Webinar: Washington Between a Turkish State Problem and a Kurdish Solution
Turkish military aggression as a destabilizing force in Kurdistan regions
Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. It’s a very timely topic.
As we speak now, the military operations are still ongoing in the Northern parts of the Iraqi Kurdistan region. It is just a continuation of a policy by the Turkish state that has been ongoing for the past thirty years. Every spring to summer, we have that episode, and not much effect has been achieved in terms of “Turkish national interest” in terms of eliminating the PKK or creating a better situation for the government of Turkey. I have been visiting Rojava quite often over the past few years. Again in Rojava, Northeast parts of Syria, where the Kurds and other communities have been trying to establish some form of administration with the help of the United States in terms of fighting ISIS, have the same concerns about the ongoing Turkish threats of attack.
ISIS captives and families are hopeful to be freed by Erdogan
We all saw what happened two years ago with Sari Kani (Ras al Ain) and in Afrin before that. One thing that is pretty much unnoticed that I felt very strongly in Rojava was that visiting the camps where the ISIS fighters and ISIS families are in like the al Hawl camp or some of the prisons where they have the ISIS captives, one thing that is keeping them, keeping their moral high, keeping them hopeful about the future, keeping them determined to continue their terror, is the ongoing threats that Erdogan makes to invade Rojava and to end the presence of that administration. Every journalist or a human rights activist, who speaks to them, in the second or the third sentence, would say, one day they will be free because Erogan is going to invade and to free them all. We saw initial signs of this two years ago when there was an attack on Sari Kani (Ras al Ain) when Erdogan took more areas; we could see it from their social media, from the prices, websites, and social media that they were very happy. They were very optimistic about their future because Erdogan will be coming and releasing them.
The other issue with Rojava that this ongoing is that despite repeated attempts from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and by the Rojava administration to have some form of a normal relationship with the state of Turkey, and they have asked various mediators through some back-channel diplomacy to create any kind of contact or dialogue with the Northern neighbor, it was all faced with refusal. The main approach from Ankara that everyone heard is that this entity has to end in a military operation, or it has to basically cease to exist. Any area that Erdogan takes, he basically replaces the Pro-SDF Kurdish administration o with militias that are very similar to ISIS. In fact, most of those members used to be from al Nusra or from ISIS. Currently, they are parts of the free Syrian Army (FSA). For example, if you go to Sari Kani or Afrin you will see a government structure or the rule. The authority there is exactly like what Mosul was like under ISIS. So this is one of the key things that is posing a threat to everyone in the region and to the international community that has been fighting ISIS for all these years.
Erdogan is following Saddam Hussien’s tactics
One repeated remark from Erdogan that we always hear is that he does not want to see an entity in North Syria that is similar to that of Northern Iraq. So in a way, despite all of what the Kurdish parties say about good relations or neighborly relations with Turkey, Erdogan at the end of at the end of the day, he sees the entity in Iraqi Kurdistan as a threat, as a national security threat against him and with his repeated operations in these bordering areas, every time he made an advance his stayed in these areas. He did not go back to the lines or to the front lines that existed before conducting that operation. Now a new development or a new tactic that he’s been using in the area of Iraqi Kurdistan under the pretext of fighting the PKK is committing an echcocide.
All the areas that are under the control of the Turkish army, the trees are being cut, and they are being transferred to Turkey to sell in the markets there. The images came out yesterday from the Berwari Bala area; they cut 10,000 Apple trees and 4,000 pear trees in just one day. Their campaign is ongoing. It is very clear that the end game or his aim at the end is to completely depopulate these areas from any human habitat and create a situation that is very similar to what the Saddam regime committed during the Anfal Campaigns in the 1980s in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkey is pushing the Kurdish parties to fight each other
This is on one side or the other side. We are also seeing that the continued military campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Turkish state is trying to involve the Kurdish parties and to get them into conflict with each other. A few days ago, five members of the Peshmerga forces were killed in an incident. It is still not very clear, but all the initial witness accounts and everything else is telling us that the attack happened through either a drone or a fighter jet because it wasn’t the way the vehicle was attacked, it was from above, it wasn’t horizontal. That created a big tension between the KDP and the PKK. The PKK themselves categorically denied. And they said this has nothing to do with us. They offered their condolences to the families of the people who were killed, and they said we are open to any investigation. The general feeling amongst the people of Kurdistan is that Turkey is here to destabilize Iraqi Kurdistan on the one hand, and to send a message to the to the Kurdish public in general, that they have they can do whatever they want.
The campaign started one day after president Biden spoke about the Armenian genocide in his statement. The analysis herein Kurdistan is that after the phone call they had, he has seems to have the green light of the United States to conduct this operation and in return for being silent or not making loud noises about president Biden’s acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide that happened on the 24th of May. The situation remains very volatile now in Iraqi Kurdistan. People, in general, realize that PKK is not the target. Fixing the PKK issue doesn’t happen in the mountains of Qandil or Metina or Gare or these areas. It happens in Ankara through the peace process. The PKK itself expressed their readiness to have a peaceful dialogue. They have given up on any separatists aspirations long ago, but the Turkish state or the Turkish government remains too adamant about the position of the current group to end and fixing the Kurdish problem in Turkey only has one way to be fixed: through military attack a few days ago.
They also attack the Makhmour Camp. It was a clear shock to everybody in the region. He demonstrated to everyone that he can do whatever he wants in the face of the silence of the international community. In fact, there are signs that the two major international allies that are involved in Iraqi Kurdistan are backing Erdogan in this campaign. Immediately after the attack and killing of the five Peshmerga in the conflict zone, the British and the American consulates were very quick to say that the PKK had done this. Before even waiting for the PKK d they immediately said that it was the PKK. Even within the KDP some of them have said it was the PKK, but others are now giving more balanced or more diplomatic statements about the issue that happened because the PKK is saying that we did not do it, and they welcome any investigation into the incident.
So the way we are seeing the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan is that Erdogan will continue. Probably the PKK is not his end game. His end game is to finish the presence of the Iraqi Kurdistan region or create a situation whereby it can be annexed to Turkey. This is what the public here is saying. I’ll stop here. Thank you.