International Business Times News
January 10, 2014 Friday 7:30 PM EST
The Invisible Land Of Kurdistan: Iraq Oil, Turkish EU Membership,
Could Lead To Official Recognition
Alan Huffman
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — The sound of Turkish military jets taking off to
unknown destinations no longer disturbs the sleep of Abdullah
DemirbaÅ?. Four years ago, at the age of 16, his son joined the PKK,
the acronym of the Kurdish Workers’ Party, a guerrilla group that has
been fighting against the Turkish state since the late 1970s. For
decades, the planes were headed to target PKK positions in the
mountains. These days, the fighters carry out surveillance missions,
patrolling Turkey’s air space near the Syria and Iraq borders. They
are no longer attacking the guerrillas as a peace process between the
Turkish government and the Kurdish independence movement slowly
unfolds.
DemirbaÅ?, the mayor of the Sur district of Diyarbakır — the
second-largest city in southeast Turkey’s Anatolia region and the
unofficial Kurdish capital — hasn’t seen his son since he ‘went to
the mountains,’ as the locals euphemistically say when referring to
someone who takes up arms for Kurdistan.
A few months ago, DemirbaÅ?’ other son was called to compulsory Turkish
military service, which means that if fighting between Kurdish rebels
and the Turkish army resumes, his family will be among many who could
find themselves with sons in opposing camps.
For now, DemirbaÅ? and other Kurds who have no appetite for war take
comfort in the dialogue under way since 2012 between the Turkish
government and the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ã-calan, even
if the government’s overtures are an effort to make the country more
attractive for membership in the European Union. Nonetheless, the
Kurdish issue remains volatile, in Turkey and in neighboring countries
with sizeable Kurdish populations, and is complicated by changing
economics, including urban migrations of rural Kurds and the
increasing extraction of oil and gas reserves in Kurdish Iraq.
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters stand in formation in northern
Iraq, May 14, 2013. The first group of Kurdish militants to withdraw
from Turkey under a peace process were greeted in northern Iraq by
comrades from the PKK, in a symbolic step toward ending a
three-decades-old insurgency. Reuters/Umit Bektas
Kurds have long been described as the biggest nation of the world
without a state. Though they claim as one of their sons legendary
Muslim leader Saladin, who fought the Crusaders and reconquered
Palestine from the Europeans in the 12th century, Kurds have never had
a country of their own. An estimated 20 million to 25 million Kurds
live in Turkey, making up about one-quarter of the country’s
population. What percentage they comprise of the total population of
the geopolitical region of Kurdistan isn’t precisely known. Kurdistan
is a mountainous region spreading over sections of five nations —
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and a small portion of Armenia. Kurd
separatists, including the PKK, want their own country, or at the
least an autonomous sub-state. For centuries, Kurdish uprisings and
attempts to create such a state have been brutally suppressed,
especially by the Turkish government as well as the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein, which carried out a massacre with chemical weapons in
the northern Iraq city of Halabja in 1988, estimated to have caused up
to 5,000 deaths.
In 1983, Kurdish provinces in Turkey were placed under martial law in
response to PKK activity, which prompted a guerrilla war that
continued into the 1990s. Thousands of Kurdish-populated villages were
destroyed and numerous assassinations, kidnappings and executions were
reportedly carried out by both sides. More than 37,000 people died and
hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homes. In those
days, Turkish security operatives drove white Renault 12 sedans, the
mere sight of which caused locals to scatter, and there are still
dozens of ‘disappeared’ whose fates are unknown. ‘Nobody knows their
number and what happened to them,’ observed Raci Bilici, president of
Diyarbakır’s Human Rights Association.
War and its aftermath always carry unintended consequences, and one
outcome of the Iraq war was the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish
region in northern Iraq along the border with Turkey, which now
functions as a semi-independent state under the leadership of Massoud
Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government and head of the
Kurdistan Democratic Party. For now, it’s unclear how the massive
exodus of Kurdish refugees from the Syrian war will influence politics
there, or elsewhere.
A view of the new refugee camp on the outskirts of the city of Arbil
in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Aug. 20, 2013. Reuters/Thaier al-Sudani
Meanwhile, in an unexpected turn of events, the concept of Kurdistan
found an ally of convenience in the form of its erstwhile enemy — the
Turkish government and its prime minister, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an. A
harsh populist on the outside — ErdoÄ?an can also be a canny
pragmatist, and at the risk of alienating nationalist Turks — who
resent Kurdish demands and whose suspicions of foreign and domestic
conspiracies to break the country apart date back to the fading days
of the Ottoman Empire. ErdoÄ?an in November joined Barzani in
Diyarbakır for an unprecedented summit meeting, to discuss energy
cooperation as well as to resume a faltering dialogue that the PKK and
its political branch, the Peace and Democracy Party, described as in a
“coma.”
The prime minister even broke a taboo by referring to Iraq’s Kurdish
region as ‘Kurdistan.’ In the words of Al Monitor’s columnist Cengiz
Çandar, ‘If a Turkish nationalist had seen this in a dream, he would
not have recovered from this nightmare for a long time.’ And in a land
where the government for a long time dismissed Kurds as being
‘mountain Turks’ — not recognizing their separate identity — ErdoÄ?an
extended an olive branch, saying that ‘rejection, denial and
assimilation have ended with our government.’ He made clear, however,
that his notion of Kurdistan stopped at the border: ‘We have a unitary
nation, a unitary flag, a unitary land and a unitary state,’ ErdoÄ?an
said at his speech in Diyarbakır. ‘We don’t have any toleration to the
people who want to divide Turkey.’
Turkey’s overtures toward the Kurds are in part driven by the thriving
country’s thirst for energy. With almost no energy resources of its
own, Turkey must purchase all of its oil and gas from outside sources
— the country’s energy imports hit $60 billion last year. Oil imports
make up between 7 and 12 percent of Turkey’s GDP, comparable to South
Korea’s outlays in energy imports. That makes both countries
especially vulnerable to spikes in oil prices. But whereas every $10
increase in oil barrel prices would cut South Korea’s GDP by 0.8
percent, or about a $1 billion increase in its account deficit,
according to Morgan Stanley, in the case of Turkey the same price
increase would add another $4 billion to its current account deficit
of $51.9 billion.
During a visit to Japan on Tuesday, ErdoÄ?an blamed the trade gap on
oil and gas imports. Consequently, Turkey is desperate to gain access
to the Iraqi Kurds’ oil reserves, estimated at 45 billion barrels, and
natural gas holdings of at least 106 trillion cubic feet. After the
ErdoÄ?an-Barzani meeting, there were reports that oil would start
flowing from Iraqi Kurdistan into Turkey ‘before the end of the year,’
though for now the pipelines remain unused.
The reason: The Kurdish regional government’s moves toward an
independent oil policy triggered a warning not only from Baghdad but
also from the U.S. government urging the Kurdish regional government
not to exceed its autonomy powers. But with Iraq now battling
al-Qaeda-linked groups and Sunni Muslims growing increasingly restive
in the country’s West, Iraqi Kurdistan, which is prosperous and
relatively safe, has the upper hand. The regional capital, Erbil, was
described as a ‘mini-Dubai’ by Mehmet TaniÅ?, a Kurdish businessman
based in the Turkish city of Å?ırnak, near the Iraqi border — not due
to magnificent skyscrapers (which the city doesn’t have) but because
of its newfound wealth.
Some say the Kurdish regional government plans to use oil money to
pave the way for a sovereign state, and ironically, many Turkish Kurds
are apprehensive about such a possibility, whether due to their own
great expectations or fears of resumed conflict. Still, Å?eyhmus Diken,
a Diyarbakır-based Kurdish writer and civil rights activist, says the
political thinking of Kurds has evolved into a more realistic model
for a freer union in Turkey.
‘The goal in the beginning was the union of the four parts of
Kurdistan [Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria] into a single, independent
state, based on a Marxist conception of people’s liberation,’ Diken
said. ‘What we are pursuing now is a federal state model that grants
more freedoms and autonomous rights to every citizen of this country,
from the Marmara region to Southeastern Anatolia.’
One PKK insider, who spoke with International Business Times in
Diyarbakir on condition of anonymity, concurred with Diken’s analysis.
‘The PKK is not nationalist,’ he said, pointing out that the region of
Kurdistan is itself less contained than it once was. ‘Kurds are all
over Turkey — in Istanbul, in Ankara, in Bursa, everywhere,’ he said.
‘What would be the borders of such a country?’ He said the dispersal
was largely the result of the war of the 1990s and the exodus of Kurds
to larger Turkish cities for economic opportunities.
And he noted that Turkey has made strides toward accommodating Kurds,
especially since the peace talks with Ã-calan began. Kurdish language
news is now broadcast freely over the airwaves and the language is
used alongside Turkish in local agencies and municipalities in the
southeast — no small feat considering that both were illegal only a
few years ago. Kurdish music blares from stores in the streets of
Diyarbakır, where the pictures of militant icons and, to a lesser
extent, Kurdish flags, are conspicuously displayed.
Contrast that with the experience of Ebre Deniz (not her real name)
who in the late 1980s, at age 19, overheard her grandparents
whispering in a strange language in their kitchen one evening at the
home they shared in Istanbul. Deniz was stunned to later find that
they were speaking in Kurmanji, the most commonly spoken Kurdish
language, and that her family was Kurdish yet had not told her so out
of fear.
Soon after, she fell in love with a Kurdish militant at her university
and took up arms for the PKK in the mountains not far from Diyarbakır.
She stayed for two years until one winter morning when the guerilla
group’s mountain camp came under attack from Turkish gunships and she
saw two teenagers blown to pieces by artillery. Shell-shocked, she was
allowed to return home to Istanbul, but guilt ate away at her, so two
years later she got back in touch with other militants by telephone.
As she was walking toward their re-encounter, not far from Gezi Park,
she claims undercover agents grabbed her and forced her into a van,
covered her head with a cloth bag and beat her. She spent the next 10
years at Istanbul’s notorious BayrampaÅ?a prison, where she claims she
was repeatedly tortured.
Now based in Istanbul, Deniz dreams of an autonomous Kurdistan — part
of a reformed, federative state, ‘one that is free and equal for
everyone, Turks, Kurds, Armenians.’
But even that limited Kurdish state seems unrealistic to another
Diyarbakır resident, a musician who gave only his first name, Engin.
He says that ethnic hatred of the Kurds isn’t easing as quickly as
some would believe.
‘Just the colors are changing,’ he said. ‘The state structure remains
the same, and it’s still repressive.’
Riot police use tear gas to disperse pro-Kurdish demonstrators in the
southeastern Turkish town of Nusaybin who are upset over plans to
build a wall along the Turkish-Syrian border, Nov. 7, 2013. Reuters
The day Engin spoke with IBTimes, on Jan. 7, military prosecutors
decided not to press charges for what is known as the Roboski
Massacre, an attack by Turkish jets on a group of civilians that left
34 dead in the Kurdish Å?ırnak province, across the border from Iraq.
The decision was met with outrage in Diyarbakır and other
Kurdish-majority cities. Turkish authorities claimed they mistook the
villagers — most of them teenagers — for PKK guerrillas, when in
fact they were smuggling cigarettes and other items into Turkey from
northern Iraq. That begged the question: What if they had, in fact,
been PKK guerillas? In that case, what would the military’s actions
indicate about the government’s peaceful overtures toward the Kurds?
Fehim IÅ?ık, an Istanbul-based Kurdish author and analyst, said Turkey
must develop a comprehensive approach to meeting Kurdish demands for
equal rights as a nation, which have been held in check for centuries.
‘Unless there is a permanent solution for the Kurdish-inhabited parts
in Turkey and the region, all solutions will be temporary in nature,’
IÅ?ık said.
People sit in the back of a truck as they celebrate what they said was
the liberation of villages from Islamist rebels near the city of Ras
al-Ain in the Syrian province of Hasakah, after capturing it from
Islamist rebels, Nov. 6, 2013. Reuters
http://www.ibtimes.com/invisible-land-kurdistan-iraq-oil-turkish-eu-membership-could-lead-official-recognition-1534936