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Turkey's
PKK:
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Less
than a decade ago, the Kurdish Workers' Party, better known as the PKK,
constituted a formidable challenge to the Turkish state. It was able to
mount a powerful insurgency in the southeastern, predominantly Kurdish
parts of the country, carried out terrorist attacks that caused severe
damage to Turkey's crucial tourist industry, forced Turkey to commit
hundreds of thousands of soldiers to police the mountainous region. The
PKK never threatened the collapse of the Turkish state, but it certainly
defied its sovereignty. For extended periods of time in the early 1990s,
the PKK was able to deny Ankara control over significant tracts of
territory - at least after dark. As such, the PKK posed a considerable
threat to Turkey's continued existence in its present shape and borders,
and was internationally the most public face of Kurdish struggle for
statehood. Yet
by the turn of the century, the PKK was weak, retreating, and near total
defeat. It no longer seriously challenged Turkish sovereignty, was gravely
decimated in numbers, and confined to pockets in unruly Northern Iraq
where it coexisted uneasily with two stronger and hostile Kurdish groups.
Faced with an imminent Turkish invasion, its main sponsor, Syria, had been
forced to expel the PKK. Only months later, the PKK's Stalin-styled
leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was apprehended by Turkish security forces and
subsequently sentenced to death. Fearing for his life, the once-defiant Öcalan
recanted and ordered his followers to lay down their arms and leave
Turkish territory. This
drastic downturn betrays the inherent weaknesses which had always hampered
the PKK. The PKK had little appeal in predominantly agrarian Kurdish
society, enjoying at most the support of 30% of Kurds in Turkey, and far
less in Iran or Iraq. It treated the Kurdish population badly, latterly
even worse than Turkish security forces. Dissent was punished with death,
and intra-party dialogue was negligible. Powerful
backers, but no friends The
relative successes of the PKK were hence heavily determined by external
circumstances. Without direct support from first the Soviet Union and
after 1989, Syria, the PKK would have been unable to challenge Turkish
sovereignty the way it did. Equally important was the power vacuum in
Kurdish-populated northern Iraq following the Gulf war, which provided the
PKK with an anarchic - and therefore safe - base of operations against
Turkey. But Turkish military strength eventually enabled it to repeatedly
invade northern Iraq, and to force Syria to relinquish its anti-Turkish
activities. Notwithstanding, an equally compelling factor behind the PKK's
strength was the disenchantment of sections of Turkey's Kurdish population
with the stringent controls over Kurdish political activities exercised by
Ankara. The PKK clearly never commanded the loyalty of anything close to a
majority of Kurds in Turkey; but even Turkish official figures show that
over 20,000 Kurdish militants were killed during 15 years of war. This
obviously means that a larger number could be mobilized to fight in the
PKK's ranks, and that an even greater number supported or sympathized with
the movement. During
his 1999 trial, PKK leader Öcalan apologized to the Turkish people for
the PKK's 'historic mistake' of waging a war against the state, debriefed
Turkish intelligence on the organization's activities, sold out every
demand the PKK had ever made, and urged his followers to lay down their
arms. To most observers, it was obvious that Öcalan was simply trying to
save his own life. Yet amazingly, the PKK followed his orders, even
unconditionally surrendering two detachments to Turkish authorities. The
PKK went through a severe crisis, with simmering dissent in the rank and
file against the sell-out by its cherished leader. To the chagrin of his
followers, Öcalan's behavior corroborated Turkish Prime Minister Bülent
Ecevit's analysis: while his followers fought in the mountains, Öcalan
lived well in Damascus, "not even moving his hand from hot to cold
water". Yet the PKK leadership, true to Öcalan, managed to retain
control over the organization - but at the cost of a significant and
growing split within it. Today
the PKK is weak: its troops are
demoralized, and the chain of command is unclear, since orders from the
top, ironically, may even be drafted by the Turkish chiefs of
staff and handed to Öcalan. The Turkish military refused to stop its
offensive, even as the PKK declared a unilateral cease-fire and withdrew
into northern Iraq. Perhaps as Ankara had intended, this brought dissent
within the PKK to the boiling point. The commander of the 'Tunceli
brigade', codenamed Kazim, openly disobeyed Öcalan's orders and refused
to withdraw his forces. The PKK's ruling body, the Presidential Council,
responded by dealing harshly with any dissent, incarcerating and executing
members for criticizing the leadership, including an assassination in
Europe. While
the PK is no longer a serious threat to the Turkish state, divisions
within the organization are a mixed blessing for Ankara. Whereas a divided
PKK is a lesser threat, it also creates uncontrollable splinter groups
that do not obey Öcalan's orders, and that carry out terrorist acts in
western Turkey no matter what the Presidential Council orders. Down,
but not out Thanks
to the strong indoctrination of its followers and ample use of repressive
measures by the leadership, the PKK seems to have survived as an
organization. However, Turkey's failure to issue an amnesty for former
fighters also make it difficult to reduce the PKK's base, and although
recruitment is low, the PKK retains up to 4,000 fighters. Given the
prevailing sense of defeat and betrayal among the rank and file, many of
these could be successfully reintegrated in society if given a chance. Furthermore,
the Turkish government has failed to significantly improve conditions in
the poor and war-ravaged southeast. An ambitious program directing
investment to the region was announced in 1999. However, IMF regulations
have impeded its working, and the recent economic crisis in Turkey casts
doubt on whether such measures can be sustained. Meanwhile,
Turkey has resisted internal and external pressure (mainly from the
European Union) to grant cultural rights to Kurds. The issue of television
broadcasting and education in Kurdish has created tensions within the
ruling coalition, with Prime Minister Ecevit's Democratic Left Party and
the center-right Motherland Party looking favorably upon granting such
rights - not as a direct concession to Kurds specifically, but through a
general liberalization of legislation. The Nationalist Movement Party, on
the other hand, adamantly opposes such steps and terms them divisive and
threatening to Turkish society's unity and integrity. Moreover, the
largest legal party identified with Kurdish rights, the People's Democracy
Party (HADEP), is regularly harassed on suspicion of links to the PKK. This
implies that the factors that created a domestic environment amenable to
the PKK's emergence in the 1970s and 1980s still prevails. However, issues
related to Kurdish cultural rights are now openly debated. Leading
political figures, including somewhat surprisingly the head of the
secretive National Intelligence Organization (Milli Istihbarat Teskilati -
MIT), have spoken out in favor of Kurdish-language television. Meanwhile,
a low-intensity conflict goes on in areas of southeastern Turkey. Besides
Tunceli, where a PKK presence is known, clashes have occurred repeatedly
in the border provinces of Sirnak and Hakkari. At
the same time, the PKK is likely to pursue its stated aim of transforming
itself into a political movement, following the Palestine Liberation
Oganisation (PLO) model. Given a few years, the PKK may be able to build
up a political identity in certain European states where memory is short,
leftist forces and anti-Turkish attitudes are strong, and where the
atrocities the PKK committed are forgotten. Achilles
heal To
do away with the PKK threat once and for all, Turkey needs to act
decisively to address the dissatisfaction rife in the southeast. The
military has a significantly better relationship with the population than
was the case in the mid-1990s, but the region's socio-economic need to
remain high on Ankara's agenda. Restrictions on freedom of expression
should also be lifted. The creation of state-controlled or state-monitored
television broadcasts in Kurdish may actually benefit the state by
creating an audience for the state among the population that now only
watches the PKK mouthpiece Medya TV, which broadcasts via satellite from
Europe. Whereas Kurdish in schools is unrealistic, it is feasible that
private institutions will be allowed to teach Kurdish languages and
culture. Should Turkey take these steps, it will have done much to remove
the base of PKK support. Turkey has already defeated the PKK militarily but such means are unlikely to destroy the organisation, given that the PKK now relies on activities in Iraq, Iran, and various European countries for its survival. To prevent the specter of separatist terrorism from once again threatening the country, Ankara now needs to undercut the PKK's possible support base through economic and political means, while it pursues its presently successful diplomatic efforts against it.
Svante Cornell |
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