EUROPE
Kurdish Rebels Assail Turkish Inaction on ISIS as Peril to Peace Talks
By KIRK SEMPLE and TIM ARANGO OCT. 12, 2014 NYT
ENDZA, Iraq — As jihadist fighters of the Islamic State lay siege to the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria, the implications of the battle have resonated deeply among residents in this part of the Qandil Mountains in northeastern Iraq, hundreds of miles and a country away.
In this region, beneath craggy peaks near the Iranian border, is the headquarters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish state for three decades, a fight that has claimed more than 30,000 lives. Members of the group, along with fighters from an offshoot rebel army in Syria, have been at the heart of the Kurdish resistance in Kobani.
“Negotiations cannot go on in an environment where they want to create a massacre in Kobani,” Cemil Bayik, a founder and leader of the P.K.K., said in a recent interview in a secret location in this area of the Qandil range. “We cannot bargain for settlement on the blood of Kobani.”
“We will mobilize the guerrillas,” he vowed.
Despite increased pressure from the United States and pleas from outgunned Kurdish fighters in Kobani, Turkey has refused to deploy its military against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, or to open the border to allow reinforcements, weapons and supplies to reach the embattled town.
On Sunday, Kurdish officials said their fighters in Kobani had been able to fend off a two-day assault by Islamic State fighters on the center of town. Coalition airstrikes had destroyed a convoy on its way to support the jihadist fighters, according to Idris Nassan, a spokesman for the Kobani resistance, who said the Kurds had been able to “manage” the latest assault. But without more extensive airstrikes and supplies of weapons and ammunition, he added, “Maybe tomorrow the situation will change again.”
Turkey’s reluctance stems in part from its desire not to do anything that might strengthen the Kurdish populist movement in the region. The defense of Kobani is being led by the People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G., an affiliate of the P.K.K., which is officially listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. In addition, Syrian Kurds have been trying to establish an autonomous region on the border, which Turkey wants to prevent.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has insisted that fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria should take precedence over fighting the Islamic State. And he holds the P.K.K. in such contempt that he recently equated the rebel group with the Islamic State.
“The P.K.K. and ISIS are the same for Turkey,” he told reporters. “It is wrong to view them differently. We need to deal with them jointly.”
According to analysts, Mr. Erdogan is calculating that if the Islamic State fighters overrun Kobani, the Kurdish defeat will not scuttle Turkey’s peace process with the P.K.K. But to the commanders of the P.K.K., Turkey’s refusal to act amounts to complicity with the Islamic State.
Turkey, Mr. Bayik said, “wants to use ISIL in order to inflict some blows on the Kurdish movement and to prevent the Kurdish people in Syrian Kurdistan to gain their rights.” He sat at a plastic table in an olive-drab tent beneath the boughs of a towering walnut tree that provided cover from surveillance drones as well as the sun.
“Turkey wants to victimize the Kurds,” he said. P.K.K. officials requested that the precise location of the interview not be revealed.
Turkey’s posture has spurred violent protests across Turkey that have left more than 30 people dead.
“The peace process is over,” a Kurdish protester said during a demonstration in Istanbul last week. He refused to give his name out of fear of being persecuted by the authorities. Standing near burning barricades and tires, and engulfed in clouds of tear gas, he said, “There can be no peace while ignoring Kobani.”
Mr. Erdogan’s strategy also carries considerable risks both to his domestic political standing and his legacy.
He owes his rise to power in part to the support of Kurds, which he has cultivated by taking a more conciliatory approach to Kurdish nationalism, developing closer ties with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government and helping to secure more rights for Kurds, including laws that allowed the use of the Kurdish language in schools and the media and the use of Kurdish names for certain towns.
“It seemed they were making historic progress,” said Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., who until recently was the United States ambassador to Turkey and is now the director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. The progress in Kurdish cultural and language rights, he said, “were things I never expected to see in my lifetime.”
Mr. Erdogan, who was prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and became president in August, is now seeking to alter the Constitution to gain more executive powers, an effort that analysts say will require the support of Kurdish parties.
Yet his position on Kobani is quickly costing him Kurdish backing, analysts say, while also helping to unify the Kurdish population around the world.
“Kobani became one battle for everybody,” said Hiwa Osman, a Kurdish political analyst who was an adviser to Jalal Talabani, the former president of Iraq. “This is a matter between good versus evil. For Turkey to be on the other side, by omission, positions all the Kurds in one camp. And this camp will not be friendly to Turkey.”
On Sunday, leaders of the two main political parties in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region said at a news conference that they had sent weapons and humanitarian aid to Kobani.
They did not say when the shipments were sent or whether they had arrived safely, but officials in Kobani said they never received any weapons or ammunition from the Kurdistan authorities.
In late September, however, a convoy of at least 15 trucks with posters indicating that they had come from Kurdistan crossed the border from Suruc, Turkey, into Kobani. Kurdish activists from Kobani said at the time that the trucks contained aid for refugees in Turkey and Syria.
While Mr. Erdogan’s standing has plunged among Kurds, the Kurdish fighters’ reputation has soared. In the Kurdistan region, the P.K.K. has enjoyed remarkably broad public support in recent months in light of its battlefield successes against the Islamic State militants.
In the initial months of the Islamic State assault on northern Iraq this summer, the P.K.K.’s performance stood in contrast to that of the Iraqi military, which wilted in the face of the Islamic State sweep, and of the pesh merga, Iraqi Kurdistan’s army, which suffered demoralizing setbacks before regaining its footing with the support of American airstrikes.
P.K.K. units are widely credited with engineering the rescue of thousands of Yazidis who were trapped on Mount Sinjar and facing annihilation. P.K.K. fighters established an evacuation corridor leading from the summit of the mountain, where the Yazidis had languished for days. The P.K.K. also rushed to the aid of the pesh merga after the Islamic State fighters threatened the Kurdish capital, Erbil, by overrunning Makhmur, a nearby Kurdish town.
“Had we not intervened, there would’ve been a great massacre,” Mr. Bayik said. The Kurdish government, he said, “would’ve lost face.”
Many Kurds have called on the United States and the European Union to reassess their classification of the P.K.K. as a terrorist organization — a rebuke of Mr. Erdogan and Turkey.
“Officially they are on the terrorist list,” Brig. Gen. Helgurd Hikmet Mela Ali, a spokesman for the pesh merga, said in a recent interview. “But if you want my personal opinion, not official: It’s clear now and it’s very obvious who the terrorists are. ISIS or P.K.K.?”
After the successful counterattack that recaptured Makhmur, Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan regional government, whose political party has had a bitter relationship with the P.K.K., rewarded its fighters with a visit.
“We have the same destiny,” Mr. Barzani told the guerrillas.
Kirk Semple reported from Endza, and Tim Arango from Istanbul. Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Caykara, Turkey, Ceylan Yeginsu from London, and Kamil Kakol from Sulaimaniya, Iraq.
 | ||
| Cemil Bayik, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has been fighting a guerrilla war against Turkey for three decades. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times |
Kurdish Rebels Assail Turkish Inaction on ISIS as Peril to Peace Talks
By KIRK SEMPLE and TIM ARANGO OCT. 12, 2014 NYT
ENDZA, Iraq — As jihadist fighters of the Islamic State lay siege to the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria, the implications of the battle have resonated deeply among residents in this part of the Qandil Mountains in northeastern Iraq, hundreds of miles and a country away.
In this region, beneath craggy peaks near the Iranian border, is the headquarters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish state for three decades, a fight that has claimed more than 30,000 lives. Members of the group, along with fighters from an offshoot rebel army in Syria, have been at the heart of the Kurdish resistance in Kobani.
“Negotiations cannot go on in an environment where they want to create a massacre in Kobani,” Cemil Bayik, a founder and leader of the P.K.K., said in a recent interview in a secret location in this area of the Qandil range. “We cannot bargain for settlement on the blood of Kobani.”
“We will mobilize the guerrillas,” he vowed.
Despite increased pressure from the United States and pleas from outgunned Kurdish fighters in Kobani, Turkey has refused to deploy its military against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, or to open the border to allow reinforcements, weapons and supplies to reach the embattled town.
On Sunday, Kurdish officials said their fighters in Kobani had been able to fend off a two-day assault by Islamic State fighters on the center of town. Coalition airstrikes had destroyed a convoy on its way to support the jihadist fighters, according to Idris Nassan, a spokesman for the Kobani resistance, who said the Kurds had been able to “manage” the latest assault. But without more extensive airstrikes and supplies of weapons and ammunition, he added, “Maybe tomorrow the situation will change again.”
Turkey’s reluctance stems in part from its desire not to do anything that might strengthen the Kurdish populist movement in the region. The defense of Kobani is being led by the People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G., an affiliate of the P.K.K., which is officially listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. In addition, Syrian Kurds have been trying to establish an autonomous region on the border, which Turkey wants to prevent.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has insisted that fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria should take precedence over fighting the Islamic State. And he holds the P.K.K. in such contempt that he recently equated the rebel group with the Islamic State.
“The P.K.K. and ISIS are the same for Turkey,” he told reporters. “It is wrong to view them differently. We need to deal with them jointly.”
According to analysts, Mr. Erdogan is calculating that if the Islamic State fighters overrun Kobani, the Kurdish defeat will not scuttle Turkey’s peace process with the P.K.K. But to the commanders of the P.K.K., Turkey’s refusal to act amounts to complicity with the Islamic State.
Turkey, Mr. Bayik said, “wants to use ISIL in order to inflict some blows on the Kurdish movement and to prevent the Kurdish people in Syrian Kurdistan to gain their rights.” He sat at a plastic table in an olive-drab tent beneath the boughs of a towering walnut tree that provided cover from surveillance drones as well as the sun.
“Turkey wants to victimize the Kurds,” he said. P.K.K. officials requested that the precise location of the interview not be revealed.
Turkey’s posture has spurred violent protests across Turkey that have left more than 30 people dead.
“The peace process is over,” a Kurdish protester said during a demonstration in Istanbul last week. He refused to give his name out of fear of being persecuted by the authorities. Standing near burning barricades and tires, and engulfed in clouds of tear gas, he said, “There can be no peace while ignoring Kobani.”
Mr. Erdogan’s strategy also carries considerable risks both to his domestic political standing and his legacy.
He owes his rise to power in part to the support of Kurds, which he has cultivated by taking a more conciliatory approach to Kurdish nationalism, developing closer ties with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government and helping to secure more rights for Kurds, including laws that allowed the use of the Kurdish language in schools and the media and the use of Kurdish names for certain towns.
“It seemed they were making historic progress,” said Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., who until recently was the United States ambassador to Turkey and is now the director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. The progress in Kurdish cultural and language rights, he said, “were things I never expected to see in my lifetime.”
Mr. Erdogan, who was prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and became president in August, is now seeking to alter the Constitution to gain more executive powers, an effort that analysts say will require the support of Kurdish parties.
Yet his position on Kobani is quickly costing him Kurdish backing, analysts say, while also helping to unify the Kurdish population around the world.
“Kobani became one battle for everybody,” said Hiwa Osman, a Kurdish political analyst who was an adviser to Jalal Talabani, the former president of Iraq. “This is a matter between good versus evil. For Turkey to be on the other side, by omission, positions all the Kurds in one camp. And this camp will not be friendly to Turkey.”
On Sunday, leaders of the two main political parties in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region said at a news conference that they had sent weapons and humanitarian aid to Kobani.
They did not say when the shipments were sent or whether they had arrived safely, but officials in Kobani said they never received any weapons or ammunition from the Kurdistan authorities.
In late September, however, a convoy of at least 15 trucks with posters indicating that they had come from Kurdistan crossed the border from Suruc, Turkey, into Kobani. Kurdish activists from Kobani said at the time that the trucks contained aid for refugees in Turkey and Syria.
While Mr. Erdogan’s standing has plunged among Kurds, the Kurdish fighters’ reputation has soared. In the Kurdistan region, the P.K.K. has enjoyed remarkably broad public support in recent months in light of its battlefield successes against the Islamic State militants.
In the initial months of the Islamic State assault on northern Iraq this summer, the P.K.K.’s performance stood in contrast to that of the Iraqi military, which wilted in the face of the Islamic State sweep, and of the pesh merga, Iraqi Kurdistan’s army, which suffered demoralizing setbacks before regaining its footing with the support of American airstrikes.
P.K.K. units are widely credited with engineering the rescue of thousands of Yazidis who were trapped on Mount Sinjar and facing annihilation. P.K.K. fighters established an evacuation corridor leading from the summit of the mountain, where the Yazidis had languished for days. The P.K.K. also rushed to the aid of the pesh merga after the Islamic State fighters threatened the Kurdish capital, Erbil, by overrunning Makhmur, a nearby Kurdish town.
“Had we not intervened, there would’ve been a great massacre,” Mr. Bayik said. The Kurdish government, he said, “would’ve lost face.”
Many Kurds have called on the United States and the European Union to reassess their classification of the P.K.K. as a terrorist organization — a rebuke of Mr. Erdogan and Turkey.
“Officially they are on the terrorist list,” Brig. Gen. Helgurd Hikmet Mela Ali, a spokesman for the pesh merga, said in a recent interview. “But if you want my personal opinion, not official: It’s clear now and it’s very obvious who the terrorists are. ISIS or P.K.K.?”
After the successful counterattack that recaptured Makhmur, Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan regional government, whose political party has had a bitter relationship with the P.K.K., rewarded its fighters with a visit.
“We have the same destiny,” Mr. Barzani told the guerrillas.
Kirk Semple reported from Endza, and Tim Arango from Istanbul. Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Caykara, Turkey, Ceylan Yeginsu from London, and Kamil Kakol from Sulaimaniya, Iraq.
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