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Kurds don't fear Turks
15.10.2007
By Betsy Hiel |
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October
15, 2007
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraqi Kurdistan region, --
Along a winding road near the border with Turkey,
Kurdish shepherds watch over goats, sheep and cows
as a family picnics along a creek. On the hillside
just past a military checkpoint, a face is painted
in blue and black hues on a white concrete slab.
The face is of Abdullah Ocalan and the checkpoint is
manned by his Kurdish Workers' Party, better known
by its Kurdish initials, PKK.
Ocalan has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999 for
leading the PKK's two-decade separatist war against
the Turks. After months of escalating cross-border
attacks, Turkey is threatening to invade Iraq's
Kurdistan north to destroy PKK guerrillas based
there.
It has mobilized on the border in recent weeks since
the PKK killed 15 of its soldiers. PKK fighters,
assault rifles slung over their shoulders, snap to
attention as acting PKK leader Murat Karayilan steps
into the cement-block checkpoint. He sounds
unconcerned about an invasion.
"Turkey has launched hundreds of raids in the last
25 years," Karayilan says. "... Even when the
Turkish military stayed for two months, they
couldn't get the results they wanted and they
withdrew."
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Murat Karayilan, acting leader of the Kurdish
Workers' Party, better known as PKK, says his
guerrilla group based in Iraq's Kurdistan Qandil
mountains, is ready for political negotiations. The
problem, he says, is "the Turkish state wants two
things from us: Give up and go to Turkish prison, or
we will destroy you." |
Yet the threat has provoked a strong reaction from
the United States because it could destabilize the
only relatively quiet region of Iraq, catch U.S.
troops in the crossfire and shatter Washington's
shaky relationship with Turkey, a longtime ally.
For its part, Iraq signed an anti-terrorism
agreement with Turkey a week ago and urges a
political resolution to the PKK crisis.
And with Baghdad's weak central government beset by
sectarian violence, the Kurdish Regional Government
-- which rules northern Iraq with near-total
autonomy -- has offered to deal directly with
Turkey.
Turkey has rejected that and its prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said he will seek
parliamentary approval for an invasion in coming
days.
"A Turkish invasion is definitely possible," says
Richard May of the World Security Institute's Center
for Defense Information and a former Army officer
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They've spent
millions of dollars to move people and equipment
from all over Turkey."
He sees the buildup as "in line with their previous
incursions into northern Iraq."
More than 30,000 people have died in the fighting
between Turkey and its Kurdish guerrillas. Although
the PKK insists it is only defending the rights of
Turkish Kurds, the United States and the European
Union consider it a terrorist group.
Human Rights Watch is critical of Turkey, too,
describing its campaign against the PKK in the 1980s
and '90s as "marked by scores of 'disappearances'
and extrajudicial executions" and saying about 3,000
Kurdish villages were "virtually wiped from the
map."
Larger fears of separatists
After Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003, the situation
briefly looked promising.
Iraqi Kurds encouraged Turkish businessmen to invest
in their region. Today, 80 percent of northern
Iraq's construction boom is overseen by Turkish
companies, and annual cross-border trade is
estimated at $5 billion.
If the Turks invade, "they will put their own
interests at risk," says Sarhang Barzainji, an
associate professor at Salahideen University in
Erbil, the region's largest city. "Kurdistan is a
big market for Turkey."
Turkey has a larger fear, though -- one shared by
anti-U.S. regimes in the neighborhood.
Iraqi Kurds' post-Saddam autonomy has inspired
Kurdish separatists in Iran, Syria and Turkey. If
Iraqi Kurds gain control of the oil-rich Kirkuk
area, Turkey fears they will split from Iraq and
encourage Turkey's sizable, restive Kurdish minority
to split off, too.
Although many Iraqi Kurds object to their mountains
being used as a PKK base, they still sympathize with
Turkish Kurds.
"The Iraqi Kurdish leadership looks at the PKK as a
Kurdish faction and doesn't want to betray them,"
says newspaper editor Azad Seddiq, an Iraqi Kurd. "I
think they hope to convince the Americans to make
the PKK a political force and give them ... asylum."
That sentiment is echoed by Nawzad Mawlood, Erbil's
governor.
"There are Kurds in Turkey, and they are asking for
their rights," he says. "There should be a political
solution."
Asos Hardi, who edits a weekly independent Kurdish
newspaper, believes Turkey is using the PKK as a
pretext.
"The PKK is not their main problem. They are afraid
of what happens with the Iraqi Kurds," he says,
calling it "a case of Kurdish phobia. Even if there
are no PKK in the mountains, Turkey is still
thinking to invade" northern Iraq.
Tough terrain for a fight
This mountainous region, where the PKK and an
Iranian-Turkish guerrilla group known as PJAK
operate, is tough terrain, with peaks of more than
11,000 feet. An Islamic terrorist group, Ansar Al
Islam, used it as a base to attack Iraqi Kurds
before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Kurdish troops
routed Ansar only after U.S. airstrikes.
The Iraqi government never had firm control over the
region, says Mawlood. "Even Saddam Hussein with
chemical weapons couldn't get people out of that
area."
Gen. Mam Rostum, a commander of the Iraqi-Kurdish
militia, the peshmerga, agrees. His own fabled
fighters might not dislodge the PKK, he says,
"because of the topography, and the PKK is fighting
with guerrilla-warfare tactics."
Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkish politics at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees
that Iraqi Kurds sympathize with the PKK's Kurdish
nationalism. But he thinks "they are failing to take
into account how serious the Turks are right now."
'We cannot give up'
PKK leader Karayilan insists Turkey's current
saber-rattling is prompted not by his group's
attacks, but by the growing political power of
Iraq's Kurds.
"We do not believe we can solve the problem through
armed struggle," he says. "We believe we can move in
a political arena."
For the PKK, that means political asylum for its
members, the release of the imprisoned Ocalan, and
full cultural and political freedom for Turkish
Kurds.
Karayilan admits Turkey has eased some of its
restrictions on Kurds, allowing them to use their
native language and establish private language
schools.
But, he says, "The Turkish state wants two things
from us: Give up and go to Turkish prison, or we
will destroy you. As a Kurdish people, we cannot
give up."
U.S.-Turkey relations at all-time low
Turkey's threat to invade northern Iraq and attack
PKK guerrillas comes when U.S.-Turkish relations are
at an all-time low.
It further complicates already-strained U.S. plans
in the region, including efforts to end sectarian
violence across Iraq and to isolate Washington's
regional arch-nemesis, Iran.
A recent Pew opinion poll showed only 9 percent of
Turks hold a positive view of the United States
while 28 percent look favorably on Iran.
"Iran is using the PKK as a public-relations tool to
get into Turks' hearts," says Dr. Soner Cagaptay, an
expert on Turkish politics at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy. "They have changed
hundreds of years of deep-rooted (Turkish-Iranian)
animosity. It just shows you how the PKK is a wedge
issue."
Turkey, a NATO member and U.S. ally since the Cold
War, infuriated Washington by refusing to allow U.S.
forces to cross its border into Kurdistan region
'northern Iraq' during the 2003 liberation. As a
result, U.S. troops and equipment remained at sea on
transport
ships.
Relations were strained still more last week when
the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to
classify Turkey's massacre of Armenian Christians at
the end of World War I as an act of genocide,
despite strong counter-lobbying by Turkish officials
and the Bush administration. The House is set to
debate the measure in November.
Turkey has hinted it may retaliate by limiting U.S.
air access to its territory and to the U.S. airbase
at Incirlik, a major supply hub for U.S. forces in
Iraq.
An invasion could deliver yet another blow to the
U.S. war plan in Iraq, according to Richard May of
the World Security Institute: It could draw-off some
10,000 Iraqi-Kurdish peshmerga fighters supporting
U.S. forces in Baghdad.
"The Kurdish military are extremely significant. ...
The Sunnis feel more comfortable with them than
(with) the Shia, and the U.S. forces like and trust
them," says May, a former Army officer who served in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
"If the Turkish military does launch a military
incursion into northern Iraq, these Kurdish soldiers
will have their loyalties pulled."
While the Kurdish peshmerga are not a "linchpin" of
the U.S. military strategy, May says "the loss of
one soldier, let alone 10,000, will have an impact."
pittsburghlive com
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan ( Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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