Iran Uneasy Over PKK Withdrawal

LONDON, United Kingdom – Iran’s state media have been critical of the historic peace process between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish government.  

Both Tehran, and the Shiite government in Baghdad that is close to it, have voiced their opposition to a process that would end a three-decade conflict in Turkey that has killed an estimated 40,000 people.

Baghdad has claimed that the withdrawal of PKK fighters from Turkey to their mountain bases in the autonomous Kurdistan Region violates Iraq’s “territorial integrity” and “sovereignty.”

Iran has linked the process to alleged Israeli and US plots to divide Iraq. One of its claims is that Turkish efforts are aimed at first creating a Kurdish state, and then using the PKK card against both Syria and Iran.

Tehran fears that the withdrawing insurgents could join up with their affiliates in Iran, the outlawed Free Life of Kurdistan Party (PJAK). Another feared scenario is that they could hook up with comrades of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, where Kurdish forces are involved in the uprising against the Iranian-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

According to a report by consultants Global Insight, neither Ankara nor Erbil would be opposed to PKK insurgents going to Syria or Iran, “given their opposition to the regimes in both” Damascus and Tehran.

Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper reported that Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araqchi told Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Ankara in late May that the PKK withdrawal should have been approved by Tehran and Baghdad.

PKK spokesperson Roj Welat dismissed such fears over the withdrawal. “It isn’t against Iran or Iraq. Maybe this process will help move the region toward peace and stability,” Welat told Rudaw.

The PKK hopes the peace process in Turkey can be an example for other countries with large Kurdish minorities.
 

“If the Kurdish issue is resolved in north (Turkish) Kurdistan, this will bring new possibilities for all parts of Kurdistan,” the PKK’s top military commander, Murat Karayilan, told reporters recently. 

“The solution of the Kurdish issue in Turkey does not only concern the north. It will launch a new process for all the Kurds. We want to initiate a new process in the Middle East,” he said.