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”).