The Kurds and the Future of Turkey
- Book Review,
by Michael M. Gunter
From Booklist
Where thoughtful analysis of the world's less visible trouble spots circulates, this analysis by the U.S. academic perhaps most closely identified with study of Turkey's "Kurdish problem" will appeal. Gunter, a Tennessee Technological University political science professor who has been a Senior Fulbright Lecturer on international relations in Turkey, provides a sequel to his Kurds in Turkey (1990), focusing on Turkey's long "authoritarian tradition," Kurdish opposition groups (particularly the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK), the consequences of the Persian Gulf War, and how the unresolved "Kurdish question" raises obstacles to both full democracy in Turkey and sounder relations between Turkey and other countries around the world. The legitimate aspirations of 20 to 25 percent of Turkey's population must be heard, and Gunter insists that "the preferred solution . . . is for Turkey to grant its citizens of Kurdish ethnic heritage their full cultural, social, and political rights as implied by democracy." Mary Carroll
Book Description
Since 1984, Turkey has suffered from an increasingly virulent guerrilla/terrorist insurgency led by the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK), or Kurdistan Workers Party, headed by Abdullah Ocalan. By 1996, more than 20,000 people had been killed and another 2,000,000 displaced and 2,000 villages destroyed. At present, this crisis threatens to challenge the future of the country. Gunter analyzes the authoritarian tradition in Turkey and puzzles over the inability of Turkey to take the final steps toward democracy. He offers a solution that will allow the country to remain whole. Gunter's masterly analysis and proffered solution is necessary reading for anyone interested in Turkey and its troubling problem.
Card catalog description
Since August 1984, Turkey has suffered from an increasingly virulent guerrilla/terrorist insurgency led by the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK), or Kurdistan Workers Party, headed by Abdullah Ocalan. By the summer of 1996, more than 20,000 people had been killed and, by the admission of the Turkish government itself, another 2,000,000 internally displaced and more than 2,000 villages destroyed. At present, the Kurdish problem in Turkey threatens to challenge the very future of the country itself. In The Kurds and the Future of Turkey, Gunter looks at the way in which the current Turkish government is dealing with the problem, analyzes the role of what he calls the authoritarian tradition in Turkey, and puzzles over the seeming inability of Turkey to take the final steps toward becoming a genuine democracy. He focuses on the PKK and its longtime leader, traces the Kurdish struggle as it has developed in Turkey since the publication of his last work, and looks at the roles of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Western Europe. He concludes by looking at the future of the country and offers a solution that will allow the country to remain whole. Informed by extensive research done in Turkey up to and during the time that the U.S. State Department temporarily banned U.S. citizens' travel to the southeast section of that country, Gunter's masterly analysis and proffered solution is necessary reading for anyone interested in Turkey and its troubling problem.
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