7. Water Projects and the Kurds of Turkey

The National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (Kurdish: Eniye Rizgariye Navata Kurdistan, ERNK).

Liberation Army of Kurdistan (Kurdish: Artêşa Rizgariya Gelê Kurdistan, ARGK).

The controversial village-guard system was introduced in April 1985 because of the enormous logistical difficulties of ensuring security in the mountainous and rural areas of eastern and south-eastern Turkey. The aim was to enable villages to defend themselves against attacks from the PKK. Originally it was believed that the village-guard system would provide income to areas that were economically depressed. Ismet G. Imset in his book (The PKK: 20 years of separatist violence, in Turkish—PKK: Ayrılıkçı Şiddetin 20 Yılı) has likened the village guard-system to the Ottoman Hamidiye regiments which functioned between 1905 and 1908. The role of those regiments was ‘to discipline the nomadic people of the region’ and maintain ‘the loyalty of Kurdish tribes to the central authority’. As in the case of the Hamidiye regiments, the government has used the village-guard system not only to improve security in the rural areas but also to determine the loyalty of the villagers. Villages or tribes who have refused to join the system are suspected of being PKK sympathizers. However, over the years the village-guard system has become a source of serious complaint. Sadik Avundukoglu, a member of the Parliamentary commission investigating ‘mystery killings’, has even argued that the abuses committed by the village guards helped to swell the ranks of the PKK fighters. In spite of frequent calls for its abolition, the number of village guards increased from just under 18,000 in 1990 to 63,000 by August 1994 when the Interior Minister announced that there would be no further additions (Ibid: 129–130). The village guards are well paid for their work, receiving approximately $100 a month, and, with this representing their only source of income, they have reason to want to see the conflict perpetuated (Barkey and Fuller 1998: 148). In our opinion, emerge of village-guard system was also the result of Turkey’s policy to divide Kurds into two parts and thus to control them better (divide and rule policy).