Analysts : BDP’s regional revenue demand means autonomy
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La peur de la sécession territoriale comme argument invoqué pour refuser de redistribuer la manne énergétique. Quand, le territoire Kurde sert bien les intérêts « supérieurs » du gouvernement turc. Si l’on deséthnicise le sujet, ne peut-on pas plutôt voir dans ces revendications des signes d’une volonté de plus de décentralisation des compétences et de justice spatiale ?
The demand by a leading Kurdish political figure that Kurds should get a share of the income derived from natural resources in Turkey’s Southeast translates into a demand that was immediately rejected by Turkey’s top energy official for recognition of sovereignty similar to the Kurds’ position in northern Iraq, analysts have said.
In an interview published by the Al Jazeera Turk news portal on Saturday, Gültan Kışanak, a former co-chair of the BDP and current mayor of Diyarbakır province, said they, as the municipality of Diyarbakır, wanted a share of the natural resources of the province.
In response to a question about whether they demanded a share from the oil produced in the province, Kışanak said: “Of course, we certainly demand a share. Municipalities should get a share from all the energy resources, from the wealth under and above the ground, and economic riches in the region.”
Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız said, in a statement on Saturday, that it would not be possible to comply with such a demand if it would come to mean recognition, though tacitly, of another state within Turkey.
Saying that they are working on the feasibility of the municipality getting a share of the riches of the region, Kışanak said in the interview: “Our colleagues have been preparing a file [on this issue]. How many oil fields are there in Diyarbakır? What is the amount of production [in oil]? Where is this oil going? In the past, there was a heavy cost [of oil in the region] in terms of environment; we are looking into it. There were serious claims that it [oil production] caused pollution in water wells. Oil is the powerhouse of economy, but the energy is going there [to the Western part of the country], and we are left with the pollution. … This is not acceptable for anybody.”
Eighty to 85 percent of Turkey’s domestic investments in natural gas and oil take place in the country’s southeast region. Drawing attention to this fact, the minister of energy said the yearly amount of investment Turkey makes in this area in the region is as high as $470 million. Noting that Turkish government does not act in a discriminative way against any provinces in the whole of the country, Yıldız said energy investments in the region provide employment for about 3,000 people.