THE KURDISH-ARMENIAN ISSUE IN THE LIGHT OF CONVERGENCE OF TURKEY AND ARMENIA
Ajdar Kurtov
en.fondsk.ru
15.05.2009
In late April Armenia and Turkey signed a "roadmap" aimed at
normalizing bilateral relations. This makes us reconsider some of
our perceptions regarding the geopolitical situation at the South
Caucasus and in Asia Minor. The usual colors of the political map
are changing and for Russia it is not for the better.
For quite a long time since the break-up of the USSR many politicians
in Armenia saw the Kurdish national movement, represented mainly by the
Kurdistan Labor party (PKK), as an ally of Armenia. Both Armenia and
Kurds had territorial claims to Turkey and that was the uniting factor.
When it came to geopolitical issues the Kurdish issue was very popular
among political analysts. "The Kurdish issue" – is a geopolitical
doctrine, which implies the creation of national administrative entity
(state) called Kurdistan on the territory of four Asian countries
(Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria) which have Kurds among their population.
Kurds are one of the ancient ethnicities on our planet and they have
never had their own state. Historically, Kurdistan had always been a
zone of permanent conflicts. For thousands of years Kurdistan was at
the interface of emerging and disbanding states, which were always
conflicting with each other. Nevertheless the Kurdish people managed
to20 keep their national identity, language and culture.
Mountain relief made Kurdistan a hard-to-reach place for any
interventions and an advantageous region in terms of military strategy,
the region many countries were fighting for. Kurds did not assimilate
unlike other folks who lived in the region. In numerous wars between
Persia and the Turkish Empire Kurds often served as cannon fodder.
In the second half of 19th century after being attacked by the
Russian army and its allies (Southern Slavs) in the Balkan region
Turkey decided to recruit Kurdish Muslims. At that time about 3.5
million of Kurds (nomadic and settled) lived quite independently in
the Eastern Anatolia region. But the Turkish authorities did not pay
salary to Kurds who fought in the Turkish army forcing them to make a
living by robbing Armenians. The Ottoman Port was very cynical in using
Kurds. The Turkish government set Kurds at Armenian Christians but at
the same time levied big tributes from Kurds for their "bad behavior".
Turkey secretly supported Kurdish sheikh Obeidula, leader of the
anti-Iran rebellion. The Turkish government used Kurds to make
problems for Iran and for Russia as well and also incited Kurds to
kill Armenians.
The expansion of the Russian Empire to the borders of Kurdistan and
especially the victory of the Bolsheviks’ revolution which gave rise
to national liberation movement in the East provided a powerful i
mpetus to the Kurdish movement. At the same time Kurdistan entered
the sphere of interests of other great powers.
The national liberation movement of Kurdistan had a lop-sided
development.
The rebellions started in different parts of Kurdistan but they
never covered the whole country. Those rebellions were repressed
by the forces of the regular army and also, which is quite typical,
by Kurds who belonged to other tribes.
Late 1970s early 1980s saw the signs of integration of separate Kurdish
organizations, which made their struggle more successful. However
it did not lead to the creation of the common organization akin to
national fronts, which emerged in many other countries. At that period
the Kurdish Diaspora in many countries became more active especially
in Europe.
Political and tribal disintegration is one of the reasons why
Kurds missed their chance (at least twice) to establish their own
state. The first chance was when after the end of the First World War
many nations formed their own states on the remains of the Turkish
Empire (Ottoman Empire). In March, 1919, in Paris, Kurdish leader
Sherif Pasha addressed the countries of the Atlanta alliance with a
proposal to form the Kurdish state but his request was ignored unlike
the similar requests of Arabs.
The second chance was missed, in our opinion, in early 1990-s when the
US and their Western allies decided "to give a good lesson" to20Saddam
Hussein for his aggression against Kuwait. With the assistance of
the Western countries and first of all from the US Kurds could have
received an independent state. The war in Iraq resulted only with the
forming of the Kurdish autonomy. It was in many ways declarative had
limited rights but it was recognized by the UN resolutions.
Soon after that the center of the Kurdish national movement moved
to the Western (Turkish) Kurdistan, where an armored struggle had
already begun under the leadership of the Kurdistan Labor party (PKK),
which was the most significant and recognized organization of the
national movement.
The Kurdistan Labor party (PKK) was formed in Turkey on September 27,
1979 as a moderate clandestine organization. But when the Kurdish
language was prohibited in Turkey the party switched to more radical
methods of political fight. In August 1984, it formed People’s
Liberation Army of Kurdistan (Arteshen Rizgariya Gelli Kurdistan
(ARGK)), which operated in the bordering regions between Turkey,
Iraq and Syria. In ten years the Army numbered up to 40 000 fighters
(so-called "peshmerga’s" which means "those who face death").
In 1985, the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (Eniya Rizgariya
Netewa Kurdistan (ERNK)) was formed in Europe under the guidance
of PKK.
Since 1988 and for quite a long time the headquarters of PKK
was located in Syria. Unlike traditional politi cal parties of
the European type PKK had a strict discipline and "articles of
war" regulations. Any disobedience was punished under this strict
"revolutionary" law. The method of "armed propaganda" is one of the
main methods of revolutionary struggle of PKK.
According to security services of Turkey, the US and most of the
Western countries, PKK is "the most dangerous among ethnic splinter
organizations, which uses international terrorism as the main weapon to
fight for Kurdistan’s independence". The party is officially prohibited
in Turkey and most of the European countries but the actions of legal
political organizations of Kurds in many aspects are defined by the
supporters of PKK.
Until the beginning of the 21 century the ideological base of PKK
could be described as Marxism-Leninism. In his works PKK’s founder
Abdullah Ocalan promoted simplified ideas of Marxism-Leninism which
in some aspects were similar to the ideas of Ernesto "Che" Guevara
in Latin America.
The ruling regimes in Iran, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and especially
in Turkey had reasons to regard the Kurdish movement as a splinter
movement.
All Western scientists note very negative attitude of Turkish people
even to ethnic self-definition of Kurds. The Turkish government
repressed all Kurdish movements even violating the regulations of
the international law.
Only under pressure from the=2 0EU Ankara softened this line of its
domestic policy hoping to become a member of the EU.
Until quite recently the Turkish press periodically wrote about
the links between PKK and Armenia. It was claimed that at least six
camps of Kurdish separatists were located in Armenia (in Zengezur
and Markara districts).
Official representatives of the Turkish government claimed
that Armenians were supplying weapons and ammunition to Kurdish
separatists. But Ankara lacked evidence to officially accuse Armenia of
supporting PKK. According to Turkey’s security service, Kurdish gunmen
freely crossed Armenian border. That is why the Turkish authorities
worked so hard to organize a blockade on the Turkish-Armenian
border. In April 1996, the Turkish General Staff decided to declare
a number of districts of Kars province as a blockaded zone for six
months. In an official statement the authorities said that it was
necessary to conduct military training in Kars. Turkish armed forces
continually and unsuccessfully conducted operations on liquidation
of Kurdish rebels in the district of the Ararat Mountain.
Earlier there were many statements in Turkish and Azeri mass media
claiming that PKK (according to the authors of those statements)
was collaborating with such Armenian organizations as Dashnaktsutiun
and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) in
order to block the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
(BTC). In order to prove those statements it was also claimed that
PKK’s gunmen had conducted a number of operations in the area of
BTC construction. The theory that Kurds were able to disrupt plans
of oil transit via the territory of historical Kurdistan is proved
by the fact that in January 1997 there was an explosion on one of
the stretches of the Kirkuk-Yumurtalyk pipeline in the province of
Mardin in the South-East of Turkey. The leakage of crude oil was
30000 barrels and rescue works and fire fighting took two days. For
Turkey’s security service the explosion was definitely caused by PKK.
Later on, however not all these versions proved to be true. Turkey’s
security forces arrested Ocalan, he was trialed and sent to a
special jail. PKK lost its leader, who remained a symbol of the
rebellion but was not a working manager anymore. BTC was built
against everything. After the overthrow of Hussein in Iraq the US
authorities approached the Iranian Kurds strengthening the idea to
establish an independent state of Kurdistan. The Kurds of Iraq even
allowed the Turkish army to conduct operations on their territory to
hound PKK supporters.
In our opinion all these events do not mean that one can talk
definitely about the existence of an efficient Armenian Kurdish
alliance against Turkey. There are significant changes in the Kurdish
movement. For PKK the creation of the independent Kurdish state is
only a minim um program. The main thing is socialistic and later
communist Kurdistan, but this is a strategic extreme (in other words:
it is a myth) of the Kurdish national movement. In reality the Kurdish
movement has to adjust to the recent global changes.
With the break-up of the Soviet Union PKK had to change its basic
statements. The ethnic leaders began to realize that the dream of
the independent Kurdistan may never come true, at least in the near
future. The efforts of the Kurdish movement to lobby its interests
in 1980-1990s (the time of break-ups of the USSR and Yugoslavia, the
unification of Germany) were in vain. At the same time the decisive
actions of the Turkish army made the Kurdish leaders doubt in the
efficiency of combat struggle.
The most realistic, according to the leaders of PKK, is the project
of Kurdistan as a subject of federation within Turkey. Different
types of autonomy (linguistic and cultural autonomy and economic and
cultural autonomy) are not excluded. In May 1997, speaking at a video
conference with the deputies of the UK’s ruling Labor party Ocalan
said that the Kurdish problem should be solved on the analogy of the
Northern Ireland. It means that the Kurdish activists started to choose
for non-radical variants which were more acceptable for the European
democracies. "We are fighting not for the creation of an independent
state in the territory of Kurdistan but for respect o f Kurds’ rights",
Abdurahman Dere, one of the leaders of ERNK in Europe, said.
The switch from revolutionary methods to moderate political projects
gave Kurds an opportunity to find support on the international
arena. Speaking about the introduction of democratic freedoms in
Turkey Kurds were trying to find potential allies in Europe. Though
semi-military structure of PKK was far from the structure of
any democratic party and Ocalan did not look like a liberal the
requirements of Kurds regarding the democratization of Turkey were
quite relevant and matched the claims of the EU to Turkey.
All these changes mean that the Kurdish problem is unlikely to be
resolved in a short-term or a medium term period. Even if we assume
that Kurdistan becomes an independent state it is unlikely that
it will avoid domestic tribal contradictions (on the analogy with
Afghanistan). Kurds who live in their historical region lack common
ideology, national myth. Unlike other Kurdish parties, which are based
on tribal principle, PKK is based on ideological principle. This
makes PKK popular among the European Kurds but at the same time it
leads to inevitable clashes with other political parties of Kurds
and first of all with political organization of the Iraqi Kurds.
It should be noted that Kurds are relatively indifferent both to
Islam and to democratic values. Though some scientists note that
the influence of Barzan sheikhs an d Sunni Islam is still strong,
the Muslim solidarity is subordinate to the national solidarity.
Back to the topic of the Armenian-Kurdish alliance on "Turkish front"
it should be noted that except for the common enemy this alliance
did not have any solid base. Though Kurds are ready for political
compromise the settlement of the Armenian problem (if we speak
about its Karabakh variant) excluded such flexibility until very
recently. If Kurdistan as an independent state is in many aspects a
never-never-land, Karabakh, on the contrary, is a real state entity
with strong army and numerous international contacts.
Historically, Kurds did not differ much from Turks in the period of the
Armenians’ massacre. It was evidenced that Kurds were robbing Armenian
villages after the deportation of Armenians. The Kurdish gunmen
were especially cruel keeping down the revolt in Sasun in 1894. It
was not advantageous for the Turkish government to spoil relations
with Kurds and it abetted any acts of violence by Kurds towards the
Armenian folk. In accordance with "divide and rule" principle the
Turkish government used differentiated approach: in case with Kurds
and other Muslim folks they conducted assimilation policy while when
it came to Christian folks they continued the policy of Adbul-Hamid,
which was physical liquidation.
In mass media the Kurdish political leaders used to declare their
claims on so-called 8 0Red Kurdistan" – an autonomous region,
which existed since 1923 till 1930 on the territory of the current
Lachinsky district now controlled by Stepanakert (Azerbaijan). Many
scientists regard this fact as a trigger for a potential conflict
between Armenians and Kurds.
Old Kurdish proverb said "Kurds have no friends". The ethnic structure
of the population which is neither Turkish nor Arabic, weak Islamic
traditions and lack of democratic traditions, language-specific –
all these things lead us to the conclusion that Kurds will not have
allies in this region.
This becomes even more obvious in the light of the convergence of
Turkey and Armenia.
Turks were always concerned with the crossing the Turkish-Armenian
border by Kurds and that was one of the reasons why the border was
strongly protected.
The recent removal of strong border control shows that Armenia has
made a commitment to Turkey to follow a special policy regarding
Turkish Kurds.
In this respect we face the following question:
Do the recent agreements between Armenia and Turkey imply any
commitments of the Armenian authorities regarding Nagorny Karakakh?
If Armenians gave up the idea of their geopolitical union with the
Turkish Kurds why not to assume that the idea of the independent
state of Nagorny Karabakh (which was used as a theoretical base to
unite Armenians and Kurds) was also eroded.