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IRAQ: Turkey's Kurd Fears Prove Unfounded
By Nadire Mater
ISTANBUL, Apr 30 (IPS) - The Red Line that Turkey had drawn around Kurds
before the Iraq war is no longer very red, or even much of a line any more. 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 Mosoul and Kirkuk early
April. 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 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 told IPS.
Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish guerrilla leader, who is serving a life time
sentence in the maximum security prison on Imrali Island 30 miles to the south
of Istanbul, has sharply criticised 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 got 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 Wear 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 U.S. 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 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 the living
conditions in Turkey are different, says leading Kurdish lawyer Hasip Kaplan.
"Iraq and Turkey are different," he told IPS. "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," says 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. (END/2003)
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