By Joris Leverink
ISTANBUL, Turkey, Dec 16 2015 (IPS)

While the war in Syria continues to draw in more outside forces, the work towards finding a political solution to this five-year old conflict carries on. In the past week, no less than three separate conferences were organized by different clusters of opposition groups. Conferences were held in three places: Damascus, Dêrîk – a city in the Kurdish-controlled northern part of Syria – and Riyadh, the Saudi capital, respectively.

With the Damascus conference widely regarded as a sham, organized with the permission and under the firm control of the Assad regime, and the conference in Dêrîk being all-but ignored by the international media, the eyes of the world were fixed on the proceedings in Riyadh.

The conference in the Saudi capital was sponsored by a number of international allies to the various warring factions inside Syria. The intended outcome was to unite the Syrian opposition so that it could present a common front in upcoming negotiations with the regime, as determined by the Vienna talks held in November.

Remarkably, little attention was paid to the conference in Dêrîk – called the “Democratic Syria Congress” – organized by Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies. This conference brought together more than a hundred delegates representing religious and ethnic groups from all over Syria, with an important role reserved for women and youth organizations. It was the first peace conference of its kind organized in opposition-controlled territory inside Syria – a fact that goes a long way in pointing out the significance of this particular event. Contrary to the one in Riyadh, this was a conference by Syrians, and for Syrians, not controlled by the agendas of powerful international allies nor obstructed by the dogmatic views of some of its participants.

The Riyadh conference was attended by political bodies such as the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the National Co-ordination Committee for Democratic Change, as well as rebel factions like Jaysh al-Islam, the Southern Front and Ahrar al-Sham, a salafist group fighting in alliance with the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front.

Tellingly, the New York Times reported that in the final statement of the Riyadh conference the word “democracy” was left out because of objections by Islamist delegates, and replaced with “democratic mechanism” instead.

In contrast, the final resolution presented at the Democratic Syria Congress in Dêrîk underlined the delegates’ commitment to democracy, social pluralism, and national unity. It confirmed the participants’ determination “to form a democratic constitution to enable solutions to the Syrian crisis through democratic, peaceful discussion, dialogue and talks; … to hold free and democratic elections required by the current process in Syria; [and] to secure the faith, culture and identities of all Syrian people.”

The Dêrîk conference also saw the establishment of the Democratic Syrian Assembly, which will serve as the political representation of the newly formed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated coalition of rebel factions, including Arab, Syriac, Turkmen and Yezidi forces. In recent months, the SDF has proved to be ISIS’ most formidable enemy, and the international coalition’s most reliable ally in the fight against the terrorist organization.

It might come as a surprise, then, that neither the SDF nor any other Kurdish organizations were invited to the Riyadh conference. As a faction that controls an area many times the size of that under control of the National Coalition – or any other rebel group for that matter – and which has been able to claim a string of victories against ISIS, it naturally ought to play a role in any post-Assad, post-ISIS future plan for Syria.

The Kurds’ absence in Riyadh has everything to do with Turkey’s position in the Syrian conflict. From the Turkish perspective, the Kurds in Syria pose a bigger threat to its national security than ISIS.

Turkey fears that the establishment of the autonomous regions, or “cantons,” in the Kurdish parts of northern Syria might inspire its domestic Kurdish population to pursue a similar goal. The fact that the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the most powerful political body in the region, is a sister organization to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a 35-year insurgency against the Turkish state, only adds insult to injury.

Commenting on the Riyadh conference, PYD co-chair Saleh Moslem stated that “it doesn’t pay regard to the current political and military reality in Syria and the region, as the most active and dynamic actors and representatives of the actual Syrian opposition haven’t been invited. In the circumstances, such meetings will have no seriousness.”

Before it even started, the precarious alliance formed in Riyadh was already on the verge of collapse. Ahrar al-Sham threatened to pull out of the talks, condemning the presence of “pro-Assad forces” and deeming the final statement “not Islamic enough.”

The goal to bring all the different opposition factions to the table, to explore common ground and to form a united front against the Assad regime is a noble one. Unfortunately it is doomed to fail when the alliance neglects to reflect the reality on the ground as well as the will of the Syrian people.

When it is merely the outcome of external parties pushing their agendas for personal benefits – whether it is to strengthen the position of local allies on the ground, to obstruct the efforts of the Kurdish autonomous administration or to explore options for negotiations with Assad in order to be able to focus all energy on destroying ISIS – any alliance will be too weak to withstand the test of time, let alone the test of war.

In this regard, despite the lack of international attention, the conference in Dêrîk might actually supersede the one in Riyadh in terms of importance. Despite the increasing involvement of outside forces, diplomatically, politically and, most important, militarily, any real solution to the crisis in Syria must be initiated by the Syrian people, not any outside power.

The Democratic Syria Congress in Dêrîk has shown that there is not only a will to work towards peace, but that there is also an infrastructure in place, a platform, where the first, cautious steps towards a peaceful future and an “alternative democratic system aiming at change” have been made.

(End)

Excerpt:

Media (r) with her assistant Daryan (l) in a Kurdish region in the Qandil mountains. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Karlos Zurutuza
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq, Jul 26 2013 (IPS)

“I witnessed a Turkish tank made in Germany destroying a Kurdish village. Civilians, children included, were wounded, and many were taking shelter inside a besieged church,” said Media, the German nurse who has become legendary in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq and is known here only by this name.

She left both her name and her native Hamburg behind in 1992 when she witnessed the fighting in the Kurdish region of Midyat, 800 km southeast of Ankara, Turkey’s capital.

She has not been back to Europe since and instead has committed herself to providing medical care for the Kurdish people. And here, there is hardly a Kurd who has not heard of her.

Media – which is a popular name among local Kurds – runs a small hospital in the Qandil mountains, a group of steep hills and valleys clustered between the borders of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

Down the valley, which is often isolated in winter due to heavy snowfall, there are several medical centres and hospitals run by the Kurdish administration from Iraq. But the Kurds in Qandil cannot afford the cost of this highly-privatised health care or cope with the rampant corruption at these places.

So they come to Media’s medical centre as she is able to provide free health care thanks to the private contributions from European, Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan donors.

“We receive no support at an institutional level whatsoever, but we will be able to keep operating as long as the Turks don’t bomb us again,” Media told IPS from her small consulting room.

She had a lucky escape in 2008 when Turkish aircraft bombed a hospital, in the small town Lewzha, where she was training paramedic personnel.

But here, at her medical centre, the 49-year-old German has an average of 30 medical consultations a day, but numbers diminish during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims.

The strategic position and the rugged terrain have turned this region into the main stronghold of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an insurgent movement fighting the Turkish government for rights and constitutional recognition for Kurds.

Between 30 and 40 million Kurds are divided across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. About half live on Turkish soil, where a three-decade-long war has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and led to the destruction of more than 4,000 Kurdish villages.

A peace process is under way between the PKK and the Ankara government. Talks began after Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, declared a unilateral ceasefire in March – it is the ninth one since 1993. Ocalan also ordered the withdrawal of his fighters to their Qandil bases.

Kurds, Media said, are fighting for their rights “in the worst possible scenario, but without losing their hope.” She has attended to countless guerrillas, as well as villagers caught in the crossfire.

Drawings and pictures on the wall at the medical centre are dramatic testimony to her work – and the need for it.

These include drawings of Aisha Ali, a farmer who was bombed while she was waving a white sheet to convey they were unarmed; and of 12-year-old Beijal, who lost her life to a land mine; and of Sozan, who lost her leg the day the Turkish army bombed the former hospital in Lewzha.

“This is a cruel war to which the international community has closed its eyes while succulent weapons contracts were signed with Turkey,” said Media. She confessed she does not feel “too optimistic” about the ongoing peace process between Turks and Kurds.

“There’s a part that always makes a move towards dialogue while the other is determined to boycott any attempt to achieve the long-awaited peace.”

There has been no shelling since the announcement of the ceasefire in March, and Media said that “only drones fly overhead following the withdrawal of Kurdish guerrillas arriving from Turkey.”

A 37-year-old dentist, known only as Daryan, has assisted Media for the past five years. As a child, Daryan fled the Turkish town of Mardin, which lies some 300 km southeast of Ankara.

It was Media who introduced Daryan to medicine and she later qualified also as a dentist in the Iraqi Kurdistan region thanks to the support from several organisations.

The Kurdish volunteer underlines the key role their small hospital plays in the region. “There are six employees in the hospital raised by the Iraqi Kurdish government in Lewzha, but it’s always closed. So local villagers keep coming up here for medical treatment,” Daryan told IPS.

Many patients come from as far as Rania, 50 km down the valley, or even Sulaymaniyah, 260 km northeast of Baghdad, because of the “several irregularities in the Iraqi Kurdish health system.”

“Corruption is rife in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and many health personnel only seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the sick.”

But Media’s work over the last two decades has gone beyond mere medical care.

“Moves like hers help us feel the warmth and solidarity from the outside that we need for keeping our spirits high,” PKK fighter and former teacher at an Iranian high school, Hiwa Zagros, told IPS. “We feel reassured and determined to follow the path towards the recognition of our rights.”

In a display of muscle-flexing, Turkish tanks this week carried out military exercises on the Syrian border, just a few kilometres away from towns that Syrian Kurds had seized from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

The seizure of the Kurdish towns sent alarm bells ringing in the Turkish capital. “It took a lot of people by surprise in Ankara. It is one of the toughest and serious issues in the last period of Turkish history,” said Metehan Demir, a military expert and columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet.

“The capture of Kurdish towns in Syria is perceived by Kurdish groups in Turkey as the signal for (a) future autonomous Kurdish region on Turkey’s border, which is seen as the start of (a) wider Kurdish state, including Iran, Iraq and Turkey,” Demir added.

Turkey has a restive Kurdish minority, accounting for around 20 percent of its population of 73.6 million. Since 1984, Ankara has been fighting the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is fighting for greater Kurdish rights. Many of its fighters are drawn from Syria’s Kurdish minority. Adding to Ankara’s angst, the PKK flag was raised in one of the seized Syrian towns.

“We will not allow the formation of a terrorist structure near our border,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told a Turkish television channel on Jul. 29. “We reserve every right . . . No matter if it is Al-Qaeda or the PKK. We would consider it a matter of national security and take every measure.”

The tough words are seen as a government attempt to assuage anger, bordering on panic in sections of the country’s often-nationalist media.

“This is because Ankara had not prepared the Turkish public for this event. I cannot believe Ankara was surprised,” said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University. “Syrian Kurds are going to look after their own self-determination. They will seek to achieve at least autonomy. We had this coming for a long, long time.”

Since the seizure of the Syrian towns, Turkish armed forces with armour have been sent to Turkey’s border with the Syrian Kurdish region.

“Turkey will see and understand whether this territory is a matter of right of the Kurds, or a base of the PKK,” warned Hürriyet’s Demir. “Depending on this situation, Turkey might actually carry out an operation.”

Any military action by Turkey, Ozel believes, would be counterproductive. “I think that would be close to a suicidal move as I can imagine,” he said. “Because I am not quite sure that the Turkish military is ready to take on yet another enemy . . . Turkey would be fighting a war on two, or even three fronts, if the Iraqi Kurds were involved.”

For now, Ankara appears to be looking to diplomacy rather than force. The semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan regional government shares a border with Turkey and the Syrian Kurdish region. In the past few years, Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party has developed close ties with the region and with Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani.

“There is now a very close dialogue between Ankara and Barzani,” said Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based EDAM research institute. “However, in Syria we see two rival Kurdish entities; one dominated by the Kurdish National Council, but the other one is an offshoot of the PKK. There, Barzani does not really have leverage.”

Questions over Barzani’s influence over developments in Syria are increasingly being raised in Ankara. Before Syrian Kurds’ gains in northern Syria, Turkish media broadcast pictures of hundreds of Syrian Kurdish fighters being escorted by Barzani’s forces back into Syria.

Adding to Ankara’s concern is that Barzani brokered a deal between rival Syrian Kurdish factions, including the National Democratic Party, which is linked to the PKK. It remains a point of controversy whether Ankara was aware of this deal, although a regional diplomatic source claims Turkish officials knew about the pact.

On Jul. 26, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned the Iraqi Kurdish leadership that “we are no longer responsible” for what might happen.

But tensions were markedly reduced after the Turkish foreign minister met with Barzani on Aug. 1 in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil. A joint statement was issued promising to work together on Syria. Ankara’s anger could be tempered by the increasing trade relationship with the Iraqi Kurds. Iraq is now Turkey’s second largest trading partner, of which the lion’s share of commerce is taken by Iraqi Kurds.

Analyst Ulgen said that if Ankara takes steps to resolve its own Kurdish conflict, it will have no reason to worry about Kurds setting up a state across the Turkish border. But he warns that events in Syria threaten to drive up the price for Ankara of any domestic deal.

“It will make it more difficult for Turkey to negotiate with its own Kurds, to the extent (that) each type of development across the border has tended (to make) the Turkish Kurds to raise their expectations as to what they can accomplish,” Ulgen said.

*Editor’s note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The village of Hasankeyf lies above the Tigris River, whose flow has carved out rock formations over the course of millenia. Credit: Jay Cassano/IPS

By Jay Cassano
HASANKEYF, Turkey, Jun 10 2012 (IPS)

Hasankeyf, a small village in southeastern Turkey, has been under threat for 15 years. Home to approximately 3,000 people, the site is one of the oldest continuously inhabited human settlements, with an archaeological record going back at least 9,500 years.

Now, the Ilisu Dam – part of a massive hydroelectric project undertaken by the State Hydraulic Works – will flood Hasankeyf and the surrounding region, effectively washing away millennia of history.

In addition to destroying a historical site, which includes vestiges of every empire that ever inhabited Mesopotamia, the dam will also cause immense ecological harm to the Tigris River valley.

Derya Engin, who staffs the Hasankeyf office of the Nature Society, a Turkish NGO, told IPS that numerous endangered species will lose their habitat if the dam is built.

“The Tigris is the only untouched river ecosystem in Turkey and it is vital that it remain that way,” she warned. “It is well-known that dams dramatically change the climate of entire regions. This dam will destroy the habitats of fish, birds, and plant life, some of which are unique to the Tigris valley.”

Construction of the dam began in earnest in 2008, but plans for its implementation date back even further.

The dam was originally conceived in the 1950s as part of a plan, called the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), intended to develop the infrastructure of largely rural and Kurdish southeastern Turkey. Since 1997, several European finance consortia have attempted to fund the project, only to withdraw support before anything concrete materialised.

The European banks and companies pulled out in large part due to massive solidarity campaigns against the dam in their respective home countries. In 2009, the German, Austrian and Swiss governments revoked the export credit guarantees to the final consortium because the Turkish government failed to meet the ecological, social, and cultural heritage standards set by the World Bank.

For a while, activists in Turkey and throughout Europe believed they had won the fight and that construction of the dam would stop. To their surprise, construction is continuing to this day.

It was later revealed that the Turkish government had quietly secured funding from two of the country’s largest private banks, Akbank and Garanti, making the project still viable.

Water Wars

The Turkish government’s reasons for pressing ahead with the controversial project are not what one might expect. Projections place the amount of hydroelectric power the dam will produce at less than 2 percent of Turkey’s total energy needs. Not an entirely insignificant amount but certainly, according to various sources, not enough to justify the destruction of an entire ecosystem, invaluable cultural heritage, and the livelihoods of several thousand people.

The Turkish government has openly proclaimed that the main function of the dam system is to bolster the country’s counter-insurgency strategy against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which mobilises from the mountainous Iraqi-Turkish border. Together, the strategically placed dams created by GAP will form a massive wall of water close to Turkey’s border with Iraq.

Having flown through the Hasankeyf for millenia, the Tigris has created a vast canyon topography that is not only visually spectacular but also provides necessary cover for militants. In addition to raising the water level of the Tigris, flooding from Ilisu Dam will spill over into nearby canyons that are currently dry.

With canyons filled and massive lakes created where rivers once flowed, the terrain will become impassable by foot.

Furthermore, the effects of the dam will extend beyond Hasankeyf, well across national borders. By virtue of being upstream from Iraq and Syria on both the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, Turkey effectively controls the flow of water southward.

With the Euphrates already heavily dammed, the Syrian and Iraqi governments have raised serious concerns about dam projects on the Tigris. Twice the region has been on the verge of water wars, once in 1975 and again in 1990. Restricting water flow from the Tigris could prove to be a tipping point in the incendiary region.

Activists believe that, ultimately, the dam will turn water into a political tool both inside and outside Turkey’s borders. “We know that the dam is really about security,” Mehmet İpek, a young local activist, told IPS.

Down the road, Mehmet Ali, a shopkeeper selling tourist souvenirs, lamented the imminent loss of his home. “They are condemning a place like this, with no equal in the world, for a dam that will only operate for 50 years.”

An invaluable site

Today there is little recourse left to stop construction. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) could theoretically put a hold on the project. A case was brought before the court in 2006 but rejected on the grounds that the ECHR protects human rights, not cultural heritage, ignoring the approximately 35,000 people who will all be forced to give up their way of life if the dam is constructed.

A new case is being submitted to the ECHR after a Turkish regional court rejected it this week. Locals hope that it will work, but are not deceiving themselves. They have learned from experience how determined the state is to continue with the project.

Ömer Güzel, a shop owner and local activist in Hasankeyf, told IPS that at one point the villagers held protests every week. “It didn’t accomplish anything,” he said. “In the end the dam is still being built right now.”

The government has kept the construction site, 16 kilometres downstream from Hasankeyf, under heavy security. However, sources with access to the site, who spoke to IPS on the condition of anonymity, claim that the dam is already half completed.

There is still a chance that the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) might list the area as a World Heritage site, effectively guaranteeing its protection.

To qualify for World Heritage status, a site must meet one of 10 criteria for outstanding universal value in an area of cultural or natural significance. Hasankeyf, as the only site in the world that meets nine of the 10 criteria, is an exceptional candidate for inclusion.

Unfortunately, that fact alone is not enough to be listed. “In order to be included as a World Heritage site, the country in which the site is located must submit an application to UNESCO. The Turkish government has not done this,” Engin explained.

A UNESCO delegation previously visited Hasankeyf and, upon taking stock of the area, urged the Turkish government to apply. The implication was that if Turkey applied, Hasankeyf would be accepted.

“But the government does not want to protect this area, so why would they apply? The dam project is too important to the state,” Engin pointed out.

(END)