suggestion . How could a dictatorial regime , perpetrator of genocide against the Kurds and the Shi’a Arabs , be their partner for building up of a democratic Iraq ? Ocalan wrote this in the summer 2001 , when Saddam Hussein was still on his throne . He does not mention that the resolution about a federate state of Iraqi Kurdistan , within a federal , democratic, and post-Saddam Iraq , was taken together by PUK , KDP, and other Kurdish parties in Iraq , in 1992 , and immediately admitted by the Iraqi Arab opposition to Saddam.
Before putting an end to the paragraph on Iraqi Kurdistan, Ocalan resumes again the topic of federalism , and insists that the three parties, KDP , PUK, and PKK , should unite their forces to form together a Kurdish federate government in the area . He does not consider PKK as a non-Iraqi party , “as a reactionary propaganda tends to show it”, since “many Iraqi Kurds, among the members of PKK , were killed in action.”
Conclusion ? It would be this : “yes for a federalist solution to the Kurdish question in Iraqi Kurdistan – provided the PKK, or its successor, be one of the founding parties in this nation-building undertaking” . Why not ? This would be positive , should mean Kurdish union on the ground of political parties. But this would require the acceptance of the Iraqi Arabs , who are the partners of the Iraqi Kurds.
Other questions could be put . I do not say KDP, PUK and other Iraqi Kurdish parties, who have been fighting the Iraqi government for the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan since 1945 , (from 1975 for PUK) , are free from any criticism . But how could such a union as suggested by Ocalan could be attained when he and many of his unconditional followers had so aggressively addressed the leaders of the Iraqi Kurds , when so much blood had been shed between them ? Do the Iraqi Kurds have interest to get united with Ocalan’s partisans when they are still placed under the US military protection , while the PKK , or its successor , is still said “terrorist” by the USA ? Objectively speaking , the PKK was born in Turkish Kurdistan ; they entered into Iraqi Kurdistan coming from Turkey ; they publish their papers first in Turkish , which has become as their “official language” , while Turkish is a foreign language , not understandable , and is unwelcome by the other Kurds – unless it is spoken by the Turcomans of Iraqi Kurdistan . If the general strategy of the Kurdish movement is to seek solution within the framework of the existing states dividing Kurdistan , then it is primarily up the Kurds in each of these states to say what they want for themselves and to struggle for . Yet it is imperative that the Kurds should forget the past , and unite their forces . On the political field, everything may happen .
About the Kurdish question in Syria - Ocalan not incorrectly writes that “as there are Arab extensions into the bulk of the Kurds, there are Kurdish extensions into the bulk of the Arabs, and the Syrian Kurds are the best example of it” .
Syrian Kurdistan is actually constituted of three regions with a Kurdish majority in northern Syria , close to the border of Turkey , which are the northern half of the province of Jazira , on the east , the district of Ain-al-Arab (Arab Pinar), close to the Euphrates on the east where the river penetrates into Syrian territory , and the district of Kurd-Dagh (also said Afrin) , close to the sanjak of Alexandretta , north-west of Aleppo. All three are adjacent to Turkish Kurdistan, but separated one from other within Syria . They were part of Ottoman Kurdistan , but the French-Turkish London agreement of 9 March 1921 , on the border line between Turkey and Syria (Syria was under French mandate) , left these districts on the Syrian side of the border, somehow as enclaves. In a way , the Kurds in Syria , about 1,8 million people, are “the younger brother” in the Kurdish family.
Abdullah Ocalan , who is native of a village to the north of the city of Urfa (Edessa in the past, Ruha in Kurdish) , in Turkish Kurdistan ,to the north of the Syrian border , takes the opportunity of speaking about the Kurds in Syria to grace the reader , once more, with a comparison between himself and the archaic and Biblical, perhaps legendary, prophet Abraham of Urfa : both started their (divine) mission similarly , said he , at Urfa .
To speak more seriously , and come back to reality , the Kurds are an oppressed people in Syria, especially in Jazira . They are not recognised as a non-Arab nationality , but yet discriminated as such . In Jazira , in the early 1960s , about 120’000 Kurds were arbitrarily stripped of their Syrian citizenship and their land properties , which were given to Arabs brought by the Syrian Baath from elsewhere . Syria is requested to cancel these measures and stop discrimination against the Kurds , to render their citizenship and their land property to those who were stripped of , or to their descendants, and to recognise the Kurdish language and democratic freedoms . Mr. Ocalan demands the same rights for “the younger brother” in the Kurdish family.
Unfortunately , since the fall of Saddam Hussein and his Baath regime , thanks to the US-British coalition , with the help of the Iraqi democratic opposition , including the Kurds , the Syrian Baath dictatorship began a harsher policy of oppression against the Kurds in Syria . By the beginning of March 2004 , Kurdish towns and villages were attacked by bands of mobs and police. For the first time the Syrian Kurds tried to protect themselves face to tyranny . They organised mass demonstrations , but fire was open to repress them . Tens of unarmed civilian Kurds were killed . The Kurdish communities in Europe demonstrated in solidarity with the Syrian Kurds . The affair has had echo in the international community.
6) No autonomy,nothing but individual rights for the Kurds in Turkey:
In chapter 6 , subtitle “Towards the Resolution of the Kurdish Question”, speaking about the Kurdish question in Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan says : “To consider the Kurds as Turks by force will not mean grandeur for the Turkish nation ; but to consider them as a social phenomenon belonging to the Turkish nation (…), to the state of Turkey , will be in its interest (…). So is the situation in America, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Russia, where there is one American people, one Belgian, Spanish or Russian people , in spite of the presence of a variety of nationalities and languages (…) . In Turkey there should be one nationality , the nationality of Turkey.” (He avoids cunningly speaking here of a Turkish nationality : his wording is willingly ambivalent .)
He continues in the same chapter : “In the democratic solution , based on the observance of modern human rights , it is no question of changing state borders, no question of recognising an autonomy to any group , or any particular status in matter of economics, society , or culture …” .
In the same chapter , and the same subtitle , he writes : “Experience shows the Kurdish question cannot be resolved with the spirit of bourgeois nationalism or by a feudal autonomy (.…) . Besides, the neighbouring states would not allow such a solution (…) . We should therefore seek with insistence and perseverance a reasonable and realistic solution (…) . If you seek autonomy , independence and self-determination, and you do not see what is reasonable and feasible, then you will lose a lot of possibilities to find a solution.” All this is meant only for the Kurds in Turkey.
He says again : “Some Kurdish nationalist centres will dislike such a modest solution (…) ; they want a Kurdish autonomy because of their class interests , but they lack support among the Kurdish people.”
Finally Abdullah Ocalan explains how his ‘modern and scientific’ solution will be beneficial to Turkey : “This modest solution will reinforce the power and the unity of Turkey (…) , will consolidate its relations with many other states , to begin by its accession to the European Union.”
Comment on 6) and further themes from Ocalan :
Here we are . Mr. Ocalan wrote the book not exactly for the resolution of the Kurdish question, but with the hope to help Turkey becoming member of the European Union , by inciting Ankara to comply with the criteria of Copenhagen, be it formally , with no effect, if by bits. The Kurds , in such a case, could possibly obtain a few bits of their legitimate rights , the liberty , for instance, for individuals and civil society associations to open classes teaching in Kurdish – if the goodwill of the Turkish bureaucracy would allow it . The accession of Turkey to the membership of the European Union , as we shall see , is clearly mentioned in the programme of KGK.
Besides, in the preface to volume I on the Democratic Civilisation , Abdullah Ocalan writes : “Turkey is the sole member of the Council of Europe who does not comply with the criteria of Copenhagen , which find their source in the European Convention of Human Rights , to which Turkey is committed (….) , yet I am open to an amiable solution.”
Abdullah Ocalan is “open” to discuss with Turkey about an “amiable solution” to the Kurdish question in which there will be no Kurdistan , no Kurdish autonomy, no federalism , no right of self-determination, no special status for the dying Kurdish language , no special fund to reconstruct the four thousand Kurdish villages levelled to earth , not even a Kurdish people , but a Kurdish social phenomenon within the Turkish nation , “Turkish citizens from Kurdish origin” who should enjoy their individual democratic freedoms , for the glory of Turkey and its accession to the European Union.
In such a Turkey having supposedly become democratic, thanks to a formal compliance with the criteria of Copenhagen – but not necessarily applied, if not by bits -, how could the Kurdish question be resolved ? Mr. Ocalan has an answer : this would be attained through individual initiatives by the civil society. He wrote with this respect, in the introduction to chapter six: “The civil society, expression of the bourgeoisie, (…) may progress outside the state structures , even against the state will , provided the rule of law is respected , and can thus represent the interest of all organised and free-minded social groups having a sound social programme, beyond the state policy.” Yet the civil society activity should obey to two rules that Abdullah Ocalan lays down : on one hand , “it should represent , horizontally and vertically, the greatest majority of the population” , and, on the hand , “it should respond to the popular adhesion of the people to the experience I am living at the prison of Imrali” . In other words , Abdullah Ocalan himself should be , while he is the prisoner of the Turkish state , the leader and the guide of the civil society.
In the same introduction to chapter 6 , he wrote : “The Kurds know difficulties to become a national state (…) , but we have an alternative … , this alternative is the way of a democratic solution, which is better ; the democratic solution allows people belonging to a national group to live freely within a democratic state, without needing to become a national state…”
Then he adds : “Many national states get united to form together a federation of states . The USA itself, the world’s greatest power, is a federation ; the national states in Europe have recently begun the process to get united within a European federation . This world’s trend toward federalism between states will further the possibility to resolve the Kurdish question on the basis of a democratic unity between the Kurds and the state within which they live (…) . The Kurds could , if they adopt a sound organisation of their civil society , so find the way to the resolution of their question by peaceful means, without recourse to violence or separatism.”
Abdullah Ocalan seeks to let the Kurds in Turkey believe they could find a solution to their national question thanks to the accession of Turkey to the membership of the European Union, without any prior solution to the question in Turkey itself , autonomy , or federalism . He has no plan, no project for the Kurds in Turkey , beside individual rights as Turkish citizens , and a flight into Europe . I have always been advocating the contrary : without a prior solution to the Kurdish question within the states dividing Kurdistan , there can be no solution within a federation of these states . Furthermore , Ocalan does not mean a federation between the states dividing Kurdistan , bet between Turkey and Europe. He is dreaming.
To leave no doubt as to the kind of ‘democratic unity’ between the Kurds and the state within which they live , Ocalan writes , in the same introduction (its subtitle 8) to chapter 6 : “The Kurds who live under the roof of a state (…) have this state as homeland , even if it has banned their language (…) . The idea of the state being the common homeland of its citizens , and not the narrow and tribal understanding of homeland , is going on in the world of today…”
This is addressed to the good understanding of Turkey , since it is the sole state that “banned the Kurdish language” . Nevertheless , this Turkey is “the common homeland” of the Kurds , the Turks and all the other groups living under its roof. This means , of course , the negation o f a Kurdish homeland . Kurdistan is not the homeland of the Kurds , it is only “the narrow and tribal understanding of homeland” . The homeland is Turkey . To make it clear , Ocalan gives the example of a Kurd from Iran , who could say : “I am Iranian and a Kurd at the same time.” That would be accepted , and even welcome everywhere in Iran . Besides , Kurdish belongs to the Iranic branch of the Indo-European languages, but is independent from Persian . When Mr. Ocalan came to the example of a Kurd from Turkey , he did not write he could say similarly “I am a Turk and a Kurd at the same time” , knowing this would be unacceptable by the Kurdish people in Turkey ; instead , he put it in this way : “I belong to the people of Turkey, and to the Kurds” .
The very name of Turkey and Turk is not only ethnic , but stuffed , in the Kurdish conscience , with an ultra-nationalistic ideology and the denial of the Kurd, while the name of Iran, Iraq , or Syria , is purely geographic and free from any nationalist connotation . A Kurd from Trukey cannot be called a Turk, or ridiculously “a Turk from Kurdish origin” . The national name of the Kurdish people in Turkey is just “Kurd” , and their homeland is Kurdistan : this should be recognised , or there cannot be a solution.
I am sorry that Abdullah Ocalan wrote all that . It is hardly believable he wrote it in full liberty and in the possession of all of his intellectual gift . Was he submitted to a any special “therapy” ? He is anyway the prisoner of the Turks .
During decades in the history of the Turkish Republic, because of the state terror policy of colonisation , deportation, and forced assimilation in Kurdistan , especially in the peripheral areas , the Kurds by millions became ashamed of being Kurds, hid their origin , abandoned their language for Turkish, and sought assimilation . That is a classical phenomenon of colonisation. To be a Kurd, was not only anticonstitutional and sanctioned by the penal law , but looked at , in the eyes of the Turkish establishment , with contempt as the mark of an underdeveloped society , with no culture, as a backward social phenomenon within the Turkish nation (Ocalan’s expression) . As a result , Kurdish became a endangered language in Turkey . The Kurdish families had and still have no other alternative but to let their children be educated in Turkish , at the state schools and colleges.
The British academic David Crystal , a known specialist in matter of languages , presents his book entitled ‘Language Death’ (Cambridge, 2002), in these terms : “The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture”. The author says that “only 600 of the 6000 or so languages in the world are safe from the threat of extinction”.
The Kurdish language is endangered in Turkey in this sense , because of the Turkish state policy, but it is not endangered in Iranian or Iraqi Kurdistan , not in the Kurdish-speaking areas in northern Syria , not even among the small Kurdish communities scattered across the Federation of Russia , who marry among themselves and speak Kurdish at home. Turkish has become “the official language” of the Kurds in Turkey and , for almost a majority of them , the language of daily life , even for those who established in Western Europe , especially among workers . These struggle against the Turkish state policy while using Turkish for the most. Happily enough there are many exception . This phenomenon of linguistic alienation led to an almost complete extinction of the Irish, Scotch and Welsh languages in Great-Britain. The process , among the Kurds in Turkey , is already achieved in the proportion perhaps of 50 % . In Turkey , Kurdish intellectuals write in Turkish , seldom in Kurdish . They write better in Turkish than Kurdish , even when they speak it , but most of them do not know to write in Kurdish . The few who write in Kurdish have corrupted the Kurdish syntax because of the influence of Turkish . A Kurdish publisher from Istanbul told me in the early 1990s that he would sell easily several thousands copies of a book , on the Kurds, if it is written in Turkish, but only a few hundreds if it is published in Kurdish . There are more than three million Kurds in the city of Istanbul, for the most workers.
The Kurdish language can be preserved from fading away in Turkey only if it is made by law and Constitution an official and compulsory language in a well defined geographical area , within the state territory , and this area can be only geographical Kurdistan . This aim cannot be realised through individual initiatives or civil society groups (private institutes, foundations, clubs , etc). Education in Kurdish , in state and private institutions, should further the same opportunities as Turkish for the future of the new generation . The Kurds in Turkey number more than 21 millions, nearly one third of the total population . In Turkish Kurdistan, an area of about 220’000 sq, km, they number more than 13 millions, representing about 85 % of the regional population. This area is much larger than England (131'760 sq.km) , within the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom is a democratic state ; it recognises Scotland as a well-defined geographical area within which the Scots govern themselves by themselves , with an elected parliament of their own and a regional government ; similarly the UK recognises Wales as another geographical and national area within which the Welsh enjoy self-government , with an elected National Assembly and a regional government . Why should the Kurds in Turkey not be allowed to demand a similar status for themselves , and why should Turkey not be required to recognise such a status for the Kurds ?
If the Kurds of Turkey do not enjoy a federate status similar to that of the Flemish and the Walloon nationalities in Belgium , or at least an autonomy status similar to that of the Basque and the Catalan nationalities in Spain, there cannot be a solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. This is what I have beenrepeating for so long , and wrote to the Presidential Council of PKK and to the European institutions.
7) Misunderstanding by Ocalan
as to language and national issues in some countries :
We have seen above that Mr. Ocalan mentioned some Western states , namely the USA , Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain , as well as Russia , to show that different nationalities , speaking different languages , may coexist without problem within one state . He just mentioned the name of these countries, without saying what about their constitution and the reality in the matter . The examples were apparently meant for the Kurds in Turkey . Either Mr. Ocalan does not know the real situation in the states he mentioned , as to the issue of languages and nationalities , or he did not further the right examples to illustrate his ideas about the “solution” to the Kurdish question in Turkey .
I am going to present , as concisely as this can be possible , the reality as to the problems of nationalities and languages in the countries Mr. Ocalan gave as example , if necessary in their historic evolution . The aim is not exactly to criticise Mr. Ocalan, but, more importantly , to further a global image , sometimes with significant details , as to the questions of democracy, languages and nationalities in these countries . This image could possibly contribute to a better understanding of these issues in Turkey, and globally in the Middle East , and be perhaps helpful for a solution of the Kurdish national question by peaceful means . The following information are based on publications and archive found in my private library, and on an experience I have personally lived , at several moments , repeatedly inside these countries . No bibliographical references will be furthered, this paper being not a scholarly study , but written with the purpose to try to be helpful to clarify important issues , by the example . More particularly , the aim is to help the Kurdish people to see clearer across the fog which was put around them , to find the way for a better future.
USA , a particular case :
It is true, there is one American people , one American nation . The case is a special case . The citizens of the USA were individual immigrants who came from elsewhere . The first immigrants were English, then Irish, Scots or Welsh , who came from Britain. There were afterwards different waves of immigrants , black Africans brought as slaves , more and more British , French coming from French Canada , France, or already established in Louisiana (a French name) , Vermont (a French name, meaning Green Mount), and other states and places , Latin Americans , Germans, Italians, Arabs, Greeks, Chinese , Japanese , and other Asiatic , etc. All these elements intermingled together from the Atlantic to the Pacific , to form the American nation. There are no nationalities in the USA presenting a majority in a geographical area and having a history as such on the American continent , to the exception perhaps of the French of Louisiana for a short period . The only native ‘nation’ of the USA were the different Indian tribes , who were almost exterminated by the first white immigrants , save “reservations” in some wild places. But all American citizens are free to keep alive the traditions, including language and culture , of the countries from which they or their fathers had emigrated . They may constitute communities of origin without having a territorial basis ; they speak English , perhaps together with another language , for about two or three generations. So are found more and more Spanish-speaking Americans in Florida and California, speaking equally English . Chinese Americans eat Chinese, not porridge, and Italian Americans , pasta . It is to be afraid this is roughly what Mr. Ocalan is proposing for the solution of the Kurdish question in Turkey, that the Kurds be intermingled with the Turks as a kind of social and cultural phenomenon amongst the Turkish nation. He forgets that the Kurds are losing their language and culture amongst the Turks , and even in Kurdistan , because they have acquired a complex of inferiority before what they believe to be the “superiority” of the Turkish culture, thanks to the Turkish state policy , since it is anticonstitutional for the Kurds to pretend having a culture other than Turkish , and to be what they are , another people . To absorb the Kurds, to kill in their heart the feeling of their dignity , of being and having been across history another nation , this is the Turkish state policy. It is to be afraid that the “solution” suggested by Ocalan would not have a different result.
Spain :
The situation in old Europe is quite different from the American case , and this is what Abdullah Ocalan does not see, or does not say , confusing cases together . To begin with Spain , it should be underlined that if there is one Spanish state , there is not one Spanish language , but several regional languages , each having its own territorial basis. None of them is called “Spanish”. There is not a “Spanish” language as it is commonly believed outside Spain . However , one of these regional languages , Castilian , the largest of them , derived from Latin and originally spoken in central Spain and in the capital Madrid , has been used across centuries as the official state language and its administration , and extended into some other areas , whence a confusion between Castilian and ‘Spanish” . Other living regional languages , also derived from Latin , are the Catalan (perhaps nearer to French than to Castilian), spoken in Catalonia, with Barcelona as capital ; Galician , to the north of Portugal , with Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle as capital; Asturian , between Galicia and the Basque country . The Basque language , Vasco , is pre-Indo-European and the oldest language in Europe . It has nothing to do with Castilian, French , or Latin, and was spoken in a much larger area in the past , on both sides - the Spanish and the French - of the western mountain range of Pyrenees. Several Basque provinces lost their language with time, including their largest city and economic centre in Spain, Bilbao , to the benefit of Castilian , and their largest city in France , Bayonne, on the Atlantic coast, to the benefit of French.
Under the Spanish republican government , before World War 2, a kind of autonomy was recognised to both Catalonia and the Basque country . This autonomy was abolished by the dictatorial and pro-nazi regime of General Franco , who seized power after a military success in the Spanish civil war, against the republican camp . Yet Franco did not dare abolish the name of ‘Bank of Catalonia’ , which was one of the largest and wealthiest in Spain . The Catalans are one of the nationalities the most gifted in matter of commerce, finance , as well as arts , painting and sculpture, while Madrid has accumulated wealth , for a large part, thanks to the looting of Spanish colonies, especially in the Americas . Because Barcelona was a large and prosperous city , many people speaking Castilian emigrated there as workers, from southern and central Spain, under Franco.
After the death of the dictator (in 1975) and the advent of a constitutional and democratic monarchy , aiming at reconciliation between the different nationalities, regions, and citizens of Spain , a new constitution , adopted on 29 December 1978 by the Cortes (Spanish parliament, constituted of the National Assembly plus the Senate), granted autonomy , on a geographical basis , to all the “nationalities” and “regions” of Spain , “within the unity of the Spanish nation” (Art. 2 of the Constitution). An autonomous status was thus recognised to both Catalonia and the Basque Country , which are the two nationalities the most typed and the most attached to their national characteristics . Galicia , Asturias had their status, as well as Andalusia , in the south, with Seville as capital . Castilian is nowadays spoken in Seville , but the area , once the centre of the Arab-Muslim state in medieval Spain , has its own cultural identity, marked by history . Autonomy was in fact granted to all of the regions of Spain (seventeen) , including regions that had never demanded any autonomy or did not need it , such as the capital region of Madrid . It is a system of large autonomy, that can be acquired according to different procedure , each autonomous government , called Generalitat , being endowed , within the unity of Spain , with a parliament , an elected government , a president appointed by the regional parliament , a higher court of justice, power in matter of budget , taxes , culture , education , language, commerce, police and public order , transport , communication, mass media , health, sport , etc. The autonomy attributes are negociated between the nationality or the region and Madrid and may differ from one Generalitat to another. These attributes are the most extensive in the Basque country , Euskadi .
Catalonia (about 6 millions on 39,5 million inhabitants for all Spain ) seems , however , to be rather satisfied with its autonomy . Some Catalans would complain that their Generalitat does not include all the Catalan-speaking areas in Spain, or those whose language was Catalan before becoming partially Castilian , or a mixture of both . A small part of Catalonia is within France (district centred on the city of Perpignan, to the north of the eastern mountain ridge of Pyrennees), but it is no question in France to recognise any regional autonomy, beside individual democratic rights and a limited decentralisation . Post-Franco Spain is thus more democratic than the French Republic , the archetype which gave birth to the juridical concept of, and established , the nation-state under the French Revolution . That was in fact already done under the monarchy , but differently and without a sociojuridical doctrine . Kemalist Turkey was to take the French ‘revolutionary’ and secular (laïc) republican concept as a model. The word laïc was borrowed from French into Turkish (layik) – as thousands of other words . Madrid would complain that the Catalan Generalitat favours the Catalan language to the detriment of the Castilian workers who established in Barcelona under Franco . Catalonia is complaining that many international societies are leaving Barcelona to Madrid, thanks to the policy of the central government as member of the European Union.
The autonomous Basque country ( Euskadi in the Vasco or Basque language, perhaps about 3 million people in Spain, if not less , beside about one million in France), whose political capital is Vitoria , is presently governed by the National Basque Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco = PNV), with more autonomous attributes than Catalonia . Its largest city and economic capital, Bilbao , is slowly recovering, year after year, its old national language, but the use of Castilian is free . The Euskadi Generalitat in Spain has official relationship with the Spanish central government ; yet there are problems between them in matter of budget, and , more seriously , there is suspicion as to the ultimate aim of the Basque people . The Generalitat does not include all of the ancient Basque provinces in Spain, such as the province of Navarre (formerly divided between France and Spain), once a kingdom of its own speaking Vasco , but today Castilian. Many Basque people have aspirations for full independence and for the unification of their homeland on both sides of the Pyrenees . There was a legal Basque party for independence , Batasuna, and there is a Basque separatist underground organisation , ETA , which began from 1968 committing acts of terrorism against agents of the central government . However , the relations between the Spanish government and the Basque Generalitat were safe , because the PNV was officially against ETA , and independent of Batasuna. Generally speaking , there was a degree of equilibrium , not indeed perfect , between the Spanish central government and the regional autonomous governments . This unstable equilibrium was to be upset by the policy of José Maria Aznar , chief of the conservative Popular Party (the PP) who won the Spanish parliamentary polls of 1996 and became the president of the Spanish central government (Prime Minister) . It happened that I am writing this paragraph on Spain at the same time as the Spanish parliamentary election of 14 March 2004 , which was preceded by the tragic railway bombing of 11 March , whence comment on these events .
The PP had won the Spanish general elections of 1996 , against the Socialist Workers’ Party of Spain, the PSOE of Felipe Gonzalez , thanks to a tactical electoral alliance with the PNV and the CIU (= Convergence i Unio) , which is the nationalist governing party in Catalonia . As chief of the central government, Aznar’s policy in matter of economy was rather successful . The PP won therefore the general elections of 2000, obtaining alone an absolute majority at the Cortes . Mr. Aznar was no longer in need of a tactical alliance with the CIU and the PNV . He adopted as a consequence, since 2000, an aggressive and provocative policy not only toward the PNV and the CIU , but against all the autonomous regional governments , that he used to call ‘peripheral’ . He banned the Basque independence party Batasuna , in 2003, but not the Catalan party for independence , called Esquerra Republicana Catalunia (ERC ) of Josep Luis Carol Rovira , possibly because of its popularity in Catalonia . He ordered , without being correctly counselled , that the damaged oil tanker Prestige be sunk , thus causing extensive damage to see life at the Atlantic coast of Galicia and France. Furthermore , José Maria Aznar involved Spain in the war policy of the US president Bush in Iraq , against the will of a large majority of the Spanish people. Finally , while Spain is traditionally very European and has much profited from the economic policy of the European Union , especially in matter of agriculture and exchange , the PP leader was the main responsible for the failure of the draft European Constitution , prepared by the European Convention under the authority of Valerie Giscard d’Estaing , the former French president.
The sharp policy of Mr. Aznar toward the “peripheral” autonomous governments resulted in sharp centrifugal reactions , not only in Catalonia and Euskadi , against the central government. Everywhere more regional attributes , a remake of the Spanish autonomy system, a kind of real federalism , is requested . In November 2003 , Don Juan José Ibarrexte , the elected president of the autonomous Basque government, made public a PNV plan aiming at the transformation of the Basque country into ‘a state having partnership with Spain’ . At Barcelona , the chief of the independence Catalan party (ERC), Rovira , said ‘there is nothing to do with Spain, it is a bad affair for the Catalans’ . At Seville , the regional president , Manuel Chavez , demands an “Andalusian power’. In Galicia , the regional president Manuel Fraga , although belonging to the PP , formerly a minister under Franco (who was himself a native of Galicia) , demands the transformation of Spain into a kind of federal state, with a Senate similar to the German Bundesrat .
Yet all the opinion polls pointed that the PP should win again the Spanish general elections of 14 March 2004 , over the PSOE , the rival socialist party . José Maria Aznar had announced his political retreat for 14 March , just after the polls, and designated in advance his successor as the future PP Prime Minister of Spain , in the person of one of his ministers, Mr. Mariano Rajoy. Four days before the polls, the PP was expected to be the winner by about 5 % or 6 % more votes than the PSOE . The question in discussion was whether the PP would have an absolute majority at the Cortes , as in 2000 , or a relative majority, as in 1996 . It was no question of PSOE winning the elections , the socialist party having been in a way discredited already under Gonzalez.
On Thursday morning 11 March , an open day , by 7.35 a.m. , four commuter trains , full with suburban people in their way to work or study in Madrid , exploded almost simultaneously upon arrival into three stations in the capital , one of them the central station . There were ten explosions commanded at distance and it was a carnage , 200 people killed , nearly 1500 injured . The electoral campaign was stopped by common agreement, but the elections were maintained for Sunday 14 March . Contrary to evidence , the PP government accused formally the Basque ETA organisation to be the butcher . The ETA had always warned before committing any terrorist action and had always targeted either military or civil agents of the central government , never the Spanish people. ETA denied twice to be the killer . An Islamist organisation claimed from London the responsibility for the Spanish “11 March” , in the style of Ben Laden’s al-Qaida . In all Spain, the two following days were days of mourning and union . The Basque people were probably the most unhappy , being those who know the best that ETA could not do it . On Saturday evening 13 March , two million people demonstrated silently and orderly at the centre of Madrid , under the rain . Many had already doubt whether the PP was telling the truth in pointing its accusation finger against the ETA . At the same evening , other demonstrators , before the PP headquarters , accused the central government to be a liar . The ETA trail was more profitable to the PP, while an Islamist trail was harmful to it. That was to be an expensive miscalculation. On Sunday evening, the elections results were proclaimed : the PP lost the elections and, of course, the central government , the winner being the PSOE and its secretary-general, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero , the future president of the central government . The Islamist trail had become an evidence . The people sanctioned the PP .
That makes a difference on the international field . With the ETA said to be the responsible for 11 March, the affair would have remained a Spanish-Spanish affair. With the Islamist trail having become an evidence , the Spanish “11 March” is henceforth the equivalent to the US “11 September”. Between the two “11” there is however a difference . The American “11” allowed the US President to go twice at war against terrorism , in Afghanistan , then Iraq . The political upset resulting from the Spanish “11” means imminent withdrawal from Iraq of the Spanish military contingent , 1300 soldiers . This withdrawal figures in the programme of PSOE and was announced by Mr. Zapatero .
There are other consequences , which should be positive for Spain. The Spanish people, or peoples , gave the proof of their wisdom . They did not entrust to the PSOE an absolute majority at the Cortes , but a relative majority of 164 seats on a total of 350 seats (148 for PP) . The socialist had never had as many seats at the Cortes . The Catalan independence party (ERC), a leftist , had 8 seats instead of one , and the former communist party (now said IU) , had 5 seats instead of 9 . To be able to govern ,Mr. Zapatero, who had taught constitutional law , should have recourse to the support of some regional parties. He said the transition should be kind and smooth, civil , and problems should be resolved by dialogue .
In the PSOE programme there is more : it is question that the nationalities of Spain be represented, in a way or another, within the organs of the European Union and the Council of Europe . The leader of PSOE might put Spain on the rail towards perhaps a Spanish kind of federalism , and why not possibly to try to make the European institutions more representative of real Europe ? .
Anyway, we are , in Spain , very far from the Jacobinistic and unitary structures of the French Republic , which refuses any particular identity to the small people of Corsica , whose original language is other than French , and is still spoken . We are very far as well from the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan . Can the Kurds in Ocalan’s “democratic Turkey” have a legal party called “Kurdish National Party” that would govern a geographical area officially called “Kurdistan“ and enjoying autonomy , as the NPV does it legally in the Spanish part of the Basque country ? Can an official “Kurdish independence party” exist in such a Turkey and be able to elect its own MPs at the parliament of Turkey, as is the case , at the Cortes of Spain , with the Catalan independence party ERC ?
There is a similarity between the Basque situation and that of the Kurds, with this difference that the Kurds are about ten times as numerous as the Basques and that their situation is still more complex , and much worse than that of the Basques . As a result of the open struggle of the Basque people , these were given an autonomous status, on a geographical basis , be it geographically incomplete , while Turkey is denying the existence of the Kurdish people and has banned the name of Kurdistan . Another difference is this : the National Basque Party , PNV ,as this was said , representing the majority in the democratically elected Basque parliament , is governing the Basque country in Spain , while the “Kurdish National Leader” , Abdullah Ocalan , is rejecting in advance any Kurdish autonomy as something “feodal” and not true to modern human rights (sic).
Belgium :
I shall try to be concise as to the situation in Belgium, but it needs some explanation. Belgium includes three nationalities or linguistic groups , all having their own geographical area , the Flemish in the northern half, speaking Flemish , which is Dutch or a kind of Dutch ; the Walloons in the southern half , speaking Walloon , which is French or a kind of French ; and a German-speaking group , far the smallest, within the Walloon area , on the east, close to the German border . The Walloon area , la Wallonie in French, was prosperous thanks to its cool and steel industry . During all of the 19th century the Flemish commercial and political bourgeoisie used to speak French , even in Flanders , and French was the language of the state administration in Brussels . Flemish was considered somehow as the language of peasants in the northern part of the country . Belgium , although a kingdom , was established as a state after the model of the French unitary and centralised republic in matter of administration – as Kemalist Turkey was to copy it . The only link between the Belgian state and the people , in their municipal communes (counties) , was represented by the provinces , whose governors were appointed by the central government . The Flemish nationalist movement (Flaamsblok , Volksunie, etc) began as a reaction against the predominance of French . The linguistic Flemish-French quarrel , which never degenerated into an armed struggle - as in the ideologically backward Republic of Turkey - , continued in the 20th century . A series of constitutional reforms begun in 1970 and ended in 1993 transformed the state into a federation . Meanwhile , the Walloon area, representing 55,2 %
