Is Turkey Renaming Istanbul Constantinople?

Last month, Turkish President Abdullah Gul broke a long-standing national taboo: He called the remote village of Guroymak by its Kurdish name, Norshin.

The president's opponents say renaming Istanbul Constantinople on highway signs will inevitably follow. Or worse. For many Turks, saying Norshin leads to saying Kurdistan, and saying Kurdistan leads to recognizing an independent Kurdish state stretching across Iran, Iraq, and southeastern Turkey.

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After a 1980 military coup, Turkey "Turkified": It banned the Kurdish language, imposed new Turkish place names, and famously declared that Kurds were actually "mountain Turks." Its government has since abandoned this extreme form of forced assimilation. But allowing or using Kurdish names is still a politically charged act, seen by many Turks as a concession to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (better known as the PKK), which has fought a brutal 25-year battle for Kurdish independence.

The Turkish government wants to end the PKK's terrorist campaign without splitting off a Kurdish state -- and sees extending cultural rights and linguistic freedoms as the way to do it. But what will it take to reconcile the Turks and the Kurds?

The verbal recognition of Kurds and Kurdish culture at the highest political level is a first step, as Gul's use of the name Norshin demonstrates. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently brought a number of parliamentarians to tears by saying that something is terribly wrong when the mothers of Turkish soldiers and the mothers of PKK fighters are saying the same prayers over their sons' bodies. That such a comparison can even be made is itself a sign of progress.

And there are concrete changes, too. Already, the government has opened a Kurdish radio station and promoted Kurdish literature classes at universities. In late July, Erdogan announced his government was beginning a "Kurdish Initiative." He has not yet provided any details. But most Turkish journalists expect the government to allow public servants and politicians to speak Kurdish, end restrictions on Kurdish media, give some form of amnesty to all but the highest ranking PKK members, and possibly even revise the Constitution to allow Kurds to be full Turkish citizens without giving up their Kurdish identity. (Those Kurds who are proud to call themselves Turks have always been accepted and often risen high in the ranks of politics and pop culture) 

These initiatives have met -- and will meet -- tremendous push-back. Previous leaders have considered similar changes, such as calling citizens "Turkiyeli" (from Turkey) rather than "Turkish," to emphasize citizenship over ethnic identity. But obstacles to implementing such initiatives have been insurmountable. Already, the two leading opposition parties have denounced Erdogan's plan. Plus, Turkey has a Constitutional Court with the power to strike down laws that alter the country's "unamendable" constitutional articles -- one of which declares that the national language is Turkish.

This time around, though, the government has the army, a long-time rival, on its side. Realizing at last that the fight will never be won through purely military means, Turkey's leading general now supports greater cultural freedom for Kurds and wants to make it easier for PKK members to surrender. The National Security Council, traditionally a vehicle for the military to "advise" the government on political issues, also gave its blessing to the initiative.

Still, security and foreign-policy concerns complicate the issue. Numerous Turks are convinced that the U.S. government -- a friend to politicians and generals, a foe to most everyone else -- is behind the Kurdish initiative. They presume that the United States is desperate to ensure stability in northern Iraq as it prepares to withdraw from the country. Thus, they claim, the United States, after supporting the PKK for years, is now forcing Turkey to give in to PKK demands in order to foster peace with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

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