Turkish jets bomb Kurdish positions
The attacks on the PKK’s positions followed last week’s violent clashes between Kurdish factions, including the PKK, and Turkish security forces in several Turkish cities. These clashes were the result of growing frustration, and anger, among Kurds in Turkey in the face of Turkish government inaction against the Islamic State (ISIS) attack on, and atrocities against, Kurds in and around Kobani.
The Guardian reports that Turkey claims that Monday’s strikes came as a retaliation by the Turkish government for armed PKK attacks on several Turkish military outposts in the area. Media reports in Turkey say that the Turkish military targeted PKK units which had been attacking Dağlıca military posts for three days now, using rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire for three days.
The Turkish chief of general staff said the military “opened fire immediately in retaliation, in the strongest terms” after repeated PKK attacks in the area, and before air strikes were launched.
The Turkish daily Hürriyet reported that the air strikes inflicted “major damage” on the PKK, but the Kurdish Firat news agency said there had not yet been any confirmation of casualties and losses on the PKK side.
The People’s Defense Force (HPG), the armed wing of the PKK, confirmed that there were several air strikes by the Turkish Air Force in Hakkari province. “After almost two years the occupying Turkish army conducted a military operation against our forces yesterday for the first time […] with these air strikes they violated the ceasefire,” a HPG statement read.
Other Turkish media outlets reported that there were more armed clashes between the PKK and Turkish troops in the Tunceli area of east-central Turkey on Monday.
Turkey reverts to 1990s tactics against the Kurds
Analysts noted that quite a few PKK supporters – the exact figure is not yet known – were killed not by Turkish air strikes, but, more ominously, by members of the Free Cause Party (Hüda Par). Hüda Par is linked to the Kurdish Hezbollah, a Kurdish Sunni fundamentalist militant group which gained notoriety in the 1990s when it was recruited by the Turkish “deep state” to murder and torture thousands of PKK members and PKK supporters in the region.
Although Kurdish Hezbollah shares with the PKK the goal of greater autonomy for the Kurds, both Kurdish Hezbollah and Hüda Par — which now serves as a front for the banned Kurdish Hezbollah — reject the PKK’s secular, socialist orientation, emphasizing instead an Islamic fundamentalist ideology. In the 1990s, Islamist elements in Turkey’s national security apparatus sought to use the Islamist Kurdish Hezbollah in Turkey’s war against the PKK, even though they – the Islamist elements within Turkey’s national security establishment — rejected the calls by both the PKK and Kurdish Hezbollah for greater Kurdish autonomy. The Turkish intelligence services armed and trained Kurdish Hezbollah and used the organization as a paramilitary unit in Turkey’s war against the PKK (note the similarity in tactics – that is, the use of Islamist paramilitary groups — by the Islamist elements in the national security establishments in Turkey and Pakistan).
Kurdish Hezbollah was an illegal organization, however, so in early 2003, after a cease-fire was announced between the pro-autonomy Kurds, including the PKK, and the just-elected Recep Tayyip Erdogan-led Islamist government in Turkey, veterans of Kurdish Hezbollah formed a Kurdish Islamist party called Mustazaf Der. That party, in turn, was declared illegal and banned by Turkish courts in April 2010. In December 2012, the founders of the now-banned Mustazaf Der – the same people who, in the 1990s, were leaders of the Kurdish Hezbollah – founded Hüda Par.
The fact that the operatives of Hüda Par have now taken up arms again against the PKK – and there is little doubt that they have done so at the urging, and with the assistance, of the Turkish security forces in a manner similar to the way these security forces used Kurdish Hezbollah against the PKK two decades ago – is an indication that the Turkish government is determined to use the context of the current ISIS-related turmoil in Iraq and Syria to renew the Turkish campaign against the Kurds, and weaken the more capable Kurdish military forces.
Analysts worry that growing tensions, let alone armed clashes, between the PKK and their Sunni Islamist rivals at Hüda Par might trigger wider unrest among Kurds and end the Turkish-Kurdish peace process.
The air strikes on Monday, and the ground clashes on the three preceding days, are the first major violations of the ceasefire since the peace process was launched in 2012.
The campaign for Kurdish independence, launched in earnest in 1984, has killed 42,000 people before the 2003 cease fire was announced.
Turkey sees ISIS as a tool to advance Turkey’s regional goals
We should not assume that Turkey’s leaders, pious Muslims though they are, actually espouse or support the extremist version of Islam for which ISIS stands. Rather, Turkey sees ISIS as a tool which, if properly protected, and provided it does not get out of hand, can be used to harass, weaken, or even defeat Turkey’s main adversaries in the region. These adversaries include the more autonomy-oriented Kurds; Assad’s Alawyte regime in Syria; the Shi’a regime in Iraq; the Lebanese Shi’a movement Hezbollah; and Shi’a-dominated Iran.
Moreover, ISIS and ISIS supporters and fellow Islamist movements and sympathizers — such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian Hamas, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and others — can help harass and weaken Turkey’s regional Sunni adversaries: General Sisi’s Egypt; Saudi Arabia; the Gulf States (except Turkey-ally Qatar); Jordan; and the Palestinian Authority.
Turkey’s bombing raids against the Kurds; its refusal to allow the PKK to shuttle reinforcements through Turkish territory to fight ISIS; its refusal to allow any help to reach the defenders of Kobani; its refusal to allow the United States and the coalition to use Turkey’s air space and territory to stage attacks on ISIS targets; its policy of continuing to allow ISIS recruits in the thousands to use Turkey as a way-station on their way to ISIS camps in Iraq and Syria; and Turkey’s continuing help to ISIS in selling oil from ISIS-controlled oil fields, have led many analysts to conclude that, at a minimum, Turkey sees the battle for Kobani as an opportunity to let two of its enemies – if ISIS, in light of the analysis above, can be defined as an “enemy” of Turkey — duke it out, rather than as a cause for alarm.
“It’s a consistent approach to the conflict,” Aaron Stein, a Turkey expert and a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based research organization, told the New York Times. “And I think they are happy to have them kill each other.”
Turkish president Erdogan has publicly insisted that ISIS and the PKK pose the same threat and must both be confronted.
“Hey, world, when a terrorist organization like ISIS emerges, you all speak out, but why don’t you speak out against the PKK as a terrorist organization?” Erdogan said recently. “Why don’t you call for a joint fight against them?”
Turkey does not only want to put an end to Kurdish ambitions of autonomy. It also wants the international coalition to fight not just ISIS, but Assad’s government as well.
“Turkey is against both ISIS and Assad,” the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Tuesday.
He reiterated that the Anti-ISIS coalition should extend its fight to the Assad regime. “Turkey will not embark on an adventure [in Syria] at the insistence of some other countries, unless the international community does what is necessary and introduces an integrated strategy,” he said. “We don’t approve of one-dimensional policies.”
Kurdish internal divisions
Turkey’s refusal to allow aid to reach Kobani, and its strikes Monday against PKK targets, are exacerbating internal political and tactical divisions among the Kurds.
Yesterday (Tuesday), Iraqi Kurdish leaders hosted a meeting in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan in which they tried to reconcile the differences between rival Syrian Kurdish factions. The Iraqi Kurdish leaders believe that reaching a settlement between the warring Syrian Kurdish factions would ease Turkish concerns about helping Kobani.
The Washington Post reports that the initiative was led by Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, who sought to persuade the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD), which is affiliated with the faction defending Kobani, to form an alliance with another Syrian Kurdish faction, the Kurdish National Council (KNC), which has close ties to Barzani.
The dispute between the two Syrian Kurdish factions, PYD and KNC, reflects the wider Syrian war, with the PYD, through its affiliation with the PKK, supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the KNC allied to the Syrian opposition fighting Assad.
A historical note: The PKK launched its campaign for Kurdish independence in 1984, and between 1985 and 1998, the PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, conducted the organization’s campaign – which cost the lives of 42,000 Turks – from Damascus, where the PKK headquarters was located and where the organization enjoyed Syria’s protection.
In 1998, Turkey threatened Syria that unless Syria turned Öcalan over, Turkey would invade and occupy Syria. Turkey began to amass its army along the Syria border – and Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, blinked first and ordered Öcalan out of the country, although he did not turn him over to Turkey. Öcalan left for Russia, Greece, and Italy – then traveled to Kenya, where Mosad agents captured him and delivered him to Turkey (those were the days of close Israel-Turkey alliance). The PKK, and its Syria affiliate PYD, have remained loyal to the Assads despite the 1998 episode.
Turkey has said that it will allow support to reach the Kurds in Kobani only if the PYD turns against Assad and join the anti-regime rebels. Barzani, who has good ties with Turkey, has also said that the Kurds in Iraq would provide aid to Kobani’s defenders as long as the PYD mends fences with the KNC, although he stopped short of demanding that the PYD join the anti-Assad rebel coalition.
Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd and former Iraqi foreign minister, told the Post that the priority is for the factions to set aside their differences, which could prove difficult.
“Our main concern is to get them united now,” he said. “There is an immediate and evident danger of losing everything.”
If there is an agreement, it would open the door to “help and assistance from other sources,” he added.
