Kurdish conflict: now in europe ?
The 19/10/2011 a major attack by the PKK, the Kurdish revolutionary organisation at war with the Turkish state since 1984, killed 24 soldiers and wounded 18 more in a series of coordinated actions in Hakkari province involving 100 assailants against 8 military posts.
The indignation in Turkey was echoed by a string of demonstrations in Europe. In several cities, protests held by Turkish immigrants turned in outright confrontations between Turks and Kurds, requiring the intervention of police. Fights erupted in Berlin, Basel and Paris, while in Hamburg, Hagen, Amsterdam and Mulhouse Turkish nationalists attacked Kurdish cultural centres, which they say harbour sympathies for the PKK (www.ekurd.net 24/10/2011 “Kurds around Europe attacked by Turkish fascist groups”; www.thelocal.fr 31/10/2011 “police fire tear gas as Turks and Kurds clash”). In Arnhem a Turkish mosque was subjected to an arson attack, attributed to PKK sympathisers (www.ekurd.net 26/10/2011 “Amsterdam: fears of violence after Turkish rioters attack Kurdish centre”). The PKK’s press agency ANF, cited by www.ekurd.net, accuses the Turkish consulates in Europe to orchestrate the troubles.
Those events may be spectacular but it is not the first time Europe becomes a secondary battlefield of the multi-faced Kurdish conflict.
At the beginning of 2010, Ankara’s AKP government’s controversial “Kurdish initiative” (a series of measures towards the Kurdish population, aiming at detaching it from the PKK and so cutting the organisation from its support base) was looking to be failing (www.thedailybeast.com 06/11/2011 “A civil war revived”, Owen Matthews). As a result, the Turkish state switched to the military option - so vindicating the PKK claims that the “Kurdish initiative” was merely a civilian complement to the Turkish army’s anti-guerrilla campaign, rather than a sincere attempt to integrate Kurds into the Turkish modern society.
A plan to asphyxiate the PKK in its bases in northern Iraq’s Kandil mountains was established with the Syrian and Iranian regimes, themselves willing to crush Kurdish dissent on their own territories. But prior to any all out offensive, Turkey gained the help of the western democracies to carry out strikes against the PKK net in Europe.
The PKK, considered as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, has built an extensive and efficient support net among the Kurdish diaspora. Its cadres raise money, recruit volunteers, and establish structures relaying the party’s action inside the Kurdish immigration, being able to mobilise crowds in huge demonstrations (www.mesop.de 11/11/2011 “PKK to raise power in Germany, report says” - from a Hurriyet article). In February and march 2010, coordinated police raids took place in Belgium, Italy, and France, dismantling clandestine indoctrination camps and fundraising operations (www.rudaw.net 17/04/2011 “Dutch intelligence gets tough with PKK”). Was targeted as well the PKK powerfull TV station Roj TV, since regularly subjected to attempts to close it down, notably in Germany and Denmark.
Since then pressure has been maintained on the PKK European net. Cultural centres affiliated to the organisation have been investigated, sometimes closed, while PKK cadres have been sent to courts, under the accusation of raising funds for a terrorist group (www.ekurd net 20/09/2011 “French police arrest several alleged PKK militants”; www.todayszaman.com 05/06/2011 “France detains three alleged PKK members”; www.mesop.de 20/07/2011 “Two alleged Kurdish PKK members arrested in Germany”; www.todayszaman.com 01/11/2011 “Paris court to conclude extortion case against PKK suspects on dec.2”).
In the meanwhile the military offensive against the PKK gerrilas developed in a movement of encirclement, taking all its amplitude when Iran launched, in march 2011, a sustained and relentless attack on the PKK-aligned PJAK. Turkey and Iran officialised their military cooperation in October (The Independent 22/10/2011 “Turkey and Iran unite to fight Kurdish rebels”), while Iran, not unlike Turkey, wages its own war against Kurdish opponents in Europe as well. It demanded to the German government the extradition of Haji Ahmadi, the PJAK chairman, who lives in exile in Germany (www.payvand.com 24/07/2011 “Germany urged to hand over PJAK chief to Iran”). Haji Ahmadi in the same time claims that the Iranian secret services wanted to assassinate him (English.rojhelat.eu 12/05/2011 “Iran pressures Iraq to crack down on Kurds”; “Iran attempts to assassinate PJAK’s leader”). Not an unreasonable concern: in 1989 Dr Ghassemlou, the PDK-I chairman, another Iranian Kurd opposition party, was killed in Vienna by Iranian agents. Three years later his successor Sarek Sharafkandi was killed in Germany by another Iranian hit squad. Years sooner, in France, it was Chapour Bakthyar, a Shah former prime minister, who was assassinated under the nose of the French police.
And with the Syrian uprising, a new dimension has been added to the conflict.
Syria has itself its own PKK-like organisation, the PYD, well established amongst Syrian Kurds: until 1999 the al-Assad regime allowed and even encouraged the PKK to run training camps and recruit on its territory - until Turkey threatened with a military intervention, and the rebels were expelled.
Syria then became a valuable ally of the Turks in their campaign against the PKK. Common “military exercices” took place along the Syrian-Turkish border ( wwww.globaliamagazine.com “Why Erdogan can’t let Assad down” 30/03/2011, Jacques Couvas), while PKK members seized in Syria were systematically deported to Turkey.
In the same time repression intensified against the PYD. A lot of its senior members, including Saleh Muslim, its present chairman, have been arrested and tortured. In January 2011 two of its militants were killed in an army ambush, igniting well organised riots in Damascus and Aleppo, reminding those taking place in Turkey in support of the PKK. Several police vehicles were set alight, and the clashes were followed by house-to-house searches by the security forces, in what looks retrospectively like a grim, small-scale rehearsal of today’s violence all across the country ( www.kurdishaspect.com “unrest in Syria after two kurds are killed by security forces” 26/01/2011).
But now confronted to a near civil war, the Syrian dictatorship keeps its army away from the Kurdish provinces. In counterpart the Kurds, anyway fearing being marginalised by an Arab opposition they often see as pawns in the hands of the Turks, do not join the general uprising. But can they stay away from the violence tearing off Syria? Furious at Ankara’s meddling in its internal troubles, the Syrian regime ominously hinted it could bring back its support to the insurgency in south-eastern Turkey. “We have religious and ethnic differences, so has Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey”, said president al-Assad.
And the Syrian Kurds from all tendencies fear to see a PKK presence, real or imagined, being used as an excuse for a Turkish military intervention, of which they would be the first victims.
The Syrian Kurds are so caught between Turkey and Syria, between the al-Baath and the opposition. And already the tremors of this new addition to the Kurdish conflict are felt in Europe. Following the assassination of Mishal Tamo, leader of the Kurdish party Future Movement, Kurd demonstrators stormed the Syrian embassy in Vienna( www.ekurd.net “Kurdish demo in Austria calls for an end of Syrian regime” 12/10/2011).
Given the intensification of the operations against Kurdish insurgent, wherever in Turkey or Iran, or the uprising in Syria, one can expect Europe to witness more demonstrations, more unrest among the expatriate communities involved in the conflict. PKK militants already launched some media operations, briefly occupying the premises of a German TV station (www.todayszaman.com 28/09/2011 “PKK sympathisers storm German TV, Westerwelle strongly condemns”), and those of the British newspaper The Guardian to protest against the lack of coverage about the Kurdish conflict. And, the 23/11/2011, the occupation by Kurdish militants of the Strasbourg offices of the Committee for Prevention of Torture turned in a confrontation with French police, resulting in arrests (www.mesop.de 24/11/2011 “Kurds attacked in Strasbourg, arrests and wounded”).
jeudi 24 novembre 2011
mercredi 16 novembre 2011
The PYD: "Yes to democratic change, no to foreign interference!"
Will the syrian uprising ignite the Kurdish powderkeg? Syria counts a sizeable Kurdish population, marginalised by the successive military regime having ruled syria since the independence, including the present days al Ba'ath regime. It is so surprising to see that, while the rest of Syria is torn by violence, the Kurdish populated provinces are remaining conspicuously quiet.
"It's a tactical choice", are saying representatives for the PYD, a syrian kurd opposition party whose radical agenda and close links to the revolutionary PKK made it a prominent enemy of the regime. "There is a de facto truce between the kurds and the government. The security forces are overstretched over Syria's arab provinces to face demonstrators, and can not afford the oppening of a second front in Syrian Kurdistan. On our side, we need the army to stay away. Our party is busy establishing organisations, committees, able to take over from the al-Ba'ath administration at the moment the regime will collapse."
Reports say that to enforce this truce, their cells in Afrin and Kobane stopped some Kurdish activists to organise demonstrations. They claim that all their efforts are about maintaining calm to avoid a bloodbath. (about those allegations, and the PYD’s chairman Saleh Muslim answer, see the KurdWatch interview edited by www.ekurd.net “Turkey’s henchmen in Syrian Kurdistan are responsible for the unrest here” http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/11/syriakurd383.htm ) They have been, they say "advising youth to remain peaceful". "An open confrontation with the dictatorship would be disastrous. Our people would become military target, not only for the army but also for some militias made of arab settlers present in our provinces. The demonstrations would be turned in an ethnic conflict the government would use at his advantage. As well, amongst the arab opposition, some groups do not accept us Kurds as equal citizens. They want to keep Syria an Arab homeland, where minorities are kept in a state of submission. We need to build our strength to be able to deal with them on an equal basis at the fall of the regime."
Hence the truce then. But the assassination, the 07/10/2011, of Mishal Tamo, leader of the Kurdish Future Movement party, could compromise everyone's calculations. At his funerals in his hometown of Qamishli (where took place a massacre of demonstrators the 12/03/2004), 50000 mourners went to the streets, accusing the state secret police to have killed the opponent. They were fired at by police - estimates are that between 2 and 5 were killed, countless others wounded. Reports from inside the town say police deployed around hospitals to prevent people to give blood for the victims.
The murder, and its potentially disastrous consequences, have infuriated the Turks. Their decades-long war against the PKK resumed with a new intensity at the end of the winter. They have been, during the past couple of years, aiming at encircling the insurgents in the mountains in Qandil, in Northern Iraq, acting alongside Iran, itself engaged in an offensive against the PKK-aligned PJAK. They gained the support of the Western democracies, which consider the PKK as a terrorist organisation, and launched in march 2010 a series of coordinated police raids in Belgium, Italy and France to break the PKK support net in europe. They enlisted Syria in this all-out offensive, organising common "military exercises" in april 2010 (http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=1165), and enticing the Syrian government to step up its repression against the PKK sympathisers present on its territory. But the relations between the two governments soured since the start of the Syrian uprising in march 2011. With Mishal Tamo's assassination, the Turks fear to see turmoil reaching Syrian Kurdistan, and the PKK seize the opportunity to implant itself there with the help of the PYD. Until 1999, the Syrian government allowed the PKK to run training camps on its territory. It was an opportunity to wage a proxy war against Turkey, with which it had tense relations then, while sending the more combative amongst the Kurds to get themselves killed on a foreign battlefield. It was something normal for a young Kurd to join the organisation, very popular at the time. It is estimated there are today around 1500 Syrians in the PKK's army, and it is not unusual, when entering a Kurdish household in Qamishli, to find a portrait of a family membre who left to fight as a gerrila. One so understands Turkey's nervousness, thinking about the 800 km of border it shares with its southern neighbour, doted with Kurdish villages it sees as as many potential PKK outposts.
But for the PYD, changing Syrian Kurdistan in a second Qandil is not an option. "It is not in our agenda, and it would be very difficult from a practical point of view", says Zuhat Kobani, a PYD representative. "But more, a PKK presence in Syria would mean a Turkish military strike, which nobody wants. We do not avoid a confrontation with the Syrian army to get one with the Turks." These denegations do not prevent Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to wave threats at Ankara: "We have religious and ethnic difference, so has Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey", did he say ominously (quoted by S. Dermitas, co-chairman of the BDP, a party regularly accused of links with the PKK, in an interview with the Hurriyet newspaper the 13/10/2011), clearly hinting that his regime could back the insurgency inside Turkey, would Ankara continue to meddle with Syria's internal politics. The PYD says the Kurds must not become anyone's pawn in the struggle for regional supremacy. "We will not help the dictatorship in any way", continues Zuhat Kobani. "We want its fall. We do not have anything to expect from Bashar al-Assad and his generals. We Kurds come under criticism because we don't join the mass demonstrations. I already explained it was a tactical choice. But look from where are coming those critics: from groups, or coalitions, which are backed by the Turks, and which are very carefull in avoiding to address any Kurdish demand." The PYD accuses the Damascus conference, held in Turkey, to actually serve Ankara's agenda. "We want change. But it must come from the syrians, and be for the syrians. It must not come from any external power willing to reduce Syria in a satellite state. The PYD so opposes any foreign intervention in Syria."
For what will come if the present regime falls? It is a concern for all the Syrian factions, from the al-Ba'ath to the most determined reformists, passing through all the religious, ethnic and political spectrum. Syrians are aware that another dictatorship could emerge from the agonising one. Zuhat Kobani and the other PYD delegates do not want to stop their action at the collapse of the junta. "The demise of the police state is just halfway of the process. Other Kurdish parties want the establishment of a federal state. It is not enough. The PYD wants a system of self-governance, in which our communities are able to rule themselves, emancipated from a central government which, all along our history, always oppressed Kurds. It means a radical reform of the Kurdish society. For this we need to educate our population, and that's what the committes we're creating are busy at now. Our cadres schools, until then located in a neighbouring country, are now in Syria. We have opened schools in Kurdish language, something unbelievable just eight months ago." He concludes: "For the PYD, it is the moment to put our theories in application."
But, maybe more than the opening of the "second front" the Syria government fears, there is a danger to see the Kurdish provinces bordering Turkey becoming the extension of another war.
Will the syrian uprising ignite the Kurdish powderkeg? Syria counts a sizeable Kurdish population, marginalised by the successive military regime having ruled syria since the independence, including the present days al Ba'ath regime. It is so surprising to see that, while the rest of Syria is torn by violence, the Kurdish populated provinces are remaining conspicuously quiet.
"It's a tactical choice", are saying representatives for the PYD, a syrian kurd opposition party whose radical agenda and close links to the revolutionary PKK made it a prominent enemy of the regime. "There is a de facto truce between the kurds and the government. The security forces are overstretched over Syria's arab provinces to face demonstrators, and can not afford the oppening of a second front in Syrian Kurdistan. On our side, we need the army to stay away. Our party is busy establishing organisations, committees, able to take over from the al-Ba'ath administration at the moment the regime will collapse."
Reports say that to enforce this truce, their cells in Afrin and Kobane stopped some Kurdish activists to organise demonstrations. They claim that all their efforts are about maintaining calm to avoid a bloodbath. (about those allegations, and the PYD’s chairman Saleh Muslim answer, see the KurdWatch interview edited by www.ekurd.net “Turkey’s henchmen in Syrian Kurdistan are responsible for the unrest here” http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/11/syriakurd383.htm ) They have been, they say "advising youth to remain peaceful". "An open confrontation with the dictatorship would be disastrous. Our people would become military target, not only for the army but also for some militias made of arab settlers present in our provinces. The demonstrations would be turned in an ethnic conflict the government would use at his advantage. As well, amongst the arab opposition, some groups do not accept us Kurds as equal citizens. They want to keep Syria an Arab homeland, where minorities are kept in a state of submission. We need to build our strength to be able to deal with them on an equal basis at the fall of the regime."
Hence the truce then. But the assassination, the 07/10/2011, of Mishal Tamo, leader of the Kurdish Future Movement party, could compromise everyone's calculations. At his funerals in his hometown of Qamishli (where took place a massacre of demonstrators the 12/03/2004), 50000 mourners went to the streets, accusing the state secret police to have killed the opponent. They were fired at by police - estimates are that between 2 and 5 were killed, countless others wounded. Reports from inside the town say police deployed around hospitals to prevent people to give blood for the victims.
The murder, and its potentially disastrous consequences, have infuriated the Turks. Their decades-long war against the PKK resumed with a new intensity at the end of the winter. They have been, during the past couple of years, aiming at encircling the insurgents in the mountains in Qandil, in Northern Iraq, acting alongside Iran, itself engaged in an offensive against the PKK-aligned PJAK. They gained the support of the Western democracies, which consider the PKK as a terrorist organisation, and launched in march 2010 a series of coordinated police raids in Belgium, Italy and France to break the PKK support net in europe. They enlisted Syria in this all-out offensive, organising common "military exercises" in april 2010 (http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=1165), and enticing the Syrian government to step up its repression against the PKK sympathisers present on its territory. But the relations between the two governments soured since the start of the Syrian uprising in march 2011. With Mishal Tamo's assassination, the Turks fear to see turmoil reaching Syrian Kurdistan, and the PKK seize the opportunity to implant itself there with the help of the PYD. Until 1999, the Syrian government allowed the PKK to run training camps on its territory. It was an opportunity to wage a proxy war against Turkey, with which it had tense relations then, while sending the more combative amongst the Kurds to get themselves killed on a foreign battlefield. It was something normal for a young Kurd to join the organisation, very popular at the time. It is estimated there are today around 1500 Syrians in the PKK's army, and it is not unusual, when entering a Kurdish household in Qamishli, to find a portrait of a family membre who left to fight as a gerrila. One so understands Turkey's nervousness, thinking about the 800 km of border it shares with its southern neighbour, doted with Kurdish villages it sees as as many potential PKK outposts.
But for the PYD, changing Syrian Kurdistan in a second Qandil is not an option. "It is not in our agenda, and it would be very difficult from a practical point of view", says Zuhat Kobani, a PYD representative. "But more, a PKK presence in Syria would mean a Turkish military strike, which nobody wants. We do not avoid a confrontation with the Syrian army to get one with the Turks." These denegations do not prevent Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to wave threats at Ankara: "We have religious and ethnic difference, so has Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey", did he say ominously (quoted by S. Dermitas, co-chairman of the BDP, a party regularly accused of links with the PKK, in an interview with the Hurriyet newspaper the 13/10/2011), clearly hinting that his regime could back the insurgency inside Turkey, would Ankara continue to meddle with Syria's internal politics. The PYD says the Kurds must not become anyone's pawn in the struggle for regional supremacy. "We will not help the dictatorship in any way", continues Zuhat Kobani. "We want its fall. We do not have anything to expect from Bashar al-Assad and his generals. We Kurds come under criticism because we don't join the mass demonstrations. I already explained it was a tactical choice. But look from where are coming those critics: from groups, or coalitions, which are backed by the Turks, and which are very carefull in avoiding to address any Kurdish demand." The PYD accuses the Damascus conference, held in Turkey, to actually serve Ankara's agenda. "We want change. But it must come from the syrians, and be for the syrians. It must not come from any external power willing to reduce Syria in a satellite state. The PYD so opposes any foreign intervention in Syria."
For what will come if the present regime falls? It is a concern for all the Syrian factions, from the al-Ba'ath to the most determined reformists, passing through all the religious, ethnic and political spectrum. Syrians are aware that another dictatorship could emerge from the agonising one. Zuhat Kobani and the other PYD delegates do not want to stop their action at the collapse of the junta. "The demise of the police state is just halfway of the process. Other Kurdish parties want the establishment of a federal state. It is not enough. The PYD wants a system of self-governance, in which our communities are able to rule themselves, emancipated from a central government which, all along our history, always oppressed Kurds. It means a radical reform of the Kurdish society. For this we need to educate our population, and that's what the committes we're creating are busy at now. Our cadres schools, until then located in a neighbouring country, are now in Syria. We have opened schools in Kurdish language, something unbelievable just eight months ago." He concludes: "For the PYD, it is the moment to put our theories in application."
But, maybe more than the opening of the "second front" the Syria government fears, there is a danger to see the Kurdish provinces bordering Turkey becoming the extension of another war.
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