Raging War With Kurds, Escalating Water Conflict With Arabs Drain
Turkey’s Resources
14.05.2011 | 11:20 | | Noyan Tapan | Articles and Analyses
(Noyan Tapan – 14.05.2011) By Appo Jabarian
Executive Publisher/Managing Editor
USA Armenian Life Magazine
In 1922, Ottoman Turkey’s successor Young Turk regime underwent a
face-lift through the creation of the modern republic of Turkey in an
attempt to create a `fresh start.’ But that `fresh’ start failed to
yield sustainable peace both within what is now called Turkey, and in
its relations with neighbors.
Peace proved elusive because of Ankara’s long-unsolved problems
including ongoing war against the 23 million-strong Kurdish minority;
and water rights conflicts with Arab states such as Iraq and Syria.
As the June 12 general elections near, The Kurdish Workers’ Party
(PKK) is used by Ankara `as an excuse to circumvent Kurdish people’s …
liberties, a tactic that has become the hallmark of the AKP and
[Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen’s loyalists — namely Erdogan’s]
Gulenist Administration in Turkey. The Turkish government and the
AKP’s agents improperly and illegally have used the PKK and the War on
Terror as an excuse to imprison many Kurdish intellectuals,
politicians, and writers, and to defame them for the purpose of
becoming the dominant power in the Southeastern part of the country.
Otherwise, the AKP and the Gulenist agents cannot be successful
without slandering and intimidating the Kurdish leaders and people.
This kind of game has been played against the Kurds for decades and
continues to be played,’ wrote Dr. Aland Mizell on Kurdishaspect.com.
Turkey’s brand of `democracy’ is funded `by and for the State. …
Democracy in Turkey is hypocrisy’ that knows no boundary. Turkish
Prime Minister Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP)
`wants to have political control in Diyarbakir in order to bring its
version of `peace’ to the region and constantly reject the Kurdish
political leaders’ proposals.’
`Turkey has been dancing with the Kurds for more than three decades.
They are not genuinely trying to solve the Kurdish problems. … The AKP
and Gulenists know the military and Turkish state conducted a dirty
war in the Kurdish regions and did not want the problem to end,
because the generals were making big money,’ lamented Mizell.
It is no secret that AKP and its allies are an integral part of the
Turkish Deep State. They regularly refuse to investigate unsolved
political murders committed during the 1990’s against Kurds,
maintaining adamant silence regarding clandestine disappearance of
Kurdish civilians.
Fears of a fresh escalation in Turkish-Kurdish war substantially grew
a few days after suspected Kurdish rebels attacked the election convoy
of Erdogan. The attack began when a hand grenade was thrown at one of
the police cars escorting the prime minister’s bus. That was followed
by fire from assault rifles. One police vehicle caught fire when its
petrol tank was hit. Police returned fire, but the attackers, said to
number about five or six, escaped into the forest. A search operation
by police and the military failed to produce any arrests, noted
Reuters news agency.
Kurds regularly hold Erdogan `responsible for this war’ between Turkey
and Kurds, and its practice of `police terror’ against unarmed
political activists.
The Kurds have detected a `push-pull’ game or `good cop-bad cop’
politics played by Erdogan’s AKP and Turkish nationalists. The `good
cop’ Erdogan finally unmasked himself by vehemently declaring that
`These separatist forces think they can get this way what they cannot
get at the ballot box. … We will not allow anyone to split up this
nation’s 780,000 square kilometers.’
As a result, Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of Turkey’s main
Kurdish rebel group has warned his forces will unleash a `big war’
after national elections if Turkey refuses to negotiate to end the
decades-old conflict, reported The Associated Press.
Ankara has grown wary of the fact that the PKK has now began launching
military operations in the Black Sea region – several hundred
kilometers west of its normal area of operation.
Murat Yetkin, a columnist with the Radikal newspaper, wrote: `PKK
militants are now ready to strike … anywhere in Turkey. This is a
serious situation.’
The Kurdish activists of Turkey’s Southeast have long been suspected
by Ankara of receiving financial backing from the oil-rich Kurdistan
Regional Government of Iraq’s north.
Turkey’s worse nightmare about the Kurds’ increased economic power and
resulting war-making capability has become a reality ever since Iraq’s
Kurdistan Regional Government began receiving revenues from its oil
productions. These revenues regularly flowing into Kurdistan’s coffers
bode badly for the Turkish hardliners.
Recently, Iraq’s self-ruled northern Kurdish region has received the
first payment from the central government in Baghdad for oil exported
from its region.
The payment amounted to nearly half of the 3 million in revenues
generated from exporting over 5 million barrels between February and
March 27.
Adding to Erdogan’s and Turkish Deep State’s woes, lately the
relations with Iraq and Syria have soured over the water rights of the
Tigris and the Euphrates rivers because of Turkey’s mismanagement of
these resources. An increasing number of dams, hydroelectric power
plants and irrigation projects have been constructed within the
context of the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP) supposedly to harness
the energy of Turkey’s water resources. But in reality Turkey is
seeking to sell the waters.
Several critics of GAP say `the more Turkey utilizes these rivers, the
less water there is to flow to the downstream riparian states of Syria
and Iraq.’ UN Representative and NGO worker Imane Abd El Al was not
optimistic about a Turkish proposal to export dammed water from Turkey
to Iraqi and Syrian farmers in exchange for oil or money. `We’re
talking about Mesopotamia here.’ Importing water to the `cradle of
civilization’, she argued, is absurd, as is the idea of treating water
as a commodity rather than a right.’
As the Arab Spring escalates, Ankara fears the triggering of a Turkish
Simmering Summer undermining the already-shaky relations with its Arab
neighbors.
It seems all too inevitable that the war with the Kurds will rage on;
and the water conflict with Arab states – Iraq and Syria will further
escalate draining Turkey’s economic, military and political resources.