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Turkey and the Kurds

Searching for an Exit on the Highway to War

By Annette Grossbongardt and Bernhard Zand

Everyone agrees that a Turkish invasion of Iraq would be catastrophic. But with Kurdish separatists staging attacks almost daily, pressure for an attack is growing within Turkey. The time to find a solution may be running out.

Whenever his schedule allows, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani leaves his presidential bunker in Baghdad to spend time on Lake Dukan in the mountains of his Kurdish homeland. It is a paradoxically idyllic refuge in a half-destroyed country, a place where yellow sandstone villas are reflected in the waters of the dammed Little Sab River, where children play in paddleboats, and where the president and his guests can enjoy a vast, panoramic view of the wilds of Kurdistan. US cabinet secretaries and diplomats rave about their visits to Lake Dukan. It is also a place where a number of important decisions have been reached.

But hardly any of them have applied to Talabani's peculiar neighbors, who have pitched their tents in the Kandil Mountains, 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the north: the militias of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), which have been embroiled in an on-again, off-again struggle with the Turkish government for more than 20 years.

The PKK has its base camp near the small city of Raniyah, and about 15 villages in the surrounding area are under the group's control. There are two checkpoints at the base of the Kandil Mountains, where men and women armed with Kalashnikovs guard the 50-square-kilometer (19 square miles) camp. Those allowed access to the rebels are confronted with a consistent message of bellicosity. If Turkey attacks, PKK commander Murat Karayilan says, "we will take the war into their cities."

'We Make Decisions on Our Own'

He's already managed to take the struggle across the border into Turkey. The number of PKK attacks in Turkey has spiked in recent months, resulting in the deaths of numerous Turkish soldiers and local militiamen in southern Anatolia. Earlier this month, a PKK unit that snuck across the Iraq-Turkey border killed 12 Turkish soldiers.

Turkey, not surprisingly, is not happy and has demanded that President Talabani and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who runs the semi-autonomous northern Iraqi regional government, eject the Kurdish troublemakers from Iraq. Otherwise, Turkey has said, an invasion may be imminent. Indeed on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his intention to go after the PKK if necessary. "Whenever an operation is needed to be carried out, we will do that," Erdogan said in a speech before a crowd in the western Turkish city of Izmit. "We do not need to ask anything from anyone for that. Some (countries) might have other wishes, but we make our decisions on our own."

It is not an idle threat. Turkey deployed 100,000 troops, supported by tank brigades, to its border with Iraq last week. Turkish jets bombed PKK positions, penetrating deep into Iraqi territory to do so. Its artillery guns were also fired across the border repeatedly.

The horrified international community realized that another armed conflict could be brewing in what is already one of the most explosive regions of the world. Iraq is still teetering on the brink of civil war. At the same time, archenemies Iran and the United States are increasingly at odds over Tehran's nuclear program, while the Palestinian conflict continues to smolder. And then there is the threat of a Kurdish war on Iraqi soil -- and perhaps even elsewhere. A branch of the PKK, the "Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan," is fighting Iranian government forces in Iran's Kurdish provinces. Some of the group's operations are also based in northern Iraq, where it has the support of the United States -- a tricky proposition given that the US, along with the EU, considers the PKK to be a terrorist organization.

Brewing Kurdish Conflict

The effects of the new crisis are already becoming apparent. Global oil markets responded with new record prices to the threat of war in oil-rich northern Iraq -- until now, one of the country's most peaceful regions. The second conference between Iraq and its neighbors, which meets this week in Istanbul and was originally convened to discuss reconstruction and resolving the conflict in Iraq, will in fact be a crisis meeting to address the brewing Kurdish conflict.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will arrive early to meet with Turkish officials eager to hear what offers she might be bringing from Washington. As a minimum, they are hoping for active US support for a limited military campaign in northern Iraq. Washington's diplomats only managed to convince Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to postpone the military offensive by promising to cooperate with Turkey in its fight against the PKK. Erdogan's scheduled meeting with US President George W. Bush in Washington on Nov. 5 is widely considered to be the final deadline before Turkey invades northern Iraq.

Pressed by the United States, the Iraqis also promised to take action against the PKK. At the beginning of the crisis, Talabani was defiant, insisting that he would "turn over not a single Kurd to Turkey, in fact, not even a Kurdish cat." But the government in Baghdad has since changed its tune, announcing that it would close the PKK office in the Iraqi capital. "We have asked them to leave our country," said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who is also a Kurd. But Iraq's weak central government has little influence in the Kurdish north.

Apo and His Supporters

The PKK, established in 1978 as a revolutionary movement for an independent Kurdish state, has re-emerged on the global stage like a ghost from the past. After the sensationalist arrest and sentencing of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999, the separatist organization seemed to have lost steam. With its founder, affectionately referred to as "Apo" by his supporters, being held on the Imrali prison island near Istanbul, the PKK saw itself forced to agree to a cease-fire. But because the Turkish government has consistently refused to negotiate with the PKK and continues to pursue its activists, the group resumed its attacks in 2003.

From its safe haven in Iraq, the PKK can both attract international attention and do as much harm as possible to the Turks. If the Turkish army were to retaliate with full force, Ankara would find itself isolated once again. "Then the world would see us as a brutal and aggressive power that attacks civilians and oppresses the Kurds," warns Turkish civil rights activist Orhan Cengiz.