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Turkey fights Kurdish PKK rebels with war
language
16.11.2007
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November 16, 2007
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- When Turkey reports the
death of Turkey's Kurdish PKK rebels, it calls them
"terrorists" and says they were "rendered
ineffective," a euphemism designed to distance
Turkish troops from the brutality of killing. But
the military glorifies its own dead as "martyrs."
While Turkey ponders how to attack guerrillas based
in northern Iraq, it is drawing on a broad
vocabulary of diplomatic and military terms in its
battle with the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party.
A common goal of Turkish war talk is to portray the
rebel group as illegitimate and unrepresentative of
the interests of Turkey's Kurdish minority, many of
whom are tired of fighting that tore apart their
communities until the 1999 capture of rebel leader
Abdullah Ocalan.
The PKK rebels, who abandoned a unilateral
cease-fire in 2004, draw recruits from Turkey's
impoverished southeast. Twenty pro-Kurdish lawmakers
allegedly have close ties to militants who seek more
rights and autonomy for Kurds.
Turkish pressure on the United States and Iraq to
crack down on the Kurdish rebels paid off when
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the PKK was
a "common enemy," and President Bush used similar
language after a Nov. 5 meeting with the Turkish
prime minister.
In practical terms, it means the United States is
providing military intelligence to Turkey, possibly
enabling it to conduct targeted airstrikes and
pinpoint operations against PKK sites in Iraq rather
than a cross-border occupation of territory that
could get bogged down in winter weather and turn
into a public relations fiasco. www.ekurd.net
Turkey is sensitive to suggestions that it might
launch an invasion, saying instead that any
operation would be an "incursion" of limited scope.
The United States and the European Union describe
the PKK as a terrorist organization, based on its
record of bombings and other attacks on civilians in
a war that has killed tens of thousands of people
since 1984. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan reinforced the point at the National Press
Club in Washington after his meeting with Bush.
"Calling them rebels or resistance fighters instead
of terrorists upsets us," Erdogan said. "It's
impossible to accept this."
The Turkish military seldom refers to the full name
of the Kurdish rebel group or its acronym - PKK -
apparently in an effort avoid any hint that it could
be an adversary of stature. The term for slain
guerrillas has a dehumanizing ring: rendered
ineffective, or "etkisiz hale getirildi" in Turkish.
However, military officials say the term is supposed
to be mild because they seek to win the support of
Kurds in a "hearts and minds" campaign. Authorities
used to refer to Kurds as "Dag Turku," or "Mountain
Turks," as a way of denying the existence of a
distinct Kurdish minority, but dropped the term in
the early 1990s as fighting with rebels reached its
peak and Turkey faced widespread accusations of
human rights abuses.
On Nov. 4, rebels released eight Turkish soldiers
who were abducted in an ambush, but the Turkish
military never acknowledged they were prisoners or
hostages, a status that could trigger calls for
negotiations on their release.
Turkey, which refuses to talk to the PKK, said only
that communication with the soldiers had been
disrupted during a clash, and the troops had
"rejoined" the army. They have been charged with
neglecting their duty amid speculation that they did
not fight hard enough when they were ambushed; the
soldiers said they ran out of ammunition.
Turkey describes its war dead as martyrs, or "sehit"
in Turkish. The Arabic-based term, also used by the
PKK, is associated with those who die in the belief
that they are fighting for Islam, but Turkey's
secular military prefers a nationalist meaning. www.ekurd.net
Fighters who died during the wars that led to the
1923 creation of the Turkish republic were also
given that title.
The PKK has its own war language, referring to its
fighters as "heroes" and accusing Turkey of
spreading rumors about rebel infighting to undermine
the group. The Web site of the People's Defense
Forces, the PKK's armed wing, delivers accounts of
battles with Turkish forces in restrained language.
Since 1984 the PKK took up arms for self-rule in the
country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
AP
**
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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