The U.S. and the Kurds

60,000 Turkish troops have massed on the Iraqi border. Meanwhile, the PKK has offered Turkey an unconditional ceasefire on the condition that it does not cross the border.

The U.S. has poured arms into Turkey throughout the duration of its brutal counter-insurgency campaign against the Kurds. Turkey was the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid between 1994 and 2004, behind Israel and Egypt. The Turkish campaign against the Kurds was arguably as murderous as Saddam's next door, which the U.S. also facilitated with billions' worth of arms (Bell Textron helicopters were used to gas the Kurds at Halabja). The idea that the Kurds are "natural" allies of the U.S. is a sad joke.

As Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed wrote in a still-useful 2001 article:

"The Turkish government has been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide against its Kurdish minority[21] as part of its war on the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) that began in 1984. The war against the Kurdish people en masse continues despite the fact noted by the Federation of American Scientists that the vast majority of Turkey’s 13 million strong Kurdish population do not claim to support the PKK. The scale of the war also happens to be much wider than what Serb forces perpetrated in Kosovo, which elicited NATO intervention. By 1999, an estimated 45,000 Kurdish civilians had been killed, and 3,000 Kurdish villages plundered and sub-sequently incinerated by Turkish security forces in a brutal scorched earth campaign, the occupants either killed or driven out. Up to 3 million people have been internally displaced in this way from their homes in this manner.[22] Most of this destruction has taken place within the last several years.[23]

Systematic detention and torture of captured Kurdish civilians has also continued with impunity. One representative example of the nature of these policies is noted by Amnesty International in its annual country report:

“Two Kurdish girls, 16-year-old N.C.S. and 19-year-old Fatma Deniz Polattas, were detained and reportedly tortured for several days at the Anti-Terror Branch of Police Headquarters in Iskenderun in early March. They were held blindfolded and naked. N.C.S. was exposed to verbal and sexual harassment. Fatma Deniz Polattas was anally raped. A formal complaint was lodged, but the prosecutor decided not to prosecute the police officers.”[24]

The Turkish authorities justify their campaign on the pretext of attempting to prevent the secession of areas in the south inhabited by Kurds, who for decades have sought self-determination through the establishment of their own state. However, as a matter of chronological fact, the movement for secession sprouted and grew in reaction to, and thus as a direct consequence of, comprehensive repression of the Kurdish population within modern Turkey since the founding of Republic by Ataturk. The institutionalised violations of human rights perpetrated by the Turkish authorities against the Kurds have been instrumental in provoking the backlash of separatist movement based on Kurdish nationalism. In the same vein as conditions between Serbia and its Kosovan province, it is primarily due to the massive repression of Kurds by the Turkish authorities that there exists a movement in the country for Kurdish self-determination, similar in kind to the plea of the Kosovan Albanians. Indeed, the Turkish government refuses to recognise the most elementary rights of the Kurdish people, repressing them by refusing to acknowledge their very existence. All human, social, civil, political, cultural and linguistic rights have been denied the Kurds by the Turkish authorities. To even speak the Kurdish language or have a Kurdish name is illegal. The result can only be described as a form of Turkish apartheid.[25]

As the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) reports, the Turkish establishment “has prohibited all existing legal avenues for Kurds in Turkey to express themselves politically or culturally…

“Kurdish language television and radio broadcasts are forbidden. In late 1998 and early 1999, Turkish police arrested over 3,000 members of the main Kurdish political party (People’s Democracy Party or HADEP) for alleged ties to the PKK. With elections scheduled for April 1999, the Government is preparing a legal case to close HADEP and another Kurdish-based political party. Fourteen political parties have been banned since 1982. The government has not responded to past ceasefire announcements by the PKK, saying it will not negotiate with ‘terrorists’. Nor is Turkey responding favorably to calls from many governments to begin negotiating with Kurdish leaders now that PKK leader Ocalan has been arrested.”[26]
Turkish political scientist Haluk Gerger comments on the foundations of this apartheid-like repression:

“The basic insecurity that characterized the system and the resultant fear that shaped the behavior of the ruling elite have their roots in history. That is, both in the imperial heritage upon which the republican reconstruction was attempted, and the very essence of the structure that was created. This phenomenon is now being augmented in all its dimensions by the war against the Kurds… Turkish militarism is characterized by the rampant prominence of its values in society, the preponderance of the military establishment in politics, and by the unabashed legitimacy accorded to violence both at popular and official levels. Turkish chauvinism is expressed in extremely aggressive ultra nationalism, in xenophobic Turkism, in excessive bigotry and in the irrational and superfluous ‘master race’ and ‘one-nation state’ ideas.”[27]

The contrast in Western policy towards parallel circumstances is conspicuous. Although, the Turkish government has been practicing ethnic cleansing against its Kurdish minority since 1984 - on an even wider scale than Serb forces have done in Kosovo – Turkey has been in consistent receipt of extensive support from most NATO allies, most prominently from the United States and the United Kingdom, both of whom played leading roles in the intervention in Kosovo. The contradiction is accentuated when we recall that the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Turkey happens to be far beyond the scale of Kosovo’s crisis both before and after NATO intervention. Yet while NATO saw fit to intervene in Kosovo and indict Serb warlord Slobodan Milosevic, the Alliance has actually supported the Turkish Republic as it pursues its scorched earth campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the south, and consolidates its apartheid-like laws throughout the country.

While the international community has failed to condemn the Turkish government’s of state terrorism, the United States has been quick in leading the way for the Western powers to label the PKK a ‘terrorist’ group. And while professing concern for the plight of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the international community has ignored repression of Kurds in Turkey. Summarising this hypocrisy, Kurdish expert Vera Saeedpour, Editor of the International Journal of Kurdish Studies, observes that:

“While the U.S. is attacking Iraq almost daily in its self-declared ‘no-fly zones’, saying that it does so because it cares about the Kurds, it is backing Turkey in its attacks against the Kurds. Turkey has destroyed, drowned villages with dams. They deny or punish any manifestation of Kurdish identity, yet Clinton has called Turkey a ‘shining example to the world of the virtues of cultural diversity’. Kurdish parliamentarians are in prison for their words, some spoken in the US. The Iraqi Kurds, under U.S. pressure, have helped Turkey in its attacks on the Turkish Kurds. European countries didn’t give Ocalan safe-haven because of the pressure from Turkey and the U.S., which insisted that Ocalan face justice in Turkey; but there isn’t any justice for a Kurd in Turkey. Ocalan asked for an international trial in Europe, but Turkey refused since they didn’t want their Kurdish policy to get any scrutiny.”[28]

The anti-humanitarian tenor of Western policies towards the Kurds are well rooted in history. Indeed, they are based on long-standing strategic interests in the region. “The Kurds are in several countries and that was planned by Britain”, observes former President of the American Kurdish Society in Boston, Hussein Aktas. “If you have a problem with Iraq, you can use them against Iraq, same for Iran and Turkey.” Thanks to this disasterous condition, historically established by the West, there are “millions of Kurds who have been displaced from their homes since 1993 in Turkey”, and “hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured.”[29]" [Emphasis added]