Fréderike Geerdink
Turkey’s president Erdoğan visited Baghdad and Erbil last week, you won’t have missed it. One of the topics at the table was the construction of the so-called ‘Development Road’, meant to enhance trade between the Gulf Region and Turkey via Iraq. The road logically runs through Kurdistan. Although the road has obvious economic purposes, Turkey doesn’t build roads through Kurdistan for ‘development’. Roads in Kurdistan built by Turkey are meant to enhance occupation.
Shall we check history? You know when Turkey built ‘development roads’ in Kurdistan too? In the early 1930s, in Dersim. The rugged region, mostly inhabited by Alevi Kurds, needed to be ‘civilized’, a euphemism for ‘force into submission’. The Kurds of Dersim were not complying with the new state, founded in 1923 but held on to their autonomy, much to the anger of Atatürk and his government.
Central power
And of course, you can’t bring ‘civilization’ without roads and bridges to bring in the troops that have to do the dirty work. Turkey started to build those in 1935/1936, a few years after Atatürk took the decision to violently bring Dersim under control. It was the last of the Kurdish lands that had not been forced to obey central power, a process that had started during the second half of the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire started to disintegrate.
Dersim – renamed Tunceli (Bronze Fist) in 1934 – had been spared so far, maybe because it was not at the borders of the empire, maybe because the terrain was so rugged and the population big but scattered over countless villages and hamlets. But eventually, it was Dersim’s turn. The local leaders, led by Seyid Riza, knew it. They resisted, but eventually turned in their weapons to try to avoid what was inevitable. In the Dersim massacres of 1937 and 1938, an estimated 20,000 tot 30,000 people were killed.
‘Peace process’
You know when Turkey also started to build roads? In June 2013, a few months after the so-called ‘peace process’ had started between the PKK and the state. The building of military infrastructure – not just roads but also fortified gendarmerie stations – was one of the earliest signs that the state was in no way sincere in this ‘peace process’.
Dam projects in Bakur (Kurdistan in Turkey) are often also part of Turkey’s military infrastructure. Many people believe their purpose is to provide the region with energy, but citizens all over Bakur will laugh in your face when you tell them that because if the state cared about bringing electricity to the citizens, they wouldn’t be cut off from it on a near daily basis for a few hours despite all the ‘investments’. The dams and dam lakes flood roads the PKK uses to get from A to B, that’s the purpose
Train track
Roads and other structures that Turkey builds in Kurdish lands are, in other words, never meant for development, they are meant for occupation. The route of the ‘Development Road’ – a highway but also a train track – through Kurdistan is no exception.
Because why isn’t the Habur border gate expanded so it can be used for the new road too? Why go from Mosul to Rabia at the Syrian border and then to a new border gate at Ovaköy? Easy: the distance from Ovaköy to Iraq proper is only a few kilometres and well within the 30 to 40 km strip of land that Turkey wants to occupy. This is not the case when you go from Mosul via Kurdistan’s Duhok to Zakho. So the road will isolate the Kurdistan Region in different ways.
Grace
Important is that the Fishkabur border gate between the Kurdistan Region and Syria (Rojava, to be precise) will be cut off from the rest of the Kurdistan Region, leaving it to Turkey’s grace whether it can be used or not. The road to Rabia goes through disputed territory between Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, and Rabia is on the way to Sinjar (Şengal), where Turkey is trying to expand its influence because it believes there are ‘terrorists’ active there. The road can of course be used to transport troops and military equipment.
This is all very practical for the war Turkey is waging against the PKK. Turkish media already write that the ‘Development Road’ will be a ‘barrier against terrorism’ and have the map ready on which that part of the Kurdistan Region is already Iraq. But it also enhances its efforts to further weaken the Kurdistan Region, a goal that is always high on the agenda of the central Iraqi authorities in Baghdad as well – Saddam may be dead, the dream to submit Kurdistan never died with him.
Mountains
That makes it even more cynical that Erdoğan also visited Erbil and was welcomed there with open arms. The Barzani clan that runs the KDP cooperates with Erdoğan and contributes to its own demise. For the PKK, which is entrenched in the mountains there and engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish army assisted by KDP peshmerga, it is different. It could very well be that the guerrilla group will try to sabotage the construction of the road.
If it does, please don’t believe reports that the organisation is attacking ‘civilian infrastructure’ and ‘hampers economic development’. A main purpose of the road is part of Turkey’s political and military strategy to destroy Kurdistan. The PKK’s goal is to hinder that.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/fgeerdink or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan https://frederikegeerdink.com/expert-kurdistan/.
