Between Iraq and a Hard Place: The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey

It all started with a treaty. The end of World War I signaled a great shift in the balance of power in the Middle East, as European powers laid claim to a region that had been under Ottoman rule for five centuries. Under the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920, the Empire would be carved up amongst the victorious Allies, and ethnic minorities living within its territories, including the Kurds and Armenians, would be granted independence. However, any hopes of self-determination were soon dashed with the Turkish War of Independence and the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which declared Turkey sovereign over much of the territory inhabited by Kurds. Since then, the re

lationship between Turkey and the Kurds has been troubled at best, marked by violence and bloodshed, and a decades long civil war which has claimed an estimated 35,000 lives. Today, the conflict has reached a new breaking point. With recent cross border operations by the Turkish military against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, the conflict now threatens to destabilize one of the fragile country’s only working regions.

The Kurds, whose population numbers about 30 million, are predominantly concentrated in four countries: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Though they share this land, the Kurds are culturally, linguistically and ethnically distinct from their Turkish and Arab neighbors. Over the years, these differences have been minimized or outright dismissed as a matter of official state policy in many of the countries where Kurds live. Kurdish language publications are banned in Syria and severely limited in Iran and Turkey. Kurdish media outlets are allocated 45 minutes per day to broadcast in Turkey, although their programming is highly censored and cannot include educational programs since the Kurdish alphabet is unrecognized by the Turkish government and its use is punishable by law. Iraq is the only country without restrictions on Kurdish language in public schools and publications, though it should be noted that this is a very recent development owing to the high level of autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan championed by Iraq’s Kurdish president Jalal Talibani, who helped to make Kurdish one of Iraq’s official state languages alongside Arabic.

Although the suppression of Kurdish minorities has generated simmering tensions in several countries, the epicenter of the conflict has always been in Turkey. The cultural exclusion of the Kurdish people was part and parcel of the project of building a modern Turkish nation-state. The founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk chose to define Turkish identity in geographic terms, claiming that the Turkish people of Anatolia and Thrace, forming the Turkish Republic, constitute the Turkish nation. This definition reflected Atatürk’s desire to avoid internal divisions among ethnic, religious, racial, sectarian or regional lines, and rejected any notion of a pluralist or multi-cultural society. The first rebellion to challenge Atatürk’s vision broke out in 1925 amongst the Kurdish population in southeastern Turkey. Though it was largely couched in religious language, this rebellion, lead by Sheikh Said, rejected Turkish rule and sought to establish Kurdish independence in the region. Atatürk responded with disproportionate force, swiftly crushing the movement in a matter of weeks. Sheikh Said was hung publicly as an example to other groups, and an important precedent was established- the newly formed Turkish government would not tolerate separatist claims on its territory and would not shy away from using force to achieve this end. Several other Kurdish uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s were put down with violent force, and martial law was declared in Southeastern Turkey following a large-scale rebellion in Dersim in 1937.

After decades of relative calm, the Turkish-Kurdish conflict entered a new, bloody era in the 1980s with the launch of an armed campaign of resistance by the PKK. Founded in 1974 by Abdullah Öcalan, and led by him until his capture in 1999, the PKK, or, Kurdish Workers’ Party, seeks to create an independent Kurdish state. Although initially involved in political and organizational activities, it adopted violent means beginning in 1984, carrying out a series of attacks on military and civilian targets, including political assassinations, suicide bombings and kidnappings. Though these attacks were relatively sporadic, they aroused a great deal of anger amongst the Turkish population and drew the military in to a long lasting regional war. The ensuing clashes, which continue to this day, have claimed more than 30,000 lives and have displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds.

In its battle against the PKK, (which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union), the Turkish military has staged several cross-border operations into Northern Iraq, in full defiance of international law. In a succession of code-named operations in the 1990s, including Steel (1995), Hammer (1997) and Dawn (1997), up to 50,000 Turkish soldiers took part in efforts to eradicate PKK rebels based in Northern Iraq. In October 2007 the Turkish Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of cross-border operations, arguing that the U.S. and Iraq had done very little to combat the activities of the PKK. A few months later Turkish warplanes began striking targets in Northern Iraq. In February 2008, the military also launched a week long ground incursion known as Operation Sun. Since then Turkish warplanes and artilleries have continued the shelling barrage, causing numerous civilian casualties and destabilizing the only region in Iraq that could plausibly be referred to as “stable.”

Roundly condemned by international organizations and governments worldwide, the recent cross-border operations in Iraq were carried out with the tacit and material support of the U.S. military, which provided intelligence to aid Turkey’s aerial bombardment (1). Questioned about the de-stabilizing effects of such operations, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that the U.S. needs to balance Turkey’s right to defend itself with the principle of Iraqi sovereignty, adding that Turkey has been a long-standing ally, and has played a “prominent role” in U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo (2).

It is surprising that the U.S. would allow such an operation to take place, when it has routinely criticized Iran for allegedly training and sending fighters into Iraq. However, Turkey holds a unique position in the region. As the only Muslim member state of NATO, it has participated in many joint military missions in Europe and the Middle East. Its location makes it strategically invaluable in the “War on Terror.” Yet Turkey has not always cooperated with the U.S. in its operations in Iraq. During the build up to the war in 2003, as large numbers of demonstrators flooded the streets to protest the looming invasion, the Turkish government, swayed by public pressure, refused to allow U.S. forces to use its territory to cross into Iraq.

Five years later, as the war continues to rage on, the Turks are engaging in a dangerous game in Northern Iraq. Their actions only serve to undermine stability in the most self-sufficient and hopeful region in the country. The militarization of the Kurdish conflict has not produced any positive results over the last 30 years. The decades long policies of cultural exclusion and marginalization of the Kurds in Turkey must be put to an end. As long as Kurds continue to be treated as second-class citizens, the violence will continue.

And if the rhetoric of stability is to be seen as anything more than a convenient strategic device to fan the flames against Iran, the U.S. should also press Turkey to

use its influence in the region to promote the formation of a prosperous and stable Iraqi nation-state. This means engaging Iraqi Kurdistan with diplomacy rather than artillery. With waning public support for the war amongst Americans, the burden of Iraqi development will ultimately be thrust upon its neighbors. The Turkish government must recognize this and work to cooperate with Iraq in order to salvage the wreckage of a war that should have never been started in the first place.

Osman Balkan reads, writes, thinks and eats in New York City.

(1) “Turkish troops pull out of Iraq," BBC News Online, February 29 2008