source:
Stratfor
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TURKEY: BOLD MOVES ON THE KURDISH ISSUE
Summary
For decades, Turkey's Kurdish issue was been owned by the country's powerful military, which prefers to use an iron fist in dealing with the Kurdistan Workers' Party. But the issue is now managed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has very different ideas on how to deal with the separatists. This new AKP strategy has everything to do with Turkey's resurgence in the region.
Analysis
After 30 years of armed struggle with Kurdish separatists, Turkey is finding new ways to manage the Kurdish issue. The Turkish government is currently in talks to allow the surrender of 15 Brussels-based Kurds who are former members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The government earlier welcomed home eight PKK members and 26 Kurdish refugees who had fled to northern Iraq in the early 1990s. These are bold and politically risky steps for Turkey to be taking right now, but they also feed directly into the country's expansionist agenda.
Turkey has long approached its Kurdish issue as a zero-sum game. For many within the political and military leadership, the reintegration of Kurdish militants into Turkish society was out of the question unless the PKK made the first move to lay down its arms on Ankara's terms. Moreover, according to Turkey's Kemalist tradition, the Turkish identity of the state must be preserved at all costs, leaving very little room for cultural, political or economic rights for the Kurdish minority. For decades, the Kurdish issue was essentially owned by Turkey's powerful military, which used an iron fist to deal with the PKK but did little in the end to quell the insurgency.
The Kurdish portfolio is now being run by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has very different ideas than the military on how to deal with this issue. The AKP is currently leading Turkey on a resurgent path throughout the region. With Russia pushing out in its former Soviet periphery and the United States withdrawing from Iraq and leaving a power vacuum in Mesopotamia, the time is ripe for Turkey to expand its sphere of influence not only in the Middle East but also in the Caucasus, the Balkans and Central Asia. This is an ambitious foreign policy agenda, and for it to be successful, Turkey must first ensure stability at home. The AKP has already done quite well in consolidating a powerful political base and in ensuring economic stability for the country. With substantial political backing, the AKP has found ways to clip the military's wings and seize the initiative on contentious topics such as the PKK.
The AKP approach to the Kurdish issue began in northern Iraq, where PKK militants have long found refuge at Qandil Mountain and political patronage from the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). For Turkey to both lock down its influence in Iraq and deny the PKK a launchpad for terrorist attacks, the AKP had to find a way to forge closer ties with the KRG. Turkey found such an opportunity in recent years when the political landscape in Iraq began to shift following the 2007 U.S. surge. Once Iraq's Sunnis started to leave the insurgency and re-enter the political system, the Iraqi Kurds were put in an all-too-familiar situation in which Iraq's Arabs found common cause in ganging up on the Kurds on everything from energy rights to security issues. Turkey took advantage of the Iraqi Kurds' vulnerability, and with cooperation from the United States -- through a combination of military force and back-channel negotiations -- pressured the KRG into providing critical intelligence on PKK positions in northern Iraq.
The KRG has been careful to voice its political support for the Kurdish cause, but it has quietly become more hostile to the PKK presence in its territory. In return, Turkey is helping guarantee Iraqi Kurdish economic and political security by developing the northern region with major investments and by providing the north with an export terminal for its natural resources. This understanding between Ankara and the KRG is holding, and thus far the KRG has been playing by Turkey's rules to apply pressure on the PKK and to ease up on Kurdish demands for Kirkuk in northern Iraq.
The AKP then turned its attention back home and launched a "Kurdish initiative" aimed at curtailing popular support for the PKK by recognizing Kurdish political and cultural rights. For example, in January, Turkey's state radio and television began broadcasting in Kurdish 24 hours a day. In September, the Higher Education Board gave the green light to open a "Living Languages Institute" at Artuklu University in Mardin that will provide postgraduate classes in Kurdish. AKP officials are discussing revisions to the constitution after the 2011 general elections, which could include a carefully worded clause to recognize Kurdish identity. The AKP has also launched a number of developmental programs in Turkey's impoverished and predominantly Kurdish southeast. So long as the Turkish government can win the hearts and minds of the Kurdish population, it can deny Kurdish separatist militants the widespread sanctuary they have enjoyed for decades. There is still much more to be done in these initiatives, and deep distrust remains, but the AKP moves have borne fruit, as evidenced by the negotiations that led to the recent surrender.
The third phase of the AKP's Kurdish strategy was to reach out to the PKK directly in negotiations. First, the AKP government began negotiating directly with the Democratic Society Party (DTP), Turkey's pro-Kurdish political party in parliament. After earlier refusing to talk with DTP leaders until they renounced the PKK as a terrorist organization, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shifted his stance over the past summer and met directly with DTP leader Ahmet Turk.
According to STRATFOR sources, back-channel talks also took place between the Turkish government and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan (who has been in prison since 1999) to allow for the recent surrender deals. Though the PKK has endured some turmoil over the years in keeping the organization from splintering, Ocalan remains the unchallenged leader of the group, and he appears to be the only PKK figure capable of delivering in these negotiations. The PKK is going along with the negotiations to test the AKP's sincerity, but it still has further demands for a general amnesty for all PKK militants (even if they have blood on their hands) and the release of Ocalan from prison. However, these additional demands are unlikely to be met as long as the PKK resists laying down its arms.
The AKP has taken significant and unprecedented moves in dealing with the PKK, but these decisions also carry a great deal of political risk. When the eight PKK members from Qandil Mountain and 26 refugees from the Makhmur camp in northern Iraq crossed the border into Turkey, they were greeted with rallies welcoming them home. Those scenes produced a great deal of backlash from all parts of Turkish society as families of soldiers killed by the PKK poured into the streets in protest. Nationalist political parties in the opposition like the Republican People's Party seized the opportunity to lambast the AKP, claiming that Erdogan has legitimized the terrorist organization by releasing PKK terrorists.
More important, the military -- not happy with the manner in which the AKP has undermined its influence -- strategically launched an offensive against the PKK in the midst of the surrender negotiations and protest rallies in a show of support for those Turks outraged by the government's actions. With the pressure increasing, the AKP had to retreat a few steps and announced Oct. 26 that it would hold off on bringing another 15 former PKK members to Istanbul from Brussels. The AKP evidently did not anticipate the level of backlash that it received for these surrender deals with the PKK, but it is already taking steps to regain the initiative. Not coincidentally, an allegedly authenticated document was recently released that implicates the army for attempting a coup. The timing of the release is notable, and such allegations against the army are the AKP's preferred method of keeping the military in check.
It remains to be seen how well the AKP will be able to maintain balance between its political and military rivals. Convincing the Turkish public of the strategic intent behind this Kurdish initiative will be a challenge given the past three decades of armed conflict, but the AKP appears determined to continue the process. Should the AKP be successful in taming the Kurdish issue at home, it will be able to devote more attention to its foreign policy objectives abroad.
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