India, Turkey share perspective on self-determination

By Kesava Menon

ISTANBUL, JULY 3. An interesting fallout of the just concluded discussions between the internal security establishments of India and Turkey is the mutual understanding that there is a commonality of approach on the issue of self-determination.

In the current global context, the question of self- determination for a minority group within a country carries serious implications for the sovereignty of the country as a whole. It has become necessary for countries determined to preserve their independence, as well as their integrity, to formulate a common approach on the question of self-determination for minority groups.

The Indian delegation's primary objective in these talks was to construct a framework of cooperation to fight global terrorism jointly.

Members of the Indian delegation were, however, surprised at the frequency and intensity with which their Turkish counterparts alluded to the related issue of self-determination manifesting itself as secessionism. In the Turkish perspective, terrorism emanating from secessionist motivations is just as pernicious as terrorism based on religion.

It is but natural for the Turks to be concerned about secessionist movements acquiring international legitimacy because of some assumed right to self-determination. The Balkans are in their neighbourhood. They have seen how the West by supporting the supposed right of self-determination of various ethnic groups has triggered chaos in the Balkans. Neighbours who have lived peacefully with each other for generations have turned viciously against each other because their respective ethnic groups started thinking that they needed their own state to express themselves.

There are reasons closer to home that make the Turks extremely wary of the current tendency to treat secessionism as the natural corollary of the right to self-determination. The main Kurd secessionist leader, M. Abdollah Ocalan, is in jail. He has called on his followers to abandon the search for a separate state and settle for cultural and linguistic freedom within Turkey. But the Kurd separatists are still active in the hills of south east Anatolia and they have bases across the international border.

The Turks are so wary about the tendency among a section of the Kurds to equate self-determination with secessionism that they restrict the cultural and linguistic self-expression of minority groups. In this respect, the Turkish approach differs from that of the Indian.

But both Governments have a commonality in their perspective on self-determination. It is that all the people in a country have the right to determine their own future by working within the same national institutions. This precludes the concept that that different groups within a country should have the right to set up their own sovereign institutions ad infinitum.

As the Balkan situation has shown the tendency to sanctify an unbridled right to self-determination can have grievous consequences for a country's independence. The superpower and its associates have been using the supposed right to self- determination of minority groups to intervene blatantly in the internal affairs of various countries, to the extent of erasing them from the map, as in Yugoslavia.

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Section  : International
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