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Turkey enlists Iraqi Kurdistan's help in
countering threat of Syria-PKK alliance
24.3.2012 |
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Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (R) and
Iraqi Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani pose for
media before their meeting in Istanbul, November 5,
2011. Photo: EPA
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March 24, 2012
ANKARA,— Turkey has been actively working
with the Kurdish Regional Administration in northern
Iraq for some time now to counter the growing threat
from its southern neighbor Syria, where Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad's government is courting
terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants
to strike Turkish interests, Today's Zaman has
learned.
A senior government official who has deep knowledge
in intelligence because of his position said Turkish
officials have been meeting with Kurdish leaders in
the northern Iraqi administration to put in place a
comprehensive strategy to diffuse the threat posed
by the PKK in the Syrian Kurdish community. The
official spoke with Today's Zaman on condition of
anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“We have come to an understanding from Kurdish
officials in Erbil that the PKK threat in Syria is
seriously undermining the legitimate aspirations of
Kurds in the region,” he explained. “What is more,
they also realized that the PKK's support of the
violent regime in Syria puts all Kurds in the region
in an awkward position. They do not want Kurds to be
seen as supporting a brutal regime that has been
cracking down on civilian protestors.” The official
said the meeting of Syrian Kurds from 32 countries
held in Erbil was held Jan. 27-28 under the auspices
of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) as an
important step towards the direction of sidelining
the PKK.
The PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD) in
Syria was not invited to attend this conference.
“[Massoud] Barzani [president of the Kurdistan
Regional Government] is telling us that his ultimate
goal is to build a coalition as wide as possible
against the PKK so that they can be effectively
marginalized,” the same official explained. “In the
long run, Barzani even aims to include the PYD under
the Kurdish National Council Syria [KNCS] provided
that they put some distance to the PKK,” he
predicted.
The KNCS was founded in Qamishli in the outer
northeast of the country as a consequence of the
Syrian uprising in October 2011 and was regarded as
a representative body of Kurdish interests there.
The KNCS says it supports a peaceful and democratic
solution to the Kurdish question on the basis of
self-determination or some sort of autonomy. It has
been in negotiations with the Istanbul-based Syrian
National Council as well as the National
Coordinating Committee for Democratic Change (NCC)
and other opposition groups, to strike a deal for
the position of Kurds in the post-Assad era. The
most contentious issue during discussions was the
status of Kurds and how that will be tied to the
Arab identity of the Syrian Republic. Assad also
uses the PKK to prevent Kurdish opposition from
unifying while the PKK helps Assad pre-empt Kurds
from joining the Arab opposition groups as well.
In the meantime, Turkish intelligence reports
submitted to the government detailed how the Assad
regime has been providing support to the PKK in
Syria by giving them freedom to operate in the
northern part of the country bordering Turkey. The
reports, explained to Today’s Zaman this week by a
senior government official,www.ekurd.net
underlined that last year’s
assassination
of a leading Kurdish figure, Mishaal al-Tammo, by
Syrian intelligence officers after he allied himself
with the Syrian opposition was in fact a shot across
the bow for Turkey. Al-Tammo was known to be
strongly opposed to the PKK taking a stronghold
among Syrian Kurds and thereby hijacking the
legitimate demands of Kurds there. By taking him out
of the picture, the Syrian regime allowed breathing
room for the PKK to aggressively work towards its
goals.
Assad thinks the PKK and affiliated Kurdish groups
in northern Syria may act as a buffer force when
Turkey decides to intervene in Syria, either alone
or acting under the mandate of a regional
organization or a UN Security Council resolution.
The PKK has already signaled it is ready and eager
to assume such a role. Cemil Bayık, number two in
the PKK, has warned that if Turkey were ever to
intervene against Assad, the PKK would fight on
Syria’s side.
PKK’s acting leader Murat Karayılan
said
on Thursday to the Europe-based Fırat News Agency, a
mouthpiece of the PKK, that Turkey was preparing the
groundwork for an intervention in Syria. “The
Turkish state is planning an intervention against
our people,” he said. “Let me state clearly, if the
Turkish state intervenes against our people in
western Kurdistan, all of Kurdistan will turn into a
war zone.”
Western Kurdistan is the term Kurdish nationalists
use to describe Kurdish areas of northeast Syria,
while by Kurdistan they mean the Kurdish areas of
Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.
Kurdish intellectual and writer Kemal Burkay told
the Human Rights Commission in the Turkish
Parliament in January that the PKK moved as many as
2,000 militants from Iraqi hideouts to northern
Syria to help Assad’s forces.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said
last week that setting up a “safe zone” or a “buffer
zone” along the border with Syria to protect
civilians from Assad’s forces was among the options
being considered should the stream of refugees turn
into a flood. Setting up such a zone would involve
troops entering Syria to secure territory.
Intelligence reports also verify that to mobilize
Kurdish support for the ailing regime in Syria,
Assad quickly moved to offer citizenship rights to
some 350,000 stateless Kurds so that they can
travel, own property, enroll in universities and
secure employment in Syria. The PKK-affiliated PYD
in Syria, though officially illegal, was also
allowed to start networking with other Kurdish
parties established in the Syrian Kurdish region.
The Syrian opposition suspects that Assad has gone
as far as promising autonomy to Kurds in exchange
for support to his regime and loyalty. The
noticeable restraint used by Syrian security
services in the face of protests against the Assad
regime in Kurdish areas may be another indication
that the regime is counting on Kurdish support for
the coming days and weeks.
This new approach is quite a contrast to the March
12, 2004 Kurdish riots in Qamishli, the capital of
Hassekah province [Syrian Kurdistan], as well as in
Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo and Damascus during
which the regime responded violently to crack down
on Kurdish protest movements. While there have been
clashes between protesters and Syrian security
forces mainly in Sunni Arab towns during the
year-long uprising, Kurdish areas have remained
relatively calm.
While Turkey has been carefully monitoring
developments in Syria, Damascus seems to have
returned to the adversarial policies of the ‘90s
during which it tried to use the PKK as trump card
against Turkey over Syria’s claim to Hatay province
and the Euphrates River, which flows from Turkey.
Assad’s father even sheltered the now-imprisoned
leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, for many years
before he was forced to leave the country under
Turkish pressure. He was later captured in Kenya by
Turkish intelligence operatives and brought back to
Turkey for trial.
The PKK, labeled as a terrorist organization both in
the US and EU, has been fighting a secessionist
campaign against Turkey for almost 30 years. The
conflict has claimed the lives of more than 40,000
PKK terrorists, soldiers and civilians.
By Abdullah Bozkurt
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