TRKNWS-L Separatist...

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Subject: TRKNWS-L  Separatist...


> Scanned and forwarded by Murat Yasin

Prepared by Foundation for Middle East and Balkan Studies (OBIV)

Address: (OBIV'in) Salacak, Kasap Veli Sok. 10 81160 Uskudar/Istanbul.
ISBN No.: 975-7341.

SEPARATIST TERROR: MENACE OF THE POST COLD WAR PERIOD

A Case Study of the PKK in Turkey

Asia Minor, or Anatolia, as it is also called, has throughout history,
served as one of the world's major land bridges linking Europe, Asia and
Africa. Thousands of years of successive civilizations culminating with
the 600 year long Ottoman Empire (1299-1923) and its successor state, the
present-day Republic of Turkey, have left their imprints on contemporary
Turkish society, creating a culturally and ethnically diverse nation.
Indeed, Turkey, not unlike the United States of America, is a veritable
melting pot of cultures, one in which nationalism, has always been based
less on race and ethnicity than upon a shared geographic, historic and
cultural identity. As a secular democracy, Turkey has always rightfully
prided itself upon the full and equal participation of all of its
citizens, regardless of ethnic background, in the richly colorful and
vibrant mosaic of its parliamentary democracy.

Ethnic diversity is evident among Turkey's 60,000,000 citizens. While
traditionally living in the southeast of Turkey, today's Turkish citizens
of Kurdish ethnic origin live scattered throughout the country. It is
estimated that more than half of them live in the larger cities of western
Turkey. They participate in all areas of social, economic and political
life. Citizens of Kurdish descent have become parliamentarians, government
ministers, prime ministers and presidents. Indeed, there is no ethnic
discrimination in Turkey. Culturally, Turkish Kurds are free to speak the
various dialects of their own language, not only in private, but also in
all public gatherings. Likewise, publication of Kurdish books, magazines
and newspapers is widespread. In short, Turkish Kurds are fully integrated
into the mainstream of Turkish society, while being encouraged to preserve
their own unique cultural heritage.

Turkey's southeastern region, due to a variety of geographic and
historical factors, is far less developed than the western part of the
country.< The southeast is very mountainous and arid with hot and cold
temperature extremes. Much of the region's economy is based on animal
husbandry and its distance from the main population centers in the west,
has made it relatively less attractive for industrial development.

It is in this milieu that the terrorist organization known as the Kurdish
Workers Party, or the PKK, seeks via the ruthless application of terror to
establish a separate Kurdish state. Advancing the spurious argument that
Kurds cannot fully express themselves in democratic Turkey, these
separatist terrorists seek to divide Turkey along ethnic lines.

Terrorist organizations preaching separatism, hatred and ethnic cleansing
are increasingly replacing militant communism as the principal threat to
world peace in the post-Cold War era. The PKK, with its Marxist Leninist
theory, its ethnic exceptionalism and its use of terror and violence as a
means of achieving its ultimate goal, the destruction of the territorial
integrity of Turkey, is recognized and classified as an international
terrorist organization by most western countries.

Although today the PKK uses terrorism as a means of achieving its goal of
establishing a separate, Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey, its
original aim, was quite different. Established in 1978, the PKK initially
sought to foment communist revolution in Turkey, a goal it shared with
other Turkish leftist organizations such as the Dev-Yol (Revolutionary
Path) and the Dev-Sol (Revolutionary Left). The use of terrorist tactics
by these organizations as a means of bringing about a nationwide
revolution was, throughout the seventies, a commonly observed phenomenon
of militant communism on every continent.

In September, 1980, the PKK leadership moved into the Syrian controlled
Bekaa valley in Lebanon. Between 1980 and 1984, current PKK leader
Abdullah Ocalan consolidated his position through a campaign of torture
and execution directed against his closest associates in a successful bid
to assume absolute control of the movement. This caused inevitable splits
within the PKK, and those who managed to escape from Lebanon established
Kurdish organizations of various political shades throughout Europe .

During this period, the emphasis of the PKK began to change. Increasingly,
its rhetoric became devoted to the propaganda of ethnic exceptionalism.
But at least one element remained constant: the ever-increasing reliance
on terrorism to achieve PKK ends.

Since 1984, hit and run activities on Turkish territory have steadily
escalated, resulting in over 8,500 deaths, (almost half of which are
civilian) and the majority of which are Kurds. Turkey's democratic
institutions, as in the case of all Western countries, were unable to
produce instant strategies to deal effectively with the growing incidence
of PKK outrages. By 1992, however, it became obvious that a mix of
complicated initiatives would be necessary to deal with the multi-faceted
threat the PKK posed to Turkey. Most recently, this realization has led to
the formation of special teams trained specifically to fight against
guerrilla units. These steps were necessitated by a qualitative and
quantitative escalation of PKK activity during the past year. This recent
escalation has its roots in a number of factors which bear close analysis.
These involve nationalism and ethnic identity, economic factors, and
changes in the region precipitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union,
rising Islamic fundamentalist and the still unresolved post-Gulf War
crisis.

Part 2

NATIONALISM AND ETHNIC IDENTITY

Nineteenth century nationalism, while a major factor in the dissolution of
the Ottoman polity, was slow in reaching the Muslim population of
Anatolia. Identity in the Ottoman Empire was based not on ethnicity or
race, but rather on religion. Thus, following World War I, when the Greek
armies invaded Anatolia, it was the Muslim population (Turks, Kurds and
others) which successfully blocked their occupation of the Anatolian
regions. Consequently, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne (subsequently signed by
other parties in 1924), viewed the Muslims in the newly formed Turkish
Republic as a whole, and reserved the status of 'minority' in the
technical legal sense only for the country's Greek and Armenian Christians
and Jews. This minority status was designed specifically to protect the
religious rights of these groups. Regardless their ethnic background, no
such special protection was spelled out for Muslims. Accordingly, the term
'minority' in the Turkish Republic has always had a particular
treaty-defined meanings. The concept of any section of Turkey's Muslim
citizenry being viewed as a 'minority' is quite simply alien.

This does not mean however, that the Muslim peoples do not preserve their
own languages, cultural identity, and folkcustoms. Successive Turkish
governments have always encouraged and supported various groups in this
regard. There is no more support in Turkey for viewing any Muslim group as
a separate 'ethnic minority' with rights of self-determination, than there
would be in the United States should a group of Hispanic-Americans in that
country's southwest start a separatist movement.

In the current proliferation of publications in Turkish and Kurdish on
Kurdish history, language and experience, there is virtually no expression
in support of ethnic separatism. Rather, these publications mainly focus
on issues such as the need for economic development and the need to
curtail the power of tribal leaders in the region. Paradoxically, even PKK
leader Abdullah Ocalan, who represents only a minority of the most extreme
Kurdish nationalists, for a long time did not demand a separate state in
recognition of the economic dependency of the southeast upon the rest of
the country. However, in recent months, Ocalan's rhetoric has shifted and
he now calls for the establishment of an independent Kurdish state
comprising southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Undoubtedly, his shift
in this regard has been influenced by the power vacuum in Iraq.

It must be stressed, however, that the majority of Turkish citizens of
Kurdish origin live outside southeastern Anatolia. The number of Kurds
moving to western Turkey continues to grow as they flee the instability
created by the PKK in the southeast. Consequently, the Kurdish element in
southeastern Turkey's population continues to decline because they prefer
to resettle in the more highly developed western regions of their own
country.

THE ECONOMY AND TERRORISM

Beginning in the early 1 960s, two decades prior to the advent of PKK
terrorism, the government of Turkey, in recognition of the region's
economic needs, began the Southeastern Anatolia Development Project (GAP),
a massive investment project designed to harness the waters of the Tigris
and Euphrates Rivers for the region's economic development.

In 1994, water from the Ataturk Dam (one of the 23 dams comprising GAP)
will irrigate 370,000 acres of land. The other 22 dams and 17
hydroelectric plants now in various stages of completion will cost over
$32 billion. When completed, this project and its accompanying
infrastructure, including six-lane highways linking the cities of Adana,
Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Diyarbakir, will provide employment opportunities
for the local people, some 50,000 of whom are still nomadic.

Although Turkey is one of the world's seven agriculturally self-sufficient
countries, investments in the southeast designed to increase agricultural
production are based on a commitment to bridge the gap between the
development levels of the country's western and eastern regions.
Economists agree that the massive commitment of Turkey's limited
investment resources to the GAP project has not been without cost. For
example, these expenditures have contributed directly to the high rate of
inflation which Turkey has experienced throughout the past decade. Despite
these financial burdens, the government is fully committed to completing
this project.

Similarly, Turkey's development activities in the southeast have led to
strains in its foreign policy in that the GAP project, designed as it is
to divert a quantity of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, has
become a source of continuing contention with neighboring Syria. While
Turkey has repeatedly expressed its desire to resolve this issue through
negotiations, media reports suggest that Syria has opted to support the
PKK to increase its leverage in the matter. It may be more than
coincidental that the PKK's recent escalation of violence coincides with
the completion of the Birecik Dam on the Euphrates. PKK violence has
effected public investment and diminished private investments in the
region with negative consequences on the local economy. Delays in
industrial plant construction result from the understandable reluctance of
the business sectors to have anything to do with the PKK.

In order to finance the purchase of weapons, the PKK extorts money from
businessmen, shopkeepers and professionals of Kurdish origin residing
abroad. The bulk of the PKK's annual budget also includes income stemming
from drug smuggling and trafficking. The British National Service of
Criminal Intelligence (NSIC) recently reported that in the past year the
PKK extorted 2.5 pounds sterling from immigrants and businesses in England
alone.  According to this source, the PKK also received 56 million DM from
their 1993 drug-running operations in Europe. In fact, in December of
19935 German authorities arrested seven men accused of using gangland
techniques to extort money from Kurds in Germany for the purpose of
financing the PKK.

To counter PKK activities in the southeast region of the country the
government has adopted a two-pronged approach: First, the elimination of
PKK terrorists by security operations in strict compliance with the rule
of law. Second, active measures to further improve the living standards of
the local people who suffer from impaired public services and a slow-down
in economic development. Further, the region's rural population is subject
to terrorist violence. Increasingly the local Kurdish people, who support
their elected government and serve as village guards to protect their
communities, are branded as 'collaborators' by the PKK and in tactics
reminiscent of those employed in an earlier era by the Khmer Rouge, are
subject (together with all members of their families, including infant
children) to assassination.

Another terrorist target is the region's educational infrastructure. By
violence and intimidation, including the burning of schools and the
execution of village school teachers, the PKK has sought to deprive a
generation of local school children of their right to basic education.

PKK efforts in these areas may fall far short of their objectives, but
they can be profoundly disruptive and wreak cruel hardships on local
citizens.

Part 3

FOREIGN POLICY AND KURDISH TERRORISM

The aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War
 served to focus attention on the Kurds in the Middle East.
 Iran has supported Kurdish elements in neighboring countries, most
particularly in support of its own military operations against Iraq.

This policy has frequently led to friction with Turkey, due to the fact
that at the same time Iran was arming Iraqi Kurds as part of its struggle
with Saddam Hussein. The PKK has likewise been using northern Iraq as a
base from which to launch attacks on Turkish soil.

In the wake of the Gulf War, the setting up of a Kurdish zone in Northern
Iraq served to create a foreign policy dilemma for Turkey. While Turkey
hosts the forces of 'Operation Provide Comfort', the mandate of which is
to shield the Iraqi Kurds from retaliation by Saddam Hussein, it likewise
supports Iraq's territorial integrity. Turkey does not wish to see the
Kurdish zone emerge as an independententity, the product of a divided
orpartitioned Iraq. Such an independent Kurdish state would disrupt tie
regional balance of power and be counter, not only to Turkey's national
interests, but to those of other countries in the region as well.

Armenia presents another case study on how regional states manipulate the
Kurdish issue to suit their own interests. In recent months there has been
an increase in PKK attacks along the northeastern Turkish border adjacent
to Armenia. Clearly, the PKK is being provided with a safe haven in that
neighboring country. What is less clear is the degree of complicity on the
part of the Armenian government as opposed to that of Armenian nationalist
militias controlling these regions. Likewise, recent visits to Armenia by
high-ranking members of the PKK leadership raise suspicions that
Armenian-PKK collaboration is intensifying. Syria is another neighboring
state which has frequently supported PKK separatists in an effort to
promote its own interests. General Syrian support for a wide number of
international terrorist groups, including the PKK, is well known. Though
deplorable, this was at least explainable as long as Syria was serving as
a Soviet surrogate in the region. Less understandable has been this
nation's continuing support for the PKK following the collapse of the
USSR. To comprehend why, one has to recall earlier comment on Syrian
unease over Turkey's GAP project and its effects on the downstream flow of
the Euphrates River.

Although Syria has repeatedly provided Turkey with assurances that it does
not support the PKK, evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.  One needs
only to recall that Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK, has for the past
several years lived freely in Syria and that the major training camps of
the PKK were located until very recently, in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa
Valley in Lebanon.

Recently, a series of developments in Europe indicates that Western
nations have finally come to fully recognize the danger presented by the
PKK and its representatives. In the wake of a series of PKK operations in
their towns and cities, Germany and France have closed all PKK
organizations functioning under a social or cultural disguise.  These
groups, which were clearly running the European arm of the PKK's
drug-smuggling operations, while at the same time extorting funds from
Kurdish and Turkish workers, were, until these crackdowns, tolerated by
some European institutions as semi-official representatives of the Kurds
working in those countries. In late November of 1993, the German
government took the long overdue step of banning thirty-five PKK 'front'
organizations which had until then operated freely in that country.
Similar steps were taken by the French government which, in banning the
PKK, reiterated its commitment not to allow its territory to serve as a
base for international terrorists.

As this brief overview indicates, the Turkish government is faced with the
dual task of addressing the problem of, both at home and abroad. The
necessity for this was recently stressed by Prime Minister Tansu Ciller
who, while reaffirming the nation's commitment to fight PKK terrorism at
home, also announced her government's intention to carry out an aggressive
diplomatic campaign designed to cut off the PKK's financial, logistical
and public relations support abroad. The success of this approach is
indicated by the current crackdowns in Europe.

The government's efforts against the PKK at home enjoy the support of the
overwhelming majority of the population of Turkey, irrespective of ethnic
affinity. When it comes to the preservation of innocent lives and the
sanctity of the nation's borders, the PKK terrorists stand alone with
their creed of violence and separatism. As the world emerges from the era
of the Cold War, issues of economic development, open trade and
international cooperation have become paramount. Ultra nationalist groups
preaching violence and ethnic exceptionalism only serve to stall progress
on these all-important issues. That is why the PKK and similar groups
present the most serious threat to international peace and cooperation in
the new world order. Only an unswerving commitment to fight this scourge
(regardless of cost) will ensure that the much-touted 'New World Order'
does not dissolve into a 'New World Disorder' marked by spiraling ethnic
clashes and chaos. Turkey, for its part, is firmly committed to ensuring
the peace and security of all its citizens by eradicating the PKK
terrorist from its midst.