Internal Displacement Of Kurds In Turkey:
Analysis Of Psychological, Economical And...
By Seyhmus Yuksekkaya
06 November, 2012
Ekurd.net
Historical Background
Kurds are an ethnic nation of about 25-30 million people who live in the generally contiguous areas of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria – a mountainous region of southwest Asia generally known as Kurdistan, meaning the land of Kurds and they are the native people of Mesopotamia. The breakup of the Ottoman Empire after the World War l, there were created a number of new nation-states, such as Iraq, Syria and Turkey, but not a separate Kurdistan, and since then, Kurds live in these four separate states (see map , shaded area is where Kurds live and belong to).
In Turkey, Kurdish language and culture is officially not recognized by Turkish government and is not being taught in public schools. Since the break of the Ottoman Empire, Kurds have been struggling with states that govern them for their cultural and political rights. PKK: Kurdish Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkere Kurdistan), an armed political movement that was found in late 1970s and since, it has been armed conflict with Turkish government in the Southeastern part of Turkey, where Kurds call their homeland, Kurdistan (Celik 2005).
The internal migration, which started in the late 1980s through early 1990s, was government forced internal migration from Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia (Kurdish population) towards urban cities such as Istanbul, Izmir and Diyarbekir. Factors led to the evacuation of more than 3000 Kurdish villages and estimated number of displaced people are thought to be half million to two million (Celik 2005; Gulsen 2010; Cohen 1999) were: the evacuation of villages by military, allowed by the 1987 emergency rule; the pressure of the PKK on villagers who do not support them, and village guards’ (an opposition group of Kurdish people hired and armed by Turkish government to fight against PKK) pressure on villagers, which they suspected of being supporters of PKK (Celik 2005; Knipscheer 2009).
Psychological Consequences
Studies show that, refugees who are internally (IDP) displaced by force from their native land; ethnic people who have been deprived off their cultural, linguistic as well political rights suffer significantly from mental health impairments such as post-traumatic disorder(PTSD) and depression compared to other groups (Thomas 2004; Knipscheer 2009; Gulsen 2010; Cummings 2011).
According to same studies, the experience of PTSD among refuges is due to reaction to violence and torture, and depression is due to reaction to loss, being away from home, and alienation from the mainstream culture. Psychiatric symptoms and distress associated with forced displacement sometimes could take months, years, or even can be a lifetime struggle for people who suffered from trauma during and after the displacement process (Thomas 2004; Cummings 2011). For example, one study shows that 12 % of Guatemalan refugees who were internally displaced and lived in Mexico showed symptoms of PTSD, 54 % symptoms of anxiety, 39 % had symptoms of depression. This study was done after 12 years of forced migration (Thomas 2004).
Same study also indicates that subgroup of people and IDPs carry long-term mental health and psychiatric morbidity. Additionally, both refugees and IDPs that were monitored years after the forced migration continued having mental health difficulties as well continued experiencing adjustment to the mainstream society and developing coping skills (Thomas 2004).
Kurdish people who were forcibly displaced by Turkish government experienced psychological problems related to PTSD, anxiety and depression in urban cities where they moved (Celik 2005). Once they moved to the big urban cities like Istanbul, Izmir, Diyarbekir and Adana started having disadvantage in the market mainly because of their low level of education and after a period of time staying unemployed, they started experiencing inter-family conflict, family violence and as a result, children were caught in the middle of conflict and the whole family suffered post-migration stress (Celik 2005; Knipscheer 2009).
While developing new identities and trying to adapt new places they moved, they experienced discrimination, social isolation and experienced linguistic problems with authority figures like polis, teacher, and manager as well as in the education and civic system. For example, in the interviews conducted by the studies in Istanbul, majority of them (two third of population interviewed) expressed frustration, anger and regret of moving there. They perceived themselves relatively in worse situation materialistically (wealth, savings, and job) and emotionally “than they were at their place of origin before 1987 when the state of emergency was declared” (Celik 2005 pp. 149). They reported feeling of deprivation, alienation, disempowerment, depression and feeling home-sick (Celik 2005).
Social Consequences
These families and individuals who moved to big metropolitan cities like Izmir, Istanbul, Antalya, Iskenderun and Adana started experiencing political, educational and cultural problems, according to studies. These problems included sending their children to school, voting in the elections, for example. According to Turkish laws, in order to vote, a person has to be registered in the city where they live. However, same law also requires this person receive a written document from the original town or city where they migrated from and register in the city where they migrated. In addition to this, these migrants neither can return to their insecure hometowns and villages o neither get these documents nor transfer their documents without personally applying to their native cities’ or towns’ offices without being there physically. As a result, they become foreigners, aliens, and strangers at places that is already strange to themselves. This, according to Cummings (2011), contributed to their cultural being acculturated in the environment where they felt strange (Cohen 1999, Celik 2005; Cummings 2011).
They also experienced registering their children to public schools because of the need of the document showing them as permanent residents. This problem existed because of their Kurdish identities; so they did not only had a state of their own but also now facing their own identities. According to interviews and studies conducted in big cities, Kurds who were forcibly migrated expressed feeling being in foreign land and seeing themselves as “foreigner”. These people also expressed feeling isolated from their extended family members because of the working conditions and the adaptation of a new way of life and abandoned their political affiliation to political or societal organizations for the fear of being prosecuted by government and city authorities. One interview conducted by researcher shows one women’s frustration, anger and feelings of alienation:
“We had our house, our animals there. Everything was very nice before these events started. I would like to go back home. Who does not want to go back where they used to live? I am constantly sick ever since I came to the city. I miss my village and want to return. I want to smell its air, taste its water. It was nice, but in the absence of the pressure. We want the removal of the state pressure” (Celik 2005, pp. 149, interview notes of February 2000, Istanbul).
Economic Consequences
Individuals and families that migrated to big cities as a result of forced internal displacement, had to find jobs to feed their families, places to live, and schools to go. Beyond the difficulties regarding schools and voting, they also experienced extremely harsh conditions in the job market. First, their identity, their accents, where they came from put them in disadvantages when compared to Turkish people who lived, went to school and worked in these big cities for long time. Second, because of their limitations for only being able to do only certain jobs,www.ekurd.net especially their educational level, they represented the majority of unemployed population (Cohen; 1999; Celik 2005). In addition to that, they were being stigmatized as Kurds who killed their sons, so they were being victimized again in the labor force (PKK being a Kurdish movement and many families’ sons and daughter joined the PKK movement). As a result, they were blocked from many resources, such as housing, education and economic opportunities.
According to Cohen (1999), Turkey is among the countries who “successfully bar international involvement with their displaced populations,” with policies of exclusion and marginalization in place contributes greatly to the isolation IDTs from a possible international aid or monitoring.
In addition to above conditions and suffrages that forcibly displaced Kurds are going through, back in their villages their land is not being cultivated, most of their animals were confiscated by village guards and soldier operation in the region, their houses are destroyed, and most their life stocks are completely gone. One family member whom immigrated to Adana province said they came to this strange city by abandoning their “beautiful village” and had a chance of selling some of their animals before coming there. However, now they are running out of the money they came with and they do not know what to do (Celik 2005)
Where the Problem Stand Now and My Critique of Current Approaches
According my own visits to Turkey and accounts from Kurdish community in Turkey, Turkey has not formally acknowledged their policies of displacing Kurds from their native land. They evacuated the villages they occupied during the 1990s and publicly announced that displaced people are free go back to their home. However, majority of these villages are now in the hands of village guards who stayed during the conflict years. They are using these villages to grow crops and are still armed and paid by Turkish government as the state agents. According to reports, they use intimidation tactics to discourage people who attempted to return their villages. Since then, Turkey have softened their tactics towards Kurds in Turkey, however, major issues, such as basic political and cultural rights such as education in Kurdish language, political activities and political movements in Kurdish language is not allowed, and Kurdish language is officially not recognized by Turkish government as one of the native languages of the land by and instead, it has been mentioned as a “foreign language” in government documents. Due to Turkish government’s plea to become European Union, Turkey claims Kurds have rights but when it comes to law and documentation of these laws and practice that follows, there no evidence that Kurds have any political or cultural rights in turkey whatsoever. As of writing this paper, there are many political prisoners, elected Kurdish politicians kept in jails with some falls accusation of being a PKK member. There is no freedom of speech in Turkey in general and Turkish national law mentions only of Turks in Turkey. Kurdish children go to school every day by reading a loud “I am Turkish, I am truthful, I am hard working, I love my country and my people more than myself, May my existence be a gift to the Turkish existence, How happy for the one who says 'I am a Turk'!
Recommendations
• Turkey to rectify its law of the land and recognize Kurds as a unique nation of their own
• Turkey to guarantee Kurds their political and cultural rights, including a right to be educated in Kurdish language, forming Kurdish political parties, civil and cultural organization of their own.
• Turkey to grant greater autonomy to Kurds just like Basque region of Spain, Quebec region of Canada. In a leverage that they will manage their internal, cultural, educational and economic affairs.
• Turkey dissolve the village guards system and integrate them in to the society
• Turkey to assist displaced Kurds to return their native land, acknowledge their past policies that displaced them in first place and compensate them for their losses during their displacement years.
• Turkey to create community mental health facilities by hiring local mental health professional to help people who suffered psychologically, mentally and physically.
• Turkey to find a way to reconsolidate and start a peace dialogue with PKK and reach an agreement that will integrate them to a Kurdish democratic political process that is practiced by Kurds.
References
Celik, B. A. (2005). “I miss my village!” Forced Kurdish migrants In Istanbul and their
representation in Associations, New Perspective on Turkey
Hickel, M. C. (2001). Protection of internally displaced persons affected by armed conflict,
concept and challenges, International Review of the Red Cross (IRRC): September 2001
Vol. 83 No 843.
Lyons, K., Manion, K. & Carlsen, M. (2006). International Perspectives on Social Work
Global Conditions and Local Practice, Palgrave Macmillan
Gulsen, C., Knipscheer, J. & Kleber, R. (2010). The Impact of Forced Migration on Mental Health:
A Comparative Study on Post-Traumatic Stress among Internally Displaced and
Externally Migrated Kurdish Women, Traumatology, 16(4) 109-116.
Cohen, R. 1999). Hard Cases: internal displacement in Turkey, Burma and Algeria. Culture in
exile, Forced Migration Review.
Knipscheer, J. W., Drogendijk, N.A., Gulsen, C.H. & Kleber, J. Rolf (2009). Differences and
similarities in post-traumatic stress between economic migrants and forced migrants:
Acculturation and mental health within a Turkish and Kurdish sample, International
Journal of Clinical and Health psychology, Vol 9, No 3, pp. 373-391.
Thomas, S. L. & Thomas, S. DM (2004). Displacement and Health, British Medical Bulletin, Vol
69, pp. 115-127.
Cummings, S., Sull, L., Davis, C. & Worley, N. (2011). Correlates of Depression among Older
Kurdish Refugees, Social Work, Vol 56, No 2
Seyhmus Yuksekkaya, a licenced Clinical Social Worker who recently graduated from Boston University School of Social Work, currently practice psychotherapy in Massachusetts, USA. He is also the secretary of New England Kurdish Association, a non-profit organization in Boston.
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