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THE KURDISH EQUATION
Turkey: Once
bitten, twice shy
By K Gajendra Singh
''I am not responsible for
geography."
- Josef Stalin to
Finland in 1938, when World War II was looming and
Russia wanted territorial concessions.
Towards
the end 2000, when the European Court of Human Rights
took up the case of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah
Ocalan, who had been condemned to death by Turkey's
Supreme Court, there was widespread relief, not only
among his followers and well wishers, but even among his
foes, including the Turkish government, as well as
neighboring countries and governments in Western Europe,
some of whom had helped him and his cause.
At
least the decision bought time as the death sentence
would not be carried out for some time. This in spite of
the fact that from 1984 to 1999 Ocalan had led the PKK
(Kurdish Workers Party) rebellion for a Kurdish state in
the southeast of Turkey that had cost over 35,000 lives,
mostly Kurds, but also the lives of more than 5,000
Turkish soldiers.
To control and neutralize the
rebellion, thousands of Kurdish villages were bombed,
destroyed, abandoned or relocated; millions of Kurds
were moved to shanty towns in the south and east or
migrated westwards. The economy of the region was
shattered. Half of the Kurdish population now lives in
western Turkey, making Istanbul the second largest
Kurdish city after Diyarbakir. With a third of the
Turkish army tied up in southeast, the cost of
countering the insurgency has amounted to between US$6
billion to $8 billion a year. Externally, the struggle
has brought charges of military and police brutality and
human rights violations from the West, to which Turkey
is linked through NATO and the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. The on-going struggle has
also affected the chances of Turkey becoming a full
member of the European Union, of which it has been an
associate member since the 1960s and with which it
entered into a customs union in 1996.
Turkey
wished that the European court would rule Ocalan's trial
null and void, and call for a stay of execution. Most
Turkish leaders, including senior officers from the
Foreign Ministry, the military, intelligence and
interior ministries knew that hanging Ocalan would be
counterproductive; although no one would say so
publicly. Many even in the fascist National Movement
Party (MHP), who had brayed for his head during the
chase, capture and trial in 1999, wanted this outcome.
Why? Because his execution would have disrupted
the peace in and around Turkey, which had been achieved
with so much sacrifice and difficulty. Nobody wanted to
rock the boat, reignite the rebellion and return to a
state of war. Ocalan has a symbolic quality, like Yasser
Arafat has for the Palestinians. The PKK cadre, too,
were apprehensive that his execution would destroy the
mystique and trigger a major internal power struggle.
Furthermore, Ocalan had a certain influence
within many EU countries. This would also be lost if he
were hanged. There are nearly a million Kurds (850,000
out of nearly 3 million Turks) in Germany and elsewhere
in Western Europe, for whom Ocalan is an icon of the
Kurdish cause.
Of course, there were the
families of soldiers and civilians killed in the
rebellion and others who wanted revenge. And extremists
on both sides; a diehard minority in the military and
police establishments and some even in the PKK who
wanted Ocalan to be hanged so that the conflict could be
reignited.
Most countries in Europe, where many
had supported the Kurdish cause and in the neighborhood
- even Syria, which had harbored Ocalan and his cadre;
Iran, which had helped the PKK from time to time; and
certainly Iraq - wanted Ocalan to be saved from the
gallows. For after his execution, the PKK would come
back to life, bringing back conflicts that would affect
them all and their relationship with Turkey.
Kurds and geography
The Kurds are an
Iranian-related people totaling over 25 million who
occupy mostly the adjoining mountainous regions of
Turkey (14 million), Iran (8 million) and Iraq (4
million ) with nearly half a million each in Syria,
Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
They have
been caught up in ethnic upheavals and the intermingling
of Aryan, Turkic and Semitic races for many millennia.
Descending from Medes, they were first mentioned as the
Kurduchoi, who harassed Xenephon and his Ten Thousand
during the epic retreat from Mesopotamia to the Black
Sea in 401 BC.
The Turks started moving into
Anatolia only after the Byzantines were defeated at
Manzikert in 1071 AD. But barring petty dynasties and
some principalities in the region, the Kurds, most now
Sunni Muslims, have failed to establish a lasting
kingdom. Salahaddin remains their greatest medieval
hero. They have been kept divided and exploited as pawns
by the ruling Persian, Turkish and Arab empires, and
later by colonial powers, enjoying autonomy only when
the empires were week. Sunni Ottomans used them to guard
the frontiers against the Shi'ite Safavids of Iran.
Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria might have adversary
relations with each other, but when it comes to Kurds,
they close ranks. But throughout history, whenever
suppressed, the Kurds become outlaws and take to the
mountains.
Belonging to the Iranian-language
family, Kurdish is spoken in five dialects and many
sub-dialects, but the divisions among Kurds are
reflected not only in the dialects or the countries they
inhabit. Differences among them have persisted
throughout history. In north Iraq, the Kurds are split
among the Kurdish Democratic Movement (KDM) of Masud
Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of
Jalal Talabani, who have been warring with each other
for decades.
But, even when divided, they have
enjoyed some semblance of autonomy, first under the
British mandate, then the leftist regime of Brig Kassem,
and even under the kid gloves and poisoned sword
treatment of Saddam Hussein, with an almost free run
during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. And now under
US-led protection after the 1991 Gulf War. The idea of a
Kurdish identity and autonomy, while vigorously
suppressed in the unitary Turkish state, has been kept
alive across in Iraq.
The Iranians have
manipulated Iraqi Kurds as did the Russians the Iranian
Kurds during World War II, encouraging them to declare
the Mahabad Republic, which after the Russian withdrawal
in 1946 was annihilated. Iran gave shelter and arms to
Iraqi Kurds and the PKK. In return, after the 1979
Khomeini revolution, the Iraqis supported Iranian Kurds.
But unlike Iraq, Iran and elsewhere, the Kurds in Turkey
are the most well integrated with other citizens.
Unfortunately, they have been subjected to growing
harassment and discrimination since the Kurdish
insurgency began, although they enjoy equal legal
rights. Ataturk's righthand man, Ismet Pasha, later
president, had Kurdish blood, as did former president
Turgut Ozal. The former foreign minister and the
parliament speaker, Hikmet Cetin, a full-blooded Kurd,
is another of many such examples of prominent Kurds in
Turkey.
Ocalan and the PKK
Nicknamed
Apo (uncle in Kurdish), Ocalan was born in 1949
at Omerli, a small town on the Euphrates in Urfa, one of
seven siblings and who claims a Turkish grandmother, and
some Arab blood too. His family took the surname of
Ocalan (avenger) for having rebelled against Ataturk's
republic in the 1920s.
With a mixed population
in south Turkey, many people speak Turkish, Kurdish and
Arabic. More fluent in Turkish than Kurdish, Ocalan was
a bright student and after the usual religious education
in the village Mekteb, at which he excelled, he won a
scholarship to the prestigious political science faculty
at Ankara, a breeding ground for Turkey's intellectuals,
civil servants and even politicians.
In the
heady days of the early 1970s after the Paris student
uprising, the Ankara university had become a center of
leftist thought and activities. To begin with, Ocalan
was an admirer of Ataturk, and even wanted to be a
military officer. But the total suppression of ethnic or
cultural pluralism, as if Kurdish history and identity
did not exist, and a spell in prison after a crackdown
on radical students in 1971, where he met other Kurdish
students, transformed him into a hardened leftist
Kurdish nationalist.
In essence, Ocalan
represents the violent face of resistance by a minority
tribe, community or a nation against forced assimilation
by majority ethnic, linguistic or religious groups and
nations - as has happened for millennia.
After
the first tentative steps in 1974 to initiate a Kurdish
liberation movement at Ankara , the PKK (in Kurdish -
Partia Karkaran-e Kurdish) - an alliance of workers,
peasants and intellectuals for a democratic and
independent Kurdistan based on Marxist-Leninist
principles - was founded by Ocalan with 12 others in the
village of Lice in Diyarbakir on November 27, 1978.
The circumstances of its origins; tribalism,
feudalism, the grinding poverty of the region compared
to the growing prosperity in western Turkey made Marxism
an abiding ideology that attracted poorer but educated
youth of both sexes. After some unsuccessful attacks in
1979, the really violent incidents, which brought
recognition to the PKK as a terror outfit, were carried
out in 1984 in Sirit and Hakkari near the Iraq-Iran
border.
From a few hundred in 1984, the number
of PKK cadres then rose to the thousands and peaked in
the first half of the 1990s when the PKK was churning
out 300 fighters every quarter. As the state used all
the brutal power at its command, the PKK fought back
savagely by killing government village headmen, guards,
teachers and doctors, apart from innocents and the
military and police soldiers. Brutal reprisals and
killings by security forces brought in thousands of
fresh volunteers to the PKK.
Ocalan left Turkey
for Lebanon just before the 1980 military intervention.
Afraid that Islamic revivalism and Kurdish nationalism
were undermining the state, the military junta banned
major political parties and debarred politicians, came
down heavily on the media, politicians, students and
radicals, especially those of Kurdish origin. But the
prisons only proved to be academies for new recruits to
the PKK cause.
Ocalan first contacted PLO
leftists, but was soon adopted by the Syrians, who
provided him a residence in Damascus and gave him the
Bekaa Valley for training his cadres. He spent some time
in Germany, but mostly functioned from Syria and
Lebanon. A ruthless and cruel leader, with a charismatic
hold over his followers and in spite of never returning
to Turkey, Ocalan is revered by his dedicated followers
and feared and obeyed by most.
Roots of the
Kurdish problem
The roots of the Kurdish problem
lie deep in the Turkish psyche. The seeds were sown
during the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the birth
of the Turkish Republic after World War I. Under the
Ottomans, its Christian, Armenian and other
millets (religious communities) enjoyed religious
freedom with autonomy in their personal laws and
education. The Turks complain that the Christian West
used the stick of religion and nationalism in Eastern
Europe to break up the empire during the 19th and early
20th century.
The first to leave were the Balkan
Christians, and in the late 19th century it was feared
that even the Kurds might desert, like the Egyptians.
But the last straw was the revolt by Muslim Arabs, for
the Ottoman caliphs were always Muslims first and then
Turks. In fact the word "Turk", until Ataturk endowed it
with dignity, was used as a term of contempt by the
Ottoman elite.
Hence, Turks manifest a pervasive
distrust of any cultural or autonomous movement that
might lead to fragmentation of the unitary republic. It
revives memories of Western conspiracies against Turkey
and the unratified 1920 Treaty of Sevres forced on the
Ottoman Sultan by the World War I victors. It would have
divided Anatolia with outright independence to the
Armenians and given autonomy to Kurds, leading to their
independence and granted zones of influence to France,
Italy and Greece. The successful war of independence led
by Ataturk, though, undid the Sevres Treaty. In the new
treaty of Lausanne in 1923, there was no mention of
Armenia or Kurds - not even the latter's language
Kurdish, although it permitted Greeks, Armenians and
others to speak in their tongues.
To begin with,
Ataturk himself had talked of Turks, Kurds, Lazes and
others, but a dramatic change came over him during 1923
-24 and he opted for a unitary state. Perhaps it was
because of the British detachment of the Mosul and
Kirkuk region, the ambivalent attitude of many Kurds and
minor revolts after the Treaty of Sevres. In 1924, he
abolished the caliphate and Kurds were just turned into
non-persons; their language, music, dress and culture,
even the use of Kurdish first names, were made illegal.
Conservative Kurds led by Sheikh Said, a follower of the
Nakshbandi sect (as are many current Islamic leaders,
like former prime minister Necemettin Erbakan), rebelled
against the ungodly state in 1925. The fledgling
republic, under pressure from radicals, ruthlessly
suppressed Kurdish rebellions, some of which lingered on
into the 1930s. Influential Kurdish families were
relocated to extreme western Turkey near the border with
Bulgaria. They were allowed to come back and
rehabilitated only after the introduction of multiparty
democracy and slackening of the unitary state's heavy
hand in the 1950s.
Turkey's constitution
describes itself as a Laic state, which, according to
many, is more Jacobin than genuinely secular. It is
based on the nationalist philosophy of Zia Gokalp,
himself perhaps a Kurd, who unfortunately used for
laic/secular, the title la din ie, anti-religion.
After the founding of the republic, its Christian
minorities were exchanged with Turks from Greece and the
remaining squeezed out later. A few left in the
southeast left too, faced with the Kurdish rebellion
against the state. So the concept of secularism in
Turkey became one of anti-religion, and it tends to
become anti this or anti that, which leads to
intolerance. The Sunni-dominated police establishment
has regularly harassed the Shi'ite Alevis, ironically
perhaps, the original Turcoman, who helped conquer
Anatolia and then the Kurds.
But perhaps the
major problem lies in the fatal belief of the
establishment; a curious macho amalgam of the
military-led secular elite and the Sunni-dominated
interior ministry to resolve problems by force as a
compromise might be seen as a sign of weakness. It
considers Islamic revivalism and Kurdish rebellion as
two major threats to the security, stability and
integrity of the state. This although the left of center
Social Democrat Party( SHP), then led by Ismet Pashas'
intellectual son Erdal Inonu (who became deputy prime
minister in Suleyman Demirels' coalition governments in
1991-95), had come to the conclusion in 1990, based on a
study that neither Kurdish nationalism nor Islamic
fundamentalism posed a threat to the republican order.
Many other subsequent reports have confirmed the same
conclusions, underlining that most Kurds wanted respect
for their identity, the use of the Kurdish language for
education and television and cultural freedom.
Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War
The
1990-91 Gulf War proved to be a watershed in the violent
explosion of the Kurdish problem. A nebulous and
ambiguous situation emerged in north Iraq when, at the
end of the war, US president George W Bush Sr encouraged
the Kurds (and the hapless Shi'ites in the south ) to
revolt against Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab regime.
Turkey was dead against it, as a Kurdish state
in the north would have given ideas to its own to Kurds.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the Gulf were
opposed to a Shi'ite state in south Iraq. The hapless
Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites paid a heavy price. Tens of
thousands were butchered. Reminders of the 1988 gassing
of Iraqi Kurds and the international media coverage of
their pitiable condition, with pictures of more than
half a million Iraqi Kurds escaping towards the Turkish
border from Saddam's forces in March 1991, led to the
creation of a protected zone in north Iraq, now
patrolled by US and British war planes. The Iraqi Kurds
have since even elected a parliament, which, of course,
has never functioned properly. Barzani and Talabani,
though, mostly run almost autonomous administrations in
their areas. This state of affairs allowed the PKK a
free run. Earlier, it had used the eight-year Iran-Iraq
war to stockpile arms.
President Turgut Ozal,
after turning around the Turkish economy in the 1980s,
was perhaps looking for a larger role in the region by
bringing Iraqi Kurds under Turkish control. So he
softened the rigors against his own Kurds. Sensing an
opportunity after US opposition to Iraqi occupation of
Kuwait and future plans for the region, he publicly
proclaimed in 1991 that there were 12 million Kurds in
Turkey and allowed them to use Kurdish in speech and
music. Earlier, in 1989, he had acknowledged his Kurdish
ancestry and had thus ended the legal taboo on the use
of word "Kurd" since 1924. The Kurds had formerly been
called mountain Turks.
On this writer's first
visit in 1969 to Diyarbakir, the biggest Kurdish city,
after checking into a hotel, as soon as he emerged he
was accosted by urchins singing Kurdish songs and
muttering defiantly "Kurdum! Kurdum!" (I am Kurd! I am
Kurd! - but in Turkish). As late as 1979, when a former
minister for public housing said that there were Kurds
in Turkey and that he himself was one, he was sentenced
to two years in prison. As the Kurds were barred from
adopting Kurdish names, many took on Arabic ones.
Therefore, they found Turkish protests hypocritical when
Bulgaria forced its citizens of Turkish origin to take
on Bulgarian names in the late 1980s.
Not only
Ozal but many Turks remain fascinated with the dream of
"getting back" the Ottoman provinces of Mosul and Kirkuk
now in Iraq. They were originally included within the
sacred borders of the republic proclaimed in the
National Pact of 1919 by Kemal Ataturk and his comrades,
who had started organizing resistance to fight for
Turkey's independence from the occupying World War I
victors. So it has always remained a mission and
objective to be reclaimed some time.
The
oil-rich part of the Mosul region was occupied by the
British forces illegally after the armistice and then
annexed to Iraq, then under British mandate, in 1925,
much to Turkish chagrin. Iraq was created by joining
Ottoman Baghdad and Basra vilayats (provinces).
Kuwait 's kayamakan (sub-governor) came under
Basra rule. Later, two British agents, Sir Percy Cox for
Iraq and Major John More for Kuwait, drew the frontiers
between them in 1923, which remains a cause of perennial
claims, tension and wars in the region. Kuwait was known
to have oil and Mosul had potential. Thus, control of
oil resources remains a permanent factor in the region.
At the same time, Turks remain equally
apprehensive of an independent Kurdish state evolving in
north Iraq, which would act as a magnet for its own
Kurds. They are most unhappy with the autonomous Kurdish
entity created in north Iraq since 1991. In the
aftermath of the Gulf War, Turkey lost out very much,
instead of gaining anything. The closure of the Iraqi
pipeline, economic sanctions and loss of trade with
Iraq, which used to pump billions of US dollars into the
economy and provide employment to hundreds of thousands,
with many thousands of trucks roaring up and down to
Iraq, further exacerbated the economic and social
problems in the Kurdish heartland and the center of the
rebellion.
The Kurdish problem after the 1991
Gulf War
Attempts to even look at the Kurdish
problem dispassionately mostly came to naught.
Unfortunately, Ozal, who had helped bring the problem
out into the open and might have found a solution, died
in April 1993. Soon after his death, the unilateral
ceasefire by the PKK, tacitly observed by the
government, broke down when, in May 1993 near Bingol, 33
unarmed soldiers were massacred by the PKK. The PKK
countered that the state had not kept its "promise" and
had continued to lean heavily on militants. Prime
minister Tancu Chiller's probing attempt in 1994 to look
at the Basque model was brushed aside by the military
Pashas and new president Suleyman Demirel, who lacked
Ozal's vision. Thus, except for the 1993 ceasefire
pause, the PKK-state violence increased from 1991 and
continued unabated until 1996 and beyond, peaking during
the 1992 Navruj (new year in Kurdish and Persian)
celebrations and after the March 1993 ceasefire
breakdown.
Of course there are many vested
interests, with considerable leakage of billions of
dollars spent in security operations against the Kurds.
Scandals crop up from time to time. Like rebel movements
elsewhere, the PKK has been accused of funding itself
from the drug trade (also from donations, extortion and
taxes in Turkey and in Western Europe), but some in the
establishment, too, have been accused of the same
charge.
Because of Turkey's continued importance
for NATO, and the PKK's Marxist ideology and Soviet
support, it remained anathema to many in the US, but
Europeans, specially with Kurdish populations, have been
more sympathetic to their plight. Europe has provided
safe havens to expelled and persecuted Kurdish MPs and
others. Many Europeans, parliamentarians and others have
extended vocal support to the Kurdish cause, raising
Turkish heckles. But compared to say Kosovo, Europeans
in general and the US in particular have been soft on
Turkey's human rights record because of the need to
humor an ally, which is even now a useful buffer against
the volatile Middle East, and for its linkages with the
Caucasus and Central Asia..
Forming nearly 20
percent of the population, about 100 Kurds are elected
to parliament, but their cause has not been taken up by
their parties. They have not been able to form a Kurdish
party to politically ventilate their grievances. Such
attempts led to harassment of parliament deputies,
removal of their immunities, jailing and even killings.
Kurdish parties such as the HEP (Kurdish Labor
Party), DEP (Democracy Party) and HADEP (People's
Democracy Party) were obstructed and suppressed. Their
members harassed, jailed and even killed, with radicals
across the board setting the agenda discouraging any
peaceful and meaningful discussion in parliament or
outside.
Since the early 1990s, attempts to
explain the Kurdish viewpoint through the media by
newspapers like Ozgur Gundem (Free Agenda) Ozgur Ulke
(Free Country) and others were stopped through
harassment and even murder of journalists and
distributors, with connivance and help from the
establishment. Even the mainline media was punished for
writing about Kurds, their problems and even about
mishandling of the rebellion. When Urfa-born popular
Kurdish singer Ibrahim Tatlisiz complained that he could
not sing in his mother tongue, he had hell to pay. Kurds
and even Turks, including famous writers like Yassar
Kemal, have been harassed and imprisoned for writing
about Kurds and their problems.
Turkey goes
for Ocalan-PKK's jugular
Turkey's determination
to deal a hammer blow to the Kurdish rebellion was
brought to a head in late 1998 when it threatened war on
Syria unless it expelled Ocalan and the PKK. They had
taken shelter in Syria since the early 1980s, as a lever
against Turkey for denial of its fair share of Euphrates
waters and irredentist claims over Hatay province. It
was allowed to be annexed by Turkey in 1939 in the hope
that it would join France and Britain in the looming
World War II.
After the collapse of the USSR,
Syria's patron and supplier of arms, a weakened and
isolated Syria expelled Ocalan, who first went to the
Russian Federation and then to Rome in search of asylum.
The Italians instead arrested him on a German warrant.
But the latter, sensing further mayhem and strife among
its Kurdish and Turkish populations, dared not extradite
him. Nor was he extradited to Turkey as it would have
caused bad blood between Turkey and the EU. In
mysterious circumstances, then, with some Greek
assistance, Ocalan disappeared. Eventually he was
apprehended after leaving the Greek embassy in Nairobi
on February 16, 1999 by Turkish agents assisted by other
countries, including, perhaps, the US and Israel. He was
brought handcuffed to a rapturous Turkey. His capture
was followed by violence and demonstrations in Turkey
and European cities with Kurdish populations.
The majority of Kurds in Turkey would be
satisfied with cultural autonomy, but the hounding of
Ocalan touched an emotional chord, uniting Kurds all
over the world against their persecution over millennia
and suppression of their aspirations for autonomy and
freedom.
Showing circumspection, the Turkish
government's attitude before and after the expected
death verdict on Ocalan underlined that the law had to
take its course. Parliament even replaced the tribunal's
third military judge with a civilian one. Although the
death penalty has remained on the statute book since
1984, of many scores convicted to death, not a single
one has been hanged. The Ocalan verdict, after its
challenge in the Supreme Court, which confirmed it ,
then went in for a time-consuming process of
ratification via the judicial committee and other
procedures.
In the meantime, an appeal was
lodged with the European Court of Human Rights. While
there was no talk of leniency in the highly charged
atmosphere, it was clear that with the time consumed in
legal formalities, it would be possible to let Ocalan
live instead of making a martyr of him, which would have
been a terrible political mistake.
Unlike the
violent protests against Ocalan's capture, the reaction
after the death verdict was muted and peaceful, barring
isolated violent acts in Turkey. At his trial, Ocalan,
instead of being defiant, promised peace and to bring
down the PKK fighters from the mountains. Awaiting a
certain death sentence in a glass cage, Ocalan's
performance was sober, dignified and consistent in his
defense. Apart from the 1993 conditional ceasefire, he
had offered the olive branch many times, including in
1994 and 1995.
Poet philosopher prime minister
Bulent Ecevit, who was opposed to the death sentence in
principle, then initiated steps to grant an amnesty to
PKK cadre not directly involved in killings and heinous
acts. The insurgency became much degraded on the ground.
The ideological benefactor, the former USSR, no longer
existed. Hafiz El-Assad of Syria was more interested in
peace with Israel. Greece had burnt its fingers in
Nairobi. There was also a chorus of demand from the
West, including the US, against hanging Ocalan.
In a remarkable show of unanimity, despite
opposition from the MHP, the Turkish parliament, after
marathon sittings in August, 2002, to strengthen its
case for the vital 2002 Copenhagen EU summit on Turkey's
possible admission, passed sweeping constitutional
reforms, including the abolition of the death penalty
and the easing of bans on the use of the Kurdish
language, to meet some of the EU's human rights
criteria.
And in early October, 2002, the
Turkish court commuted to life imprisonment the death
sentence passed on Ocalan. And on December 11, the
Turkish parliament overwhelmingly approved a package of
human rights reforms, including sanctions against
torture, but it stopped short of full ratification
pending technical procedures. While these steps were
necessary to bring the country closer to the Europe
Union's human rights norms in its 40-year westward
journey, it was also to douse some of the root causes of
the fires of Kurdish rebellion and to create normal
conditions for its Kurdish origin Turkish citizens.
Turkey is not likely to enter the EU soon,
despite 2003 being set as the date for deciding a date
for accession talks, but some major steps have been
enacted to keep the embers of the rebellion defused.
No wonder Turkey remains vitally concerned and
worried about the consequences of another Gulf war with
Iraq. The war in the 1980s between Iraq and Khomeini's
resurgent Shi'ite Iran helped the PKK to establish
itself in the lawless north Kurdish Iraq territory. The
PKK also helped itself with arms freely available in the
region during the eight-year war.
After the
1990-91 Gulf crisis and war, with lack of legitimate
authority and absence of possible Turko-Iraqi joint
offensives against Kurds in north Iraq, the Kurdish
rebellion blossomed most violently. Syria harbored
Ocalan and the PKK, but any infiltration from across the
Syrian Turkish border would have invited legitimate
right of hot pursuit and reprisals.
Turkey has
crossed quite deep into north Iraq from time to time for
punitive attacks on PKK hideouts and formations, despite
the usual international furor. It has even bombed some
border areas in Iran too, where the PKK might have taken
shelter.
Turkey is at the crossroads again, now
under relentless pressure from the US to join in the war
against Iraq and a regime change in Baghdad. Many
thousand Turkish troops are already in north Iraq again,
on a mission yet to be defined and agreed to. But unlike
1990-91, this time around the politicians are most
reluctant, while the armed forces favor an adventure.
But this is not Cyprus, where after invading it
in 1974, the Turkish armed forces stayed put.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador
(retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August
1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as
ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is
currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies.
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