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Turkey's fears prove
unfounded
By Nadire Mater
ISTANBUL - The Red Line that Turkey had drawn
around Kurds before the Iraq war is no longer very red,
or even much of a line anymore. Fears of a Kurdish
secession inspired by Kurds in northern Iraq are proving
unfounded.
Kurds from Northern Iraq did cross
that Red Line around what Turkey said should remain
their confines when they took control of Mosul and
Kirkuk early last month. But Turkish Kurds, particularly
Kurdish guerrillas, have distanced themselves from the
new Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq.
The
Turkish government has done no more than send a dozen
observers into northern Iraq, instead of an army. The
observers are working out ways of cooperation with the
new leadership.
An official document issued in
Turkey last year had warned that "ethnic minorities in
Iraq should be prevented from establishing separate
administrations" and that an attempt to do so would mean
crossing the "Red Line". The Turkish line around Kurds
was both regional and political. A clause in the
official document code-named B.020 said, "Declarations
in this direction will be a cause for intervention on
our part."
It is Turkey's attitude to
developments in northern Iraq that will determine
Kurdish responses within Turkey, says lawyer Kemal
Parlak from the independent DEMOS (Democratic
Reconciliation and Solution to the Kurdish Question).
Parlak dismissed the prospect that Kurdish autonomy in
Iraq might incite Turkish Kurds to demand an independent
state. "Should Turkey implement democratic reforms,
grant cultural rights to Kurds and other ethnic groups
and reinforce the authority of local governments,
Turkey's Kurds would stick to their Turkish citizenry,"
he said.
Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish guerrilla
leader who is serving a life time sentence in the
maximum-security prison on Imrali Island about 50
kilometers south of Istanbul, has sharply criticized the
new Kurdish administration in northern Iraq. "Two paths
exist before the Kurds in the Middle East," Ocalan said
in a letter issued from his prison. "The nationalist
dead-end, and the democratic alternative that I have
been pursuing." The democratic alternative "does not
necessarily aim to establish a Kurdish state but urges
democratic reforms in the particular countries where
Kurds live", he said.
Kurds were divided into
four countries after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
in 1918. Of an estimated total of 16 million Kurds now,
12 million live in Turkey. Two million Kurds live in
northern Iraq, a million in Iran and close to a million
in Syria.
The PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party),
which declared war against the Turkish government in
1984 to demand self-determination, had built support
bases in northern Iraq and recruited Iraqi Kurds. Ocalan
led the PKK struggle from his headquarters in Damascus.
PKK influence in northern Iraq grew considerably
after the Gulf War in 1991. This was seen by the Turkish
government as a dangerous development, and it extended
operations deep into northern Iraq. Turkish forces
staged countless cross-border operations. The biggest
came in 1996 when Turkish troops killed or injured about
2,000 PKK guerrillas. The1996 incursion considerably
undermined the strength of the PKK.
The conflict
between Turkish troops and the PKK left more than 30,000
dead, and a devastated countryside. The conflict came to
a standstill in 1999 when Ocalan was extradited from
Damascus, and later handed over to Turkey by the Kenyan
police, apparently under US supervision. Ocalan was
sentenced to death in July 1999, but the sentence was
converted to life imprisonment in 2001 under the amended
Turkish law.
The PKK declared a unilateral truce
and disbanded itself. Its members regrouped under the
Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK).
Turkish Kurds will inevitably follow a different
path now because living conditions in Turkey are
different, says leading Kurdish lawyer Hasip Kaplan.
"Iraq and Turkey are different," he said. "Turkey has
lived through 15 years of armed conflict between Kurdish
guerrillas and the government, but the country has been
able to avoid the kind of grave traumas Iraq suffered
under Saddam's rule."
Iraqi Kurds are
concentrated mainly in Suleimania and Irbil. Turkish
Kurds are scattered around Turkey as a result of
migration that was in part enforced by the Turkish
government between 1984 and 1999. "A period of
uncertainty haunts the region," said political analyst
Merdan Yanardag from Istanbul. "The situation is still
inflammable." But Kurds are looking to a better future
with Turkey, not with northern Iraq.
(Inter
Press Service)
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