More Young Kurds vow to fight Turkish army in Kurdish towns. Jan.2016

More Young Kurds vow to fight Turkish army in Kurdish towns. Jan.2016

In scenes reminiscent of Syria’s five-year-old civil war, fighting between the Turkish government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in southeastern Turkey has increased dramatically in the last few months, leading to concerns that Turkey — a NATO country — could be headed for a civil war of its own.

Indeed, the conflict has moved from Turkey’s rural areas to its cities. Hundreds have been killed and some 200,000 people have been forced to leave their homes. Schools, government buildings, shops and houses have been destroyed and infrastructure crippled.

Major towns such as Cizre, Nusaybin and Silopi are under curfew and an additional 10,000 police and troops armed with artillery and tanks have been deployed. If Turkey was not a NATO member, one suspects that the United States and France would have already sent their ambassadors to the region by now in a show of support for the Kurds.

The fighting between the Turkish government and the PKK has been ongoing since 1984. But a few years ago, when the Turkish government initiated a courageous political process to end the decades-long armed conflict, there was great hope the security situation would dramatically improve. And, for a while it did.

In 2013, I travelled to southeastern Turkey and met with many Turkish and Kurdish political leaders. I will never forget the mayor of Hakkari, who leaned across his desk and dramatically said to me, “welcome to Hakkari, the very centre of 30 years of war.”


AdvertisementIt’s a fight that has cost the Turkish economy more than a trillion dollars during the past three decades — money that could have been better spent on development than war. However, the Kurdish people were subjected to a systematic and often brutal assimilation policy after 1923. The outcome was the PKK.

From the perspective of many people I met in 2013, the time to achieve a lasting peace had finally arrived. Turkey had a strong majority government ready to negotiate with the PKK. The Turkish economy was performing well with money available for development projects. The military, unusually, appeared willing to support the government’s peace overtures and many Kurds were simply fed up with the never-ending unrest.

Now, everything has changed.

Instead of going ahead with democratization efforts that would have enabled the easing of Kurdish grievances, the government re-started the fighting in late July 2015, the day after a group allegedly linked with the PKK killed two policemen.

A more reasonable government, one might have expected, would have taken the time to discuss its options. In this case however, in an instant the gloves were off.

If the Turkish government believes it can win a war with its own people it is simply being delusional. Combing through some old files in my Ankara office a few years ago, I came across a 1991 Turkish military briefing for foreign attachés that claimed the military had already broken the back of the organization. They were wrong 25 years ago and will continue to be until some sort of negotiated settlement is achieved.

These are, unfortunately, dark days for Turkey. International media outlets paint a picture of a government that is attacking its own people, that is insincere about fighting ISIS, that shot down a Russian fighter jet for no good reason, and that drags its feet when it comes to closing its border with Syria.

It also violates Iraqi sovereignty by stationing troops in that country without permission, has failed to stem the refugee flow to Europe, jails its journalists and, according to Amnesty International, mistreats refugees.

Of course, as a complete picture of Turkey it’s unfair.

But perceptions are everything and the Turkish government needs to work quickly to repair its international reputation. Initiating a ceasefire with the PKK would be a very constructive first step.

Chris Kilford (then Col. Kilford) served as Canada’s defence attaché to Turkey from 2011-14. He recently became a fellow with the Queen’s Centre for International and Defence Policy.