Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Our sources in the region continue to worry that Turkey’s push for peace with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will be unable to survive the myriad traps in its path.

The most encouraging sign to date was the announcement of a PKK pullout from Turkey, made on 25 April by acting PKK leader Murat Karayilan, who is based in Iraq’s Kandil mountains.  The announcement came after seven months of efforts instigated by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Erdogan’s peace moves crucially gained the support of the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdish-based Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), whose support Erdogan is courting in parliament in order to achieve his desired changes to the constitution – including a move towards an executive presidency, with Erdogan as the presumed first incumbent.

That there is a strong desire for peace in a conflict that has claimed 40,000 lives since 1984 is certain, and the BDP, which shares the same support base as the PKK, has been assiduous in helping Erdogan move the peace process forward.  The BDP has acted as a go between, delivering messages to PKK representatives in Iraq and Europe and liaising with Ocalan in his Imrali island prison.

But there have been lost opportunities for peace before, in 1993, 1999, and 2009.  This time, one problem is that Turkish security sources remain deeply sceptical about Karayilan, partly because of his track record but also over his capture by Iranian security forces in August 2011 and subsequent release.  Turkish intelligence at the time was convinced that Iran had done a deal with Karayilan, and they have noted that after his release a halt to the activities of the Iranian branch of the PKK – the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) - was declared.

Suspicions about Karayilan have flared up again in the past week with his allegations about US drone attacks against PKK targets, including the December 2011 ‘Uludere massacre’ in which 34 Kurdish smugglers were killed close to the Iraq-Turkey border.  The incident has hitherto been attributed to a mistake by the Turkish air force (acting on intelligence from US drones), and it is thought that Karayilan’s allegations about a more direct US involvement may have been intended to exacerbate anti-US sentiment in Turkey ahead of the meeting between Erdogan and President Barack Obama scheduled for 16 May.

One Turkish commentator has drawn the following conclusions from this episode: “From the remarks he [Karayilan] made last week, we now understand the terms of the negotiations [with his Iranian captors in August 2011] included helping to make anti-US sentiment flare up in Turkey.  Karayilan…seems to have turned sharply against the US following his ordeal at the hands of the Iranians.”

Some are also suggesting that an anti-US, pro-Iran faction within Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) maybe involved in an attempt to raise anti-US sentiment in Turkey.

Then there are Turkey’s opposition parties, particularly the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), both of which are against the peace moves with the PKK.  CHP chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu told a party meeting on 30 April: “Erdogan is the PKK’s captive.  Everyone should know this.”  On the same day, MHP chairman Devlet Bahceli warned that Erdogan was planning to release jailed PKK leader Ocalan in return for the PKK’s disarmament.  He said: “Mr Prime Minister, do you call this development peace?”

We have also mentioned in the past the complication caused by the civil war in Syria, which has provided the Syrian Kurds with some autonomy of their own.  For the moment the Iraqi Kurds under Masoud Barzani have thrown in their lot with Ankara, but this could be tactical; and increasing autonomy, even independence, from Baghdad could eventually increase not dampen Kurdish ambitions, particularly if the same process were to be at work in Syria, which it now is.  The Syrian Kurds, for instance, are increasingly benefiting from control over oil resources in Syria’s northeast.  Oilfields around Al-Hasakah, now under the control of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, are thought to produce 250,000 barrels of crude per day.

These are immensely complicated calculations for the Kurds, but one thing is certain: they will be seeking to make the maximum possible gains from the opportunities presented by the Arab Spring, and at some stage that is going to rub up against Turkish resistance.  Erdogan’s twin needs of wanting maximum access to oil from Iraqi Kurdistan and requiring Kurdish domestic support for his proposed constitutional changes have created propitious circumstances for a push towards a settlement between Turkey and the PKK, but it remains probable that other matters will intervene to change the calculations.