Sarah Glynn
As Turkish forces bombard the mountains of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and set light to harvest-ready fields in North and East Syria, and speculation continues about a possible deal between Presidents Erdoğan and Assad at the expense of the Kurds, destruction of Kurdish identity can be seen as the central pillar of Turkish politics. Before looking at these latest attacks, I want to step back and examine how and why this has come about.
100 years of prejudice
Modern Turkey was born out of the defeat of the old Ottoman Empire, and the subsequent war against the triumphant European powers. It inherited the wounded pride of a former empire and a nationalist resistance to European imperialisms. The genocides of those wars are in its foundations: anti-Christian genocides against the Armenians and Assyrians in the atmosphere of distrust and land-grabbing of the First World War, and against the Greek population of Smyrna (now İzmir) at the end of the war with Greece. After the formal creation of the Turkish Republic by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Muslim unity was replaced by modern secular Turkish ethnic nationalism.
Like most states, and with an especial harshness, Turkey built internal support and unity through patriotic identification with the dominant culture; and Kurds found themselves expected to forget their own culture and language as members of a new nation state defined by Turkishness. For a century, Kurds in Turkey have been under unrelenting and often brutal pressure to assimilate. Those who refuse to be Turks become the enemy “other”, and fulfil the useful role of a scapegoat who can be blamed for state failures.
Resistance to assimilation took on new strength with the founding of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which began – in 1978 – as a Marxist-Leninist liberation movement, before developing a vision for non-statist autonomy and direct democracy. The PKK took up weapons because the Turkish state punished any attempt at change through political means. The support that they were able to build up in the Kurdish community was a testament not only to their dedication and organisation, but also to the extent to which the Kurds were oppressed.
In response, the state didn’t just attack the PKK guerrillas, they applied collective punishment to the whole Kurdish community – which strengthened Kurdish support for the PKK resistance. In the worst period, in the 1990s, over a thousand Kurds disappeared in extra-judicial killings, and thousands of Kurdish villages were burnt down, forcing their inhabitants to leave the Kurdish regions.
Both before and after the capture and imprisonment of their leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999, the PKK has tried to seek a solution through peaceful negotiation that would allow Kurds to live with dignity. Despite some openings, the Turkish state has not allowed this to happen, just as they have not allowed pro-Kurdish politicians to do their job unmolested. Talks in 2013-15 provided a window of hope, but after Erdoğan witnessed the growing support for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party within Turkey, and the success of Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria, he reverted to treating the Kurds as an enemy that has to be eliminated by brute force. The extinction of the PKK and of all groups following Öcalan’s ideas, and the crushing of every display of Kurdish culture, has become a rallying cry for government supporters, reinforced by Erdoğan’s alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
All Turkish governments have been ethnic nationalist and anti-Kurd. Erdoğan has given that nationalism a new Islamic dimension. The majority of Kurds are practising Muslims, but the Kurdish Freedom Movement’s stand against traditional oppression, especially of women, has been used to portray them as outside the Islamic fold. When Erdoğan rallies support by appealing to religion and to socially conservative family values, the Kurds become a useful ‘other’ against whom the government can divert people’s anger and frustration over increasingly difficult living conditions.
Despite Erdoğan’s populist rhetoric, the majority of Turkish citizens are struggling to make ends meet, while the president and his friends enjoy conspicuous wealth. A long economic crisis, in which incomes have fallen well behind inflation and people have been forced to live on credit, has now been compounded by the conventional medicine of high interest rates. Distraction from economic woes has become central to government survival.
National unity can be further strengthened by war against an external outsider, and the Kurds fill that role too. Ironically, the massive financial cost of Turkey’s wars in Syria and Iraq are exacerbating the country’s economic difficulties, increasing the government’s reliance on patriotic distraction and anti-Kurdish scapegoating.
In their wars against the Kurds in Iraq and in Syria, Turkey is responding to irredentist ambitions that date back to the foundation of the Turkish Republic. The National Pact (Misak-ı Milli), of 1919-20, claimed sovereignty over all land inhabited by a “Muslim Ottoman majority” by which was included Kurds as well as Turks. Many Turkish nationalists would like to reverse the concessions agreed at Lausanne and reinstate some form of Turkish control in northern Syria and Iraq, in line with Misak-ı Milli demands. Turkish imperialist ambitions are pursued under the guise of defending Turkey against “Kurdish terrorism”. Foreign Minister, Yaşar Güler, reiterated in an interview with Politico on Monday that Turkey is “fully determined to create a 30-40 km deep security corridor along our Iraqi and Syrian borders and to completely clear the region of terrorists”.
Kurds provide a focus of hate through their refusal to become Turks, but the Kurdish Freedom Movement has also been targeted for propagating socialist ideas and an alternative to capitalism. As in so many other countries, the United States has been ready to help. America assisted in the creation of covert state organisations dedicated to disrupting any move against the establishment, and they supported the growth of far-right groups, such as the Grey Wolves who have been responsible for the deaths of many Kurds and leftists. Together with their European friends, America has supplied many of the weapons used against the Kurds. They have given Turkey political cover for their attacks by accepting Turkey’s branding of the PKK as terrorists and turning a blind eye to the realities of Turkey’s campaign of Kurdish extinction.
The extent to which these policies have succeeded in imbuing Turkish society with xenophobic Turkish nationalism was on very public display last Sunday, when Turkish football supporters filled the Berlin stadium with Grey-Wolf hand gestures at the UEFA Cup quarter final against the Netherlands. This has been described as the equivalent of a team’s supporters making the Nazi sieg heil, and viewed as another example of the normalisation of fascism. It followed international outcry and a two-match ban after one of the Turkish players had made the Grey Wolf sign at the team’s previous match. On Sunday, the supporters’ Grey Wolf signs also doubled as a middle finger to the European authorities who had criticised this display of Turkish national chauvinism, and whose criticism had prompted Erdoğan to cancel other engagements and attend the match in person.
Of course, Erdoğan and Turkey are far from alone in exploiting ethnic nationalism, or even fascism. Their populist appeal is increasingly evident across the world. Rather than make changes that would allow everyone to benefit from a more equal society, elites have always resorted to promoting patriotism and prejudice and the well-worn tactic of divide and rule. The crisis of capitalism, and the success with which America has extinguished every flicker of a socialist alternative, have resulted in governments relying increasingly on authoritarianism and right-wing populism to control restive and unhappy populations. The Turkish example is brutal, but it doesn’t illicit much international response because governments are driven by interests not ethics, and other governments also follow similar practices, if not always to such a cruel extent. As we can see in the response to the vote for the Nouveau Front Populaire here in France, what really gets elites worried is any sort of left group getting within a whiff of power.
Turkey in Iraq
But to return to where I began, in Iraq. Since mid-June, and especially since early this month, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has come under unprecedented attack from the Turkish military, who, in the words of a PKK commander, speaking to al Monitor, “are using every weapon in their arsenal”. Hundreds of armed vehicles and thousands of soldiers have been brought into the region. Last Sunday, the Community Peacemaker Teams NGO reported that the Turkish army was occupying a further strip of land that extended 15km from the Turkish border, and had set up seven new military bases – making a total of 71. They had displaced villagers from at least 162 villages, and their bombardments had burnt 2,000 hectares of agricultural land.
This has been made possible by the active assistance of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which controls the northern part of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Barzani family, who dominate the KDP, have always acted ruthlessly in their own interests, and in recent years they have decided that this means acting in complicity with the Turkish state. The assistance of KDP peshmerga has become increasingly important, and there is now no attempt to hide their involvement. Can Acun, of Turkey’s pro-government think tank, SETA, told TRT News, “At the moment, while the Turkish army is advancing, we see that the peshmerga are giving us more logistical support.” And he spoke of the KDP evacuating villages. The PKK’s Duran Kalkan, who describes Turkey’s operation as “de facto annexation”, has highlighted that Turkey has been able to manoeuvre easily through roads that are under Iraqi and KDP control.
Turkey’s aim is to cut off and isolate the PKK guerrillas in different pockets, but the PKK are putting up a fierce defence, including counter attacks on Turkish positions. They claim to have shot down a Turkish helicopter on Wednesday, and have also brought down Turkish drones, and they now have some drones of their own. Amed Dicle observes that the fighting is expected to go on for months.
Dicle also compares the village evacuations to the clearances in North Kurdistan/southeast Turkey in the 1990s. Local people have been describing the loss of their homes and livelihoods. One elderly man observed, “I have lost ten members of my family. Don’t I have the right to cry?”
As if this were not trouble enough, there has been a further report of Turkey bringing in former jihadi mercenaries from Syria. Sepi Media has published the names and photographs of over 400 former members of ISIS who have been trained by Turkey and are expected to be deployed to fight Turkey’s war in Iraq.
At the same time, a presumed Turkish attack on the Yazidi area of Şengal, has destroyed a car carrying journalists, wounding four people, one of them fatally.
It is widely believed that Turkey’s invasion was facilitated by Erdoğan’s discussions with Iraq and the KDP when he visited Bagdad in April. Certainly, the Iraqi government, which can actually do very little, was initially silent in the face of this major breach of Iraqi sovereignty, but on Wednesday, the Iraqi News Agency reported that Iraq’s National Security Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, had affirmed their “rejection of the Turkish incursion” and the need for Turkey to “adhere to the principles of good neighbourliness and diplomatically engage with the Iraqi government for any security-related matters”. A government delegation has been dispatched to the Kurdistan Region.
In America, a government spokesperson has reiterated that the US “urged” Turkey to coordinate with the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to protect civilians, but he evaded further questions. Perhaps, the Newsweek op-ed by the wife of Iraq’s Prime Minister can make Americans take a bit more notice. (By convention, Iraq’s prime minister is a member of Iraq’s other Kurdish Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).)
Turkey in Syria
This week has seen widely divergent speculation over a possible reconciliation between Turkey and Syria. Erdoğan would like the two countries to come together to attack the Kurds and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria which the Kurds founded, and he has been talking up the prospect of improved relations. The sticking point has always been Assad’s insistence that Turkey must first commit to a programme for withdrawal from the Syrian lands they have occupied.
On Monday, Ibrahim Hamidi, Editor in Chief of al Majalla, confidently asserted that Assad had dropped this precondition, and that the two countries were in secret talks planning a joint attack against the Autonomous Administration’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Others remained more sceptical, and Syria’s pro-government Al-Watan noted that Erdoğan’s statements have avoided mention of Turkey’s occupation. He has ignored Syrian demands for Turkey to announce plans for withdrawal, and also demands that Turkey be explicit when talking about terrorist groups, and Al-Watan concluded that “Ankara does not seem prepared to meet these demands.” Asharq Al-Awsat quoted sources in Damascus, who stated that the Syrian-Turkish issue remains unresolved.
Meanwhile, Turkey is continuing their low intensity war against North and East Syria, with the aim of making life there impossible. They hope not only to prevent the Autonomous Administration from putting into practice their progressive social programme, but to turn people against the authorities, and to force the inhabitants to leave the region. A new article by Henri Sulku in Turning Point outlines the many facets of Turkey’s cruel and illegal war, and especially the use of ecocide. Besides restricting essential water flows and destroying essential infrastructure, Turkey is setting fire to crops just as they are due to be harvested. This destructive practice was earlier employed by ISIS, but Turkey and their mercenaries have carried on the attacks.
Inside Turkey
The army also carries out operations within Turkey itself, in the Kurdish regions where the PKK operates. Areas are put under blockade, which severely curtails residents’ daily lives even before any military action. A village in Batman district has just emerged from a fifteen-day blockade and military bombardment of the surrounding area. Many houses were raided, and people were beaten and detained. In addition, crops are now desiccated or burnt. Another operation has just started in Nusaybin district.
The newly appointed Governor of Diyarbakir – the de facto Kurdish capital – is the former Governor of Van, who, as a notoriously corrupt Trustee, sold off municipal land, sacked hundreds of workers, and left the municipality in debt. Kurds holding wedding celebrations in Çukurca in Hakkâri have been forced to display a Turkish flag. And the contempt felt for the Kurds has been demonstrated by a report that Kurdish Covid patients were used as guinea pigs for trying out a new potential treatment that had not undergone tests in the lab and that appears, in some cases, to have been fatal.
Turkey’s toxic legacy
Even if, peace talks were to start tomorrow – talks that the PKK has long been calling for – a century of prejudice, and decades of war, will poison the region for a long time to come. Turkey’s war against the Kurds has polluted people’s minds as well as the region’s earth and water. It has destroyed physical structures and human communities. Their deliberate defiling of the Kurdish landscape will continue to impact the region’s ecology, while ethnic cleansing and demographic change may sow the seeds of future conflicts. The promotion of jihadi mercenaries has enabled a gangster culture that will not be easily vanquished, and the general instability provides fertile soil for the reemergence of ISIS or the emergence of similar groups.
While we always hope that other countries will put positive pressure on Turkey, concern not to upset a state so strategically placed between East and West has led to many leaders bowing to Turkish wishes. This has a corroding impact on those other countries’ politics and judicial independence.
In Serbia, Turkish pressure resulted in the illegal detention for three years of Kurdish activist Ecevit Piroğlu. Piroğlu played a significant part in the Gezi protests and later fought against ISIS in Rojava. In June 2021 he flew to Serbia and asked for asylum, but instead he was arrested in response to an Interpol red notice issued by Turkey. Although the Serbian courts eventually ruled against extradition, the Serbian authorities kept him locked up in a mixture of prison and detention centres. This week, after a prolonged international campaign – and weakened by two long hunger strikes – he was finally freed from the detention centre having reached the 180-day limit. He was told he must leave the country straight away, and wants to go to Brazil, but there are no direct flights and transit countries won’t give him a visa. So, he remains in political limbo. A personal nightmare and a metaphor, perhaps, for todays’ politics.
Sarah Glynn is a writer and activist – check her website and follow her on Twitter
