SO GOES AN OLD KURDISH ADAGE. On a recent visit to Turkey’s southeastern city of Van, a Kurdish businessman told me that, “America has just one friend in the Middle East and that is the Kurds. Kurdish people like America because of protecting Kurds in north Iraq. But if America fights Kurds, it will lose Kurdish friends.”
From 1984 to 1999 Turkey was embroiled in a persistent and bloody domestic conflict with the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), a group of militant Kurdish separatists. Some 37,000 were killed; 1.5 million were displaced. Turkish authorities now believe that the Kurds in northern Iraq are providing sanctuary to some 5,000 PKK guerillas. This is of more than historical interest because the PKK has recently emerged from hibernation and unleash a new wave of violence against Turkey: In 2006 dozens were killed and hundreds injured and arrested. The Turkish military has responded by deploying 50,000 additional troops to it’s southeast border, adding to the already 200,000-strong force in the region.
Iraqi Kurds are reluctant to act against the PKK and the United States is reluctant to disrupt Iraq’s most stable region by pursuing them, even though it recognizes the PKK as a terrorist organization. Turkey sees U.S. inaction in Iraq’s Kurdish north as tacit protection of terrorists, which puts America in a bind: Show too much deference to Kurds in Iraq, and you alienate Ankara. Support Ankara, and you lose vital Kurdish support in northern Iraq.
Turkey has long considered Kurdish nationalism a threat to its territorial integrity. This perception has increased as Kurds have carved out more autonomy across the border in Iraq. The fact that an Islamic party currently rules Turkey complicates the picture, as NATO-member Turkey has entered into bilateral agreements with Iran and Syria to support one another against a Kurdish threat. Whereas Iran once supported the PKK’s terrorist activities, it has seized on its new common bond with Turkey as an opportunity to turn Turkish public opinion in its favor.
THERE ARE 25 MILLION Kurds today, concentrated in the region where Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria meet. Turkey is home to half of these Kurds, their historical homeland in the southeast, and a number of important Kurdish cultural centers, such as Diyarbakir, Mardin, and Van. Turkey and the Kurds share a complex history.
The 1920 Treaty of Sevres established an autonomous Kurdish administration in Turkey’s southeastern region. The Kurds of northern Iraq’s Mosul province were to be allowed to join, if they chose. But due to a combination of Attaturk’s vigorous objections and domestic British political maneuverings, the dream of Kurdish independence was short-lived–it was snatched away by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Kurdish rebellions in 1925 and 1937 were brutally suppressed.
Under both Attaturk and the Turkish nationalists (following the 1980 military coup), Kurds had their language and ethnicity denied in Turkey. Rather than “Kurds,” they were called “Mountain Turks” and speaking Kurdish became a crime. In the 1970s there was a revival of the Kurdish nationalist movement under Abdullah Ocalan, who eventually formed the PKK. The group took up arms in earnest in 1984 and continued their fight until Ocalan’s arrest in 1998.
The Turkish response to the Kurdish rebels was harsh, crippling the southeast, where today unemployment tops 50 percent. But the PKK were no angels. They targeted teachers throughout the southeast (who they considered “agents of the state”) and are known to have slaughtered entire Kurdish villages for not cooperating. Yet, despite its classification as a terrorist organization, the PKK continues to enjoy broad Kurdish support in Turkey. In Van a man told me that without the PKK, Kurds would be unable to speak their own language today–which conveniently ignores the fact that Turkey’s pro-Kurd reforms were enacted only after violence ceased following Ocalan’s arrest.
But the violence has returned. Last March, in the mountains near the town of Mus, a clash with Turkish forces left 14 PKK guerillas dead. The funeral for the guerillas sparked days of rioting in cities throughout the region. Seven people were killed, dozens were arrested, and hundreds were injured in riots in Diyarbakir, a city of 1.2 million.
On March 31 the splinter-group TAK (Kurdistan Freedom Falcons) took responsibility for detonating a bomb in Istanbul that killed 1 and injured 13. A TAK-issued statement declared, “From now on, every attack against our people will be met immediately by even more violent acts. We will start to harm not just property but lives too. With our actions we will turn Turkey into hell.” On April 5, the TAK detonated another bomb at the Istanbul headquarters for Prime Minister Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
IN THE MIDST of Van’s chaotic bazaar I found the headquarters for the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party and asked to speak with the leadership. I was ushered into the “Minister’s” office.
An older man with thick-framed glasses, Ibrahim Sunkur is the DTP’s Van provincial party minister. He spoke largely in platitudes, saying that, “The Kurdish people want human rights in Turkey instead of dangers for Kurdish people” and that, “The DTP wants maximum democracy.” Then he said, curiously: “The Turkish government says that PKK is a terrorist group. But since 1923 the Turkish government has never let Kurds have any rights. ”
It is no secret in Turkey that Ocalan helped orchestrate the formation of the DTP as a political face to the PKK. Publicly, the relationship between the DTP and PKK has been somewhat akin to that between Sinn Fein and the IRA: They are known to be linked, but while the DTP does not publicly endorse the PKK, it doesn’t disavow it either.
So I asked, “Is the government correct to call the PKK a terrorist group?” Sunkur’s response was evasive: “DTP works for all Turkish people,” he said. “PKK works only for Kurds.”
I asked what the DTP is trying to achieve for the broader Turkish people. Sunkur replied, “Kurdish language rights and the right to practice Kurdish culture, human rights for Kurds, and an economic plan that includes Kurds.”
“Is that everything?” I asked.
“And amnesty for PKK,” Sunkur added. “The Turkish government must stop attacking PKK and let them enter politics at the negotiating table.”
The exchange was instructive. Rather than being a program “for all Turkish people,” Sunkur’s list of political goals was Kurd-specific. And including amnesty for the PKK in the party platform seems, on the face of it, unrealistic, if not outright antagonistic to the Turkish government. On the other hand, the DTP’s reluctance to distance itself from the PKK likely does have broad support amongst its constituents.
“If PKK is fighting after Kurds are given rights to practice their culture, then we will say they are terrorists,” said another man I spoke to in Van. “But for now PKK is trying to do something Kurds support.”
AN ALREADY PRECARIOUS SITUATION became more so when Iranian and Turkish forces both recently attacked PKK positions inside Iraqi territory. Iran used to support the PKK as another proxy by which to agitate the West. But now, with an Islamic-based party controlling Turkish parliament, Iran may see the PKK “problem” as an opportunity to build bridges with Turkey. “The Iranians are very smart and they know an opportunity when they see one,” says Soner Cagaptay, of the Washington Institute. “The Iranians want to portray an image that says, ‘Americans talk the talk on PKK, but Iran walks the walk.’ They know that the quickest way to the Turkish heart is to deal with the PKK problem with force. They want to show that they share concerns with Turkey.”
The United States is certainly in no position to take Middle Eastern friends for granted. Turkey is Washington’s closest ally in the Muslim world. The Kurds in northern Iraq are Washington’s closest ally in Iraq. But the Kurdish issue is creating a rift between Washington and Ankara while at the same time facilitating a bond between Ankara and Tehran. The United States may find it increasingly difficult to play both sides of the fence.
Unless Kurds in Turkey and Iraq take action against the PKK, the United States may be forced to make a choice between friends. And the Kurds, once again, could find themselves with no friends but the mountains.
Peter Church is a writer who covers travel and international politics
