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Turkey's PKK: 

Defeated or Hibernating?

Svante  Cornell

Less than a decade ago, the Kurdish Workers' Party, better known as the PKK, constituted a formidable challenge to the Turkish state. It was able to mount a powerful insurgency in the southeastern, predominantly Kurdish parts of the country, carried out terrorist attacks that caused severe damage to Turkey's crucial tourist industry, forced Turkey to commit hundreds of thousands of soldiers to police the mountainous region. The PKK never threatened the collapse of the Turkish state, but it certainly defied its sovereignty. For extended periods of time in the early 1990s, the PKK was able to deny Ankara control over significant tracts of territory - at least after dark. As such, the PKK posed a considerable threat to Turkey's continued existence in its present shape and borders, and was internationally the most public face of Kurdish struggle for statehood.

Yet by the turn of the century, the PKK was weak, retreating, and near total defeat. It no longer seriously challenged Turkish sovereignty, was gravely decimated in numbers, and confined to pockets in unruly Northern Iraq where it coexisted uneasily with two stronger and hostile Kurdish groups. Faced with an imminent Turkish invasion, its main sponsor, Syria, had been forced to expel the PKK. Only months later, the PKK's Stalin-styled leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was apprehended by Turkish security forces and subsequently sentenced to death. Fearing for his life, the once-defiant Öcalan recanted and ordered his followers to lay down their arms and leave Turkish territory.

This drastic downturn betrays the inherent weaknesses which had always hampered the PKK. The PKK had little appeal in predominantly agrarian Kurdish society, enjoying at most the support of 30% of Kurds in Turkey, and far less in Iran or Iraq. It treated the Kurdish population badly, latterly even worse than Turkish security forces. Dissent was punished with death, and intra-party dialogue was negligible.

 

Powerful backers, but no friends

The relative successes of the PKK were hence heavily determined by external circumstances. Without direct support from first the Soviet Union and after 1989, Syria, the PKK would have been unable to challenge Turkish sovereignty the way it did. Equally important was the power vacuum in Kurdish-populated northern Iraq following the Gulf war, which provided the PKK with an anarchic - and therefore safe - base of operations against Turkey. But Turkish military strength eventually enabled it to repeatedly invade northern Iraq, and to force Syria to relinquish its anti-Turkish activities. Notwithstanding, an equally compelling factor behind the PKK's strength was the disenchantment of sections of Turkey's Kurdish population with the stringent controls over Kurdish political activities exercised by Ankara. The PKK clearly never commanded the loyalty of anything close to a majority of Kurds in Turkey; but even Turkish official figures show that over 20,000 Kurdish militants were killed during 15 years of war. This obviously means that a larger number could be mobilized to fight in the PKK's ranks, and that an even greater number supported or sympathized with the movement.

During his 1999 trial, PKK leader Öcalan apologized to the Turkish people for the PKK's 'historic mistake' of waging a war against the state, debriefed Turkish intelligence on the organization's activities, sold out every demand the PKK had ever made, and urged his followers to lay down their arms. To most observers, it was obvious that Öcalan was simply trying to save his own life. Yet amazingly, the PKK followed his orders, even unconditionally surrendering two detachments to Turkish authorities. The PKK went through a severe crisis, with simmering dissent in the rank and file against the sell-out by its cherished leader. To the chagrin of his followers, Öcalan's behavior corroborated Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit's analysis: while his followers fought in the mountains, Öcalan lived well in Damascus, "not even moving his hand from hot to cold water". Yet the PKK leadership, true to Öcalan, managed to retain control over the organization - but at the cost of a significant and growing split within it.

Today the PKK is weak: its troops

are demoralized, and the chain of command is unclear, since orders from the top, ironically, may even be drafted by the Turkish chiefs

 of staff and handed to Öcalan. The Turkish military refused to stop its offensive, even as the PKK declared a unilateral cease-fire and withdrew into northern Iraq. Perhaps as Ankara had intended, this brought dissent within the PKK to the boiling point. The commander of the 'Tunceli brigade', codenamed Kazim, openly disobeyed Öcalan's orders and refused to withdraw his forces. The PKK's ruling body, the Presidential Council, responded by dealing harshly with any dissent, incarcerating and executing members for criticizing the leadership, including an assassination in Europe.

While the PK is no longer a serious threat to the Turkish state, divisions within the organization are a mixed blessing for Ankara. Whereas a divided PKK is a lesser threat, it also creates uncontrollable splinter groups that do not obey Öcalan's orders, and that carry out terrorist acts in western Turkey no matter what the Presidential Council orders.

 

Down, but not out

Thanks to the strong indoctrination of its followers and ample use of repressive measures by the leadership, the PKK seems to have survived as an organization. However, Turkey's failure to issue an amnesty for former fighters also make it difficult to reduce the PKK's base, and although recruitment is low, the PKK retains up to 4,000 fighters. Given the prevailing sense of defeat and betrayal among the rank and file, many of these could be successfully reintegrated in society if given a chance.

Furthermore, the Turkish government has failed to significantly improve conditions in the poor and war-ravaged southeast. An ambitious program directing investment to the region was announced in 1999. However, IMF regulations have impeded its working, and the recent economic crisis in Turkey casts doubt on whether such measures can be sustained.

Meanwhile, Turkey has resisted internal and external pressure (mainly from the European Union) to grant cultural rights to Kurds. The issue of television broadcasting and education in Kurdish has created tensions within the ruling coalition, with Prime Minister Ecevit's Democratic Left Party and the center-right Motherland Party looking favorably upon granting such rights - not as a direct concession to Kurds specifically, but through a general liberalization of legislation. The Nationalist Movement Party, on the other hand, adamantly opposes such steps and terms them divisive and threatening to Turkish society's unity and integrity. Moreover, the largest legal party identified with Kurdish rights, the People's Democracy Party (HADEP), is regularly harassed on suspicion of links to the PKK.

This implies that the factors that created a domestic environment amenable to the PKK's emergence in the 1970s and 1980s still prevails. However, issues related to Kurdish cultural rights are now openly debated. Leading political figures, including somewhat surprisingly the head of the secretive National Intelligence Organization (Milli Istihbarat Teskilati - MIT), have spoken out in favor of Kurdish-language television.

Meanwhile, a low-intensity conflict goes on in areas of southeastern Turkey. Besides Tunceli, where a PKK presence is known, clashes have occurred repeatedly in the border provinces of Sirnak and Hakkari.

At the same time, the PKK is likely to pursue its stated aim of transforming itself into a political movement, following the Palestine Liberation Oganisation (PLO) model. Given a few years, the PKK may be able to build up a political identity in certain European states where memory is short, leftist forces and anti-Turkish attitudes are strong, and where the atrocities the PKK committed are forgotten.

 

Achilles heal

To do away with the PKK threat once and for all, Turkey needs to act decisively to address the dissatisfaction rife in the southeast. The military has a significantly better relationship with the population than was the case in the mid-1990s, but the region's socio-economic need to remain high on Ankara's agenda. Restrictions on freedom of expression should also be lifted. The creation of state-controlled or state-monitored television broadcasts in Kurdish may actually benefit the state by creating an audience for the state among the population that now only watches the PKK mouthpiece Medya TV, which broadcasts via satellite from Europe. Whereas Kurdish in schools is unrealistic, it is feasible that private institutions will be allowed to teach Kurdish languages and culture. Should Turkey take these steps, it will have done much to remove the base of PKK support.

Turkey has already defeated the PKK militarily but such means are unlikely to destroy the organisation, given that the PKK now relies on activities in Iraq, Iran, and various European countries for its survival. To prevent the specter of separatist terrorism from once again threatening the country, Ankara now needs to undercut the PKK's possible support base through economic and political means, while it pursues its presently successful diplomatic efforts against it.                        

 

  Svante Cornell

 

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