What the PKK Wants
I've been fighting probably the worst jet lag I've ever experienced. And I seem to have flown into--of all things!--a music festival, which does little to improve the concentration. Yet I want to keep my promise to the security guard at Atatürk Airport: I want to try to make people understand why the deaths of thirteen Turkish soldiers in Silvan is more than a random tragedy in a far-away place.
This was a bid to consume Turkey in a civil war. Yes, it has been in a state of civil war for decades, and yes, it seems as if this sort of thing "happens every day," but no, this doesn't happen every day.
In conjunction with the DTK's "declaration of democratic autonomy," this was clearly an attempt to escalate and spread this war. I've written about the constraints this war places on Turkish foreign policy, no matter which party or clique is in power. If you want to understand what's happening in the region in a way that goes "beyond platitudes," start here.
This column by Yusuf Kanli, headlined We want our sons to live, mentions many key points. I agree with it.
(Americans might be quick to interpret his comment about it being impossible for Turks to be "obsessed with security, like the Israelis," as a slur. It's not: He's making the same point I've made about the Israeli strategy toward security being impossible to apply to larger countries.)
Istanbul is the world's largest Kurdish city, by Kurdish population. If you read in the news that Kurds have no civil rights in Turkey and are never allowed to speak their language or sing Kurdish songs, I can say categorically that it isn't so: A democratic paradise Turkey is not, but this idea is just false.
No one in his right mind would argue that things are just great in Turkey or that ethnic Kurds enjoy perfect civil rights in every part of Turkey. That would be insane. No one would deny that ethnic Kurds have suffered. That would be insane. But everyone in his right mind can see that a wider, bloodier civil would be more insane by orders of magnitude.
The PKK is a designated terrorist organization, and so-designated for a good reason. They killed thirteen young men who were in the region to rescue three hostages they had kidnapped.
No doubt someone will frame their recent activities as a natural response to Kurdish exclusion from Turkish democracy and the failure to release elected, independent Kurdish deputies from jail. I'll be the first to say that policy is wrong. But this is not a "natural response" to it, and I have a few questions for anyone who says it is.
Who elected the PKK?
Oh, that's right: No one.
What's their justice system like?
Give me a break.
They're Maoists:
The democratic nation cannot exist if it does not overcome the hegemony of the modern capitalism positivist strategy built on individualism and subjected to liberalism.
No, that's not a Turkish propaganda website, it's a PKK propaganda website. That's a recent statement. That's what they say they want, and I believe them.
You know what that means.
- Comment (12)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (0)
Comments :
Aug '10
Re: What the PKK Wants
After 7 hours, nobody's commented on this at all? Huh. Tiresome self-promotion coming up: do a search for "PKK" in this and you'll get my sole and perhaps trivial insight into the outfit's constitutional outlook. Wish I could give the original link.
Although I am slowly coming around to the view that maybe someone actually pictures a standup sovereign Kurdistan and is willing to battle for it, I think I still incline to the Middle-Easterners-as-hellraisers view. After your first few thousand idle males, it's like your first few thousand dungpatties: you kinda figure it's normal. There is an unseriousness about Middle Easterners - whose impulse to tidiness appears spent once they've slapped crap against a wall - that I think prevents quite a lot of us from believing these people, as dangerous as they can be, require respect.
Re: What the PKK Wants
Respect? You mean, as in, "admiration?" Or, "could be a serious problem to us?" Obviously I feel the very opposite of the first. But as lethal terrorist groups go, the PKK ranks high and is certainly a threat to regional stability of a major order.
Re: What the PKK Wants
Claire, I wonder how (or if) this is playing in Turkey: a story is circulating that an attack in Istanbul in May that injured eight, which had been ascribed to the PKK, was not PKK at all but Hezbollah. (Corriere della Sera reported this yesterday and Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post both published pieces on it.) The theory is that Hezbollah, acting on orders from Iran, was trying to hit Israeli Consul General to Istanbul Moshe Kamhi in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian nuclear physicist Masoud Ali Muhammedi in Tehran last year. (They missed him completely, but unfortunately succeeded in wreaking havoc and injuring local Turks.) The Turkish administration is calling this Israeli disinformation, and the official Israeli line is that they have no knowledge that this was a Hezbollah hit attempt.
I'm curious whether regular Turks even know about this possibility, and what they might be saying about it.
Re: What the PKK Wants
Judith, I'm in Seattle now, but yes, that was reported in Turkey--front page--and pretty quickly dismissed as silly. I know the shopping mall in question; leaving a remote-detonating bomb at a bus station outside of it would be a crazy way to try to whack a specific target. I'm not saying Hezbollah is masterfully competent or anything, but no one in Istanbul could remotely keep such a regular schedule that you'd be able to predict, even to the half hour, when someone would be passing through that neighborhood. If Hezbollah thought that would work, I guess you can sleep easier tonight, because pretty clearly they're the dumbest terrorists in the world. Unfortunately, we both know they're not. (Moreover, if the Israeli CG hasn't been trained to vary his routes to work I'd be astonished.)
Re: What the PKK Wants
To be clear: Traffic in that area is so wildly unpredictable that to imagine you could say, "He passes through that bus stop every day at 7:23 am" or whatever is ridiculous, and at any given point you can expect literally thousands of people to be on that street. If you make an appointment with anyone in Istanbul to do anything, any time scheduled is understood to mean "give or take an hour or two depending on traffic." You put a bomb there, the aim is to kill Turkish citizens indiscriminately.
Apr '11
Re: What the PKK Wants
In my younger days I used to fly a trip from an RAF base in England, stopping in Germany, Italy and ending up at Incirlik AB in Turkey. Half the time we carried relief supplies for the Kurds in northern Iraq, the other half we carried materiel for killing Kurds in Turkey. Often, in the morning, I'd see attack planes launching on strikes into the hills around the base - fighters of the PKK were that close. And I always had a question for which I've never found a satisfactory answer: what is a Kurd anyway?
Speaking historically, as I understand it, Turks are not native to Anatolia but are, rather, another instance of invaders from the Asian Steppes. I believe "Turk" is based on a Chinese word for Barbarian." As near as I can determine, Kurds are of Persian descent. What, exactly, is the causus belli between these two groups?
Re: What the PKK Wants
Maybe as far back as the Sassanid era they're of Persian descent? It was a long time ago. Definitely a distinct ethnic and linguistic identity now (with many dialects and infinite divisions). Kurdish is considered by linguists to be related to Persian--it's an Indo-European language. Fourth-largest ethnic group in the greater Middle East. I'm trying to find some background material that could introduce you to the origins of this conflict in an intelligent way, and not sure where to start--how much time do you want to give to it? If you want to read a journalist on the subject who comes with my seal of approval, look for articles by Nicholas Birch. To think about Kurdish nationalism broadly, you have to start--really--with the rise of the idea of the nation-state and the post WWI treaties that created the boundaries of the Middle East. But again: Don't confuse the PKK with "the Kurds."
Apr '11
Re: What the PKK Wants
Thank-you. I have an interest in the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Crusades and as a result know a bit about the Ottoman Empire from reading the works of Lord Norwich, Lord Kinross, Stephen Runciman and George Ostrogrosky. This is to say what I know is a thousand years old. I know some of the great Islamic champions - Salah al Din - for example were Kurds. I just don't quire understand how they fit in among the ethnic groups that make up the contemporary mid-east scene. And though I understand they're fighting for nationhood, I don't quite grasp what their historical claim is.
Re: What the PKK Wants
This might be a good starting point, and he offers what I suspect is a good bibliography.
Re: What the PKK Wants
Here's another excellent introduction by Svante Cornell, whose scholarship is well-informed and trustworthy.
Apr '11
Re: What the PKK Wants
Thank-you...I've printed-out both pieces and am heading for my comfy-chair to read them
Apr '11
Re: What the PKK Wants
Ah, the curtains begin to be pulled back, the light appears and I begin to see my errors. I was looking at the notion of "Kurdistan" through a Western, Nation-State lens thinking it a concrete reality like Tajikistan or Kazakhstan rather than a more amorphous thing similar to the suffix "-bad" in Southwest Asia, meaning "place where the (fill in the blank) tribe lives."
Also I thought the PKK was trying to recapture some lost tribal golden-age of antiquity. An ur-state from a time long gone. Now I understand it's just one more example of that tedious Marxist-Leninist plague that bothered the world for much too long. Heck, even the Chinese don't consider themselves "Maoist" anymore - at least according to Kissinger's latest book.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.