WEEKLY SELECTION: Kurds Use Ocalan Capture to Press Case

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 1999 (IPS) - The end of a standoff at the UN headquarters in Geneva Wednesday and the killings of three Kurdish protestors outside Israel’s embassy in Berlin summed up the promise and the peril Turkish Kurds face following the capture of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

On the one hand, analysts of the Kurdish situation claim, the sudden burst of anger by Kurds in Europe following Ocalan’s capture on Monday by Turkish agents in Kenya has brought the plight of Turkey’s 12 million Kurds to centre stage.

On the other, as shown by the killing of three Kurds by Israeli security guards in Berlin, the sudden rash of demonstrations and takeovers by Kurds “could make the Kurdish cause seem like a nuisance,” warned Asli Aydintasbas, an expert on Kurdish affairs for Turkey’s daily ‘Radikal’.

“I don’t think it creates sympathy,” Aydintasbas said of the new attention paid to the Europe-based protestors. “It could erode existing sympathy.”

Yet the Kurdish demonstrations – which included takeovers, mainly of Greek embassies, in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Armenia, Russia and Italy – have at least forced European leaders to focus on the arrest of Ocalan, leader of the leftist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, founder of the New York-based Kurdish Library and Kurdish Museum, argued that European governments “will make a big presentation of demanding a fair trial with international observers” now that Ocalan has been caught.

However, Saeedpour doubted their sincerity, noting that several European governments rejected Ocalan’s pleas for asylum in the four months between his departure from Syria and his capture in Kenya.

“There’s a limit as to what the Turks will accept from the Europeans,” Saeedpour argued. The heavily military-influenced Turkish government may back down from executing Ocalan, she said, but in most matters, including conducting a military trial under conditions of secrecy, “Turkey will do what Turkey wants”.

Nevertheless, the United Nations Wednesday declared in a statement that it “is ready to make known to the competent international authorities the Kurdish demonstrators’ positions, particularly that the legal procedures and fundamental principles of law should be fully respected with regard to Abdullah Ocalan”.

Those words were enough to end a standoff that began Tuesday when some 20 Kurds stormed into the UN headquarters at Geneva’s Palais des Nations. The protestors left peacefully by noon Wednesday after voicing their demands, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Over time, the Europe-wide display of Kurdish anger, which Saeedpour called “extremely organised”, could draw attention to the abuses the Kurds have faced in Turkey, where a government campaign to eliminate the PKK and its supporters has resulted in some 30,000 deaths over the past 14 years.

Ever since Ocalan began an insurgency in southeastern Turkey for Kurdish independence 14 years ago, the movement for Kurdish rights has been dominated by the Marxist PKK.

“Because of the armed nature of the conflict, there hasn’t been a chance for moderates on both sides to express their opinion,” Aydintasbas said. Now, ironically, Ocalan’s capture could “allow other options to blossom”, she added.

The PKK itself has been severely weakened ever since Ocalan, the undisputed leader of the heavily centralised PKK, was forced to leave his traditional safe haven, Syria, last October following the Ankara government’s threats against Damascus.

“The PKK is very much a one-man organisation,” argued Aydintasbas. “When Ocalan left Syria, it was broken.”

The ensuing four months, in which governments from Italy and Germany to the Netherlands denied Ocalan asylum, further embarrassed the party, she added.

Yet if the PKK had been weakened, that did not mean that Turkey could win the Kurdish conflict militarily, Saeedpour contended. “In the long run, Turkey is fighting a losing battle,” she said. “They’re not going to destroy the PKK; it’s like trying to rope the wind.”

The likeliest outlook, many of the analysts argue, is for continued war between an increasingly desperate Kurdish movement and a Turkish government strongly armed by the United States, among others.

Outside influence may also have been decisive in Ocalan’s capture as he was driven to Nairobi’s airport by a convoy of Greek embassy vehicles Monday night. Saeedpour argued that the ill-fated demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin showed that the Kurds increasingly believe that Ocalan’s capture was the responsibility of the United States “with the help of Israeli intelligence”.

U.S. officials have denied direct involvement in the capture, although Washington pressed its European allies for months not to allow Ocalan to have safe haven in their countries.

More importantly, argued Kani Xulam, director of the American Kurdish Information Network, “Turkey gets its jet fighters and helicopters from the United States and Europe. If it didn’t get those weapons, it would have made peace.”