Turkey plans to pour billions into impoverished southeast

13/03/2008

Turkey is planning to invest up to $12 billion in a comprehensive five-year programme for its Kurdish-dominated southeast, in a bid to improve living standards in the region and draw young men away from militant activities.

(Christian Science Monitor, Zaman, Turkish Daily News, Hurriyet - 13/03/08; The New York Times, UPI, VOA, The New Anatolian - 12/03/08; Hurriyet - 11/03/08)

Tradesmen chat in front of their shops in Turkey's southeastern city of Sanliurfa. The government plans to invest $12 billion in the region as part of an economic stimulus package. [Getty Images]

Turkey is preparing a multi-billion dollar programme for its Kurdish-dominated southeast, aimed at boosting employment in the region and drawing young men away from militancy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview published on Wednesday (March 12th).

"Everything we can see in the western part of the country we can see in the east," he told The New York Times in Ankara on Tuesday.

The government is planning to set aside up to $12 billion to underpin a series of projects in the impoverished region, home to most of Turkey's approximately 12 million Kurds. The programme is expected to create new jobs and thus improve living standards in that part of the country, as well as erode support for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), classified as a terrorist organisation by both the United States and the EU.

Erdogan told the Times that the projects envisioned in the five-year programme would include the construction of two large dams and an irrigation system, as well as completing the paving of roads and removal of land mines from fields along the Syrian border.

While the plans for the new initiative are to be finalised within the next two months, the prime minister is expected to present it formally during a visit to the region on April 6th.

He "will make very important statements in Diyarbakir," former adviser Mehmet Metiner, himself a Kurd, was quoted as saying earlier this week. "He will deliver important initiatives to promote Kurdish culture and language as well as a comprehensive package for the region."

Erdogan's remarks came in the wake of the Turkish forces' major ground offensive against PKK militants in northern Iraq last month and his talks with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Ankara on Friday. He said military action alone is not enough to combat terrorism.

"The fight against terrorism is not only this. … It also has a socio-economic part, a psychological part, a cultural part," Erdogan said in his interview.

Therefore, besides the economic measures, the government plans to dedicate a state television channel to Kurdish language broadcasting, which would meet a long-standing demand of Turkey's Kurds. The television channel, which is expected to start operating in several months, will also run programmes in Persian and Arabic.

"This will be the most important step in providing cultural rights to the region," the Times quoted Erdogan as saying.

He also reiterated Ankara's willingness to improve ties with the Iraqi Kurds, whom it has blamed for supporting the PKK rebels stationed in the country's north, using it as a launch-pad for cross-border raids on Turkey.

"We are the most important door for northern Iraq to open up to the world. We are the healthiest door," Erdogan said.

PKK rebels have been fighting for self-rule in Turkey's southeast since 1984. More than 30,000 people were killed in their armed conflict with Turkish forces until 1999, after which several thousand militants fled to northern Iraq.

"Everyone who has entered Iraq until now will stay for a while and go away, but we will stay," Erdogan told the Times. "We have relatives in northern Iraq. And people living there have relatives in our southeastern region. With whom will we have good relations other than with ourselves?"