Kurd’ was banned and they were referred to as mountain Turks. Leyla Zana, a Kurdish woman MP, was charged with treason and sentenced to 10 years in jail for speaking partly in Kurdish in parliament. There were no Kurdish language TV channels and radio stations and no newspapers, and under the constitution no party can be formed on an ethnic basis. Then perhaps less for altruistic reasons and more for meeting the European Union’s Copenhagen criteria, the AKP government liberalised its Kurdish policy. In 2007, the official Turkish TV began programmes in Kurdish, and two Kurdish language TV channels and an FM radio station were allowed to operate.

The long and unending military conflict is making most Kurds wonder whether they can succeed militarily. Abdullah Ocalan, their leader who was kidnapped in Nairobi in 1999 and brought to Turkey, is as popular as ever, but a growing number of Kurds seem to believe that non-military options be given a chance.

The war fatigue was evident at the emotion-charged funeral of the three women at Diyarbakir, a largely Kurdish city. Salahettin Demirtash, leader of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), denounced the recent Turkish air attacks on Kurdish militants in the Qindil mountains in Iraq but spoke repeatedly of his desire for peace. “Peacemaking is not possible”, he said “while making war at the same time.” As Kurdish mothers bade farewell to their children, he said, “they did not promise revenge. They demanded peace”. Then, despite known opposition from Kurdish hardliners, Demirtash said he supported Ocalan’s talks with the government.

The talks began in the summer of 2009 when some Turkish intelligence officials met Ocalan in the Imrali island prison. The talks didn’t go well, opposed as much by the Turkish ‘deep state’ as extremists in the PKK. But, after winning a third term, the government re-engaged Ocalan. The key issue is Ankara’s insistence that the PKK lay down arms. The Turkish media has reported that the PKK is considering this option in return for cast-iron guarantees from Ankara on some of their key demands. Because of the PKK’s hard line, Kurdish parties based in Turkey, especially Demirtash’s BDP, have acquired an importance out of proportion to their following among the Kurdish people. The talks acquired some credibility when Erdogan for the first time spoke of a ‘peace process’ during a meeting with AKP deputies in parliament on Jan 15. He asked the MPs to realise where Turkey would be if it did not have a Kurdish insurgency that is now three decades old.

An Iraqi style autonomous Kurdistan is something that Turkey cannot visualise in its south-eastern region. What observers expect Ankara is to focus on the renunciation of violence by the PKK. In return the Turkish state will guarantee maximum cultural rights for the Kurdish people, release hundreds of Kurdish activists, scrap harsh laws which the Kurds feel are directed at them, and recognise the Kurdish identity in the new constitution now on the anvil. Ankara will also have to work closely with the BDP and other moderate Turkey-based Kurdish parties and, more important, listen to Ocalan. That the Turkish authorities should negotiate with him 14 years after his arrest shows there can be no peace if Ocalan is not on board.

The writer is a staff member