Sarah Glynn
The youth organisations of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish parties have launched a campaign against special warfare. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and associated Green Left have been undergoing a period of critical meetings and discussions since May’s elections, and the youth are described by Fırat News Agency as the backbone of the parties.
Special warfare is a term that is used at lot in the Kurdish context, and refers to methods of government control and intervention outwith the engagement of regular armed forces. Such practices –often undertaken with the argument that the end justifies the means– are as old as war, but the modern version came out of the Cold War.
On 15 August, the PKK will commemorate the 39th anniversary of their armed struggle against the Turkish state. The Republic of Turkey has oppressed the Kurds since its foundation 100 years ago. For 40% of that time, the PKK has been fighting back, at first for independence and now for an autonomy that would allow local regions to control their own affairs. Special warfare has played a major part in the state’s response.
In special warfare, states work secretly with those they outwardly shun, notably the extreme right and organised crime. In modern Turkey, the organisations used to suppress opposition to the government have evolved from secret anti-communist –and generally anti-left– organisations set up by the CIA, Britain’s MI6, and other state intelligence agencies after the Second World War. The CIA’s Office of Special Projects was founded in 1948 for covert operations against “hostile foreign states or groups” or in support of “friendly foreign states or groups” in which US involvement would not be evident and would be plausibly deniable. Secret paramilitary organisations were established in many European countries besides Turkey, and these had no scruples over using Nazis, street thugs, and criminals to achieve their aim and to prevent left organisations from winning support and gaining control. Their methods included assassinations, support for coups, and false flag operations to tarnish the reputations of those they wished to defeat. The anti-left organisations in Turkey were known as Counter Guerrillas.
These secret bodies of the deep state have been responsible for supporting coups and for brutal campaigns of terror, including the killings and forced disappearances carried out by JİTEM, the intelligence department of the Turkish gendarmerie, in the 1990s. A special Counter Guerrilla unit carried out attacks on civilians that would be blamed on the PKK and give legitimacy to the collective punishment against the Kurds being meted out by Turkey’s official security forces. The deep state also supported the growth of violent reactionary organisations that acted as their proxies in attacking dissent and attempting to instil fear in the population: notably the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves, attached to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and also Hizbullah (no relation to the Lebanese organisation), a militant Kurdish Islamist group that was used to attack members of the Kurdish Freedom movement and has been blamed for the murder of hundreds of Kurds and leftists. The MHP has been in an electoral alliance with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2018, and Hüda Par, the descendent of Hizbullah, had four MPs elected from the AKP list in May’s election.
In special warfare, virtually anything goes, including mass surveillance and the manipulation of social beliefs. Sometimes this is achieved through straightforward propaganda and disinformation, but all organisations, from NGOs to universities, can be used as –often unwitting– tools in defanging progressive radicalism and dismantling dissent.
For the HDP/Green Left youth organisations, the war against the Kurds is at the root of all the crises facing the people of Turkey, and the isolation of Kurdish leader, Abdullah Öcalan –held incommunicado in İmralı island prison– is central to this war. They say that the government aims to alienate young people and make them amenable slaves of the system by bombarding them with television, sport, and art that glorifies militarism and Turkish nationalism, and –even more dangerously– by encouraging drug addiction and prostitution. They invoke the Kurdish Freedom Movement’s legacy of resistance and the historical mission of the youth; and they explain that this will be translated into a campaign to “foster a more informed and engaged community” through a process of house to house visits, meetings and workshops.
Drug addiction has become a huge problem, as so often happens in poor areas deprived of hope. Kurds are under additional stress, and in Kurdish cities, elected municipal governments have been usurped by state-appointed trustees while their social programmes have been shut down. The HDP’s Children’s Commission has just produced a report that found that the age of addiction in Amed (Diyarbakır) and the surrounding area has dropped to just nine years old.
Turkey and the PKK
The state’s war against the PKK is conducted through large scale deployment of conventional military forces, but by widespread special warfare practices too. The most insidious of these are the mis-portrayal of the PKK as a terrorist organisation –a designation that has been taken up by receptive states who have no sympathy for anti-capitalist autonomous movements– and the torture and abuse of Abdullah Öcalan. The leaders of liberal democracy have been implicated in this too, from Öcalan’s abduction in 1999 by the CIA and other western intelligence services, to their failure to pressure Turkey to abide by international human rights law. Meanwhile, İmralı has become a template for Turkey’s isolation and mistreatment of other political prisoners.
One result of this international complicity is that the war against the PKK is very little talked about outwith Turkey, so it is not widely known that parts of Turkey itself are effectively a war zone. There was little notice taken even in 2015-16, when Turkish tanks reduced parts of Kurdish cities to rubble, and around half a million people were forced to flee their homes. For those living in the warzone, military operations can prevent basic activities such as taking animals to pasture and tending orchards and vineyards. On Thursday, Fırat News Agency reported on conflict in the countryside round Bilbês village in Şırnak, which had been under military blockade since 29 July. After 24 hours of aerial bombardment from F16s and helicopters, tanks, soldiers, and police had been brought into the area.
Last Saturday, they reported that a military operation with armoured vehicles was taking place in Diyarbakır district, and that the rural areas of nine villages in Nusaybin district had been declared “special security zones” for fifteen days, with no entry allowed without permission, and that military helicopters had been dispatched to the area. Less than two weeks previously, a PKK guerrilla had blown herself up in Nusaybin to avoid imminent capture by Turkish security forces.
The PKK in Iraq
The PKK are still active in Turkey –or rather active again after ending their post-earthquake, pre-election ceasefire, which had failed to elicit any response from the Turkish government. However, their main bases are in the mountains of Kurdish northern Iraq, which have served them as a safe retreat since long before the region achieved de facto autonomy in the 1990s. In May 2013, as part of Peace talks with the Turkish government, and with the agreement of Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and then Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the PKK began a total withdrawal from Turkey into these bases. However, in 2015, after President Erdoğan turned his back on the peace talks and began bombing the region, Barzani also changed his tune and demanded that the PKK leave Iraq.
These last years have seen the PKK’s mountain bases in Iraq come under relentless attack from Turkey, which has established a large and growing military network in the region. Turkey’s attacks on the PKK chime with their ambitions to control more of the former Ottoman Empire. However, this hasn’t stopped Barzani’s KDP from supporting what is effectively a Turkish invasion of their region. The KDP has been working with the Turkish military for some time, and recent reports describe them building roads to help Turkish forces penetrate the area.
Turkey’s use of drones has forced the PKK to hide in tunnels cut deep into the rock, and there have been numerous grim reports of Turkey illegally pumping chemicals into the tunnels. Even so, and despite their hugely superior resources, Turkey has not been able to get the victory that they have been looking for. The area that they are currently trying to capture, Girê Cûdî, is a place they had to withdraw from in December. The Turkish army has admitted to losing six of its soldiers this week. The PKK claim to have killed thirty-one, despite heavy Turkish bombardment.
The week began with another fatal Turkish attack on civilians in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. A bomb hit a vehicle, killing one man and wounding another, and was followed by an artillery attack on a village. Turkey has been accused of deliberately targeting civilians, and they certainly have no problem with driving away local people and creating a resentment that can be directed against the PKK. A new report by the End Cross-border Bombing Campaign estimates that since 2015 Turkey’s armed forces have killed between 113 and 140 civilians in Iraq and injured between 187 and 215 more.
On Wednesday, two more people were injured –one fatally– when their car was hit by a drone near Sulaymaniyah, but who they were is disputed; and all three occupants were killed when another Turkish drone hit their car yesterday.
Syria
In North and East Syria, where Turkey insists on treating the Autonomous Administration and its defence forces as an extension of the PKK, the Turkish military has long been targeting civilians in order to drive people away from border areas and generate insecurity. A Turkish artillery attack on village homes on Tuesday killed a woman and two of her grandchildren, aged ten and three, and injured three other members of her family. Two more people were injured in attacks on other villages on Wednesday.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have reported that, in retaliation for the murder of their fighters by a Turkish drone, they carried out an action against Turkish-backed militias that had been attacking them, killing six members of the militias but also losing one of their own fighters.
One of the many ways, besides their military attacks, that Turkey seeks to undermine the Autonomous Administration is by restricting access to water. They are doing this both by holding back much of the flow of the Euphrates and – through their mercenary militias – by shutting down the Alok pumping station that supplies water to over a million people in Hasakah. These are not hidden acts, but they have received extraordinarily little publicity for what are clearly war crimes. This week there were reports of nine pumping stations along the Euphrates being unable to function due to lack of water, and of the SDF being called in to deliver tankers of water to Hasakah.
In the parts of Syria that they have occupied, Turkey hides behind the militias that they have put in charge of daily life, but the Turkish state remains in control in the background and bears responsibility for what takes place there. Acting through local groups is standard special warfare practice.
A new report by North Press includes first-hand accounts of horrific torture in the prisons run by the Turkish-backed militias that make up the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA). The report states, “According to security sources within SNA factions in Tel Abyad [Girê Spî] and Sere Kaniye, the public and secret prisons are run by Turkish Intelligence. The factions send the detainees’ files to Turkey to check their security status. Then, some detainees are transported to Turkish territory illegally, while the remaining are subjected to the extortion of the factions to get ransom from their relatives. One of the sources noted that large numbers of detainees are not registered in the records and hence are used by the factions to get money. Most of the detainees are asylum seekers and get arrested while attempting to cross the Syrian-Turkish border. When that happens, they are tortured, abused, raped, and sexually harassed, which is considered a routine procedure within the prisons of the SNA factions.” Security sources told the report’s authors that officially registered detainees have numbered 490 since the beginning of 2023, and that all the militias act on orders from Turkish commanders. North Press was able to “confirm the names of 6 members of Turkish Intelligence and prison supervisors who oftentimes took part in interrogations, abuse, and torture of detainees.”
Turkish special warfare includes support for ISIS. Their nominal membership of the Global Coalition Against Daesh is largely a fig leaf to cover up the logistical support they have given to ISIS fighters. Even those ISIS members who have been convicted in Turkish courts can expect to see their sentences shortened and only to spend a short time in prison.
For Turkey, the Kurds are the enemy, and ISIS is a useful tool with which to attack the Kurds and to undermine the Autonomous Administration. America instrumentalised militant Islam too, notably the groups that gave rise to the Taliban, which they used in their fight against the USSR. In Turkey’s case, support is easier as the Turkish government has moved closer to ISIS in their approach to Islam and society. The continued strength of ISIS is evidenced this week by two fatal attacks on Syrian government forces. At least ten soldiers were killed in an ISIS attack on government positions in the Raqqa countryside on Monday, and on Thursday at least twenty-three soldiers were killed and ten wounded when ISIS attacked their bus in Deir ez-Zor Governorate.
Erdoğan wants to persuade all countries to treat the Kurds in Syria as a terrorist threat, and he hopes to use a rapprochement with Syrian President Assad as the basis for a joint attack on the Autonomous Administration. However, Assad has made it clear that, while he has no patience with autonomy or with the US presence in the region, any meeting with Erdoğan is dependent on Turkey withdrawing from the areas that they occupy. He told Sky News that “Terrorism in Syria is made in Turkey”, and commented, “Erdoğan’s objective in meeting me is to legitimise the Turkish occupation in Syria. Why should I and Erdogan meet? To have soft drinks?”
Also this week, USAID announced that they “will be working with civil society orgs in NE Syria to improve their strategic planning, financial & operational management & external advocacy approaches”, commenting that “A strong civil society is crucial for improving Syrians’ access to essential services.” While the immediate help will no doubt be welcome, this is another example of smoke and mirrors. The people of North and East Syria could teach USAID about civil society; they don’t need NGOisation. They do need protection from Turkish attacks, which are purposely designed to weaken that society and which America will not even expressly condemn. And, like other Syrians, they are suffering economically from US sanctions, which, though now not applied in their area, have destroyed the value of the Syrian pound.
Turkey
In Turkey itself, special warfare continues to be pursued through the courts, and notably through the travesty of the Kobanê Case, in which 108 people, including leading members of the HDP, are on trial for issuing a tweet calling on people to demonstrate in support of the city of Kobanê as it struggled against ISIS. That this can be portrayed as a criminal act, let alone one punishable by life imprisonment without parole, highlights the state’s undercover –though hardly hidden– political attack. One of the defendants observed in the court last week that ISIS is not even mentioned in the indictment.
Meanwhile, Erdoğan is accusing environmental protestors of attempting to destroy Turkey’s economy, and the earthquake clean-up shows that Turkish authorities are continuing to sacrifice lives and futures on the altar of business interests, as local communities and lands are smothered in asbestos and other pollutants. As he presides over the destruction of Turkey’s land and people, Erdoğan hides behind a higher mission, promising that Turkey will be the standard-bearer in the defence of Islam. Weaponising Islam to enhance his prestige and whip up popular hatred against his critics has become a regular Erdoğan tactic.
Iran
In Iran, public demonstrations of force are combined with more covert methods of control. As in Turkey, these include a scorched earth approach to areas of resistance. In Marivan, over 1000 hectares of forest have been destroyed in a fire that eyewitnesses claim was started by government forces. While the government was accused of doing nothing to stop the spread of the flames, a call from environmental organisation, Sebze Chya (Green Mountain), brought volunteers from across the Kurdish region. Five environmental activists have been detained by the authorities, but, by Thursday, the fire was largely under control.
Kurdish regions of Iran are deliberately deprived of economic development and sources of employment. People are forced to work as cross-border porters, or Kolbars, and the natural dangers faced by the Kolbars are magnified by attacks from Iran’s border guards. Kolbar News records that in the six years up to mid-July, 341 Kolbars were killed, and 1,003 others were injured, with 3/4 of these casualties the result of direct shootings by the Iranian military.
Öcalan
The youth organisations with which I began, and the Kurdish Freedom Movement more generally, stress the importance of ending Öcalan’s isolation. This week, four years after he was last allowed to see his lawyers, two delegates from North and East Syria presented a petition to the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) in Strasbourg and to the United Nations in Geneva, calling on them to play their part in helping to end Öcalan’s isolation and enable visits by his lawyers and his family, and to work towards his release. Their Strasbourg meeting was important for eliciting a clear response from the CPT that –contrary to rumours– they did meet with Öcalan when they visited İmralı island prison in September. On top of this, one cannot but be impressed by the scale of support for the petition. In North and East Syria, with an estimated population of around five million, it received two million signatures, which is over 60% of the adult population. We were told, and the sheer numbers bear this out, that support came from all the different ethnic communities that live in the region.
Sarah Glynn is a writer and activist – check her website and follow her on Twitter
