The Kurdish moment
Since the very beginning of the Arab Spring in late 2010 this service has been arguing that, in whatever direction the process eventually led, the Kurdish regions would play an important role. The Kurds, in short, would never miss such an opportunity to advance their cause. Accordingly, we have been monitoring Kurdish developments closely throughout the past two and a half years of Middle Eastern turmoil – and, as we have been reporting in the past couple of weeks, events in the Kurdish regions are now both accelerating and getting more complicated.
The complications include the fact that the Kurdish cause is being covertly supported by Israel, which has traditionally sought non-Arab allies around the periphery of the Middle East. Until 1979, Israel’s alliance of the periphery included Iran and Turkey, but now with neither Turkey nor Iran friendly towards Israel, Israeli support for the Kurdish cause is a certainty. Yet, paradoxically, the Kurds are also now being supported by Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, although not by the pro-Iran regime in Baghdad. Both Iran and the Assad regime have acquiesced in the Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s (PYD’s) push for autonomy in northern Syria in return for its help in defeating the Sunni rebels. The fact that this is a tactical rather than a strategic alliance adds to the complications.
But the Kurds themselves are not fully united. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq led by Masoud Barzani has reached a mutually beneficial accommodation with Ankara, and it is concerned that the autonomy-seeking activities of the PYD, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) offshoot in Syria, could upset the balance.
Aware of the dangers, Barzani has moved to call a National Kurdish Conference to be held next month. A preliminary meeting was held in Irbil in northern Iraq on Monday (22 July). Barzani has had talks with representatives from 39 Kurdish political parties from Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq, telling them that reaching agreement among the Kurdish factions is essential “to ensure that the will of the Kurdish people in all four parts of Kurdistan is respected”. Specifically on the agenda for the national conference will be Syria and the peace process in Turkey.
However Barzani, as leader of the thriving KRG, can now be looked upon as a status quo figure. Not unnaturally he doesn’t want the applecart upset. In his speech to delegates on Monday, he said: “What we need is peace”, underlining that freedom for the Kurds depends on peace and the improvement of the regional economy and not on war or “threats to our neighbours”. But intelligence reports say that the PKK is becoming increasingly active politically in northern Iraq, trying to bolster alternatives to Barzani, while in northern Syria the PKK-affiliated PYD has clashed with forces loyal to Barzani.
Kurdish divisions are a recurring theme of Kurdish history, as is the way in which those states threatened by Kurdish separatism, namely Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, have been able to exploit those divisions. Although, as noted, these divisions clearly still exist, the difference more recently has been that it is the Kurds who are getting the better of the equation by exploiting the divisions that have developed within Iraq and now in Syria. They have also managed to neutralize Iranian antagonism not only by fighting the Sunni rebels in Syria but by maintaining a ceasefire in Iran by the PKK-linked Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK). The Kurdistan People’s Congress (KGK) has also appointed the pro-Iranian Cemil Bayik as co-chairman. And, it should be noted, that as the Kurds are now aligned with Syria and Iran (however temporarily) that means that they are also aligned with Russia.
But nothing is decided, and everything is (literally) still to fight for; and for the moment the key battleground is in north-eastern Syria. As we have noted, Assad has sought to co-opt the Kurds in his fight to survive by offering autonomy, but the conflict between the PYD and the Sunni rebels has been intensified by the April 2013 decision by the European Union to lift the oil embargo on Syria.
The intention was to enable the rebels to earn revenue by trading oil from areas they controlled. But the effect has been to exacerbate tensions between the Kurds and the Sunni rebels (as well as between Islamists and local Sunni Arab tribes). The main oil fields are in the provinces of Dayr al-Zur, which is controlled by Sunni Arab tribes, and in Al-Hasakah, which is controlled by the PYD. On 20 July it was reported that the PYD had pushed fighters from the Islamist Al-Nusrah Front out of Ras al-Ayn in Al-Hasakah following fierce clashes which left around 30 people dead. The clashes then continued near Rumaylan oil field, 125 miles from Ras al-Ayn.
Shirzad al-Yazidi, a spokesman for the PYD, has explained the situation in the Kurdish areas as follows: “What we are having now in our Kurdish areas is something that is described as a de facto situation; therefore we are trying…to reach the stage of institutionalizing the authority and establishing an administrative system that copes with the principles for which we have worked and struggled, which is to establish our...decentralized administration…”
The key question is how Turkey will react to all this, particularly at a time when its foreign policy is in tatters. Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has moved from a policy of “zero problems with neighbours” to being seriously at odds not just with Iran and Syria but also with the conservative Gulf states (and of course Israel) over its support for a new Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Middle East. But not only has this policy antagonized previously friendly (or at least indifferent) neighbours, it has also failed. The Muslim Brotherhood has been ousted in Egypt and continues to be resisted in Syria.
Now Erdogan’s (quite sensible) Kurdish policy of getting close to Barzani’s Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq at the same time as seeking a settlement with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey could be unravelling. Quite apart from the PKK-orchestrated declaration of Kurdish autonomy in Syria (about which Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said: “We cannot allow a fait accompli next to our borders”), there is rising evidence that far from withdrawing from Turkey’s southeast (as agreed), the PKK is continuing to recruit and otherwise entrench its position.
The use of a ceasefire and peace negotiations for such purposes is an age-old tactic used by guerrilla groups worldwide, and the hardliners in Turkey are getting restless.
This week, the centrist Turkish newspaper Vatan published a commentary which argued: “Turkey is passing through a period of incredible strategic blindness…The PKK is having its most influential period…since it was founded…The PKK is gaining psychological benefits it could not even dream of a couple of months ago. In other words, Turkey has given the PKK a small state as a present.”
It has also been widely noted that the National Kurdish Conference called by Barzani will include delegates from the PKK and all PKK-affiliated organizations, whereas in the past the Turkish government has been able to prevent Barzani from allowing PKK participation in previous conferences.
There are signs amidst all this that at least some in Turkey may be preparing for renewed conflict with the PKK, judging by its decision to go ahead with the purchase of new armoured vehicles. Earlier this month, Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz said that Turkey was looking for a new supplier of 175 mine-resistant, ambush-protected armoured vehicles (MRAPs) which a local company had failed to deliver (it had only been able to deliver 293 out of 468 ordered in 2009). The police are to order a further 20 such vehicles for themselves, and the government has said that follow-up orders from both the army and the police were likely. Separately, Turkey’s Undersecretariat for Defence Industries (SSM) has approached two local manufacturers to bid for the supply of 184 tracked and 76 wheeled armoured weapon carriers.
A senior EU ambassador in Ankara commented this week: “It came as a surprise that the Turks are still so keen to buy the rest of the mine-resistant vehicles a producer had failed to deliver. A more politically consistent and financially rational move could have been to suspend this purchase at least during the peace process.”
Another well-placed source added: “The move, in a way, reveals that Ankara is powerfully calculating the possibility of a failure in negotiations with the PKK and of renewed violence. There is no other immediate security threat than the PKK that the Turkish army could use these vehicles for.” JdeC.