Sherdan Bircan
& Simon Cunich
Clashes between the Turkish army and People's Defence Force (HPG) guerrillas — the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a long battle for Kurdish self-determination — have reached a highpoint since the PKK announced an end to its unilateral ceasefire last October. This has come as the Turkish government has intensified its political and military campaign against the PKK.
A report released by the HPG on July 31 highlighted the hypocrisy of the Turkish government's stance on Israel's war against Lebanon: "On the one hand Turkey is criticizing Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Palestine, and on the other preparing to follow Israel's example by entering Southern Kurdistan [northern Iraq]."
Following the killing of 13 Turkish soldiers in a July 15 PKK attack, the Turkish cabinet and the Higher Anti-Terror Board held extensive discussions to plan an offensive against the organisation. Two days after the attack, justice minister Cemil Cicek reaffirmed Ankara's position: "The [PKK] is a terrorist organisation and every country has the authority and the right to fight against terrorism."
Turkish government officials signalled plans for cross-border operations in northern Iraq against PKK camps, calling on the US and Iraqi governments to take stronger action against the PKK to avoid such an incursion. Cicek said: "We expect Iraq to take the necessary precautions to prevent possible attacks against Turkey, and the US to help Iraq in this sense."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on July 5 that Washington "will work very actively with Turkey and also with the new Iraqi government to deal with [the PKK] because, as I have said before and as I said when I was in Turkey, no-one wants the PKK to be able to operate, to carry out terrorist attacks against Turkey anywhere, but most especially from northern Iraq".
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, secretary-general of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has joined these calls, saying that "Iraq will do its best to prevent the PKK from organising attacks on Turkey from the Iraqi territories".
But while the Turkish government is pressing forward with diplomatic negotiations, its military is massing thousands of troops along the Iraqi border. According to the Turkish online newspaper Zaman, the number of Turkish troops deployed in the country's south-east near the Iraqi border has recently been increased to 200,000.
On August 3, PKK central committee member Cemil Bayik said that the PKK "will not be crushed with cross-border operations". Bayik said there will "only be a solution" when Turkey "accepts the self-determination of the Kurdish people".
The HPG report stated that in July, 65 operations were carried out against the guerrillas — 53 by the Turkish army, seven by the Iranian army, and five jointly by Turkish and Iranian forces. HPG guerrillas carried out 65 retaliation operations, killing 32 Iranian soldiers and 120 members of the Turkish armed forces. Twelve HPG guerillas were killed in July.
Bayik said that "Turkey has fairly difficult problems and they know it. Economic problems, social contradictions, political contradictions are intense and, once more, Turkey's problems with Europe, Cyprus and partly [the] US are the main lines of the crisis ... and our struggle aggravates the situation. Instead of solving these problems with a democratic solution for Kurdistan they concentrate on the elimination of the Kurdish liberation movement."
The PKK represents the 29th uprising and the longest period of struggle since the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923. The PKK was formed as a Marxist-Leninist organisation in 1978 by political science student Abdullah Ocalan.
The PKK, aiming to create an independent Kurdish state, began an armed struggle against Turkey on August 15, 1984. During the subsequent conflict with Turkey around 40,000 people were killed. More than 5000 Kurdish villages have been destroyed and 2 million Kurdish refugees have been forced to flee their homes.
Between 1993 and 2005, the PKK announced a series of unilateral ceasefires, at the same time changing its strategy to a struggle for democratic rights of the Kurdish people. In response, the Turkish state has maintained the line that Turkey will not negotiate with "terrorists" and refused to respect the ceasefires or meet the demands of the PKK.
There are currently 3000 Kurdish political prisoners in Turkish jails, including Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence. Charges have been laid recently against members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) for publicly condemning the ongoing violence against the PKK and Kurdish peace activists, including the killing by Turkish police of 20 activists at anti-war demonstrations this year.