Arab News
By David Romano
Jan. 17, 2021
MISSOURI, US: A good many Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere will be
celebrating the departure of US President Donald Trump when he leaves
office on Jan. 20.
Those in Iraq will remember when his administration hung them out to
dry during their independence referendum, allowing Iran, Baghdad and
Shiite militias to attack, while Turkey threatened to blockade them.
Turkey, meanwhile, had little reason to fear American outcry over its
human rights violations as it arrested and jailed thousands of
pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) activists and their elected
representatives.
And in case this did not prove sufficiently disappointing for the
Kurds, Trump withdrew US troops from the Turkish border in
northeastern Syria in October 2019, giving Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade the Kurdish enclaves there
and ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands from the area.
Kurdish forces in Syria, who had just concluded the successful ground
campaign against Daesh, found themselves betrayed by a callous and
unpredictable American administration. Just days before Trump greenlit
the Turkish operation in a phone call with Erdogan, the Americans had
convinced the Syrian Kurds to remove their fortifications near the
Turkish border to “reassure Turkey.”
Most Kurds therefore look forward to President-elect Joe Biden taking
over in Washington. In Turkey, from which roughly half the world’s
Kurdish population hails, many hope the new Biden administration will
pressure Ankara to cease its military campaigns and return to the
negotiating table with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
At the very least, they hope a Biden-led administration will not
remain silent as Erdogan’s government tramples upon human rights in
Turkey and launches military strikes against Kurds in Syria and Iraq
as well.
Judging by the record of the Obama administration, in which Biden
served as vice-president, Kurds may expect some improvements over
Trump. But they should also not raise their hopes too high.
One need only recall how Erdogan’s government abandoned the Kurdish
peace process in 2015, when the Obama administration was still in
power. At that time, the HDP’s improved electoral showing in the
summer of 2015 cost Erdogan his majority in parliament. He responded
by making sure no government could be formed following the June
election, allowing him to call a redo election for November.
Between June and November, his government abandoned talks with the
Kurds and resumed the war against the PKK. The resulting “rally around
the flag” effect saw Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP)
improve its showing in November, boosted further by the Turkish army
siege of entire Kurdish cities, which in effect disenfranchised them.
Following the November 2015 vote, Erdogan formed a new government with
the far-right and virulently anti-Kurdish National Action Party (MHP).
The militarization of Ankara’s approach to its “Kurdish problem”
increased even further under the AKP-MHP partnership. In 2015 and
2016, whole city blocks in majority Kurdish cities of southeastern
Turkey were razed to the ground as part of the counterinsurgency
campaign. In the town of Cizre, the army burned Kurdish civilians
alive while they hid in a basement.
In Sirnak, footage emerged of Turkish forces dragging the body of a
well-known Kurdish filmmaker behind their armored vehicle. In
Nusaybin, MHP parliamentarians called for the razing of the entire
city.
Urban warfare is never pretty, of course, and the PKK held part of the
blame for the destruction as a result of its new urban warfare
strategy. Many aspects of the Erdogan government’s counterinsurgency
actions of 2015 and 2016 went beyond the pale, however, and should
have earned at least some rebukes from Washington.
The Obama administration stayed largely silent during this time.
Policy makers in Washington had finally gained Turkish acquiescence to
use NATO air bases in Turkey in their campaign against Daesh and
Ankara has also promised to join the effort.
What Obama really received from Ankara, however, were a few token
Turkish airstrikes of little significance against Daesh and a rising
crescendo of heavy attacks against America’s Kurdish allies in Syria.
Erdogan’s government duly reported every cross-border strike and
various incursions and invasions into Syria as “operations against
terrorist organizations in Syria” — conveniently conflating Daesh and
the Syrian Kurdish forces.
Turkey even employed former Daesh fighters and other Syrian radical
groups among its proxy mercenaries in these operations, further
aggravating Syria’s problems with militant Islamists.
The quid pro quo of this arrangement involved Washington turning a
blind eye to Turkey’s human rights abuses against Kurds both in Syria
and Turkey. Even Turkish airstrikes in Iraq, which at times killed
Iraqi army personnel and civilians in places like Sinjar, failed to
elicit any American rebukes — under Obama or Trump.
If the new Biden administration returns to the standard operating
procedures of the Obama administration regarding Turkey, little may
change.
Although a Biden administration would probably not callously throw
erstwhile Kurdish allies in Syria or Iraq under the bus as Trump did,
they might well continue to cling to false hopes of relying on Turkey
to help contain radical Islamists.
Many in Washington even think Turkey can still help the US counter
Russia and Iran — never mind the mountain of evidence that Turkey
works with both countries to pursue an anti-American agenda in the
region.
Alternatively, Biden may prove markedly different to his incarnation
as vice president. Biden knows the region well, has called Erdogan an
autocrat on more than one occasion and has repeatedly shown sympathy
for the Kurds and their plight in the past.
In charge of his own administration rather than acting as an aide to
Obama’s, Biden could conceivably break new ground regarding Turkey and
the Kurds.
If so, he might start by pressuring Turkey to abide by human rights
norms. Selahattin Demirtas, the former HDP leader and 2018 Turkish
presidential hopeful, as well as tens of thousands of other political
dissidents have been languishing in pre-trial detention in Turkey for
years now.
In December 2020, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that
Demirtas’ detention is politically motivated and based on trumped-up
charges and that he must be released.
Although Turkey is a signatory to the court, it has repeatedly ignored
such rulings. A more human rights-oriented administration in
Washington might join the likes of France and others in pressuring
Ankara on such matters.
A determined Biden administration might also try to coax or pressure
Ankara back to the negotiating table with the PKK. A return to even
indirect negotiations, especially if overseen by the Americans, could
go a long way towards improving things in both Turkey and Syria.
Little more than five years ago, Turkey’s southeast was quiet and
Syrian Kurdish leaders were meeting as well as cooperating with
Turkish officials.
If Erdogan and his MHP partners nonetheless remain adamant in
maintaining their internal and external wars, then Biden should look
elsewhere for American partners.
Biden said as much only last year, expressing his concern about
Erdogan’s policies. “What I think we should be doing is taking a very
different approach to him now, making it clear that we support
opposition leadership ... . He (Erdogan) has to pay a price,” Biden
said.
Washington should embolden Turkish opposition leaders “to be able to
take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the
electoral process,” he added.
This kind of language from the new Biden administration might go a
long way towards changing the current policy calculus in Ankara.
*
David Romano is Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at
Missouri State University