AI
Thursday, October 09, 2014 6:06:06 PM
Turkey's tough choice: Take on ISIS or the PKK?
By Gönül Tol, Special to CNN
updated 12:11 PM EDT, Tue October 7, 2014
VIDEO: Will Turkey face ISIS on the ground?
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Gönül Tol: Turkey may be joining the anti-ISIS coalition to suppress Kurdish separatists
* The vote does not signal intervention against ISIS any time soon, she says
* Tol: The PKK has effectively become the West's best hope for on-the-ground troops
* The fight against ISIS has also empowered the PKK militarily, he writes
Editor's note: Gönül Tol is the founding director of The Middle East Institute's Center for Turkish Studies .. http://www.mei.edu/center-turkish-studies .. and an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Institute for Middle East Studies .. http://www.gwu.edu/~imes/. The views expressed in this commentary are entirely those of the author.
(CNN) -- Turkey is in a tough spot. It has ISIS militants threatening the Syrian border town of Kobani, inching ever closer to confronting Turkish security forces. In addition thousands of Syrian Kurds, fleeing ISIS attacks, have massed along its border, adding further to Ankara's troubles.
Amid mounting pressure to become more active in the U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS, the Turkish parliament last week overwhelmingly authorized its military to make incursions into Syria and Iraq; also to allow foreign troops to operate out of Turkish bases. The move has been greeted in Western capitals as a welcome sign that Turkey is finally fully on board with the anti-ISIS coalition.
Yet the Turkish parliament's actions herald neither a complete about-face in policy toward Syria nor immediate military action against ISIS. Indeed, Turkey's reasons for joining the war may be more to do with suppressing Kurdish separatists and removing the al-Assad regime than with destroying the jihadist group.
Toppling the leadership in Damascus and keeping in check the Syrian Kurds who are closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, have long been Ankara's priorities in Syria.
VIDEOS
Turkey authorizes strikes on ISIS
ISIS forces enter Kobani, sources say
Biden regrets saying allies helped ISIS
Cam catches ISIS shelling Syrian city
The wording of last week's parliamentary resolution -- which states that "the terrorist elements of the outlawed PKK still exist in northern Iraq" .. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/originals/2014/10/turkey-syria-iraq-caolition-ground-operation-against-isis.html#ixzz3FNBKmfZp -- suggests that Kurdish separatists still remain the Turkish government's top concern.
The vote does not signal intervention against ISIS any time soon .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkish-parliament-authorizes-military-action-in-syria-iraq/2014/10/02/cca5dba8-7d0c-4e70-88bb-c84abbdca6d2_story.html: despite thousands of Syrian Kurdish refugees and ISIS's fast advance towards Turkey's southern border, Ankara seems unwilling to act. Turkey's defense minister Ismet Yilmaz said .. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/turkey-syria-iraq-caolition-ground-operation-against-isis.html#ixzz3FN2bfzXH: "Don't expect an imminent step after the approval of the authorization request."
Rather, the Turkish government is likely to give its full cooperation to the campaign against ISIS so that it can secure agreement of a U.S.-backed no-fly zone in Syria: this, Ankara believes, would address both concerns.
Turkey thinks that Assad regime's ability to attack mainstream opposition forces from the air has strengthened ISIS, causing the Free Syrian Army to flee and allowing the Islamic militants to capture the vacant territory. Enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria would ground al-Assad's air force and boost rebels fighting to topple him: it could also establish a Turkish military presence, ridding northern Syria of Kurdish fighters linked to the PKK and smothering the autonomous Kurdish region. Turkey has become increasingly uneasy about the emergence of yet another Kurdish entity on its frontier after the PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish groups established autonomy in northern Syria.
The military and diplomatic boost that the PKK has received through its effective fight against ISIS has also worsened the situation for Ankara. In response to the growing ISIS threat, the PKK, the Peshmerga, and the People's Protection Unit (the PKK-linked Kurdish militia group fighting in Syria), have established a united Kurdish front, with the PKK militants coming to the aid of Peshmerga fighters and halting the jihadi group's advance into the autonomous region of northern Iraq. The People's Protection Unit was the main force battling ISIS, and it helped thousands of Yazidis escape from the western part of the region as ISIS attacked.
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"The PKK has effectively become the West's best hope for on-the-ground troops"
Gönül Tol
---
The PKK has effectively become the West's best hope for on-the-ground troops, winning the group positive reviews in Western media. Since the group started its assault against ISIS in northern Iraq, there has been a lot of talk in Western capitals about removing the PKK from the terror list.
The fight against ISIS has also empowered the PKK militarily: Turkey is concerned that that weapons sent to the Peshmerga might ultimately end up in the hands of the PKK at a time when Ankara is moving forward with a deal that would disarm its group. The Turkish government puts the blame for this on the West but Ankara's overtures towards its own Kurdish minority have been mostly strained by its own short-sighted Syria policy.
The ongoing conflict around Kobani has underscored the many challenges the Syrian war poses for the peace process Ankara launched in 2012 in an effort to end the 30-year old Kurdish insurgency. The intensified shelling in Kobani has angered Kurds on the Turkish side of the border, who have blamed the Turkish government for allowing ISIS to fester and not doing enough to stop its assault against Kurds.
Turkey's reluctance to get involved for fear of empowering Kurdish militants in Turkey is now contributing to the growing discord between Kurds and the government. Last week, after reports that Turkey closed the border gates .. http://tinyurl.com/on7hqh8 .. to impede the flight of Kurds from Kobani, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's imprisoned leader, warned that if ISIS carried out a "massacre" in Kobani then the peace process with the PKK could end.
If engaged by Ankara, the PKK-linked groups in Syria could be integrated into the moderate Syrian opposition and become an effective fighting force against the al-Assad regime. But the Turkish government's increasingly harsh rhetoric against the group signals that such a shift in Ankara's thinking is not in the works. Last week, Erdogan said .. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2014/1002/Why-Turkey-is-joining-fight-against-Islamic-State-without-enthusiasm-video .. "While the ISIS terror organization is causing turmoil in the Middle East, there has been ongoing PKK terror in my country for the last 32 years, and yet the world was never troubled by it. Why? Because this terror organization did not carry the name 'Islam.'"
If Turkey keeps seeing the PKK a bigger threat than ISIS activities in Syria, then the legislation passed last week is unlikely to lead to a deeper involvement of Turkey in the fight against the jihadist group.
READ: Who is doing what in the coalition battle against ISIS?
http://cnn.com/2014/10/06/world/meast/isis-coalition-nations/index.html
READ: Exclusive: From school teacher to ISIS member
http://cnn.com/2014/10/06/world/meast/isis-female-fighter/index.html
The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gönül Tol.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/opinion/turkey-isis-pkk/
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1980 Turkish coup d'état - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
===
The PKK: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?
.. some history, i don't know how balanced, accurate or biased this piece is, just that it is some history of an organization
and of a country, in an area highly relevant to conflict vs peace in our world today .. large excerpts from a much larger one ..
http://kurdistan.org/work/commentary/the-pkk-freedom-fighters-or-terrorists/
By Ismet G. Imset
Thursday, December 7, 1995
The Crisis
A burning war:
When in 1984 Turkey found itself faced with a series of armed attacks on military installations in the dominantly Kurdish-populated rural Southeast region, it immediately resolved on a traditional policy, to deal with these so- called “handful of bandits” in style, with weapons against weapons.
For Ankara officials and many Turks, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which launched the attacks, was nothing but “a remnant of the pre-1980 terrorism” which had spread throughout this strategically important country in the form of violent urban activities in the late 1970's, constituting an excuse for the US-backed September 12, 1980, military takeover.
Turkey’s enforced mono-ethnic identity was so well carved into millions of minds that no one even questioned the roots of the PKK, what this organization represented, whether its existence had legitimate social or political reasons, or whether the ethnic connotation in the name was anything further than a Marxist ploy to gain regional support.
Instead, both Turkish officials and western intelligence agencies preferred to treat the problem superficially, looking at it with the over-confident assumption that it was a “doomed terrorist group” from the very beginning and one which conspired to divide Turkey for regional foreign interests.
On the surface, every indication supported this view. The PKK’s manpower was then low, ammunition and armament was scarce and the organization, confronting Turkey’s enormous war machine, could clearly stay on its feet only with “outside” support — coming mainly from the regional countries attempting either to control their own Kurdish populations through promotion of crisis’ elsewhere or indeed aiming to cripple NATO- member Turkey as the Cold War dragged on.
Yet, despite repeated assurances from officials that this terrorist group had been “dealt with,” from only a 20-man urban based passive student movement in the late 1970s, the PKK had already grown into a 300 strong trained militant force in the early 1980s.
This expansion actually reflected what was in store for the future. Its number increased several fold over the following years and by 1994, Turkish military officials estimated that its active supporters and sympathizers in the Turkish Southeast alone numbered more than 400,000, added to over half a million Kurds supporting the organization throughout Europe. If Turkey’s current laws were fully applicable, this means that at least one million Kurdish origin citizens of the country are deemed by officials as “enemies” and could face capital punishment without question.
The PKK is known today to have extensive support among the Kurds of Turkey and Syria, and is gradually expanding into the Kurdish regions of neighboring Iran and Iraq as well.
The exact number of PKK combatants or fighters has been an issue of debate for many years. In 1991, the late president Turgut Ozal claimed there were 3,900 full-time guerrillas. In April 1993, however, the US State Department was to estimate the PKK had only 3,000 guerrillas and two to five thousand active supporters. In October 1993, The New York Times estimated that 10,000 PKK guerrillas were operating throughout Turkey and neighboring countries.
[...]
With the military takeover though, the conditions for a “just cause” to launch a war for freedom and democracy if nothing else, were stronger than ever and the very fact that a group of generals, using their force and weaponry had ousted an elected civilian regime and abolished the country’s constitution, spoke for itself in way of legitimacy for any form of resistance. The generals had taken over the country, closing down parliament, banning all political parties and placing their leaders, including the prime minister, under “protective custody.”
A summary of that period was recently published in a Turkish news magazine and is highly important in the context of the PKK’s own struggle and its reasons. It is, in reality, a full explanation of the immediate circumstances in which the organization launched its armed struggle and thus claimed that it was a legitimate one or a just war: Throughout the coup era in which the PKK launched its first organized operation in Turkish territory, a total of 650 thousand people were detained and most suspects were either beaten or tortured; over 500 people died while under detention as result of torture; 85,000 people were placed on trial mainly in relation to thought crimes or guilt by association; 1,683,000 people were officially listed in police files as suspects; 348 thousand Turks and Kurds were banned from traveling abroad; 15,509 people were fired from their jobs for political reasons; 114 thousand books were seized and burned; 937 films were banned; 2,729 writers, translators, journalists and actors were put on trials for expressing their opinions. One can hardly argue, as we enter the 21st century, that such a regime had any legitimacy other than to conform with the financial and political expectations of its foreign supporters.
It is true that urban terrorism between January 1979 to September 1980 had claimed the lives of 3,546 civilians and 164 security officers. Mass demonstrations had spread to the cities with “liberated zones” being established in urban and rural areas. In central Anatolia, fundamentalist Moslems, themselves arguing they were deprived of fundamental religious rights with the creation of the secular republic, were on the rampage. Hundreds had died in Sunni-Alawi sect clashes and thousands were placed in prison even before the coup. These justified the coup in the eyes of a Turkish majority as well as among Turkey’s western allies — despite the fact that Martial Law actually existed throughout Turkey as these developments took take place. Yet, the repressive nature of the overt military administration was so great that it soon started to bother all. Most of all the Kurds in Turkey.
The takeover in Turkey prompted the PKK’s limited number of supporters first to train with Palestinian fighters in the Middle East region and later to fight alongside them during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This cooperation then led to various regional movements opening their territories to the PKK, where it trained and prepared for warfare. It had also managed to spread among Turkey’s migrating Kurdish community abroad, specifically in Libya.
[...]
In contrast to the Turkish Security Directorate figures, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch/Helsinki reported that a total of 950 people had been killed in Kurdish-linked violence from 1984 to May 1988 and even before Ankara formally turned to the policy of “answering guns with guns,” the situation was desperate. In 1988, the same organization was warning in writing that “Indiscriminately, the Turkish army is terrorizing the local people on the grounds that they are supporting the terrorists… As a result of this, the Southeast region gives the image that it is completely besieged.”
The turning point:
After 1989, the PKK strengthened rapidly in the region facing almost no problems in finding new recruits, weapons or financial resources. It expanded among the people and established itself as a popular movement. In November 1989, following crucial local elections held in March, Turgut Ozal was elected as the eighth president of the Turkish Republic. His Motherland Party which came to power in 1984 was still in government but the local polls had reflected a decline in national support.
Ozal immediately appointed Parliament Yildirim Akbulut as prime minister with the aim of preventing the ANAP from falling apart and in belief that Akbulut would remain only as his mouthpiece. Akbulut’s first test, as with all Turkish prime ministers, was to deal with “terrorism.”
The turning point for the Kurdish issue was in March that year with a meeting of the National Security Council which ended with a government- backed decision to launch a major military and psychological crackdown on Kurdish separatists. “We have decided to answer guns with guns,” Akbulut announced after coming out of this seven hour meeting. He added that a series of measures would be taken both against the terrorists and their supporters.
According to these decisions, the Turkish press would be placed under a heavy censorship, citizens living in the region could be banished by local officials, anyone who supported the separatists or gave them aid would be sentenced to ten years imprisonment and the state would in no way tolerate PKK sympathizers.
The ANAP government, which was losing the support of the electorate, had accepted the military package and was looking for the support of the country’s armed forces. And, the impact of the decisions were seen almost immediately in the region with even more indiscriminate security operations leading to immense human rights violations everywhere.
The PKK, which was already strengthening, had then also caught the opportunity to establish local authority in various areas, filling the gap of state authority. Secret Kurdish schools started functioning in the darkness of the night. The number of court cases heard at Turkish civil courts declined rapidly as so-called PKK peoples’ tribunals came to being. In several provinces the PKK even set up its local police and intelligence units.
What was disastrous for Ankara in 1990, however, was a major change in the PKK’s own policy towards village guards. Until then, the organization was blamed to have terrorized the region with raids on villages and civilians. But in a 1990 party congress it decided to cease all such activities which could lead to civilian casualties and to concentrate more on military targets and political struggle. It also declared a general amnesty for all village guards, valid for a whole year, for anyone who turned in their guns and refused to collaborate with the state.
This move, unfortunately, did nothing to curb violence but changed its source. It literally forces Turkish troops to target village guards and families attempting to drop out of the system, to carry out mass arrests, deportations and a wave of arson attacks on civilian villages.
As the PKK moved to clean its own human rights record, turning to a more politicized struggle, Turkey was unknowingly deciding to get harsher. Thus, at this crucial junction point, wide-spread human rights violations on the Turkish part only supported the PKK’s argument and further strengthened the organization.
The Government
Since 1990, much of Turkey’s political scene has changed. From a time when even writing the word “Kurd” was banned and punishable, Ankara –in face of a serious Kurdish insurgency– has come to the point of accepting the existence of “a Kurdish identity.” Currently Suleyman Demirel is the President and the government is a temporary coalition between the conservative True Path Party and the Republican Peoples Party.
The main change, however, is the increase of military control over state affairs, often leading to claims that PM Ciller’s coalition is merely a rubber- stamp government for the Turkish army. Ciller has indeed abandoned all Kurdish policy issues to the military in general belief that the problem is only of terrorist origin. Her prime advisors on the issue are businessmen of Kurdish origin who have vast personal interest in the region and some, in the continuation of the conflict. For today’s Ankara, “there is no Kurdish problem. There is a problem of terrorism which we will eradicate.”
The year 1994 turned out to be one in which Turkey introduced yet a new dose of bitter medicine for the Kurds. From the very beginning of the so- called Ciller era, it became evident that Turkey’s military commanders were quite confident with the civilian administration and saw it as an ideal structure to work with. Ironically, this era of covert military rule actually started a year after the reputable Human Rights Watch/Helsinki issued its strongly worded report titled: “Destroying Ethnic Identity: The Kurds of Turkey.” Three years after this report, the New York Times was to carry a major commentary titled: “The Kurdish Killing Fields,” emphasizing how horrifying the conflict had become.
Under normal circumstances, a social democrat partner with a conservative right-wing party would have become a political problem but it was soon made clear by the junior coalition partner of the coalition that as long as its deputies remained in power, neither the coalition protocol (based on promises of democratization) nor other political principles of the party itself mattered. As for the senior coalition partner DYP, despite some resistance from the extreme hard-liners, the social democrats were an ideal camouflage.
Many practices and decisions which could not have been enforced under a right-wing administration alone were being put into life with only slight problems owing to the “social democrat” element which the conservatives exploited fully. Immediately after taking to power, Ciller went to work on the country’s economic problems and literally abandoned the whole decision making process in all security-related issues to the forces concerned. To deal with urban terrorism, the Turkish police force immediately implemented urgent measures with the support of the government. Despite an ailing human rights record owing to frequent disappearances under detention and alleged extra judicial killings, a major success was scored in this field.
The drive against urban terrorism turned out to be so successful that it increased the say of a specific group of individuals in the civilian security apparatus, later lining them up along with selected military commanders as well as the Emergency Law Regional Governor’s office. An undeclared secret command structure under the control of the military had come to being and those with the backing of the armed forces even within the police force were enjoying extensive authority. In the words of a senior intelligence officer, “by the year 1994, it was clear that Turkey was being run by a state within the state and we had nothing to do about it.”
The military-Ciller relationship appeared to be so strong that commanders in the troubled region had started to speak proudly of the “complete harmony” they enjoyed with the administration and were more and more often praising the prime minister’s capability to “grasp the situation.” According to former Chief of Staff Gen.Dogan Gures, Ciller was “worth 30 generals.” According to the Emergency Law governor, she was fully supportive of “the campaign on terrorism.” He in fact noted that “although the prescription is a painful one, it has to be administered.” Yet, according to Ankara-based observers, she had completely surrendered in.
Thus, on the one hand realizing the “Kurdish identity” for the sake of a western audience but on the other arguing that a “Kurdish problem” did not exist and the problem was of terrorist origin alone, Ankara turned once more to a fully military origin solution to solve the Southeast crisis. The solution, in the minds of those with the authority, is still simple. The solution to ethnic terror was state terror. If the state could make itself felt in the Southeast, if it could show to the people how “strong” it was, then — theoretically– the PKK could be isolated. No one in authority seemed to consider the internationally accepted alternative that the “strength” of the state comes not from using force but by representing democratic standards, respecting human rights and winning the confidence of its own people.
The result of this policy was best expressed in a September 1995 report issued by the Turkish Human Rights Foundation which noted that in the year 1994, Turkey’s repression of the Kurds had spilled over to western areas as well and not only the Kurds but a large part of the Turkish population was suffering from the results of this policy. The Foundation report boldly claimed that 1077 security personnel had been killed in clashes with the PKK in 1994 alone. And, the figures continued: 32 people were killed by police during controversial house raids; 1,128 people were tortured while under detention; 32 others were tortured to death while in police custody; 49 disappeared while under the custody of security officials; 97 were killed only for failing to stop when ordered to do so and 432 were killed in mystery murders generally attributed to security forces.
In 1994 the press –especially the Kurdish press– had suffered from the continuing repression dearly:
[...]
As if to emphasize the PKK’s argument for legitimacy, Turkey’s formal policy since the early 1990s has been one of preventing all attempts to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the Kurdish problem through open debate and dialogue. Among the most outstanding cases is that of Turkish sociologist Besikci who has spent most of his last decade in prison. Besikci, who carried out a sociological survey on the Kurds, was first fired from his job with a university then placed in prison. Since the incident, he has been sentenced to a total of 84 years jail on 40 separate cases related to his books and faces up to 198 years imprisonment with 27 more cases to go.
Even Turkey’s reknown author Yasar Kemal may now be jailed if found guilty on charges related to an article he wrote in January for the German news magazine Der Spiegel. Three separate charges have been brought up against him which could earn this 72-year-old intellectual 15 years of prison life. Ironically, one of the charges is related to alleged remarks of “racism” in the said article.
Many more examples can be listed. One outstanding and very recent example is related to 1080 Turkish intellectuals who collectively defied the laws and issued a book containing banned articles. They are all now being prosecuted and may face up to the three years in jail.
To put it bluntly, Turkey still fears to seek for a social, economic or cultural solution for the Kurds. It fears that any of these principle rights, actually guaranteed by international agreements, are nothing but “concessions,” and even to restore the principal human rights, would lead to ethnic demands and eventually to the division of the country.
As for what a June 1995 military briefing to newspaper owners in Ankara has shown, the army will not tolerate any demands for reforms on the issue and will not even consider a bi-lingual solution to the problem as it deems it as a concession to terrorism. No one in the hard-liner flanks seems to comprehend the idea that once the state restores confidence among the local people and the Kurds start to enjoy equal rights as well as the right to freely organize on the democratic platform, there will be a natural atmosphere for a voluntary unity — eventually isolating all remaining separatist demands and marginal methods and one which the PKK itself has promised to unconditionally support.
The military formula is one too easy. First, terrorism will be crushed fully and then Ankara “may” introduce economic reforms and social measures for further “Turkification” in the area. This plan involves a massive repopulation of the region, using ethnic Turkic emigrants as well, concentrating local Kurdish populations into “collective villages” where they can be assimilated and monitored easily and, finally, restoring the firm hand of the state in the region.
It is worth to mention here that the dominant military argument fails because it is based on the assumption that (a) Turkey is a democracy and terrorism has a short life span in democracies; (b) the Kurds are a Turkish people who side with the stronger force and thus strength and force is required and (c) Kurdish demands for independence will continue either until they are all fully assimilated or the pioneering groups are completely annihilated.
The formula is in fact so simple that since 1984, when the PKK was only a group of around several hundred fighters, Ankara has actually recruited for this organization and literally forced it to grow into a 30,000-strong guerilla force. It is so simple that it continues to constantly recruit for the guerrillas even more than the PKK could have recruited for itself. Again it is so simple that it has turned what initially appeared to be “a mere terrorist group,” based on marginal demands and ideology, into a major ethnic insurgency movement, an armed conflict group, backed by hundreds of thousands of people.
Refusing to see that local conditions or accept the ethnic repression of the Kurds, and the state of overall Turkish democracy are actually fanning the Kurdish revolt. Officials ignorantly insist the problem is one of terrorism and they will deal with terrorism first and then look into other aspects of the crisis. Their argument is based only on assumptions. The assumption that the Kurds have no democratic demands, that the complaints voiced aim only to divide Turkey, that the problem is created only by the foreign powers which back them and that unless terrorism is dealt with, any democratic rights to the Kurds will only further provoke terrorism to the extent of division.
In other words, instead of resolving on a new “state policy” on the Kurds, which would effectively end separation demands and lead to a solution through dialogue, Ankara has found it fit to “index” the whole of its state policy on the activities of a single organization and in doing so, has thus managed to continue its denial of a Kurdish identity or that the Kurds are basically an ethnic minority who don’t have their own state and who live in more than one different state — which under international laws gives them the right for self determination.
Changing Tactics:
The most recent change in the tactics and strategy of the PKK was recorded in 1990 when, as may be remembered, the organization halted all centrally controlled activities which could harm civilians. In 1993 there were several attacks on tourism targets, abduction of tourists and a three-month cease fire which Ankara wished later to ignore.
Instead of dealing with reforms that could hinder violence, Turkish officials chose to attack the PKK and anyone deemed to “sympathize” with the organization. In many cases this led to retaliation of sorts. In fact, the cease- fire itself was ended in a bloody PKK attack on a military convoy during which over 30 off-duty soldiers were killed. The Turkish press did not mention that a day before this attack, 12 PKK guerrillas in the same area had been killed and that constant Turkish air raids had continued, in provocative manner, on various PKK units.
After the cease-fire, the PKK concentrated more on centralizing control and selecting targets. This was a time of strong provocation. Not only were Turkish troops attacking all Kurdish villages and hamlets (and often torching them to the ground) but they were intentionally trying to provoke the people. In many cases, later relayed to state officials, gendermerie/commando A and B teams were involved in mutilating guerilla bodies (i.e. carving their eyes or hearts out) before shipping them back to their families.
It was in this period that a new argument, voiced for years by local commanders, was given an ear in Ankara. The major complaint in the region was that conventional forces were fighting guerrillas in “home territory” and this was complicating the struggle as it was impossible to differentiate between these forces and the civilians. “It would have helped” as an officer in Hakkari put it, “if we were operating in a foreign land. At least then we would know the enemy.”
In 1993, Turkey set out to create that enemy. Attacks on all “legal” Kurdish formations including political parties and newspapers were intensified. Villages were raided one after another. Torture became but a local part of life. Many of thousands of the “undecided” civilians, regarded as “suspects” by Turkey, were “forced” to join the guerrillas where they could be dealt with militarily and legally.
This was, perhaps, a bizarre example of a state promoting –by its own laws– a crime and criminal activities. But the military had their say and a major plan, drawn up in the early 1990s but rejected by Ozal and later by Prime Minister
http://kurdistan.org/work/commentary/the-pkk-freedom-fighters-or-terrorists/
By Gönül Tol, Special to CNN
updated 12:11 PM EDT, Tue October 7, 2014
VIDEO: Will Turkey face ISIS on the ground?
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Gönül Tol: Turkey may be joining the anti-ISIS coalition to suppress Kurdish separatists
* The vote does not signal intervention against ISIS any time soon, she says
* Tol: The PKK has effectively become the West's best hope for on-the-ground troops
* The fight against ISIS has also empowered the PKK militarily, he writes
Editor's note: Gönül Tol is the founding director of The Middle East Institute's Center for Turkish Studies .. http://www.mei.edu/center-turkish-studies .. and an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Institute for Middle East Studies .. http://www.gwu.edu/~imes/. The views expressed in this commentary are entirely those of the author.
(CNN) -- Turkey is in a tough spot. It has ISIS militants threatening the Syrian border town of Kobani, inching ever closer to confronting Turkish security forces. In addition thousands of Syrian Kurds, fleeing ISIS attacks, have massed along its border, adding further to Ankara's troubles.
Amid mounting pressure to become more active in the U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS, the Turkish parliament last week overwhelmingly authorized its military to make incursions into Syria and Iraq; also to allow foreign troops to operate out of Turkish bases. The move has been greeted in Western capitals as a welcome sign that Turkey is finally fully on board with the anti-ISIS coalition.
Yet the Turkish parliament's actions herald neither a complete about-face in policy toward Syria nor immediate military action against ISIS. Indeed, Turkey's reasons for joining the war may be more to do with suppressing Kurdish separatists and removing the al-Assad regime than with destroying the jihadist group.
Toppling the leadership in Damascus and keeping in check the Syrian Kurds who are closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, have long been Ankara's priorities in Syria.
VIDEOS
Turkey authorizes strikes on ISIS
ISIS forces enter Kobani, sources say
Biden regrets saying allies helped ISIS
Cam catches ISIS shelling Syrian city
The wording of last week's parliamentary resolution -- which states that "the terrorist elements of the outlawed PKK still exist in northern Iraq" .. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/originals/2014/10/turkey-syria-iraq-caolition-ground-operation-against-isis.html#ixzz3FNBKmfZp -- suggests that Kurdish separatists still remain the Turkish government's top concern.
The vote does not signal intervention against ISIS any time soon .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkish-parliament-authorizes-military-action-in-syria-iraq/2014/10/02/cca5dba8-7d0c-4e70-88bb-c84abbdca6d2_story.html: despite thousands of Syrian Kurdish refugees and ISIS's fast advance towards Turkey's southern border, Ankara seems unwilling to act. Turkey's defense minister Ismet Yilmaz said .. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/turkey-syria-iraq-caolition-ground-operation-against-isis.html#ixzz3FN2bfzXH: "Don't expect an imminent step after the approval of the authorization request."
Rather, the Turkish government is likely to give its full cooperation to the campaign against ISIS so that it can secure agreement of a U.S.-backed no-fly zone in Syria: this, Ankara believes, would address both concerns.
Turkey thinks that Assad regime's ability to attack mainstream opposition forces from the air has strengthened ISIS, causing the Free Syrian Army to flee and allowing the Islamic militants to capture the vacant territory. Enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria would ground al-Assad's air force and boost rebels fighting to topple him: it could also establish a Turkish military presence, ridding northern Syria of Kurdish fighters linked to the PKK and smothering the autonomous Kurdish region. Turkey has become increasingly uneasy about the emergence of yet another Kurdish entity on its frontier after the PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish groups established autonomy in northern Syria.
The military and diplomatic boost that the PKK has received through its effective fight against ISIS has also worsened the situation for Ankara. In response to the growing ISIS threat, the PKK, the Peshmerga, and the People's Protection Unit (the PKK-linked Kurdish militia group fighting in Syria), have established a united Kurdish front, with the PKK militants coming to the aid of Peshmerga fighters and halting the jihadi group's advance into the autonomous region of northern Iraq. The People's Protection Unit was the main force battling ISIS, and it helped thousands of Yazidis escape from the western part of the region as ISIS attacked.
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"The PKK has effectively become the West's best hope for on-the-ground troops"
Gönül Tol
---
The PKK has effectively become the West's best hope for on-the-ground troops, winning the group positive reviews in Western media. Since the group started its assault against ISIS in northern Iraq, there has been a lot of talk in Western capitals about removing the PKK from the terror list.
The fight against ISIS has also empowered the PKK militarily: Turkey is concerned that that weapons sent to the Peshmerga might ultimately end up in the hands of the PKK at a time when Ankara is moving forward with a deal that would disarm its group. The Turkish government puts the blame for this on the West but Ankara's overtures towards its own Kurdish minority have been mostly strained by its own short-sighted Syria policy.
The ongoing conflict around Kobani has underscored the many challenges the Syrian war poses for the peace process Ankara launched in 2012 in an effort to end the 30-year old Kurdish insurgency. The intensified shelling in Kobani has angered Kurds on the Turkish side of the border, who have blamed the Turkish government for allowing ISIS to fester and not doing enough to stop its assault against Kurds.
Turkey's reluctance to get involved for fear of empowering Kurdish militants in Turkey is now contributing to the growing discord between Kurds and the government. Last week, after reports that Turkey closed the border gates .. http://tinyurl.com/on7hqh8 .. to impede the flight of Kurds from Kobani, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's imprisoned leader, warned that if ISIS carried out a "massacre" in Kobani then the peace process with the PKK could end.
If engaged by Ankara, the PKK-linked groups in Syria could be integrated into the moderate Syrian opposition and become an effective fighting force against the al-Assad regime. But the Turkish government's increasingly harsh rhetoric against the group signals that such a shift in Ankara's thinking is not in the works. Last week, Erdogan said .. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2014/1002/Why-Turkey-is-joining-fight-against-Islamic-State-without-enthusiasm-video .. "While the ISIS terror organization is causing turmoil in the Middle East, there has been ongoing PKK terror in my country for the last 32 years, and yet the world was never troubled by it. Why? Because this terror organization did not carry the name 'Islam.'"
If Turkey keeps seeing the PKK a bigger threat than ISIS activities in Syria, then the legislation passed last week is unlikely to lead to a deeper involvement of Turkey in the fight against the jihadist group.
READ: Who is doing what in the coalition battle against ISIS?
http://cnn.com/2014/10/06/world/meast/isis-coalition-nations/index.html
READ: Exclusive: From school teacher to ISIS member
http://cnn.com/2014/10/06/world/meast/isis-female-fighter/index.html
The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gönül Tol.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/opinion/turkey-isis-pkk/
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1980 Turkish coup d'état - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
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The PKK: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?
.. some history, i don't know how balanced, accurate or biased this piece is, just that it is some history of an organization
and of a country, in an area highly relevant to conflict vs peace in our world today .. large excerpts from a much larger one ..
http://kurdistan.org/work/commentary/the-pkk-freedom-fighters-or-terrorists/
By Ismet G. Imset
Thursday, December 7, 1995
The Crisis
A burning war:
When in 1984 Turkey found itself faced with a series of armed attacks on military installations in the dominantly Kurdish-populated rural Southeast region, it immediately resolved on a traditional policy, to deal with these so- called “handful of bandits” in style, with weapons against weapons.
For Ankara officials and many Turks, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which launched the attacks, was nothing but “a remnant of the pre-1980 terrorism” which had spread throughout this strategically important country in the form of violent urban activities in the late 1970's, constituting an excuse for the US-backed September 12, 1980, military takeover.
Turkey’s enforced mono-ethnic identity was so well carved into millions of minds that no one even questioned the roots of the PKK, what this organization represented, whether its existence had legitimate social or political reasons, or whether the ethnic connotation in the name was anything further than a Marxist ploy to gain regional support.
Instead, both Turkish officials and western intelligence agencies preferred to treat the problem superficially, looking at it with the over-confident assumption that it was a “doomed terrorist group” from the very beginning and one which conspired to divide Turkey for regional foreign interests.
On the surface, every indication supported this view. The PKK’s manpower was then low, ammunition and armament was scarce and the organization, confronting Turkey’s enormous war machine, could clearly stay on its feet only with “outside” support — coming mainly from the regional countries attempting either to control their own Kurdish populations through promotion of crisis’ elsewhere or indeed aiming to cripple NATO- member Turkey as the Cold War dragged on.
Yet, despite repeated assurances from officials that this terrorist group had been “dealt with,” from only a 20-man urban based passive student movement in the late 1970s, the PKK had already grown into a 300 strong trained militant force in the early 1980s.
This expansion actually reflected what was in store for the future. Its number increased several fold over the following years and by 1994, Turkish military officials estimated that its active supporters and sympathizers in the Turkish Southeast alone numbered more than 400,000, added to over half a million Kurds supporting the organization throughout Europe. If Turkey’s current laws were fully applicable, this means that at least one million Kurdish origin citizens of the country are deemed by officials as “enemies” and could face capital punishment without question.
The PKK is known today to have extensive support among the Kurds of Turkey and Syria, and is gradually expanding into the Kurdish regions of neighboring Iran and Iraq as well.
The exact number of PKK combatants or fighters has been an issue of debate for many years. In 1991, the late president Turgut Ozal claimed there were 3,900 full-time guerrillas. In April 1993, however, the US State Department was to estimate the PKK had only 3,000 guerrillas and two to five thousand active supporters. In October 1993, The New York Times estimated that 10,000 PKK guerrillas were operating throughout Turkey and neighboring countries.
[...]
With the military takeover though, the conditions for a “just cause” to launch a war for freedom and democracy if nothing else, were stronger than ever and the very fact that a group of generals, using their force and weaponry had ousted an elected civilian regime and abolished the country’s constitution, spoke for itself in way of legitimacy for any form of resistance. The generals had taken over the country, closing down parliament, banning all political parties and placing their leaders, including the prime minister, under “protective custody.”
A summary of that period was recently published in a Turkish news magazine and is highly important in the context of the PKK’s own struggle and its reasons. It is, in reality, a full explanation of the immediate circumstances in which the organization launched its armed struggle and thus claimed that it was a legitimate one or a just war: Throughout the coup era in which the PKK launched its first organized operation in Turkish territory, a total of 650 thousand people were detained and most suspects were either beaten or tortured; over 500 people died while under detention as result of torture; 85,000 people were placed on trial mainly in relation to thought crimes or guilt by association; 1,683,000 people were officially listed in police files as suspects; 348 thousand Turks and Kurds were banned from traveling abroad; 15,509 people were fired from their jobs for political reasons; 114 thousand books were seized and burned; 937 films were banned; 2,729 writers, translators, journalists and actors were put on trials for expressing their opinions. One can hardly argue, as we enter the 21st century, that such a regime had any legitimacy other than to conform with the financial and political expectations of its foreign supporters.
It is true that urban terrorism between January 1979 to September 1980 had claimed the lives of 3,546 civilians and 164 security officers. Mass demonstrations had spread to the cities with “liberated zones” being established in urban and rural areas. In central Anatolia, fundamentalist Moslems, themselves arguing they were deprived of fundamental religious rights with the creation of the secular republic, were on the rampage. Hundreds had died in Sunni-Alawi sect clashes and thousands were placed in prison even before the coup. These justified the coup in the eyes of a Turkish majority as well as among Turkey’s western allies — despite the fact that Martial Law actually existed throughout Turkey as these developments took take place. Yet, the repressive nature of the overt military administration was so great that it soon started to bother all. Most of all the Kurds in Turkey.
The takeover in Turkey prompted the PKK’s limited number of supporters first to train with Palestinian fighters in the Middle East region and later to fight alongside them during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This cooperation then led to various regional movements opening their territories to the PKK, where it trained and prepared for warfare. It had also managed to spread among Turkey’s migrating Kurdish community abroad, specifically in Libya.
[...]
In contrast to the Turkish Security Directorate figures, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch/Helsinki reported that a total of 950 people had been killed in Kurdish-linked violence from 1984 to May 1988 and even before Ankara formally turned to the policy of “answering guns with guns,” the situation was desperate. In 1988, the same organization was warning in writing that “Indiscriminately, the Turkish army is terrorizing the local people on the grounds that they are supporting the terrorists… As a result of this, the Southeast region gives the image that it is completely besieged.”
The turning point:
After 1989, the PKK strengthened rapidly in the region facing almost no problems in finding new recruits, weapons or financial resources. It expanded among the people and established itself as a popular movement. In November 1989, following crucial local elections held in March, Turgut Ozal was elected as the eighth president of the Turkish Republic. His Motherland Party which came to power in 1984 was still in government but the local polls had reflected a decline in national support.
Ozal immediately appointed Parliament Yildirim Akbulut as prime minister with the aim of preventing the ANAP from falling apart and in belief that Akbulut would remain only as his mouthpiece. Akbulut’s first test, as with all Turkish prime ministers, was to deal with “terrorism.”
The turning point for the Kurdish issue was in March that year with a meeting of the National Security Council which ended with a government- backed decision to launch a major military and psychological crackdown on Kurdish separatists. “We have decided to answer guns with guns,” Akbulut announced after coming out of this seven hour meeting. He added that a series of measures would be taken both against the terrorists and their supporters.
According to these decisions, the Turkish press would be placed under a heavy censorship, citizens living in the region could be banished by local officials, anyone who supported the separatists or gave them aid would be sentenced to ten years imprisonment and the state would in no way tolerate PKK sympathizers.
The ANAP government, which was losing the support of the electorate, had accepted the military package and was looking for the support of the country’s armed forces. And, the impact of the decisions were seen almost immediately in the region with even more indiscriminate security operations leading to immense human rights violations everywhere.
The PKK, which was already strengthening, had then also caught the opportunity to establish local authority in various areas, filling the gap of state authority. Secret Kurdish schools started functioning in the darkness of the night. The number of court cases heard at Turkish civil courts declined rapidly as so-called PKK peoples’ tribunals came to being. In several provinces the PKK even set up its local police and intelligence units.
What was disastrous for Ankara in 1990, however, was a major change in the PKK’s own policy towards village guards. Until then, the organization was blamed to have terrorized the region with raids on villages and civilians. But in a 1990 party congress it decided to cease all such activities which could lead to civilian casualties and to concentrate more on military targets and political struggle. It also declared a general amnesty for all village guards, valid for a whole year, for anyone who turned in their guns and refused to collaborate with the state.
This move, unfortunately, did nothing to curb violence but changed its source. It literally forces Turkish troops to target village guards and families attempting to drop out of the system, to carry out mass arrests, deportations and a wave of arson attacks on civilian villages.
As the PKK moved to clean its own human rights record, turning to a more politicized struggle, Turkey was unknowingly deciding to get harsher. Thus, at this crucial junction point, wide-spread human rights violations on the Turkish part only supported the PKK’s argument and further strengthened the organization.
The Government
Since 1990, much of Turkey’s political scene has changed. From a time when even writing the word “Kurd” was banned and punishable, Ankara –in face of a serious Kurdish insurgency– has come to the point of accepting the existence of “a Kurdish identity.” Currently Suleyman Demirel is the President and the government is a temporary coalition between the conservative True Path Party and the Republican Peoples Party.
The main change, however, is the increase of military control over state affairs, often leading to claims that PM Ciller’s coalition is merely a rubber- stamp government for the Turkish army. Ciller has indeed abandoned all Kurdish policy issues to the military in general belief that the problem is only of terrorist origin. Her prime advisors on the issue are businessmen of Kurdish origin who have vast personal interest in the region and some, in the continuation of the conflict. For today’s Ankara, “there is no Kurdish problem. There is a problem of terrorism which we will eradicate.”
The year 1994 turned out to be one in which Turkey introduced yet a new dose of bitter medicine for the Kurds. From the very beginning of the so- called Ciller era, it became evident that Turkey’s military commanders were quite confident with the civilian administration and saw it as an ideal structure to work with. Ironically, this era of covert military rule actually started a year after the reputable Human Rights Watch/Helsinki issued its strongly worded report titled: “Destroying Ethnic Identity: The Kurds of Turkey.” Three years after this report, the New York Times was to carry a major commentary titled: “The Kurdish Killing Fields,” emphasizing how horrifying the conflict had become.
Under normal circumstances, a social democrat partner with a conservative right-wing party would have become a political problem but it was soon made clear by the junior coalition partner of the coalition that as long as its deputies remained in power, neither the coalition protocol (based on promises of democratization) nor other political principles of the party itself mattered. As for the senior coalition partner DYP, despite some resistance from the extreme hard-liners, the social democrats were an ideal camouflage.
Many practices and decisions which could not have been enforced under a right-wing administration alone were being put into life with only slight problems owing to the “social democrat” element which the conservatives exploited fully. Immediately after taking to power, Ciller went to work on the country’s economic problems and literally abandoned the whole decision making process in all security-related issues to the forces concerned. To deal with urban terrorism, the Turkish police force immediately implemented urgent measures with the support of the government. Despite an ailing human rights record owing to frequent disappearances under detention and alleged extra judicial killings, a major success was scored in this field.
The drive against urban terrorism turned out to be so successful that it increased the say of a specific group of individuals in the civilian security apparatus, later lining them up along with selected military commanders as well as the Emergency Law Regional Governor’s office. An undeclared secret command structure under the control of the military had come to being and those with the backing of the armed forces even within the police force were enjoying extensive authority. In the words of a senior intelligence officer, “by the year 1994, it was clear that Turkey was being run by a state within the state and we had nothing to do about it.”
The military-Ciller relationship appeared to be so strong that commanders in the troubled region had started to speak proudly of the “complete harmony” they enjoyed with the administration and were more and more often praising the prime minister’s capability to “grasp the situation.” According to former Chief of Staff Gen.Dogan Gures, Ciller was “worth 30 generals.” According to the Emergency Law governor, she was fully supportive of “the campaign on terrorism.” He in fact noted that “although the prescription is a painful one, it has to be administered.” Yet, according to Ankara-based observers, she had completely surrendered in.
Thus, on the one hand realizing the “Kurdish identity” for the sake of a western audience but on the other arguing that a “Kurdish problem” did not exist and the problem was of terrorist origin alone, Ankara turned once more to a fully military origin solution to solve the Southeast crisis. The solution, in the minds of those with the authority, is still simple. The solution to ethnic terror was state terror. If the state could make itself felt in the Southeast, if it could show to the people how “strong” it was, then — theoretically– the PKK could be isolated. No one in authority seemed to consider the internationally accepted alternative that the “strength” of the state comes not from using force but by representing democratic standards, respecting human rights and winning the confidence of its own people.
The result of this policy was best expressed in a September 1995 report issued by the Turkish Human Rights Foundation which noted that in the year 1994, Turkey’s repression of the Kurds had spilled over to western areas as well and not only the Kurds but a large part of the Turkish population was suffering from the results of this policy. The Foundation report boldly claimed that 1077 security personnel had been killed in clashes with the PKK in 1994 alone. And, the figures continued: 32 people were killed by police during controversial house raids; 1,128 people were tortured while under detention; 32 others were tortured to death while in police custody; 49 disappeared while under the custody of security officials; 97 were killed only for failing to stop when ordered to do so and 432 were killed in mystery murders generally attributed to security forces.
In 1994 the press –especially the Kurdish press– had suffered from the continuing repression dearly:
[...]
As if to emphasize the PKK’s argument for legitimacy, Turkey’s formal policy since the early 1990s has been one of preventing all attempts to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the Kurdish problem through open debate and dialogue. Among the most outstanding cases is that of Turkish sociologist Besikci who has spent most of his last decade in prison. Besikci, who carried out a sociological survey on the Kurds, was first fired from his job with a university then placed in prison. Since the incident, he has been sentenced to a total of 84 years jail on 40 separate cases related to his books and faces up to 198 years imprisonment with 27 more cases to go.
Even Turkey’s reknown author Yasar Kemal may now be jailed if found guilty on charges related to an article he wrote in January for the German news magazine Der Spiegel. Three separate charges have been brought up against him which could earn this 72-year-old intellectual 15 years of prison life. Ironically, one of the charges is related to alleged remarks of “racism” in the said article.
Many more examples can be listed. One outstanding and very recent example is related to 1080 Turkish intellectuals who collectively defied the laws and issued a book containing banned articles. They are all now being prosecuted and may face up to the three years in jail.
To put it bluntly, Turkey still fears to seek for a social, economic or cultural solution for the Kurds. It fears that any of these principle rights, actually guaranteed by international agreements, are nothing but “concessions,” and even to restore the principal human rights, would lead to ethnic demands and eventually to the division of the country.
As for what a June 1995 military briefing to newspaper owners in Ankara has shown, the army will not tolerate any demands for reforms on the issue and will not even consider a bi-lingual solution to the problem as it deems it as a concession to terrorism. No one in the hard-liner flanks seems to comprehend the idea that once the state restores confidence among the local people and the Kurds start to enjoy equal rights as well as the right to freely organize on the democratic platform, there will be a natural atmosphere for a voluntary unity — eventually isolating all remaining separatist demands and marginal methods and one which the PKK itself has promised to unconditionally support.
The military formula is one too easy. First, terrorism will be crushed fully and then Ankara “may” introduce economic reforms and social measures for further “Turkification” in the area. This plan involves a massive repopulation of the region, using ethnic Turkic emigrants as well, concentrating local Kurdish populations into “collective villages” where they can be assimilated and monitored easily and, finally, restoring the firm hand of the state in the region.
It is worth to mention here that the dominant military argument fails because it is based on the assumption that (a) Turkey is a democracy and terrorism has a short life span in democracies; (b) the Kurds are a Turkish people who side with the stronger force and thus strength and force is required and (c) Kurdish demands for independence will continue either until they are all fully assimilated or the pioneering groups are completely annihilated.
The formula is in fact so simple that since 1984, when the PKK was only a group of around several hundred fighters, Ankara has actually recruited for this organization and literally forced it to grow into a 30,000-strong guerilla force. It is so simple that it continues to constantly recruit for the guerrillas even more than the PKK could have recruited for itself. Again it is so simple that it has turned what initially appeared to be “a mere terrorist group,” based on marginal demands and ideology, into a major ethnic insurgency movement, an armed conflict group, backed by hundreds of thousands of people.
Refusing to see that local conditions or accept the ethnic repression of the Kurds, and the state of overall Turkish democracy are actually fanning the Kurdish revolt. Officials ignorantly insist the problem is one of terrorism and they will deal with terrorism first and then look into other aspects of the crisis. Their argument is based only on assumptions. The assumption that the Kurds have no democratic demands, that the complaints voiced aim only to divide Turkey, that the problem is created only by the foreign powers which back them and that unless terrorism is dealt with, any democratic rights to the Kurds will only further provoke terrorism to the extent of division.
In other words, instead of resolving on a new “state policy” on the Kurds, which would effectively end separation demands and lead to a solution through dialogue, Ankara has found it fit to “index” the whole of its state policy on the activities of a single organization and in doing so, has thus managed to continue its denial of a Kurdish identity or that the Kurds are basically an ethnic minority who don’t have their own state and who live in more than one different state — which under international laws gives them the right for self determination.
Changing Tactics:
The most recent change in the tactics and strategy of the PKK was recorded in 1990 when, as may be remembered, the organization halted all centrally controlled activities which could harm civilians. In 1993 there were several attacks on tourism targets, abduction of tourists and a three-month cease fire which Ankara wished later to ignore.
Instead of dealing with reforms that could hinder violence, Turkish officials chose to attack the PKK and anyone deemed to “sympathize” with the organization. In many cases this led to retaliation of sorts. In fact, the cease- fire itself was ended in a bloody PKK attack on a military convoy during which over 30 off-duty soldiers were killed. The Turkish press did not mention that a day before this attack, 12 PKK guerrillas in the same area had been killed and that constant Turkish air raids had continued, in provocative manner, on various PKK units.
After the cease-fire, the PKK concentrated more on centralizing control and selecting targets. This was a time of strong provocation. Not only were Turkish troops attacking all Kurdish villages and hamlets (and often torching them to the ground) but they were intentionally trying to provoke the people. In many cases, later relayed to state officials, gendermerie/commando A and B teams were involved in mutilating guerilla bodies (i.e. carving their eyes or hearts out) before shipping them back to their families.
It was in this period that a new argument, voiced for years by local commanders, was given an ear in Ankara. The major complaint in the region was that conventional forces were fighting guerrillas in “home territory” and this was complicating the struggle as it was impossible to differentiate between these forces and the civilians. “It would have helped” as an officer in Hakkari put it, “if we were operating in a foreign land. At least then we would know the enemy.”
In 1993, Turkey set out to create that enemy. Attacks on all “legal” Kurdish formations including political parties and newspapers were intensified. Villages were raided one after another. Torture became but a local part of life. Many of thousands of the “undecided” civilians, regarded as “suspects” by Turkey, were “forced” to join the guerrillas where they could be dealt with militarily and legally.
This was, perhaps, a bizarre example of a state promoting –by its own laws– a crime and criminal activities. But the military had their say and a major plan, drawn up in the early 1990s but rejected by Ozal and later by Prime Minister
http://kurdistan.org/work/commentary/the-pkk-freedom-fighters-or-terrorists/
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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