LONDON - As images of heroic Kurdish fighters fill the media, analysts and politicians are asking whether this could be the moment to consider removing the terrorist label off the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), amid a new willingness to see Kurds achieve their ambitions of statehood.
Reports of Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters working with the US-led coalition to call in air strikes against Islamic State (ISIS or IS) forces has led commentators to dub them “trusted partners”. It’s a far cry from the way in which the PKK and its Syrian affiliate, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), has been viewed in Europe and Washington since the start of the PKK’s armed insurgency against Ankara 30 years ago.
Analysts say that Ankara, which has refused to allow PKK fighters or weapons over its border to help fellow Kurds in the besieged Syrian town of Kobane, and has violently repressed Kurdish protests within Turkey, has been wrong-footed by the rapidly-changing political landscape.
“The Turks didn’t seem to understand the qualitative and the emotional shift that was going on whereby the PYD went from a group that was seen as an ally of the PKK -- a slightly distasteful Kurdish group in Western circles with the label of terrorism attached to it -- to a trusted partner,” says Dr Michael Stephens, a specialist in Middle East affairs at the Royal United Services Institute.
“They’ve gone from being an organisation where diplomats would struggle to meet them to all of a sudden entertaining Western and European strategists, major military operators in the region,” Dr Stephens told an audience at a Westminster debate on Turkey, the Kurds and the Crisis in the Middle East last week.
“(After Kobane) all of a sudden what we have is an express commitment by the United States to the security of Syria and Kurdistan,” said Dr Stephens.
One reason for the rehabilitation of the PKK’s image in the West is that it is seen as engaging in an existential fight on behalf of all Kurds in the region, as well as the fact that it has been many years since any attacks on foreign visitors to Turkey. Among diaspora Kurds, too, where it was already deeply rooted, it has gained further prestige from the influence its actions in Kobane are having on geo-political policy.
Ibrahim Dogus, of the Centre for Turkish Studies in London, told Rudaw there was a strategic, as well as an emotional justification for delisting the PKK, which would allow it to receive weapons.
“It is vital that the PKK is removed from the list of proscribed organisations in order to allow its fighters to receive direct or indirect military aid in the fight against the IS,” he said.
In Kobane, the PKK-affiliated People’s Protection Units (YPG) have been resisting an overrun by ISIS for six weeks.
“YPG fighters, with the support and involvement of Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are playing the most important role in the fight against IS in Syria, with the potential to do more in Iraq,” Dogus said.
In Brussels, where many leading members of the PKK are based, support among members of the European Parliament (MEPs), particularly those from socialist parties who sympathise with the PKK’s left-wing ideology, has been strong for some time.
At the Kurdish Institute of Brussels, Mauro Desira, a Kurdish activist, says the Institute has seen a significant increase in goodwill among both MEPs and public.
“It is definitely an issue now. Turkey is being marginalised, and it’s about time the PKK were recognised,” he told Rudaw by telephone.
The moment ought to be propitious. In late 2012 the Turkish state and the PKK launched a peace process that resulted in a ceasefire and talks, led by the PKK’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
Despite setbacks caused by Turkish reluctance to support the Kurds against ISIS, its harsh rhetoric against the group, violent suppression of pro-Kobane protests and the PKK killings of four Turkish soldiers last week, the process limps on for now, with Ocalan calling for restraint from his followers.
PKK supporters argue that as the party is now in peace talks with the government and acting as the West’s bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism, the terrorist label is outdated and unfair.
They say that even the KDP and PUK, the main parties in the KRG, were historically listed as terrorists, a hangover from insurgency activities in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Legislative moves are currently afoot in Washington to have them removed from the list.
There are significant differences however; while the KRG has for some time had good relations with Washington and a mutually beneficial economic relationship with Ankara, the PKK was until recently engaged in a vicious conflict with Turkey, a strategically key member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), with close relations with the European Union.
Any European or US proposal to delist the PKK would therefore be all but inconceivable without Ankara’s consent. The PKK has also made it clear that, although it favours a negotiated peace, it might revert to violence if talks break down.
Nonetheless, Turkey has shown it is capable of changing positions quickly for pragmatic reasons, argues Bill Park, Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies, Kings College, London.
“The Turks struggle with the whole Kurdish issue. When the KRG first emerged Turkey wouldn’t formally deal with it. The KRG leaders were simply tribal leaders according to (Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan and he would only deal directly with Baghdad. Now the Turks seem quite happy to allow Iraqi Peshmerga to come into Turkish territory to help the Syrian Kurds,” he told the Westminster debate.
But while Ann Clwyd, a British Labour Party MP who has followed Kurdish affairs and frequently visits the region, agrees there is growing support for the Turkish Kurds and that “(PKK recognition) is certainly a matter for discussion with the Turks,” she told Rudaw that it would have to be for Ankara to decide.
“Although they have become more conciliatory towards the PKK, they could get nervous if they fear the group will turn its weapons against them,” she said.
Many Turks, including left-wing secularists who might otherwise sympathise with the PKK, are also antagonised by its demands for an autonomous region, which they see as striking at the heart of the founding principles of Kemal Ataturk, the architect of modern Turkey.
“As long as the PKK keep armed people in Turkey they can’t expect the removal of their terrorist listing,” Turkish journalist and specialist on the PKK Rusen Cakir told Rudaw recently.
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