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Turkish forces bomb a KRG village
By Arian Mufid:
As the PKK enters its 42nd year of guerrilla warfare against the Turkish state, Erdogan continues to use their resistance as an excuse to install the Turkish military junta in the Kurdistan Regional Government.
1984, 1986 and 1987 saw several attacks made against the PKK by the Turkish military. However, the PKK remained undefeated, even achieving worldwide recognition as pioneers of Kurdish resistance against Turkish state terrorism.
1983 marked the cooperation agreement between Turkey and Iraq, whereby Turkey granted Iraq access of 5km within its border space and vice versa. This agreement was made to ‘protect’ both states’ national interests against Kurdish aspirations for independence. However, the need for both states to allow each other such latitude diminished during 1984-1991 when the Kurdish revolutionary factions in Iraq were weakened by civil war involving two rival Kurdish parties, PUK and KDP. As the Kurds lacked a united front, Iraq revoked Turkey’s access within its borders prohibiting the Turkish military from access to the PKK within Iraq.
Following the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government in 1992 with the help of the UK and US, Turkey felt itself threatened and thus restarted its attack on the PKK within the KRG, but this time with the help of KDP and PUK, around the areas of Hafanin, Kukurk and Kandil. The Turkish military Junta agreed to recognise the Kurdistan Regional Government on the condition that the KRG would align itself with Turkey in the fight against the PKK. Turkish military attacks on PKK continued and they called it Operation Sandwich, meaning they attacked the PKK from the ground and air, rolled into the sandwich. The aim of the attack was to destroy PKK for once and for all but in fact it wasn’t successful. According to a KRG Peshmarga department statement, between 1992 to 2008 Turkey attacked PKK 26 times via KRG territories. According to the same report, thousands of Turkish soldiers accompanied by fighter jets and tanks supported these attacks.
