More Important than the issue of the Kurdish Rebels
Mustafa Zein AL-Hayat - 01/03/08//
Since its rise to power in Turkey, the "Prosperity and Development" government has been trying to exploit its distance from chauvinism to settle the issues of minorities within an Islamic framework that recognizes state secularism. Accordingly, in a visit to Diyarbakr where the Kurds are the majority, Ragab Tayyip Erdogan asserted on the eve of the 2007 elections that the Kurdish cause was the cause of democracy which he took on personally and intended solve through peaceful means. Indeed, he tried to settle the affair along with his "twin" President Abdullah Gul. The two men set the grounds for a solution by offering the Kurds the opportunity to express themselves in their own language in some publications, to establish the Democratic Society Party (24 seats in parliament) which demands autonomy in Anatolia in return for giving up its arms. In other words, what for four decades was an almost impossible dialogue between Ankara and the Kurds became a reality, even if it came in the form of proposals made by the government without awaiting responses. What then has changed and turned the dialogue into war?
Following the death of 15 soldiers during skirmishes with the Kurdistan Workers Party a few weeks ago, the Strategic Research and Studies Center in Ankara organized a forum in which the general chief of staff General Yasar Buyukanit and his deputy General Ergin Saygun criticized the government and the European Union for making concessions to the Kurdistan Workers Party. They held both sides responsible for the diminished role of the military establishment and for forcing it into a tight corner. General Biuk asserted that terrorism has acquired political legitimacy by entering the parliament in a reference to the seats occupied by the Democratic Society Party in parliament. He also directed harsh criticism at the Repentance Draft Law.
Needless to mention, the two generals were expressing their intentions to work on retrieving the political role of the army and left the government with two choices: either to continue with its approach to resolve the Kurdish issue and bear the consequences, or to let the military establishment have its way in persecuting the rebels, especially since the Americans and the Kurds of Iraq have failed to honor their promises to control the militants whom Washington brands as terrorists. With a promise of cooperation from the US, the government chose to cave in to the army demands.
The military campaign has now ended just as it started. Its declared objectives, namely terminating the rebels, have not been achieved. Yet, the generals considered it essential to remind the Kurds that the model they established in North Iraq will be in jeopardy if they thought of transferring it to Turkey. The generals preferred not to fight a pointless war of attrition. They left matters to Talibani, Barazani and the American forces to resolve Kurdistan Workers Party problem either by neutralizing it or militarily controlling it since this remains a demand common to the Americans and the Turks, and all this was to ensure readiness for Washington's more significant objective: organize the Iraqi house and mobilize allies and friends in preparation for an upcoming confrontation with Iran. The Kurds, moreover, may have a role to play in harassing Iran.
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