The Kurds, the Turks and the PKK

The immediate threat of military action may have lessened, but it is still a slow-motion train wreck. If the Kurds of northern Iraq do not quash the PKK, Turkey will and Turkey will be justified. But the fact that Turkey will be justified will in no way lessen the damage to long-term Turkish or Kurdish interests.

The immediate threat of military action may have lessened, but it is still a slow-motion train wreck. If the Kurds of northern Iraq do not quash the PKK, Turkey will and Turkey will be justified. But the fact that Turkey will be justified will in no way lessen the damage to long-term Turkish or Kurdish interests.

JINSA has a long history with both the Kurds of northern Iraq and with Turkey – and we were not surprised to discover that in the period of American protection for the Kurds, Turkey emerged as the primary economic and social interlocutor for the autonomous region of Iraq. The Kurds and the Turks are both open to consensual government and rule of law. Both are entrepreneurial traders. Both are friends of the United States and both have benefited from their association with America.

But we are concerned by the Kurdish attitude toward the activities of the PKK, and the unwillingness to acknowledge that the PKK is a terrorist organization. Kurdish claims that the PKK is comprised of only a few hundred ragtag fighters are untrue, and their proposition for a Turkish amnesty for terrorists is unacceptable. Defenders of the PKK sound like Palestinians who don’t want to be associated with Hamas or Fatah or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but won’t do anything about them. The Kurds vehemently protest is that they are NOT like the Palestinians. But, sadly, now they are.

There are people – Palestinians, Kurds and others – who are terrorists because terrorism advances their goal, whether that goal is the eradication of Israel or the carving out of a Kurdish state in the Republic of Turkey. There are people who kill and maim because whatever they could get from a peaceful modus vivendi between Palestinians and Israelis or Iraqi Kurds and Turkey is not enough for them. They can’t be bought off. They can’t be bribed out of their belief that violence will either bring them earthly success or heavenly reward. They have to be eradicated. The “other” Palestinians and the “other” Kurds have to accept that as the price of their more reasonable aspirations.

This is bad for Turkey. Having endured PKK terrorism for years and fought an ugly war to win control of their borders, the Turkish government has to consider doing it again.

It is bad for the Kurds. Having endured horrific violence at the hands of Saddam and the fallout from Turkey’s war against the PKK, they are facing violence again because they were unable to rein in their terrorists.

And it is really bad for the United States. The Kurds of northern Iraq are claiming that the U.S. military has to protect them in the event of Turkish intervention. But our troops cannot be in the position of protecting the PKK. The best we will be able to do is hope Turkey will do it fast, do it with as little collateral damage as possible, but do it for the benefit of all concerned.
It is unfortunate that the Kurds didn’t/couldn’t control this when it started instead of minimizing it, justifying it and pretending their terrorists were different from anyone else’s terrorists. But we may be past the point where that is possible, and none of the remaining options look good.