PKK is using al-Qaeda’s strategy
Just like al-Qaeda, the Kurdish terrorist group is hoping to make its enemy ‘lose consciousness and act chaotically against those who attacked it’.
Fouad Hussein is a radical Jordanian journalist who met Abu Musab Zarqawi and other al-Qaeda leaders as early as 1996. Later on he spent quite sometime with these people and even shared the same prison cell. In 2005, he produced what is probably the most definitive outline of al-Qaeda’s master plan: A book titled “Al-Zarqawi: The Second Generation of al-Qaeda.” According to Hussein, before Sept. 11, ideologues within al-Qaeda believed that “the Islamic nation was in a state of hibernation” and some action was needed for the “awakening.” By striking America – “the head of the serpent” – al-Qaeda would cause the United States to “lose consciousness and act chaotically against those who attacked it.” The result would be the popularization of al-Qaeda. “This will entitle the party that hit the serpent,” they wrote, “to lead the Islamic nation.”
Journalist Lawrence Wright, who wrote about Hussein’s exposures in the New Yorker, thinks that Iraq’s invasion by American troops in 2003 fulfilled al-Qaeda’s dream. By widening its front, America caused many Muslims who had no sympathy for al-Qaeda to go furious and join forces with “the party that hit the serpent.”
The best Kurd is a …
Although al-Qaeda and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are on totally opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, I think these days the latter is using a strategy similar to that of the former. By consistently hitting Turkish targets, and by deliberately infuriating the Turkish state and society, the Kurdish terrorist group is hoping to make Ankara lose consciousness and act chaotically against those who attacked it. And just like al-Qaeda, it hopes to harvest popularity from the reaction that such an excessive counter-terrorist response will raise.
The PKK’s leaders did not need to be rocket scientists to know that if they had killed dozens of Turkish soldiers and civilians by infiltrating the country from northern Iraq, Turkey would have been tempted to hit back. Moreover, there would be a great uproar in society, which could easily target anything that resembles the PKK, including peaceful Kurds. “The best Kurd is a dead Kurd,” said to me a young and otherwise reasonable guy the other day, after watching the news of his fellow countrymen killed by the PKK. And yesterday Turkish newspapers were reporting attacks on shops owned by local Kurds in cities like Bursa and Mersin.
I am sure that the PKK strategists must be watching these events with pleasure. The reason is that the PKK is not willing to see a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish question. It realized that such a solution would render itself unnecessary and jobless. Moreover, it bears a fierce ethnic nationalism that will not be satisfied with democratic rights under a Turkish state. So, it has decided to sabotage the peaceful and democratic solution that Turkey has been nurturing in recent years.
The big question is whether Turkey will fall into this trap by losing consciousness. The usual suspects – the ones who have already proven to have lost consciousness on many other issues – are again on the stage: Opposition leader Deniz Baykal, and all the spokesmen of his ultra-nationalist party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), are accusing President Gül and Prime Minister Erdoğan of being too soft and shaky on this issue. They argue that Turkey should immediately launch a big incursion into northern Iraq – and to hit not just the PKK, but also the forces of Massoud Barzani, the leader of the semi-autonomous Kurdish-controlled northern region.
That would be the first Turko-Kurdish war in history – and a great blessing to the PKK, which will not only represent itself as the vanguard of all the Kurdish people, but will find backing from the constitutionally enacted autonomous Kurdish government of northern Iraq.
US should take initiative:
My position is that Turkey should indeed hit the PKK fighters both in Turkey and in northern Iraq, but the cross-border campaign should be a very limited and calibrated attack on specific terrorist targets. This is indeed what the government has announced as its intention. But hawkish politicians and pundits continuously want for more. They crave for total war.
Yet they are not the only ones to blame. Barzani is constantly fuelling the nationalist line in Turkey with his provocative and pro-PKK remarks. He and his aides should realize that there are many people in Turkey who want to build much better relations with the Kurds of Iraq, but they will do nothing if those very Kurds take a hostile position toward Turkey.
Finally, a lot of responsibility lies with the United States. Yes, America has supported Turkey in the face of PKK terrorism for many years, and has helped us capture its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999. But since 2003, many Turks suspect America changed sides. To prove otherwise, and to calm down the ultra-nationalist upsurge in Turkey, the U.S. should either do something serious against the PKK or convince the northern Iraqi Kurdish leadership to help Turkey against this terrorist group.
If the Bush administration does not want to see the only stable part of Iraq being destabilized by a massive Turkish incursion, it should help remove the threat that has brought Turkey to this point. This time the situation is very serious – and quite urgent.