Turks-Koerdisch conflict #4

quote:

Strijd in Zuidoost-Turkije terug van weggeweest

Door correspondent Bram Vermeulen

De wegen over de verlaten bergruggen in het zuidoosten van Turkije zijn leeg, maar niet veilig. Dorpsmilities, betaald door de Turkse staat, patrouilleren er met machinegeweren en serieuze waarschuwingen.

"Zorg dat je binnen bent voor het donker, het is hier niet pluis." In Siirt weten ze dat. Daar vielen Koerdische seperatisten vandaag een militaire basis aan. Twee Turkse soldaten vonden bij de aanslag de dood. Ook de dorpsmilities kwamen onder vuur. Drie militieleden kwamen om, net als twaalf Koerdische rebellen.

De PKK, de Koerdische afscheidingsbeweging, is in de regio bij tal van misdaden betrokken en heeft de afgelopen weken de aanvallen op Turkse doelen opgeschroefd. Zo gaat het nu dag in dag uit in dit deel van Turkije.

Hervormingen
Een jaar lang hield de Koerdische militante beweging PKK zich aan een staakt-het-vuren dat de beweging zichzelf had opgelegd. Volgens de leider van de beweging, Abdullah Öcalan, die in 1999 levenslang werd vastgezet, was dat om de democratische hervormingen een kans te geven die de Turkse regering de Koerden in het vooruitzicht had gesteld.

De staatsomroep zendt sinds vorig jaar ook uit in het Koerdisch, een universiteit mocht de verboden taal eindelijk gaan doceren. Maar de hervormingen zetten niet door, ook al is het een van de vele eisen die de Europese Unie aan Turkije stelt voor toetreding.

De enige Koerdische partij in het parlement werd verboden. Duizenden sympathisanten werden opgepakt. Gisteren werd een Koerdische schrijver vastgezet, omdat een van de personages in zijn boek sympathie zou hebben voor de PKK.

Doodgeboren
De beloofde hervormingen blijken doodgeboren. En de strijd die al 25 jaar woedt in dit deel van Turkije is terug alsof die nooit is weggeweest.

quote:

Turkish military says warplanes bomb Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's military says its warplanes have bombed Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq over the past two days.

The military's statement says the air force jets bombed the main rebel base on Mt. Qandil on the Iraqi-Iranian border and the Hakurk area in northeastern Iraq, on Thursday and Friday.

It says the warplanes tried to target rebel positions and avoid civilian casualties.

The military says all the warplanes returned to Turkey safely. The statement did not mention any rebel casualties.

Turkey's military is targeting Kurdish rebels who have used northern Iraq as a springboard for hit-and-run attacks on Turkish targets for decades. The rebels have recently escalated their attacks in a battle for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.

quote:

Geheim overleg Israël en Turkije

ANKARA/JERUZALEM (ANP) - Israël en Turkije hebben voor het eerst sinds de aanval op een hulpkonvooi voor Gaza eind mei, waarbij negen Turkse activisten omkwamen, op hoog niveau contact met elkaar gehad. Dat bevestigde Israël donderdag tegenover de BBC.

De Israëlische minister van Handel, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, sprak met de Turkse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Ahmet Davutoglu. Het overleg had volgens Israël op verzoek van de Turken plaats.

quote:

Turkey Says Syria Detains 400 Kurdish Separatists

ISTANBUL — Syrian security officials have detained 400 people suspected of links to the Kurdish separatist group P.K.K., the state-run Anatolian news agency reported on Thursday.

In a sign of growing cooperation with Turkey, Syrian forces began operations in Damascus and four other cities in a crackdown on members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K., suspected of “being members of a terrorist organization, forcefully collecting money, attempting to divide Syrian land in efforts to form a separate state and inciting ethnic and religious separation among Kurds,” the report said.

Turkish officials said they were waiting for more information on the detentions.

“As far as we heard, Syrian security officials started these operations about two weeks ago,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “At this stage, we need further feedback from Syrian authorities to confirm whether these detentions were directly P.K.K. related.”

Cooperation between Syria and Turkey has improved as Turkey’s relations with Israel have deteriorated since the end of May, when nine Turkish citizens were killed during an Israeli raid on an aid flotilla trying to reach Gaza.

For more than 30 years, the government in Damascus has been accused of allowing P.K.K. rebels to stage attacks into Turkey from Syrian soil. Tensions began easing only after the Syrian authorities expelled the P.K.K. leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1998.

The Syrian operation took place as military officials said that Turkey had killed 12 P.K.K. rebels in eastern Turkey. Two Turkish soldiers and three civilian guards were also killed in the clashes near Siirt, in southeastern Turkey.

P.K.K. violence has been escalating in Turkey, a development that the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims is a reaction to new efforts to expand political and cultural rights for the 12 million Kurds in Turkey.

The government’s initiatives have fallen short of Kurdish demands, which include education in the Kurdish language, constitutional recognition of Kurdish identity and amnesty for P.K.K. rebels.

quote:

What 32,000 plus Kurds did NOT die for

BURAK BEKDİL


This time the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is exposed to the risk of extinction! Not at gunpoint, though, nor by bombs. If the PKK men do regularly read the Turkish newspapers they may die en masse out of stroke-causing laughter. Unfortunately, the PKK leadership may have already banned newspaper-reading to ward off that existential threat.

These days, proposals centered on the theme “how best and fastest to finish off the PKK” abound. Most retired generals showing up on TV debates claim they would do the job in a few months if given the authority. The PKK is lucky they are retired officers, not active-duty ones.

Meanwhile, we have happily learned that batches of Turkish-made drones will soon be operational and that they will inflict irreparable damage on the PKK. Personally, I would view it as a grand success if these unmanned aerial vehicles do not crash into mountains or into their own ground control units, get lost during flight or send wrong imagery so that our fighter jets bomb Diyarbakır.

Now Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül seems to have pinned his hopes on the delivery of two U.S.-made Super Cobra attack helicopters. We tried things with six of them in the past. I know eight means bigger firepower than six. Mathematically speaking, we shall have chances that are better by a quarter over before – and that’s when the helicopter gunships are delivered (probably in 2011) and become operational.

Not all let’s-finish-off-the-PKK proposals concern weaponry and warfare. The ruling Justice and Development Party’s, or AKP, mayor for Rize argued that all Turks should take one Kurdish bride as a second wife, a campaign which, according to Halil Bakırcı, would replace Turkish-Kurdish hostility by Turkish-Kurdish kinship.

Why second wives, one may wonder. Mayor Bakırcı explained that second wives are a part of “our (Islamic) culture.” I am still curious why Mr. Bakırcı did not aim at quicker results and propose three Kurdish wives for each Turkish man since Islam allows up to four wives. The only trouble is is there may not be enough Kurdish brides if all Turkish men decided to practice the mayor’s idea to finish off the PKK without firing a single bullet.

Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek thinks that the heart of the matter is the failed extradition of PKK members. He accuses EU states for deliberately blocking extraditions or even releasing PKK suspects on purpose. Mr. Çiçek is still mute on a disturbing question though: Why does Turkey wish to join a bloc which systematically supports the PKK?

The opposition is in no better shape. The Republican People’s Party, or CHP, is silent apart from some useless rhetoric in the quest for an inch more of popularity. The Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, is still toying with incredible ideas such as hanging Abdullah Öcalan and declaring emergency rule in the southeast.

But which instruments has Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government resorted to in order to defeat the PKK? A few years ago Mr. Erdoğan thought he could win over by using his miraculous Muslim solidarity card. Do good Muslims kill other Muslims? No! Just like “Muslims do not resort to terrorism” or “Muslims don’t commit genocide.” It did not work.

But frankly he has taken a lot of important steps to grant broader cultural and political rights to Kurds. When the prime minister speaks in a heart-broken tone reminding of his reforms – including Kurdish broadcasting – which have remained unrequited, he has a point. Record levels of government investment in the southeast, healthcare, roads, buildings, houses…

Yes, they are a reality. And so are the removal of legal barriers on Kurdish language including, on a de facto basis, political propaganda and even inmates speaking to their relatives. All of that is not Mr. Erdoğan’s propaganda, but reality. Just like better prison conditions for Mr Ocalan.

Mr. Erdoğan has also established a trilateral mechanism with the United States and Iraq, transformed Turkey’s often hostile relations with the Iraqi Kurds into a friendly ethos and, as part of the trilateral mechanism, extensively used intelligence-sharing with the U.S. military.

Why, then, are we where we are now? Why was Turkey a safer place without all those successful Kurdish reforms? For an answer, next week I shall quote extensively from this column a few years earlier.

But for the moment we all should try to understand what the ugly statistical side of the war could mean. Since 1984, a total of over 30,000 PKK men and women, 6,657 security forces and 5,687 civilians have been killed in the PKK’s war on Turkey. Taking into account Turkey’s demography, we can safely assume that at least a quarter of the dead soldiers and policemen and civilians could also be Kurdish.

Dear very important gentlemen; sorry to remind you, but 32,789 Kurds have not willingly died in what they saw as a holy war only to make sure their relatives can comfortably sit at home and enjoy state television broadcasting in Kurdish, go watch a Kurdish play at a nearby theater, send their children to Kurdish-language courses, ensure that Kurdish inmates can communicate with their beloved ones in Kurdish or so that Kurdish towns can sport their long-forgotten Kurdish names on signposts.

quote:

Op vrijdag 2 juli 2010 22:21 schreef Blocko het volgende:
Kan je ook beargumenteren waarom jij van mening bent dat de Koerden een eigen staat zouden moeten krijgen?

quote:

En, wat is je mening over het verlangen van sommige uit Friesland naar een eigen staat?

quote:

En last but not least, waarom doe je zoveel moeite om jou standpunt met betrekking tot deze kwestie op deze manier uit te dragen, speelt je achtergrond als Griek (zie nick) daar een rol in? Raakt die woede of afgunst jegens de Turkse staat dan wel de Turkse burgers in de huidige tijd kant noch wal?

quote:

Bij een aanval van Koerdische rebellen op een Turkse militaire controlepost in de buurt van de grens met Irak zijn drie soldaten en negen opstandelingen om het leven gekomen. Dat heeft het Turkse persbureau Anatolia gemeld.

De gevechten braken maandag uit toen rebellen het vuur openden op de controlepost in de provincie Hakkari. Het Turkse leger is nog op zoek naar opstandelingen die er na de strijd vandoor gingen.

quote:

Turkey's Forgotten War

By Amir Taheri

While news of the war in Afghanistan swims in the main media channels little attention is paid to a forgotten war that has claimed more victims during the past three weeks. This forgotten war is Turkey's 20-year long campaign to subdue its Kurdish rebels who have found a safe haven in neighboring Iraq.

Over the past three weeks Turkish air force has carried out a series of bombing raids against alleged Kurdish rebel positions while gunfights have continued between he ground forces f the two sides. According to news agencies at least 100 fighters, including 30 Turkish soldiers, have been killed, many more than the casualties reported from the Afghan war for the same period.

This forgotten war needs to be remembered for a number of reasons.

First, there is that little ignored fact which is Iraq's national sovereignty. The Turks formed the habit of treating Iraq as a war zone in 1991 when Saddam Hussein gave them the green light to enter northern Iraq to kill the Kurds. In exchange, Ankara allowed smuggling rings linked to Saddam's family to operate through Turkish territory. Such behavior, illegal then, is now unacceptable as well. Today, Iraq has a government that represents is people and thus as a state enjoys the legitimacy that the Takriti set up lacked Bombing a member of he United Nations even in the name of fighting rebels is a step to far by any standards.

Next, there is the fact that the present Turkish government, formed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) built part of its initial good reputation on its condemnation of Ankara's raids against Kurds in Iraq. When in opposition, AKP leader Recep Tayyib Erdogan, now prime minister said repeatedly that there was no military solution to Turkey's long standing 'Kurdish problem.'

In a conversation we had with Erdogan in Davos in 2001 he went out of his way to advertise his party's 'creative solution' for the problem even if that included ' thinking the unthinkable.'

To its credit, the AKP government did initiate measures that helped modify Turkish attitudes towards the Kurds. Some Kurdish political prisoners were released and the strict ban on Kurdish language and culture was eased. These measures were in part a result of pressure from the European Union. However, AKP had its own reason for trying to mollify the Kurds. In its second general election victory, AKP collected almost 43 per cent of the votes. A quarter of those votes came from Kurds who thought they were saying thank you the measures taken by AKP. Some Turkish analysts claim that without Kurdish votes the AKP would not have won a straight majority.

Ever since Kemalism emerged as the core ideology of the Turkish republic, the Kurdish minority, believed to be between 17 and 20 per cent of the total population, were either ignored or marginalized in the name of pan-Turkism a creed that belonged to the same family as Italian fascism, German Nazism and Argentine peronism. Erdogan and many other AKP leaders spent years fighting that creed.

It was, therefore, not unexpected that they should reject the pan-Turkist myth that here was no such hinges a Kurdish identity and that the Kurds were simply 'mountain Turks'. While pan-Turkists emphasized the supposed ' blood ' link as the cornerstone of nationhood in modern Turkey, the AKP put the emphasis on Islam, the common religious faith of 99 per cent of the population.

In the past few years, however, the AKP has gradually moved away from some of its original positions by falling for what is now known as neo-Ottomanism, the ideological mirror-image of pan-Turkism.

Neo-Ottomanism is designed to unite pan-Turkists and Islamists in a common quest to revive the supposedly glorious days of the Ottoman Empire in which Turkish nationalism and Islam were the ingredients of the ideological cocktail.

Neo-Ottomanism is based on a number of myths. Chief among these is the claim that the Ottoman Empire was a modern construct, some say even the first experiment in globalization, if only because of its diversity.

What is not said is that the Ottoman Empire treated its diverse peoples as subjects not as equal partners in a common enterprise. This is why neo-Ottomanism cannot accept the Kurdish minority as a distinct entity within a democratic pluralist system.

The neo-Ottoman approach to the Kurdish problem is further complicated by the identification of the Kurdish minority with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Marxist outfit with a discourse that belongs to another age.

Like it or not, there is no doubt that the PKK represents a chunk of Kurdish opinion in Turkey and must be brought into the broader picture of Turkish democracy. Most Turkish citizens, including perhaps a majority of ethnic Kurds, do not like the PKK's ideology or political methods. However, the Turkish political landscape consists of a handful of minority parties that represent a rich spectrum. In that spectrum even the PKK could find a place, provided it abandoned he goal of overthrowing the Turkish republic through armed struggle.

Almost 10 years ago, Erdogan, the most imaginative of Turkish leaders in a generation, spoke of a 'creative solution' to the Kurdish problem. That ' creative solution' should include efforts to wean the PKK away from violence and terror. The first step in that direction is the establishment of a dialogue, perhaps with the help of the Kurdistan government in Iraq which has already informed Ankara of its readiness to mediate.

Within the past two years Turkey has started reshaping its foreign policy in the hope of finding a greater role in its natural geopolitical habitat which includes the Middle East.

However, Ankara would not be able to play a leadership in the region while it continues bombing Iraqi territory. Nor would Ankara's profession of anger at the way Israel treats the Gaza population sound sincere when Turkey's ethnic Kurds continue to be treated with less consideration that a modern democracy should offer its citizens. It is, perhaps, time for Erdogan Pasha to start thinking the unthinkable.