Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

As the Western powers struggle to understand and control events in the Arab Middle East (see this week’s main briefing), perhaps not enough attention is being paid to Kurdish developments.  As Kurds throughout the region are inspired by the pro-democracy Arab unrest, there are three points to watch in particular: unrest in Turkey; destabilizing moves by the Kurdish regional government in Iraq; and the effects on Syria-Turkey relations of President Assad’s attempts to strike a regime-saving deal with the Syrian Kurds.

In Turkey, the Arab uprisings have inspired a ‘civil disobedience’ campaign by the country’s 20% Kurdish minority that could increase tensions in Turkey’s southeast in the run-up to elections on 12 June.  On 28 March, riots broke out in Siirt province when 40,000 people marched to a protest at a mass grave of 200 Kurds in Kasapderesi.  The protests in Turkey could also inspire further violence from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla group, which ended a truce on 28 February.

In Iraq, perhaps most dangerously, pro-reform demonstrations in the Kurdish north, particularly in Sulaymaniyah, have been met by an attempt by the regional Kurdish leadership to divert attention by ramping up demands for Kurdish control of oil-rich Kirkuk – a city that Iraq’s Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, described last month as “the Jerusalem of Kurdistan”.

The Kurdistan regional government sent troops into Kirkuk following the demonstrations in Sulaymaniyah in February, and there have been warnings from Turkoman politicians that Kurdish assertiveness in Kirkuk could lead to severe violence.  Arshad al-Salili, a member of the Turkoman Front, has gone so far as to warn: “We feel that Kirkuk is heading towards civil war.”

Finally there is Syria.  As mentioned in this week’s main briefing, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is attempting to solve his domestic crisis by, amongst other measures, cutting a deal with the Syrian Kurds.  For instance, Assad has promised to “solve the problem of the 1962 census” which denied Syrian nationalisty to 35,000 Kurds (now grown to 150,000) in the eastern region of al-Hasaka.

But taking a more conciliatory line with the Kurds could lead to trouble with Turkey - and, indeed, no sooner had suggestions emerged that Assad was seeking to strike a deal with the Kurds than it was reported (on 1 April) that Turkish security forces had killed seven Kurdish militants after a large group of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas crossed over the border from Syria.

Back in 1988, Syria and Turkey almost went to war over Syrian support for the PKK, and the rapprochement only came after Syria changed its policy towards the Kurds.  Last year Syrian security forces arrested around 400 suspected PKK guerrillas.