|
Kurdish offensive in Turkey has indirect
Syrian backing
18.8.2012
By Roy Gutman, McClatchy Newspapers |
|
|
|
Semdinli is a small market Kurdish town in the
Kurdish region SE Turkey (northern Kurdistan) where
the PKK Kurdish guerrilla group staged its first
strike in 1984. Photo: UKS
Photo: Roy Gutman/MCT
August 18, 2012
SEMDINLI, Turkey's Kurdish region,— Kurdish
militants, who’ve been at war with the Turkish state
for the past 30 years, tried out a new tactic this
summer. As they cut the main road from the Iran and
Iraq borders to the southeast Turkish market town of
Semdinli, they declared that it wouldn’t be the
familiar “hit and run” operation. This time it was
“hit and stay.”
Hoping to set a trap for the Turkish army garrison
here, rebel fighters from the Kurdistan Workers
Party placed 50-caliber heavy machine guns and
rocket launchers on high ground to ambush the
motorized units the army was certain to send. But
the army avoided the main road and destroyed the
heavy weapons from the air. It lofted drones to spot
the guerrillas, then pounded them with long-range
artillery.
Twenty days into the operation, the Turkish high
command announced Sundaythat it was over. It claimed
that 115 guerrillas had been killed, and that only
six Turkish soldiers and two village guardsmen had
died.
The rebel campaign obviously hadn’t worked as
planned. Even so, it did have an impact: By
distracting the Turkish government, it served the
interests of two of Turkey’s neighbors, Syria and
its close ally, Iran, both of which are eager to
counter Ankara’s open advocacy of ousting Syrian
President Bashar Assad.
In a regional realignment that’s been under way
since the Syrian uprising started in March 2011,
Iran and Syria appear to be providing support and
sanctuary to the Kurdistan Workers Party and egging
on its struggle against Turkey. Kurds live in Iraq,
Iran, Syria and Turkey, and the Kurdistan Workers
Party’s headquarters have been in northern Iraq.
Now, however, as Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional
Government draws closer to Turkey, the Kurdistan
Workers Party is finding allies elsewhere.
Iran is one example. Charging that Turkey, Saudi
Arabia and Qatar are responsible for the bloodshed
in Syria, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the Iranian
chief of staff, warned last week that after Syria,
“Turkey and other states will be next in line.”
Turkey denounced the “baseless accusations and
unworthy threats made against our country.” Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, went on
to urge Iranians to protest their government policy:
“I ask the Iranians. Is there a place in your
religion for defending a regime that kills its
people, or not? If Syrians are fleeing their
country, shouldn’t Iran be brought to account?”
Meanwhile, Kurdistan Workers Party ties with Syria
have improved dramatically, as Assad, searching for
troops to fight the opponents of his regime, handed
over control of nearly all the country’s
Kurdish-dominated region to a Kurdistan Workers
Party affiliate. Syria also provides a base for
Bahoz Erdal, whom Turkish officials say is
commanding Kurdistan Workers Party fighters on other
fronts in Turkey.
Thus, a group that Turkey and the United States
label terrorist appears to be moving into power
right on Turkey’s border. It could prove a major
problem for Turkey, whose 80 million population
includes more than 14 million Kurds – more than half
of all the Kurds who live in the Middle East.
Semdinli, a town of 19,000 situated in a
picturesque, narrow valley, is a case study of that
problem. The Kurdistan Workers Party launched its
first violent assault against Turkish security
personnel here on Aug. 15, 1984, and has been back
often. The latest intervention began July 23, when
guerrillas set up a checkpoint on the other side of
Mount Goman, on the main road to the Iran and Iraq
borders.
“I heard about it towards evening,” said Ibrahim,
43, a dairy farmer who traveled here when his
5-year-old son took ill. It was the start of
Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting,www.ekurd.net
and neighbors were traveling to Semdinli to stock up
on supplies. Guerrillas who were manning the
checkpoint turned them back, and told them to stop
using Turkish documents and instead use only papers
issued by the Kurdistan Workers Party.
They declared that this would be a “frontal battle”
with Turkish authorities. “People warned them that
the Turkish army would drive them out of the valley,
but they said, ‘No, we’re here to stay,’ ” recalled
Ibrahim, who asked not to be identified further for
fear of retaliation.
As he sat at an outdoor cafe near Semdinli’s modest
hospital, an enormous boom from just hundreds of
yards away rattled the windows. It was an army
howitzer firing from the garrison at the Kurdistan
Workers Party, possibly in Ibrahim’s village on the
other side of the mountain. This is the Turkish
army’s approach to counterinsurgency: sending in
drones to spot suspected insurgents and using the
imagery to aim a cannon that’s said to have a range
of 25 miles.
Ibrahim smiled, for today he was at the outgoing end
of the bombardment.
Many times, he recounted, “a relative in Semdinli
would call us when it was fired, and then a minute
or two later, it would hit.” The shells crashed
mostly in fields, once near a house, but they made
it impossible to sleep at night, work his crops or
tend his cattle. “Night and day, it was more shells
than I could count,” he recalled.
The confrontation was costly for the area’s
residents. Ibrahim’s settlement – McClatchy isn’t
naming it for his safety – and five others had
emptied, and he had no idea of the fate of his
property. “Everything I’ve got – my crops, my house,
my cattle – it’s in the village,” he said. “We are
living 10 people in a house. Nobody is earning a
wage. There is no work. I don’t know what I’m going
to do.”
Business in Semdinli plummeted, because most of the
district’s population of 62,000 had no way of
getting to town. A waiter at a cafe said people
would leave the town if they could. “When people
hear the sound of guns, they just leave,” the
30-year-old waiter. “I have a son who’s 1 month old.
If something happens, what am I going to do?
Still, Semdinli appeared to be booming, with dozens
of high-rise buildings under construction. Officials
say the major investors are smugglers, who make a
good profit out of importing diesel fuel and
cigarettes from Iran and electronics from Iraq, all
of which highly taxed in Turkey. Semdinli, which
sits astride the main smuggling route from northern
Iraq and Iran, has no other industry.
The town’s mayor, a lawyer named Sedat Toere, is an
unabashed supporter of the Kurdistan Workers Party,
known as the PKK. “There is a majority consensus
among the population that the PKK are fighting for
the rights of the Kurds, and they do represent the
Kurds.” If the group were to capture the town, “this
would not be much opposed by the people, because the
security forces on duty in the town are foreigners
to the people here,” he said. He calls Turkish rule
“80 years of assimilation policies.”
Mesut Genctuerk, the government-appointed district
governor, dismissed Toere’s assertions. He put the
popularity of the Kurdistan Workers Party at a
maximum of 10 to 20 percent.
There’s no doubt life could be much better here if
it weren’t for the guerrilla war, said Muharrem
Tekin, of the local chamber of artisans and
businesses.
A four-lane highway that’s a year or two from
completion will cut the trip to Van, the nearest
airport and railhead, to two hours. There’s a
high-quality coal deposit in Derecik, just 25 miles
from Semdinli. The local honey is “as good as
anything from the Black Sea,” and there’s a quarry
just outside the town that has world-quality marble.
It even has a unique local flower, known as the
upside-down tulip.
If the borders with Iran and Iraq, now closed for
reasons of security, could be opened, industry might
move here.
“This is a place of great natural beauty. It could
be the pearl of the East,” Tekin said. For now, the
town’s reputation, as a major center of Kurdistan
Workers Party activity, scares off investors. But if
the war ends, “we have many things to offer.”
McClatchy special correspondent Joel Thomas
contributed to this report.
Copyright ©, respective
author or news agency,
mcclatchydc.com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page
|
®
