The Kurds and Peace: Kurds tend to forget the past easily

By Dr Aland Mizell:

PKK has agreed to withdaw its forces from Turkey

Throughout history, the Kurdish people have faced one incontrovertible fact of real politics. Kurds have no real predictable or long-term allies in the Middle East. Because of disunity among Kurdish people, they have often sought alliances with international powers, and most of the time these friendly allies decided it was in their interest to drop Kurds in favor of the regime that they opposed.

For example, in the war in Iraq first in the 1991 Gulf War and then the 2003 Gulf War, the Turkish government was against any autonomous Kurdish region, but then Turkey realized that they could not stop the Kurds from having autonomy. Not only that, but Turkey called Barzani and Talabani shepherds and refused even to talk with them. Then, after the Saddam regime, Turkey saw that the new Iraq was closer to Iran, so they are now using the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) against the Iraq Central Government, which is ruled by the Muslim Shia sect. Further, Turkey does not want to lose Syria, so that it becomes another Iraq.

It is a big mistake for the Kurds to be in conflict with anyone, and especially Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey because the Kurds should realize that all four are the countries that have oppressed them for decades. This history can perhaps best be understood by applying the rule that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Turkey has sought alliances with Iraqi Kurds to fight against the PKK. Furthermore, Turkey has been helping the Iranian Kurds to rebel since the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Iran was supporting the PKK against the Turks. Today the same game and scenes are being played out; Turkey is supporting the KRG to create tension between the KRG leader Barzani and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and to exacerbate the power struggle between the Kurdish groups because that is what the Kurds’ enemy wants. Yet, the PKK has influence over the PYD, which translates into conflict between PKK and Barzani. The Kurds fail to understand that unity of the Kurds is the biggest fear for Turks, Persians, and Arabs. Turkey is using the KRG leader to pressure the PYD and to give a measure of power to Barzani to be the sole representative of the Kurdish people in the region.

Nevertheless, the game for the Turks is to weaken the PKK and to divide the Kurds in Iraq.

Most of the time Kurds expose themselves to being agents of foreign powers, and Kurds have had no power to refute the serious charges against them. Israel was helping both Iraqi and Iranian Kurds, and at the same time being political allies with Turkey. The Kurdish issue will not go away easily, because the major powers have been involved in Kurdish politics. The Kurds control the two most important resources in the world—water and oil. The PKK and the Turkish government each hold the other responsible. But the Turkish government so far has never acknowledged its crime against the Kurds nor apologized to the Kurds.

The PKK has good reasons to negotiate with the Turkish government because violence has lost its purpose. One of the ways for the PKK to be cleared from the terrorists list by the European Union, the USA, and the international community is to engage in political dialogue because the Kurdish issue is not a terrorist issue.  That is why Turkey, however, is trying to make the problem a terrorist issue since the Kurdish issue is really a human rights one. Yet, so many things are in question regarding the way the peace process is being conducted. There is no framework for negotiations, no countries’ direct involvement, and no guarantor powers. We do not see much of Oçalan, the PKK’s imprisoned leader, only via the BDP party; thus, the PKK does not have equal power with the Turkish government in the peace negotiations. The government also repeatedly strives to make progress by sidestepping the main issues.

However, united Kurds would have power. Without the Kurds there is no greater Middle East Project, and the Kurds should be part of the new Middle East. In the end Turkey will help the KRG be independent from Iraq because Turkey does not want to have a strong Shia rule in the Iraqi government but instead to leave it weak.

There is a Kurdish proverb, “Believe neither in the oppressor’s laugh nor the pleasantness of winter.” Both are misleading. The outcome all depends on the situation with the Syrian Kurds. If the Syrian Kurds have their autonomous region, then they will not put the Kurdish movement at too much risk, but if the Kurds in Syria do not have any power or any autonomy after the Assad regime, then Turkey will have a strong presence there, which will make the PKK lose another front. That is the biggest factor in Turkey’s having peace with the PKK. The current trajectory of the peace process is not optimistic for the reason mentioned above. Again Turks need Kurds one more time like they did during the formation of the Republic of Turkey, but after Turkey got what it wanted, then it denied the right of existence of the Kurdish people. Seemingly the current peace process is a show. Using sixty-three wise men is simply a public relations tool for touring the country and trying to convince the Turks that they should support the peace process.

Studies show that to have democratic institutions, a country needs vibrant social capital. Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? Robert Putnam in his book ‘Making Democracy Work’ shows empirical evidence about the important performance of democratic institutions. His theory has influenced policy makers about how to approach the relationship between politics and society. The central question that Putnam raises is, “What conditions are necessary for creating strong, responsive, effective representative institutions?” Putnam explains the positive institutional performance based on “social capital,” such as norms, networks, and trust.

So, if we apply the same rules to the Kurdish issue, we will see that Turkey did the opposite. It destroyed all the Kurdish networks and social networks, because it did not want the Kurds to have a social movement. It closed down Kurdish student organizations, Kurdish civic institutions, academicians, media, television stations, and political leaders. In fact, last year the Turkish government with the help of the Gulenist missionary group launched a dirty campaign against the KCK and, as a result, put many individual Kurds who want only the best for Kurds and Kurdistan in jail, including the list of players mentioned above.

Because the Turks want to be the dominant power, they do not want to leave any room for Kurds to be organized. If we compare the Kurdish civic organizations with the Turks, especially the Gülen movement, we must ask if they are equal. How many civil organizations do the Kurds have? The media, the KCK, and the PKK do not listen to Gülen and his version of Islam; therefore, Gulenists do not accept the Kurds because everything is channelled through him. If you close down Kurdish organizations, academics, media, books, and history, how will the Kurds learn history to avoid repeating it? It is true that trust, networks, and norms develop over time when the members of the community interact socially and cooperate with each other. Social capital has a good impact on government because it lets a community overcome the dilemma of collective action, which could hinder the will to cooperate for the purpose of making social life better. But if an equal chance were given to the Kurds, mostly likely this problem of the negative possibilities of collective action would not exist.

The problem is that for ninety years Turks have been brainwashed with Turkish nationalism, but Kurdish nationalism has been illegal and completely denied. So what is the APK doing to prepare the Turks psychologically to accept the Kurds in three to six months as this peace plan suggests?

My biggest concern is that Turkey helped to create Huda–Par, a new Islamist Kurdish party allegedly linked to the Sunni extremist group, Hezbollah, as an alternative to the BDP. Huda–Par is slowly becoming a serious contender with the BDP and the PKK. We will see in the municipal elections scheduled for March 2014.

The reason the Turkish government does not welcome a third-party intervention in the peace process is because it sees it as interference in its domestic affairs. But, interestingly, Turkey will interfere in other states’ domestic affairs, such as in Iraq, Syria, etc. The participation of a third party gives a peace process more legitimacy and has contributed in many cases to the sustainability of the peace agreement, as recent empirical research suggests. The involvement of a third party is valuable in not only bringing together conflicting parties to talk about peace and to break the deadlock, but also in seeing that every provision is implemented, not just for compliance but with the spirit of addressing the real causes of the Kurdish problem. This examination of the root causes helps to avoid a relapse in the conflict and to build and consolidate sustainable peace, as well as to monitor and guarantee the agreement.

The Prime Minister of Turkey’s sincerity to make a peace process work is doubtful, and his ability to deliver on his promises questionable because of another power play to prevent Erdogan from fulfilling those promises; it is not a military one, but rather the Turkish Muslim missionary leader, Fethullah Gülen and his followers. Because they are a government inside the government, they have so much power in decision-making. Further, the timing of the peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK is very suspicious, only one of the obstacles preventing the Kurdish people from trusting the Turks.  Because Turkey is bogged down in a war of choice with Syria and neutralizing the PKK in northern Syria, a peace with the Kurds would give more power to Turkey to pressure the Assad regime.

For example, Gülen himself not long ago was upset about the Turkish government not killing all the PKK members. Now he has even changed his position and supported peace, but he compares the PKK’s and Turkey’s peace process to the truce of Hudaybiyah between the Prophet Mohammed and non-Muslims. Besides their relations among the distant nations, Kurds should ask themselves what happened to the promises made by the Turks and British in 1920?  Why did they not keep their promises then? After the Turks got what they wanted from the Kurds, they then said, “How happy is the one who says I am a Turk.” Now they are cheating Kurds with same ideology but with a different motto, “How happy is the one who says I am Muslim.” Now they are using projects of religion, the “brotherhood projects.” I do not have problems with their talking about several formulas for a solution to the Kurdish issue if one of them is autonomy within Turkey’s borders. But I do have a problem with their having selective justice and the biased racist policies of Muslim countries, including Turkey, toward the Kurds. For instance, when Saddam Hussein used poison gas against the Kurds in the Iraqi town of Halabja killing thousands of Kurds, no one heard of an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The world did not even hear one shared criticism against Saddam Hussein; we never heard one shared criticism of Muslims at a mosque in Turkey; we never heard one shared criticism from Gülen and his followers or his media; but the same year the OIC was concerned about the Turkish minority in Bulgaria.

Many Kurds are Muslims, yet are being oppressed by the Muslim countries, so who could bring the issues of the Kurds to the international arena? In my opinion now the AKP and the Gülen movement would blame everything on the secular Turkish government of the past, saying it was anti-Kurdish and anti-Muslim. There are countries that are at odds with Turkey in terms of regional objectives. For example, Iran and Turkey compete for leadership in the Muslim world. A political solution to the Kurdish issue will make Turkey have an active role in the region and could become a model for resolving its conflict peacefully.

In conclusion, the Kurds tend to forget the past easily. They should keep in mind that the Turkish history book still teaches their kids that Mosul and Kirkuk should be part of Turkey. During the 1991 Gulf War, the US led war against Saddam Hussein, the late Turkish President Turgut Ozal had a similar plan about historic Turkish claims to the region in the event of a collapse of Iraq. Some of his military generals resigned and did not support the President’s ideas.  President Ozal went on to encourage the Turkish government to make the Kurdish region in Iraq economically dependent on Turkey. Turkey still thinks Mosul and Kirkuk oil rich provinces were forcefully separated from Turkey. When the US began the Second Gulf War with Iraq in 2003, the AKP government sought legal clarification of the status of Mosul and Kirkuk, so the Turkish government did not want Mosul and Kirkuk to be part of a Kurdish region but preferred it to be part of Iraq. So Ankara is using the Turcoman card to undermine the Kurdish claims to Kirkuk, and Turkey is still insisting that Kirkuk is not only inhabited by Kurds but also by multiethnic groups. There is a similar policy today based on the destruction and denial of the Kurds.

In his famous speech in Diyarbakir in 2005, Prime Minister Erdogan recognized for the first time that there is such a Kurdish issue, but later on Erdogan denied that he had said there is now a Kurdish issue since he labels it a terrorist issue. Assimilation is a fundamental policy of the Turkish state, and for a long time the Turkish government lied to the public about Kurdish issues and still continues to lie about problems related to the Kurds. To solve the Kurdish issue, the current Turkish government needs sincerity, but a major power within the government is not sincere about the Kurdish issue in a healthy way. Withdrawal of the PKK is a distraction from what lies at the core of the problem, which is Turkey’s lack of will to acknowledge Kurdish rights and to take responsibility to apologize to the Kurdish people for the crimes committed against them.

Withdrawal of the PKK is an indicator of peace between the Kurds and the Turkish government, but what indicator from the Turkish government shows that Turkey is really sincere? The question is what kind of political status do Kurds seek and what are they wiling to achieve? What has prevented them from achieving it? The answers cannot be found in the withdrawal of the PKK alone, nor solely in the corridors of power in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Kurdistan has long been the object of imperial and superpowers’ interests. Since nations’ interests do not end, the Kurdish issue will remain long and volatile.

Dr. Aland Mizell is with the University of Mindanao School of Social Science, President of the MCI and a regular contributor to The Kurdistan Tribune, Kurdishaspect.com, Mindanao Times and Kurdish Media.You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com