Turkey’s Kurdish issue has received a more global character because of the Syrian civil war. The PKK, with the help of its military strength, eliminated other Kurdish groups in the area and established an indisputable sovereignty on the southern border of Turkey with Syria.
Meanwhile, the conflict between Turkey and the PKK was reignited in July 2015. It has become more entrenched and it’s almost at the brink of a full-fledged war.
2003: The Occupation of Iraq
Actually, everything started in 2003 with the occupation of Iraq by the United States of America and its ally, the United Kingdom. The justification for this occupation was to bring democracy to the Middle East based upon the lie of “the existence of weapons of mass destruction.”
With the toppling of Saddam, Sunni sovereignty in Iraq collapsed, Shiites came to power, and the Kurds declared autonomy in their region.
Sunnis were on the losing side. The promised calm and security did not come to pass, however, and the chaos spread to the region.
Arab Spring
The situation became more unstable with the “Arab Spring”.
While the West was trying to solve the crisis in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new tide of change started from Tunisia and spread to other northern African countries.
The West, at the beginning, greeted this change with a cautious optimism. Arab countries were moving towards parliamentarian regimes and the most striking change happened in Egypt.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Morsi, received the backing of the people and was elected to power. This was an unexpected result for the West.
Up until that time, Egypt was ruled by western-allied dictators; however, after this first-ever democratic election in the country' history, someone who was supported by the people, and was critical of the West, came to power.
Strong ties between Turkey's Erdogan and Egypt's Morsi, who share similar tendencies, increased the concerns in the West. The West became more concerned when leaders with similar inclinations came to power in Tunisia and Morocco.
Especially when more critical and boisterous voices increased in the Islamic world against Israel's oppressive policies towards the Palestinians, the United States and its allies grew more anxious.
The Assad Regime
During the same time, the Assad regime in Syria became unstable. Mr. Erdogan tried to convince Assad to provide more rights to his people and listen to the demands of the opposition, who were peaceful at the time. However, that changed quickly. Assad's refusal to negotiate and the West's influence finally convinced Turkey that the Assad regime must go. However, the failed Morsi experience in Egypt changed the color of the situation.
The backbone of the Syrian opposition was Islamist groups. When the West realized this situation, they started to put the brakes on. Assad saw an opportunity in this ambivalent behavior of the West. He exercised very strong and brutal policies of massacres towards the Islamist opposition.
Assad's remorseless behavior strengthened radical jihadist groups within the Islamist groups, and the moderate forces in the opposition lost power.
“Islamism” as it is defined and perceived in the West took center stage. Terrorists became prominent within the Islamist opposition groups.
These developments in Syria were also experienced in Iraq. Some Sunni groups who lost all their power under the oppressive Shiite regime started to become radicalized.
ISIS flourished in this environment and became the angry voice of these Islamist groups, specifically the Sunnis.
When ISIS brutally tortured and killed Western journalists and intellectuals on video, that only served to increase the Islamophobia already rampant in the West.
The West needed new allies to suppress this “Islamic wave of terror.”
The Kobani Resistance
The Kurds took center stage in this new scenario. In 2014, a critical conflict occurred in Kobani in Syria. Secular Kurds (PYD-PKK) became a symbol of the resistance against sharia in that city. The PYD-PKK, with the financial, military and moral support of the West, resisted ISIS. The city was saved from the “Islamic jihadists.”
At the same time, peshmergas (the fighting force of Northern Iraqi Kurds) joined the fight against ISIS in certain areas of Iraq. All these developments led to a new discovery by the West. The Kurds became the new force to fight against “Islamic terrorism.”
Turkey-PKK
In 2013, Turkey took important steps to end a 30-year conflict with the PKK. The government started a new period called the “resolution process”. The goal was to move the PKK forces outside of Turkey and to demilitarize them. The successful negotiations lasted for two years and Kurds in Turkey enjoyed many positive changes in their lives, and their political party received broad support in parliamentary elections. However, this process abruptly ended with the new developments in Syria, and a new period of conflict emerged.
Turkey does not want a PKK-influenced Kurdish autonomous region on its southern border. On the other hand, the PKK, with the legitimacy that they obtained by fighting ISIS, gained support in the West, and started to proclaim autonomous cantons in northern Syria on Turkey's southern border.
After the June 2015 election in which the HDP (the political party aligned with the Kurds) received high votes, the PKK declared a “people's revolutionary war” against the Turkish government. In the cities where the HDP received high votes, the PKK declared autonomy and war against the state by erecting barricades and digging trenches. Thousands of PKK and their sympathizers and 500 members of the security forces have died since that date. Many cities turned into ruins and hundreds of thousands of residents were forced to flee.
Unfortunately, this conflict is still ongoing and the state is working to regain sovereignty in PKK-occupied towns.
We are concerned that the situation will continue like this for the foreseeable future because the PKK continues its claim of sovereignty in the region. They believe that global circumstances and regional conditions are on their side. They see the sympathy that they receive from the West as an opportunity for their claim.
Turkey, on the other hand, displays an angry reflex to the situation due to the West's reaction to President Erdogan, which is evolving into Islamophobia and an open hostility towards Turkey.
Hence, Turkey views the PKK's new strategy as part of an “international conspiracy” against Turkey.
Recently parliament took strong measures by lifting the immunity of various HDP parliamentarians who have deep connections to PKK.
Results and Evaluations
Iraq's occupation is the main reason for the chaos in the Middle East. That occupation changed everything in the region.
During this disintegration process, a Shiite axis that includes Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut has been formed. Recently, the Tehran regime used the lifting of the sanctions by the West and the USA to reclaim a strong leadership role in the region. With its military presence in Baghdad and Damascus, Tehran is trying to control the oil regions of these countries.
In Turkey and Syria, Iran is partnering with the PKK, and in northern Iraq with Talabani forces trying to overthrow Barzani. On the other hand, Turkey is an ally of Barzani, who is being pressured by Iran.
Russia and the United States continue to support the Kurds against the ISIS threat.
My opinion is that Turkey can form a new agreement with the Kurds on the basis of rights and equality. However, I am not sure what path the PKK will take because of the reasons I have mentioned before. They continually raise the bar. On the other hand, Turkish Kurds are very concerned about the PKK's plan of autonomy from Turkey. The vast majority of the Kurdish population in Turkey see their future as part of Turkey. They also demonstrated their stand by not supporting the PKK's recent “people's revolutionary war”.
The West's distorted view of the Islamic world also adds to the chaos.
The extreme secular view of the West believes that religion is the main reason for this mess. They fail to notice peaceful parliamentarian tendencies in the Islamic world. A wholesale hostility towards Islam is not the answer to the situation.
The chaos that resulted from the West's intervention, as well as prevailing poverty, have both negatively affected the changes in the Islamic world. The solution may come by breaking with prejudices and understanding the situation in the correct way.
If the West tries to look at the region through the eyes of the region's people, instead of their own eyes, they may see the reality in a better way.
Resolution is possible within a peaceful climate where different identities will not clash but may be reconciled on the basis of respect for each other's rights.