Tag: HDP Kurdish Party

Turkey Hoodwinked Washington

From the BBC:

The US and Turkey reached an agreement which will see Turkish jets join the air campaign against Islamic State (IS) militants. American officials hailed the agreement as “a significant step forward” in the fight against IS.

The good news was that Turkey would now be fully integrated into the strategy of the wider anti-ISIS coalition. However, as of last week, the Turkish Air Force had conducted 300 strikes against Kurdish targets versus three against ISIS targets. So Turkey, while giving lip service to the war against ISIS, is actually attacking the Kurds, who in this case, are ISIS’s enemies. As we said in our column on 8/25:

The present strategy of the US for defeat of ISIS is ultimately dependent on the Turks. Turkey is the main pathway through which ISIS receives recruits…and [is] the main pathway through which ISIS continues to export oil to raise money.

Turkey has a conflicted relationship with ISIS. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest has a long article describing the problems of Turkey as an ally posted at the American Conservative:

Indeed, when I was in Istanbul last July, bearded rebels were observed in the more fundamentalist neighborhoods collecting money for ISIS without any interference from the numerous and highly visible Turkish police and intelligence services.

Given the state of play that now exists in the ME, Washington was delighted when Turkey announced on July 23rd that it would play a more active role against ISIS. But the euphoria in DC was short lived, as Turkey quickly demonstrated that its partnership with the US was window dressing, as ISIS was not the enemy that Ankara had in mind.

Why the bait-and-switch? Turkey’s domestic politics. Turkey held a parliamentary election on June 5th in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) failed to obtain a majority. Worse still, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is largely Kurdish, won more than 13% of the vote, much of it consisting of former AKP seats, making it a potential swing party in forming a new government. The AKP couldn’t form a coalition government without the Kurds or a right-wing party, which Erdogan wouldn’t permit, and new elections now seem set for November 1st. Erdogan wants to try again for a substantial AKP majority, which would allow him to amend the constitution, and add significant new powers to his role. Nevertheless, the most recent election demonstrated that AKP had lost some control, and Erdogan had to do something to create a more compelling narrative.

Enter the Kurds.

For three decades, Turkey has been at war with the Kurds, some of whom seek more autonomy within Turkey, while others favor the creation of an independent Kurdish state incorporating parts of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey. 18% of the Turkish population is of Kurdish origin, and are the country’s largest minority.

Even though Turkey has had a cease fire with the most powerful Kurdish dissident group, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) since 2013, the AKP’s calculation appears to be that more chaos will mean more votes, with people turning to the devil they know in hopes of stability.

And Erdogan chose to attack the Kurds under the aegis of the US-led war on ISIS.

All of this suggests that the US was bamboozled. One American general called the development a “bait and switch,” while another commented that Erdogan “needed a hook” to go after the Kurds, and lied to Washington to get one. Surely, the Pentagon, CIA and White House know that they were all snookered.

When the news broke that Turkey had bombed ISIS and when it mentioned (without comment) the PKK, it was obvious what the Turk’s game really was. And, they are not alone:

Saudi Arabia plays the War on Terror game to get us to help out with Yemen, and to counter Iran.

Israel plays the War on Terror game to keep the $billions coming.

Egypt’s Sisi also plays the War on Terror game to keep US aid coming and to help consolidate his own grip on Egypt.

Our own domestic Fear Machine uses the War on Terror to keep the taxpayer-paid gravy train rolling along.

The only ones not benefiting from some Terror-related play are we, the people suckers. Oh, and the collateral damage to the people in the countries that we and our allies are “liberating.”

See you on Sunday.

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A State for the Kurds?

The Kurds are on the verge of creating a homeland of their own, despite Iraq and US efforts to avoid it. If they do, the Middle East may never be the same. The Wall Street Journal had an interesting report about the possibility of an independent Kurdish state:

Amid an imploding Middle East ravaged by religious hatreds, the Kurds are providing a rare bright spot—and their success story is finding fresh support and sympathy in the West. By contrast with the rest of the region, all the main Kurdish movements today are broadly pro-Western and secular.

There are 30 million Kurds in the ME and only 4.5-6 million live in Iraq. Their language, Kurdish, is part of the Indo-European family of languages—close to Persian (Farsi) but unrelated to Arabic or Turkish.

Unlike Iranians, who are mostly Shiite Muslims, most Kurds are Sunnis. Despite that, they are confronting the Sunni ISIS, and the Shiite-supported Syrians.

Here is a map of the potential Kurdish state:

Kurdish Empire

 

In Iraq, the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, (KRG), was adopted by the new Iraqi constitution after the US invasion. Kurds control their own affairs. This has allowed the Kurds to achieve a boom in investment and construction that has produced new highways, hotels and shopping malls.

The Kurdistan government in northern Iraq maintains its own armed forces, known as the Peshmerga (literally, “those who confront death”), and no Iraqi troops are allowed in the region. The KRG controls its own borders, and Westerners can fly into the region’s capital, Erbil, without a visa. Kurdish is used everywhere as the official language, and few young Iraqi Kurds can speak fluent Arabic.

Yet, political divisions hamper the Kurds’ fight against ISIS, and their prospects for self-rule. Only a minority of Peshmerga brigades on the front lines are under KRG command, while the rest still report directly to one of the two rival political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

From a regional perspective, Iran has a significant Kurdish minority that it has suppressed in the past. Now, it is strengthening ties with the KRG, since Iran views the KRG as an ally in the fight against ISIS.

In Syria, the civil war has enabled Kurds to set up a wide area of self-administration in the northeast of the country, eliminating the border between Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, who now travel back and forth across it without visas.

And in Turkey, decades of outright denial of the existence of Kurds, (they called Kurds “Mountain Turks”) led to a bloody war between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. The fighting ended only after a cease-fire was proclaimed in March 2013. The PKK was once an ally of the Assad regime, and is still classified as a terrorist group by the US and Turkey.

But, in the just-concluded Turkish elections, Kurds voted for the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, which won 13% of the national vote and gained 86 seats in the Turkish parliament. The Kurds demonstrated they can serve as check against the anti-democratic aspirations of Turkey’s President Erdogan.

But neither the Iraqis nor the US want an independent Kurdistan, despite the possibility that Kurdistan as an independent state would be a buffer against the expansion of ISIS. They act as a “Northern Front” in the war against ISIS, and ISIS will be forced to commit resources to the area, as demonstrated by the Kurds seizing the crucial border crossing, Tal Abyad, cutting ISIS supply lines and uniting Kurdish areas that now stretch from Iraq halfway to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yes, an independent Kurdistan would mean the “fragmenting” of Iraq, which Mr. Obama does not support. But Iraq was never a real country; it was cobbled together after WW1 by European bureaucrats drawing arbitrary lines on a map, with no thought to historical or cultural realities. Like Humpty Dumpty, no one knows how to put those historical anomalies “Syria” and “Iraq” back together again. They’re going to be a mess for a while.

The Kurds are different. They have the makings of a state − an area that enjoys the allegiance of its people, has civil order that allows it to raise taxes and create an effective army. It is doubtful that the US will formally recognize a Kurdish state anytime soon, but the ME is a place where that is irrelevant.

No need to recognize the Kurds as a state, just treat them like one. Buy their oil (as Israel does), and give them weapons and humanitarian aid.

They may richly repay the investment.

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Turkey’s March Towards an Islamist Presidency Stalls

Results from Turkey’s parliamentary elections Sunday show that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party lost its majority in Parliament.

With 99.9+% percent of the vote counted, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) garnered the support of 41% of voters. That would give it some 258 seats – 18 below the minimum needed to keep its majority. In 2011, the AK Party received 49% of the vote, 8 points higher than in 2015. This is the first time the AKP fell short of a majority since it came into power in 2002.

The election was widely perceived as a referendum on Erdogan’s plan to change the Turkish constitution in order to grant himself sweeping, unprecedented presidential powers. Because Erdogan’s record shows tendencies toward authoritarianism, many observers in Turkey and outside believed that his proposed constitutional amendments would not just change the structure of Turkish democracy, but pose an existential threat to it.

Erdogan began the campaign asking voters for 400 seats, which would have allowed the party to change the role of the presidency unilaterally. The AK Party needed 330 seats of the total 550 to call for a national referendum to change the constitution, but they stalled at 258, so that will lead to a coalition government, and no immediate ability to change the Turkish constitution.

The Kurdish HDP, now the first Kurdish party ever to be seated in Turkey’s parliament, won 80 seats. Most westerners like the Kurds, for their resistance around Mosul in Iraq and around Kobani in Syria. They also support women’s rights and gay rights. Kurds are the Muslims who are closest to western values. From BBC: Who are the HDP?

• The HDP was founded as a pro-Kurdish party in 2012
• There are 15million Kurds in Turkey, 20% of the population
• It had the only openly gay candidate in Turkey’s elections
• A higher proportion of women ran for the HDP than any other party

Here is an election results map from the Daily Hurriyet:

Turkey Electon Map

 

Voter turnout was 85%. The map shows the AKP in orange, the CHP party in red and the HDP in purple. It is clear that the HDP made its gains in southeast Turkey, the area most at risk in the ISIS and Syrian uprisings. HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas called his party’s showing:

A fabulous victory for peace and freedoms…As of now the discussions on a presidential system, a dictatorship, has come to an end

The Daily Star reported on the dilemma Erdogan faces. Under the current constitution, the president position (that Erdogan now holds) has limited powers. He campaigned to change the constitution, but the election’s result could leave Erdogan stranded in the presidency without the powers he sought. Bottom line: While Erdogan’s plan for Islamic presidentialism has been defeated, the AKP is still in control of Turkish politics — and likely will remain that way for a long time.

The reasons for the loss seem mostly driven by the Turkish economy and Erdogan’s policies on Syria. For the past decade or so, the AKP has ridden high on a dynamic record of promoting economic growth. But recently, the economy has been slowing down. The Turkish lira has lost considerable value, the economy has not grown anywhere near the rate that it had in the past, and there are worries about an economic collapse. And many were afraid of Erdogan’s plan for deepening Turkish involvement in Syria, Iraq and the greater Middle East.

Today, Erdogan is a wounded politician, and the AKP is weakened. This will lead to infighting within the AKP and maybe even a split of the party into several factions. In all this result will likely leave less capacity in Turkey for adventures in Syria and Egypt, or with ISIS and the AL-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra front.

As the Guardian said:

None of the four parties in the new parliament are able to form a single-party government, meaning Turkey is entering a period of volatility. Erdogan approaches politics as a binary contest between winners and losers in which the decisive aim is to secure a majority. On Sunday he lost…

The country had been sliding into an Islamic autocracy under the guise of democracy, but the Turkish electorate have called a halt to that.

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