<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<span class="post_date" title="2016-01-07">January 7, 2016</span>
<h1 class="headline" itemprop="headline"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/07/turkeys-war-against-the-kurds/"
rel="bookmark">Turkey’s War Against the Kurds</a></h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/vijay-prashad/"
rel="nofollow">Vijay Prashad</a></span> </p>
<div class="post_content" itemprop="articleBody"><b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/07/turkeys-war-against-the-kurds/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/07/turkeys-war-against-the-kurds/</a></small></small></b><br>
<p>A war of words has broken out between the Turkish President,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the leader of the left-wing People’s
Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas. Mr. Demirtas, who
is Kurdish, leads a party that unites the Kurdish nationalist
forces and Turkey’s left-wing groups. Until recently, he and the
HDP have called for more rights for the Kurdish population
within Turkey rather than for the creation of a Kurdish state
out of Turkey. The Kurds in Turkey are spread out across the
country, with Istanbul having the largest concentration (one
million Kurds). Nonetheless, the majority of the Kurdish
population lives in the country’s south-east, which has been the
epicentre of demands for self-determination. In late December,
Mr. Demirtas backed a resolution passed by the Kurdish
Democratic Society Congress (DTK), which reiterated an old
demand for the creation of Kurdish “autonomous regions” and
“self-governance bodies”. <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/erdogan-accuses-kurdish-leader-of-treason/article8043157.ece">Mr.
Erdogan called Mr. Demirtas’ action “treason”</a>.</p>
<p>Mr. Demirtas, who has a calm and careful political demeanour,
has come to this position from great desperation. Out of the
gaze of the international media, Turkey’s government has been
prosecuting a violent war against the Kurdish people. From last
summer, <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/turkeys-dangerous-war-on-kurdish-militants/article8055112.ece">Turkey
began a policy of military curfews </a>and severe crackdowns
on the Kurdish towns and cities of south-eastern Turkey. Turkish
tanks have been shelling Cizre, near the Syrian border, and
military operations in Diyarbakir and Silopi escalate each day.
The region, say local journalists, resembles a war zone. Mr.
Erdogan has called this violence a “fight against separatist
terror organisations”. Diyarbakir mayor Gultan Kisanak said,
“Tanks and heavy weaponry, which are only used in conventional
warfare, are being used by the Turkish armed forces, in areas
where hundreds of thousands of civilians live.” Ms. Kisanak, a
former political prisoner and a very popular politician, bravely
stood up as an MP against the murder of 34 Kurdish civilians by
the Turkish air force in the 2011 Roboski Massacre. She does not
mince words, nor does she exaggerate.</p>
<p><strong>Peace talks</strong></p>
<p>Since 2013, the main military wing of the Kurdish resistance —
the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — has been in talks with the
Turkish state for a full peace agreement. <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/time-now-for-politics-not-guns-ocalan/article4540298.ece">The
PKK’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, has been in Imrali Prison </a>since
1999. The dialogue between the state and the PKK was called the
Imrali process, after the name of the island where Mr. Ocalan’s
prison is based. Negotiations based on a 10-point Dolmabahce
Agreement proceeded until this summer, when Mr. Erdogan
restarted his belligerent talk. He rejected as implausible
negotiations between the PKK — a “terrorist organisation,” he
called it — and the government. He tied the HDP to the PKK. The
HDP responded that it has no “organic” ties to the PKK, although
many former guerrillas are now above ground inside the HDP. The
President rejected the HDP’s claim at his Ramzan speech at a
mosque in Istanbul’s suburban Atasehir district. He said that
the HDP and the PKK have an “inorganic tie”. He wanted war
against not only the PKK, an armed force, but also against the
HDP, a respected parliamentary party. Both had to be dented.</p>
<p>Why has Mr. Erdogan been so eager to go to war against the HDP
and the PKK? There are two reasons: first, the HDP’s political
successes have prevented his political ambitions, and second,
the PKK’s assistance to the Syrian Kurds had raised the spectre
once more of Kurdish statehood or autonomy.</p>
<p>The rise of the HDP inside Turkey dented Mr. Erdogan’s personal
ambitions to shift the Turkish political process from
parliamentary to presidential rule. Mr. Erdogan bizarrely cited
Hitler’s Germany as an example of a successful presidential
system. Victories of the HDP in both parliamentary elections of
2015 prevented Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP)
from earning an absolute majority in Parliament, which would
have delivered power to change the system. Mr. Erdogan’s war
against the HDP and the media emerges from political
frustration. His attempt to link the HDP to the PKK was designed
to frighten its support base. Assassinations and arrests of
pro-HDP politicians and journalists began in earnest. The
killing of human rights attorney Tahir Elci in late November
last year had a chilling effect. It also drew from Mr. Demirtas
this sentiment: “What killed Tahir was not the state, but
statelessness.” Loss of faith in Turkey’s commitment to its
minority and to multi-party democracy led influential people
like Mr. Demirtas to reconsider autonomy and self-government of
the Kurdish areas.</p>
<p><strong>Creation of People’s Protection Units</strong></p>
<p>Much of the explanation for the assault on the Kurds is to be
found in Turkey’s failed policy in Syria. Battle-hardened PKK
fighters turned to help the Syrian Kurdish fighters in 2011,
after the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad withdrew from
Syria’s Kurdish regions in the north. The outcome of this
assistance was the creation of the People’s Protection Units
(YPG). The YPG and the PKK have been fierce fighters against the
Islamic State (IS), since it entered the area in 2012. The
battlefield advances of the Syrian Kurds with the PKK have
lifted their morale, gained them international attention, and
won them adherents amongst Turkey’s non-Kurdish population. It
is the ferocity of their fighting and their progressive social
policy that gave buoyancy to the HDP in the recent elections. <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/nato-backs-turkeys-war-on-terror/article7474938.ece">Declaration
of Syrian Kurdish autonomy </a>alongside Iraqi Kurdish
autonomy (since 1991) put pressure on Turkey’s Kurds to follow
suit. This was precisely what Mr. Erdogan and the Turkish
ultra-nationalists despise.</p>
<p>Since October, the Turkish armed forces have hit not only the
Kurdish cities in south-eastern Turkey but also PKK and YPG
combatants inside Syria. PKK leader Cemil Bayik accused the
Turkish state of attacking the PKK to “stop the Kurdish advance
against ISIS”. This is an accusation that has become commonplace
in the region — that the AKP is implicated in the establishment
of IS. Turkey’s border with Syria is porous for entry of IS <em>jihadis</em>
and for IS oil. The latter draws in Mr. Erdogan’s son Bilal, who
is a director in the BMZ group that has played a role in the
trans-shipment of IS oil to Malta, and then to Israel. Mr.
Bayik’s point is strongly made but what evidence exists supports
his assertion. Turkey’s ambivalence towards IS also bedevils the
U.S., which uses the Turkish base at Incirlik to bomb IS, and
watches Turkish craft attack the Kurdish forces who are the main
ground troops against the IS.</p>
<p>Turkey is in danger of a civil war, as Mr. Demirtas warned in
September. Mr. Erdogan believes that he can ride the tiger of
the anti-Kurdish war. It is more likely that he will lose
control of the situation and plunge Turkey into irreparable
damage. The Turkish government believes<a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/boost-for-erdogan-as-akp-wins-critical-turkey-vote/article7830186.ece">
it can score a military victory against the PKK</a>, which is
why it has been striking PKK camps inside Turkey, Iraq and
Syria. Before the PKK can be destroyed, the Turkish forces will
have to raze the cities and towns of south-eastern Turkey. They
are on the road to doing this — with little international
condemnation of their actions.</p>
<p><em>This article originally appeared in <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/">The Hindu</a>.</em></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Vijay Prashad’s</strong>
most recent book is No Free Left: The Futures of Indian
Communism (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2015).</em> </p>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>