Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteI caution anyone dipping their toes into any of the world's conflict zones not to prejudge motive by the general timbre of a people's struggle. These days, through processes defined by social acquisition and divestiture within organizations (turnover, in other words), the remnants and spin-offs of clans, militias, and political parties, above-ground and under, make dark stew of political clarity.
Where violence disconnects from discourse, where "actors" fail to acknowledge acts or remain so deeply hidden in their circles as to lend more existence to their acts than themselves or their causes, political complaints and their solutions drift like clouds across the landscape. More force of nature than bastard child of either reason or sentiment, the cause, whatever it is, was, or could be becomes instead the cause of continuing.
Head-up-butt, upside-down, backwards, and inside-out, it's not unusual for me to misapprehend a remote political stance, but wading into the histories of the PKK leaves me drowning more than usual.
From James Brandon's analysis last year around this time for The Jamestown Foundation:
After calling off a five-year-old cease-fire in 2004, the PKK has renewed attacks on targets in Turkey. In recent months, Turkey has stepped up its calls for the United States to take action against the PKK's bases on Mount Qandil in Kurdish northern Iraq, rejecting the PKK's offer to declare a new cease-fire and open talks. For the United States, however, solving the PKK issue is difficult since it must weigh its support for Turkey with its need for stability in northern Iraq. [1]
In this new era of boomtown government and development for Iraqi Kurdistan, how does the PKK contribute to instability in northern Iraq? Does the PKK, once an aligned socialist cause--not the least unusual of drifts in forming up today's Kurdistan Regional Government--represent another romantic forward-to-yesterday cultural agenda?
Take a step back: start with Wikipedia's description of the history of the PKK:
The core (backbone) of the organization was formed in Ankara by members of the "Ankara Democratic Association of Higher Education (ADYÖD)." Abdullah Öcalan and his supporters were generally known as APOCUS, in Turkish "Apocular". Initially, Apocular consisted of 16 members, led by political science student Öcalan. Abdullah Ocalan, Kesire Yildirim (Ocalan), Haki Karer, Cemil Bayik, Kemal Pir were outstanding members. Today, only a few still living or following the cause, a result of a combination of factors, including disputes internal to the PKK.
Haki Karer was sent to Gaziantep to develop bases. [2]
Oddly enough, any old middle-aged U.S. left-winger might get that statement.
In the post-Vietnam, post-Che, post-Mao era that was America's outrageous mid-to-late 1970's, one understands the intellectual foundations, the concern with building support in the countryside, the "grass roots" efforts, and possibly not a little "consciousness raising" too to go with whatever hell raising may have been in vogue at the time.
Still, that painful phrase, " . . . only a few still living or following the cause, a result of a combination of factors, including disputes internal to the PKK" echos a familiar arc known to, say, the Weatherman Faction, the American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers, etc.: specifically, for radical politicos in the 1970's, the bickering, the government counterintelligence (and infiltration) programs, the ageing into drift--been there, done that, and most are somewhere else now (and it takes a journalist to find out where).
Having fun with the hip parlance: they were so much younger then, and they're older than that now.
The Wikipedia entry goes on to note some officially recognized "vaccum of power" in the territory hosting the PKK, an observation that jives with several, at least, of conditions characterizing guerrilla action in the Islamic Small Wars (my term, and I'm tired of putting quotes around it). The interests vary, of course, but the accessibility and difficulty of the terrain involved--mountains, desert, swamps, and other--does not. With isolation comes both the ability to sieze power on the part of the audacious and to then incubate, nurture, or sustain ideas across small populations.
I think that's how we got Vegas.
In any case, the Wikipedia author gets around to noting, "2002 the PKK terminated itself. The same organisational group forms a new party with the name of Kürdistan Demokratik ve Özgürlük Kongresi (KADEK). Turkey claimed at the time that KADEK and PKK were identical," a signal, I think, that the cultural throughput of an idea about personal identity, the freedom fighter romance, if you will, better propels militant action than devotion to the delivery of alternative government or preferred cultural (and legal) services, but . . . I don't know. My thoughts too are just ideas.
Here in interview format is comment by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) External Relations Director Safeen Dizayee on recognizing the problem:
TNA: There is a clear reluctance in the KRG to name the PKK as a terrorist organization. What is the reason for this?
Dizayee: Like I said, Ankara should not index her relations with us on PKK or border security only. The issue here is not so much to do with tagging this group or that group with whatever name or definition. What is the issue is that we all accept that there is a problem and we also agree that we have to resolve the problem. The question is how. We may have a different approach but there has to be serious talks on how to find common grounds. We do not see a military operation as the only solution. Because of this position, unjustly, we are accused of harboring and aiding PKK by many circles in Turkey. These same people seems to have short memories of our struggles. [3]
I'm a little late to the party (September 25, this year) but might suggest separating, defining, and codifyng PKK or related organization or individual motivation--not just ends but drives and gratifications too--from action altogether on the theory that militant violence may be expressive of other than achievable, practical "realpolitik" or indicative of any persistent, compellingly so, political stance.
For Turkey to attempt what Kurdistan may not may bring up some tender issues about borders, sovereignty, and security, but it might have also the legitimacy of "hot pursuit" between cooperating national government. That may be a tougher nut to chew on for Kurdistan than for Turkey, but given so much guerrilla mayhem-creating capability through the world's overstock in cheap arms and ordnance (and do-it-yourself explosives), the PKK's question might be, "If we were not part of it or its vanguard, where would we have the movement go?"
Toward "a united Kurdistan" would seem a possible answer, but one may wonder what benefits, rights, and privileges might not be obtained in the way of similar cultural, economic, and political outcomes across the four borders of interest.
2. "History of the Kurdistan Workers Party." Wikipedia, as experienced October 15, 2007.
4. Simon, Bob. "Kurdistan: The Other Iraq." CBS News, "60 Minutes", August 5, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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