Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can end in a knife-fight.

          Some time ago, a friend of mine and I decided that “someone who will not cooperate under any circumstances” wasn’t a bad functional definition of the word barbarian. After all, it’s the perfect mix of practical and pejorative; it places the word in opposition to one of the main features of civilization, and if you’re going to call someone a rude name, refusing to cooperate isn’t a bad thing to criticize. This reminded me of that conversation, and I started thinking about how what we call one another is important. The old yarn that the term “terrorist” doesn’t actually mean anything simply isn’t true anymore, and recent demonstrations of this have also shown the possibility that we need to reconsider the public language of enmity.
          The history of the Kurds in Turkey in many ways began in 1514, with the victory of Selim I at Chaldiran, the result of which was the annexation of Kurdistan and Armenia. The 16th century antecedent to our modern conflict was a strangely calm event. The Mongols had rolled through Kurdistan, with the 14th century invasion of Timur being particularly devastating; even with the 15th century aid of the Kara Koyunlu, the Kurdish resurgence did not last long, with their defeat at the hands of the Ak Koyunlu and the subsequent persecution of Kurds. By comparison, the Ottoman Turks were surprisingly polite, dividing Kurdistan into districts and promoting existing Kurdish leaders to the governorships.
          This didn’t last, as it wasn’t long before Selim the Grim (or “the Brave,” depending on who you ask) was displacing Kurdish tribes as a security measure, possibly taking a cue from the bloody actions of his Safavid neighbors. The period of Ottoman rule saw several conflicts between the Empire and various Kurdish groups, though the first one to make explicit demands as an ethnicity for nationhood occurred in the late 19th century. Kurdish nationalism did not truly emerge, however, until after the First World War.
          The wartime tactic of co-opting Kurdish opposition into highly visible positions within the government was effective enough to see the Ottoman Empire through to its end. With its breakup, however, Kurdish nationalism began to become more prominent, largely in response to secularization, and the centralization of government and new Turkish nationalism of the Turkish Republic. Not to be discounted, of course, is the Turkish displacement of Kurds during the war by the Young Turks, involving dispersement within Turkey and deportation. The large-scale rebellions of the 1920s and 30s did little for the relationship between the Turkish government and the Kurds.
          The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was founded in the late 1970s on the principles of socialism and Kurdish nationalism. Engaging in intense fighting with other radical groups, the PKK also staged several attacks against targets that they perceived as oppressing the proletariat or collaborating with the Turks. The 1980s coup d’état in Turkey forced many members of the movement to flee to Syria, where they began to militarize. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw the PKK abandon its socialist philosophies in the absence of Soviet support, and focus more on Kurdish nationalism and Islamic beliefs.
          The Turkish government calls the PKK a terrorist organization, as does the United States and the European Union. The use of conventional and suicide bombing to achieve its aims, as well as assassinations abroad, militant activity in Iraq, and fighting with Coalition troops suggests that this label is maybe not a hundred percent inappropriate. But the historical resistance of the groups the PKK claims descent from suggest that we might need to entertain the notion that the PKK represents a legitimate resistance group. Similarly, political support within the Turkish parliament as well as the tacit (and not… as tacit) support of many European nations and Russia at various times does suggest some questions about what the difference between terrorists and separatists or rebels.
          The real and practical difference? You can negotiate and begin a process of rapprochement with separatists and rebels, but it’s important to “not be in the habit of commenting on statements made by terrorists.” Clearly the issues of Kurdish rights isn’t so contentious that the Turkish government won’t give; they’ve been slowly relaxing since before the turn of the millennium, starting with the lifting of the Kurdish language ban in 1991, and accelerating in 1999 with the capture of the PKK’s leader, Öcalan. The peace between the PKK and Turkey during that time was unilateral, however, as it would be again in 2006.
          Let’s be fair, both the peace initiative from the PKK in 1999 and that in 2006 ended abruptly with the radical wings of the PKK retaking control of the group. Fundamentally, however, it seems like it has to do with what the term terrorist has come to mean in the modern age. The Turkish government has been pursuing a policy of supporting and engendering negative feeling toward the PKK for 25 years, and things like this certainly aren’t helping the Turkish public view the organization as a group to be negotiated with.
          The real problem, however, is the international community. Changes in the way we fight terrorism and the way we think about fighting terrorism, including the notion of a unified international response, mean that to treat with terrorists is to endanger your relationship with your allies, or possible military action. Turkey probably isn’t worried about a U.S.-led invasion, but they might be worried about what it would mean to begin talking to a group which the European Union, of which they are an aspiring member, has declared to be a terrorist organization. In the modern age, declaring a group to be terrorists is effectively declaring a fight to the death, which is, admittedly, pretty much what Turkey has already publicly done.
          Not to be rude, but you know who else could probably have benefited from this lesson? That’s right, the United States. It’s not hard to recall the speeches of our last President, and the profligate use of the word terrorist, and how in this period we operated with a strategy apparently consisting of hating those guys, and being prepared to fight them to the bitter end. It turns out, after nearly a decade of fighting, that maybe we don’t have the moxie necessary to murder on the scale required to stamp out an insurgency through force, and having discovered that our notional allies are maybe not a hundred percent reliable, we’ve adopted a more cosmopolitan approach to counterinsurgency, and decided that we might have to negotiate. It shouldn’t be surprising that during that time our language became more sophisticated, going from referring to those we fought in Afghanistan as terrorists, to calling them the Taliban, to calling them insurgent groups, rebels, and even separatists and militias, terms for which some notable demographics in the US have historically had significant sympathy.
          The US benefits from an absence of some of the complications faced by Turkey in potential talks to end terrorist threats. Not only is the US influential enough of the world stage to engender cooperation from its allies, but it might possess the guile to make this look like a reversal of previously brutish foreign and military policies. Ultimately, however, the US’s primary advantage in rebranding its conflict in Afghanistan away from the marketing used to start the War on Terror is that both the American public and Coalition allies are increasingly asking the question “can we be done, please?” The question of whether we really can back out of the zero-tolerance conflict against "terrorism" we've started remains to be seen. Then again, who knows, it’s possible that we’ve got other aims in mind.