Two Men Can Stop the War Between Turkey and the Kurds

Syrian Kurds waving Kurdish flags and flags with the logo of the People’s Protection Units outside the United Nations office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, on Monday. Credit Safin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Syrian Kurds waving Kurdish flags and flags with the logo of the People’s Protection Units outside the United Nations office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, on Monday. Credit Safin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The conflict between Turkey and the Kurds has escalated since Turkey started a military offensive against the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin on Jan. 20. The Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units, which is the United States-led coalition’s top partner in the fight against the Islamic State, controls Afrin. And Turkey is a critical NATO ally.

The Trump administration is floundering. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has ignored President Trump’s appeal to avoid actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces and torpedo the campaign against the Islamic State. Mr. Erdogan has vowed to carry the battle further east to militia-controlled territory stretching all the way to the Iraqi border, where an estimated 2,000 American Special Operations Forces are deployed.

Turkey blames Washington’s support for the People’s Protection Units for the meltdown in American-Turkish ties. Many of the militia’s top cadres are drawn from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., the armed group that has been waging a bloody campaign for self-rule inside Turkey. The State Department lists the P.K.K. as a terrorist organization but does not so designate the People’s Protection Units. Turkey insists that the P.K.K. and the militia are the same.

Turkish officials believe that once the Islamic State is defeated, the People’s Protection Units will melt back into the P.K.K. and train its American weapons on Turkey. American officials retort that it was Turkey’s tolerance for — if not outright collusion with — thousands of jihadist fighters who flowed into Syria through Turkey that forced them to embrace the militia. Both arguments have merit.

The truth is that Turkey’s Kurdish problem was not concocted by Western powers but is a result of decades of brutal suppression of its Kurdish population. Syria, a former Ottoman dominion, has always figured in the fight.

In the early 20th century, Kurdish rebellions erupted across Anatolia and were savagely suppressed. Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who won the Kurds’ support against Allied occupation, embarked on an unremitting campaign of assimilation. The Kurds were dismissed as “mountain Turks.” Thousands fled to Syria, then under French mandate, where Kurdish intellectuals, tribal leaders and sheikhs united around a society called Xoybun, established to liberate Kurds from Turkey’s grip.

In 1984, Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the P.K.K., started his insurgency against Turkey from Damascus with the blessings of Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Assad saw Mr. Ocalan as leverage in Syria’s dispute with Turkey over Euphrates water and the P.K.K. as a distraction for his own restless Kurdish population.

At the height of the P.K.K.’s rebellion in the 1990s, about a third of its fighters were thought to be Syrian Kurds. And even today, it is not unusual for a Syrian Kurdish family to have one son fighting for the People’s Protection Units against the Islamic State and another for the P.K.K. against Turkey.

Ending the P.K.K. conflict in Turkey is inextricably linked to peaceful relations with Syria’s Kurds. Mr. Erdogan just made that harder. Only one man can help extract Turkey from this mess: Abdullah Ocalan.

Despite 19 years in Turkish captivity, Mr. Ocalan remains the uncontested leader of the P.K.K. — and the People’s Protection Units — and is revered by millions of Kurds across the globe. He retains the authority to negotiate peace with Turkey, as he did in 2008 with Mr. Erdogan, then a reform-minded prime minister who became the first Turkish leader to hold secret talks with the P.K.K. With Turkish soft power at its height, Mr. Ocalan, a ruthless egomaniac, giddily imagined a new regional order where Turks and Kurds might prevail.

In hindsight it is clear that Mr. Erdogan’s idea of peace was to impose his own terms: for the P.K.K. to disband; for the Kurdish militia to join Turkish-backed Syrian Arab rebels to fight the Assad regime; and for the biggest pro-Kurdish political bloc, whose core constituents are P.K.K. sympathizers, to back Mr. Erdogan’s now fulfilled goal of expanding his executive powers. The Kurds refused. The peace talks collapsed along with a two-and-a-half-year cease-fire.

Turkey proceeded to jail its democratically elected Kurdish lawmakers, who might have helped sideline P.K.K. hard-liners, and Mr. Ocalan has been held incommunicado ever since. Mr. Erdogan’s hawkishness shores up his nationalist base ahead of critical presidential elections in 2019.

But such brinkmanship is fraught with danger. Violence between Turks and Kurds inside Turkey, miraculously averted thus far, could erupt. A new generation of Kurds who see no common future with Turkey will continue to swell the P.K.K.’s ranks.

Washington’s shift influenced Russia’s decision to let Turkey intervene in Afrin, and the Kurds are paying a heavy price.

There is a strong moral argument for the United States to not abandon the People’s Protection Units. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently stated that American troops would stay on in Syria after the battle against the Islamic State, to counter Iranian influence and to squeeze the Syrian regime until Bashar al-Assad is forced to step down.

It is uncertain whether the United States is prepared to commit the thousands of troops and billions of dollars that such an endeavor would require. Or whether the United States is ready to offer the Syrian Kurds the diplomatic recognition they crave.

The United States is also unlikely to go for a total rupture with Turkey and push it irreversibly into Russia’s arms, especially because Turkey is better placed than the Kurds to counter Iran.

Without a firm answer, Mr. Ocalan’s children are savvy enough to not get dragged into an inconclusive fight with either Iran or the Syrian regime. They view the relationship with the United States as leverage for a better deal from the Assad regime. The fertile and oil-rich territories the Kurds hold thanks to American air power can be bartered for some form of autonomy.

The United States’ presence twinned with Russian backing might help them ram through a deal. Wary of a ripple effect among its own rebellious Kurds, Iran would certainly oppose moves that would grant their Syrian cousins greater rights. But it is worth a try.

However, the notion that the P.K.K. can use American muscle to wrest concessions from Turkey is misguided at best. American pressure will only harden Mr. Erdogan and the Turkish public against the Kurds.

Turkey and the P.K.K. must not wait until they have both paid a punitively high price in war to talk. Despite his authoritarianism, Mr. Erdogan remains the most popular and boldest leader in recent Turkish history. He and Mr. Ocalan can end this war, and they should agree on an immediate cease-fire inside Turkey and Syria.

Turkey should free Kurdish lawmakers and mayors being held on flimsy terror charges and resume stalled peace talks. In exchange, the P.K.K. should free Turkish captives and withdraw its fighters from Turkey to show good faith. But Mr. Erdogan, who doesn’t seem inclined toward compromise, apparently believes as did many before him that the Kurds can be defeated by military force. They can’t.

Amberin Zaman, a former Turkey correspondent for The Economist, is a columnist for Al Monitor.

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