The Kurdish Problem, Again

The signals coming out of Turkey's predominantly-Kurdish southeast region and from along the border with Iraq are not comforting. In recent weeks, Turkish soldiers are being on an almost daily basis in attacks by the resurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Turkey's state-run news agency happily reports that 46 PKK members have been killed in the past month, failing to mention that most of them are also young Turkish citizens whose bodies will be returned home to be buried and mourned. Turkish jets have been bombing targets in Northern Iraq with increasing regularity, while Today's Zaman reports that military checkpoints have now been reintroduced in the southeast and that a previously-abandoned ban on herders taking their flocks up to the region's high plateaus has also been reinstated.

It seems like the hope and good will created by the Turkish government's "democratic opening," a reform initiative announced last summer that's mostly designed to deal with the decades-old Kurdish problem, has very quickly evaporated. Cengiz Candar, an astute analyst whose warnings are worth listening to, writes in a column in today's Hurriyet Daily News:

The democratic initiative is not going anywhere. It has come to a halt, deviated even. We have an endless number of signs showing that we are back to the square one....

....The pre-1990 conditions settle in the Southeast again. We are going back to a state in which people are fed up with check points and barricades.

The full column (worth reading, though poorly translated) is here.

A New (Old) Front in the Turkey-Israel Fight

As if more fuel was needed to be poured on the fire burning in the wake of last week's tragically botched Israeli flotilla raid, a new campaign is being mounted in Turkey to link Israel with increased activity by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The main impetus for this is the fact that around the same time that Israeli commandos were sliding down their ropes onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish cruise ship turned naval embargo buster, PKK guerillas attacked a naval base on the southern Turkish coast, killing six sailors. The implication is that Israel was using the PKK attack as a kind of virtual smoke screen against the Turkish-led flotilla and sending out a warning shot to Turkey to not push things too far.

Turkish officials have certainly been hinting at that being the case. “We do not think the two attacks are a coincidence,” Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said. Turkey's interior minister, Besir Atalay, also expressed his concern that the two events were somehow connected and said any links will be investigated. In an article in Sunday's edition, Today's Zaman runs a fairly long piece entitled, "Suspicion growing about possible link between PKK and Israel," quoting a host of analysts who make some fairly inflammatory accusations (Israeli agents training PKK terrorists in how to "penetrate" cities and that captured PKK guerillas have confessed that they were trained by Israel, for example) without offering much evidence.

In a column in the same paper, Andrew Finkel -- one of the few voices of caution in the overheated Turkish media -- sees the attempt to link Israel with the PKK as part of a worrying trend. From his column:

....It is this sense of events slipping out of control which is among the most worrying aspects of Turkey’s current standoff with Israel. As if the nation did not have enough issues to deal with, it has now taken on responsibility for the Middle East. If the government appears to be taking a hard line on Israel, public opinion is shouting that it should take a harder line still. A recent public opinion survey undertaken by the MetroPOLL organization reports that 60 percent of the population believe the government has under-reacted to events. If pressure continues to build then Turkey will continue to back into uncharted waters.

There must be suspicion among the cynical few that the government is not displeased with the current crisis with Israel. Its total command of the headlines and the uniformity of the popular outrage has usefully overshadowed debates over constitutional reform, unemployment and the resurgence of the PKK. However, such cynicism would be misplaced; a more realistic view is that the government is genuinely concerned that those of its citizens trying to run the blockade in Gaza are now wagging the dog of Turkish foreign policy. One can only assume there is debate among the highest echelons between those who believe that the last week has served to redefine Turkey’s new soft power in a positive way and those who worry this exercise is getting out of hand; the contrast between a Turkey which enjoys more prestige and one which risks dismantling its carefully nurtured image of an ambassador between different regions. Distaste for the policies of the Netanyahu government aside, a Turkey able to speak to Israel presents a very different picture to the world than a Turkey which might adopt the anti-Zionist discourse of the Middle East.

Full piece here.

Making a link between Israel and the PKK/Kurds is not a new trope in Turkey. It was raised a few years ago during the American war in Iraq, when Turks were particularly worried about how the war might empower the Iraqi Kurds and the PKK and threaten Turkey. At the time, the rumors didn't only involve suggestions that Israel was training Kurdish peshmergas and helping the PKK, but also included the mother of all rumors -- that Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani is in fact Jewish (there was a line of rabbis in Kurdistan, which until recent decades had a large and thriving Jewish community, named Barzani). His being "Jewish," of course, would explain everything very neatly. Follow this link to an article I wrote at the time about this particular "who's a Jew" campaign.

A full-scale diplomatic war is clearly going on between Israel and Turkey right now. But there are clearly also efforts being made to drive a further wedge between the two countries, something both sides should be very vigilant about.

On Kurds, Syria Bucking the Trend

Human Rights Watch has just issued an interesting and thorough report about the repression of Kurdish political and cultural life in Syria (Kurds make up about 10 percent of the population there). While Iraq's Kurds are getting closer and closer to something approaching statehood and Turkey is discussing significant changes in how to approach its Kurdish minority, Syria appears to be heading in the other direction. From the report, entitled "Group Denial":

In March 2004, Syria’s Kurds held large-scale demonstrations, some violent, in a number of towns and villages throughout northern Syria, to protest their treatment by the Syrian authorities—the first time they had held such massive demonstrations in the country. While the protests occurred as an immediate response to the shooting by security forces of Kurdish soccer fans engaged in a fight with Arab supporters of a rival team, they were driven by long-simmering Kurdish grievances about discrimination against their community and repression of their political and cultural rights. The scale of the mobilization alarmed the Syrian authorities, who reacted with lethal force to quell the protests. In the final tally, at least 36 people were killed, most of them Kurds, and over 160 people were injured. The security services detained more than 2,000 Kurds (many were later amnestied), with widespread reports of torture and ill-treatment of the detainees.

The March 2004 events constituted a major turning point in relations between Syria’s Kurds and the authorities. Long marginalized and discriminated against by successive Syrian governments that promoted Arab nationalism, Syria’s Kurds have traditionally been a divided and relatively quiescent group (especially compared to Kurds in Iraq and Turkey). Syria’s Kurds make up an estimated 10 percent of the population and live primarily in the northern and eastern regions of the country.

The protests in 2004, which many Syrian Kurds refer to as their intifada (uprising), as well as developments in Iraqi Kurdistan, gave them increased confidence to push for greater enjoyment of rights and greater autonomy in Syria. This newfound assertiveness worried Syria’s leadership, already nervous about Kurdish autonomy in Iraq and increasingly isolated internationally. The authorities responded by announcing that they would no longer tolerate any Kurdish gathering or political activity. Kurds nevertheless continued to assert themselves by organizing events celebrating their Kurdish identity and protesting anti-Kurdish policies of the government.

In the more than five years since March 2004, Syria has maintained a harsh policy of increased repression against its Kurdish minority. This repression is part of the Syrian government’s broader suppression of any form of political dissent by any of the country’s citizens, but it also presents certain distinguishing features such as the repression of cultural gatherings because the government perceives Kurdish identity as a threat, as well as the sheer number of Kurdish arrests. A September 2008 presidential decree that places stricter state regulation on selling and buying property in certain border areas mostly impacts Kurds and is perceived as directed against them.

(You can read the full report here.)

The situation of the Kurds in Syria (which I imagine is reflective of how political opposition in the country is treated in general) certainly has implications for Turkey. The success of Turkey's new "Kurdish Opening" -- a series of democratic reforms which could ultimately lead the disbanding of the PKK, which includes Syrian Kurds among its members -- depends, to a certain extent, on the other countries in the region with large Kurdish populations (Iraq, Iran and Syria) also taking conciliatory steps on the issue. The question for Ankara, it appears, is can it use its rapidly improving ties with Damascus to push the Syrian regime to start taking those steps?

The Middle East's Troubled Waters

Something worth keeping an eye is the growing dispute between Iraq, Syria and Turkey over water issues. All three countries, which share many of the same river borne water resources, are going through a period of decreased rainfall. The difference, of course, is that Turkey is upstream from Syria and Iraq, which means that it controls much of the water that eventually trickles down to the other two countries. Iraq, in particular, is accusing Turkey of taking too much of the water that flows through the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flow through all three countries, because of its extensive dam network on the two rivers. (For more on Turkey's dam building project in the southeast of the country, take a look at this Eurasianet piece of mine.)

From a Reuters report on the brewing water crisis:

Turkey has failed to meet a pledge to release more water down the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to Iraq, an Iraqi minister said on Thursday, and called for a coordinated water policy in the region.

In June, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said Ankara will guarantee a minimum 400 cubic metres of water per second from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to help its neighbour weather a drought.

But Iraq's Water Resources Minister Abdul Latif Rasheed told Reuters that Iraq was still not getting enough water from Turkey, and said his country's agriculture and drinking water supplies were at stake.

"It isn't happening and we want Turkey to implement that agreement. The amount of water we are getting is fluctuating," Rasheed said on the sidelines of a meeting between Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian ministers to discuss water sharing from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

"The minimum requirement Iraq needs is 600 cubic metres. Sometimes it fluctuates to less than 200 cubic metres. We need two or three times that amount," he said.

Iraq accuses Turkey, and to a lesser extent Syria, of choking the Euphrates with hydroelectric dams that have restricted the flow, damaging the farm sector already suffering from decades of war, sanctions and neglect.

The dispute is a delicate diplomatic issue for Iraq as it seeks to improve ties with its neighbours. Turkey is one of Iraq's most important trading partners.

Turkish officials say flows to Iraq have been decreased by Syria, which also shares the Tigris and Euphrates basin.

But Rasheed said Iraq was getting less water since Turkey began building dams in the southeast of the country under the GAP development project....

....Turkey says it has occasionally limited the flow on the Tigris and Euphrates to less than 400 cubic metres per second to meet its own needs during extremely dry weather.

Syria's Irrigation Minister Nader al-Bunni said his country was "concerned" about the amount of water that flows out of Turkey and said neighbours sharing the Euphrates and Tigris rivers needed to find a solution that is "sustainable from a social and humanitarian point of view".

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to abandon their land in Syria, a major farm commodities producer in the region, due to the effects of the country's worst drought in decades.

(You can read the full article here.)

[UPDATE I -- Turkey has apparently now reversed course on the issue, saying it would release more water than the minimum required, although it did not specify how much.)

Water issues and climate change are clearly going to pose major political and diplomatic challenges for the Middle East in the years ahead. For some interesting perspectives on this, take a look at the most recent edition of Bitterlemons, an online roundtable on Middle East issues. One of the articles, titled "Conflict Ahead," by Aharon Zohar, a specialist in regional and environmental planning, offers this warning:

These issues will affect stability mainly in countries and societies that are already destabilized due to ethno-religious conflict, weak economies and environmental decline. One expression of this could be violence between countries rich in water and energy resources and those without, particularly where they share drainage basins of international rivers: Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt over the Nile; Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates; and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel over the Jordan and its tributaries. Another instance could involve internal destabilization of moderate states like Egypt and Jordan due to water shortages....

....Readiness to counter the consequences of global warming in the Middle East demands coordination and problem-solving on a broad regional level. Yet in view of the hostility and tension that characterize regional inter-state relations, this option appears less likely than specific ad-hoc cooperation between specific countries.

[UPDATE II -- The Washington Post has an interesting piece about some environmentally suspect joint projects Israel and Jordan are undertaking in an effort to deal with their looming water shortage problems. Worth reading.)

(photo -- a dam near Sanliurfa, in southeast Turkey, part of the country's GAP dam and irrigation project. By Yigal schleifer)

Nabucco's New Start

I have a piece up on the Eurasianet website looking at the implications of the Nabucco pipeline agreement signed yesterday in Ankara. From the article:

The troubled Nabucco pipeline project -- designed to diversify Europe’s energy supply and loosen Russia’s grip on the continent’s natural gas market -- took a major step forward on July 13 with the signing of a transit agreement between Turkey and five European Union countries involved in the undertaking.

The 2,050-mile-long (3,300 kilometer) Nabucco pipeline is designed to bring gas from the Caspian Basin and the Middle East to European markets via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The $10-billion pipeline is scheduled to start operating in 2014. Nabucco’s primary objective is to lessen Europe’s overdependence on Russia for gas. Moscow currently supplies approximately 40 percent of Europe’s gas.

Although the signing is being hailed as an important statement of intent, experts caution that Nabucco still faces major hurdles, particularly regarding where the pipeline’s projected annual need of 31 billion cubic meters of gas will come from. "Now that the agreement is being signed, frankly an even more difficult process begins, as to what will fill the pipeline," says Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Signing the agreement was the easy part."

Despite the signing, there are still no concrete agreements covering Nabucco’s supply. Azerbaijan is currently the most likely supplier, but it can’t fill Nabucco on its own. Other possible sources include Egypt, Syria and Iraq, whose Prime Minister, Nuri Al-Maliki, attended the signing ceremony in Ankara. Turkmenistan also has indicated that it wants to be a supplier.
Another possible, though contentious, supplier would be Iran, which has some of the world’s largest gas reserves. But European Union officials said that, for now, they are ruling out Teheran’s participation. "Iran has major gas reserves and will surely export them one day, but today it imports gas. On top of that, there are the political and legal issues," Andris Piebalgs, the European commissioner on energy issues, said in an interview with the Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, a Turkish English-language daily. "Until the outstanding questions are solved, Iran will remain a difficult option."

A similar message was given by Richard Morningstar, the United States special energy envoy, who also attended the signing ceremony. "With respect to Iran, our position is very clear. We do not think that Iran should participate at this point," Morningstar told reporters.
The question of supply for Nabucco may become a race against time, given that the route faces stiff competition from other projects, particularly South Stream, which would carry Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, from where it would continue to other parts of Europe….

…. With the signing of the transit agreement, which brings together Nabucco’s major stakeholders, it appears that the project’s planners are following the blueprint laid down by the successful Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which transports oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast via Georgia. Like Nabucco, BTC -- which started pumping oil in 2006 -- is designed to diversify the West’s energy supplies and provide a supply route that avoids Russia. Also like Nabucco, the BTC project faced massive obstacles and no shortage of skeptics who said it would never be built.

"If you look back to the BTC struggle, it’s clear that [the planners] are, to a certain extent, following the same path," says CSIS’s Aliriza. "Signing an inter-governmental agreement like this opens up the way to eventually finishing the project."

But Aliriza also warns that there is a difference this time around. When BTC was being planned, Russia was not the energy power that it is today. Russia’s political and commercial ties with some of the countries involved in Nabucco, particularly with Turkey, have also deepened in recent years. "Given all the leverage that Russia can bring to bear makes certain that the BTC analogy doesn’t really apply," he said.

You can read the full article here.

For Nabucco, Is It Kurdistan to the Rescue?

I have a piece up on Eurasianet looking at the possibility of supply from gas fields in northern Iraq breathing new life into the troubled Nabucco pipeline project (for some background, take a look at this previous post, as well as this one). The "Kurdish" gas option adds an interesting twist to the Nabucco story, although it's clear nobody checked with Baghdad before they announced that Iraqi gas would save the struggling pipeline project. From my article:

Could supplies from gas fields in northern Iraq breath new life into the troubled Nabucco pipeline, a project designed to free the European Union from Russia’s virtual gas supply monopoly?

That was certainly the hope created by the May 17 announcement that a consortium of European and Middle Eastern energy companies completed a deal to develop gas resources in Northern Iraq, part of which would be used to kick start the flow of energy via the long-stalled Nabucco route.

"It’s an important and promising development for the acquisition of a huge volume of natural gas for Turkey and for Europe via Nabucco," the pipeline project’s managing director, Reinhard Mitschek, said of the $8 billion deal between Austria’s OMV AG and Hungary’s MOL, and the United Arab Emirates’ Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum, which currently operate a gas site in northern Iraq.

Representatives of the UAE companies said they believe the Iraqi fields could supply up to 3 billion cubic feet of gas per day, which is what Nabucco is being designed to carry. Crescent’s executive director, Badr Jafar, said the projected volume was sufficient to justify the construction of Nabucco.

But experts are warning that Iraq’s internal political squabbles may make it difficult for gas from the country’s north to make it to Europe. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) controls Northern Iraq, but the central government in Baghdad has rejected the KRG’s attempts to make independent energy deals.

On May 18, a day after the deal between the European and UAE firms was announced, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani slammed the proposal. "We will not allow any side to export gas from the region without the approval of the central government and the Iraqi Oil Ministry," he said. Baghdad has previously blacklisted companies that have made independent deals with the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.

"I don’t think there will be permission for both the development and the export of that gas before the problems between the central government and the KRG are solved," says Necdet Pamir, an energy analyst based in Ankara.

"There is a strong reaction from the Iraqi government to the announced deal and there may be some restrictions put in place. I don’t think in the short term such a development will be fulfilled. This is just wishful thinking right now," he added.

Nabucco’s proposed northern Iraq connection came to light just two days after Russia signed deals with Bulgarian, Greek, Italian and Serbian energy companies to facilitate the construction of a rival pipeline, dubbed South Stream. Those pacts seemed to signal the death-knell for Nabucco, which has been plagued for years by questions about profitability.

Announcing the Iraqi connection may have been a way for Nabucco supporters to make a statement that they won’t be going away anytime soon. "Desperate times call for desperate measures. A few years ago, the Iraqi supply would have been further down the list, but now it’s seen as more of a possibility," said Amanda Akcakoca, an analyst at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank....

....The failure of the Iraqi connection to materialize for Nabucco would mark just the latest in a series of setbacks for the pipeline project. Two problems that continue to hover over Nabucco are a lack of reliable suppliers and disagreements between the European Union and Turkey over transit fees. According to recent reports, a May 8 meeting in Prague between the EU and countries involved in the pipeline project may have achieved a breakthrough in disputes between Brussels and Ankara, but Nabucco is still very much in danger, experts say.

"Within EU circles everyone is still talking about Nabucco positively, but if you talk to experts, most of them say it is dead," says Akcakoca.

"Perhaps they [analysts] re being too pessimistic, since Nabucco is still on the table and if enough of the right political and financial support were put behind it, it would still have a chance," Akcakoca continued. "The situation in Iraq itself makes it unlikely as a primary source for Nabucco. The main sources still remain in Azerbaijan and Central Asia."

You can read the full article here.

(Photo - A gas extraction plant in northern Iraq)

Uttering the "K" Word

Making great strides in Turkish foreign policy is easy: all you have to do is say one word and a new reality is created. That, at least, seems to be the Turkish press’s take on president Abdullah Gul’s recent two-day visit to Iraq. The Iraq visit itself was fairly significant – it was the first one by a Turkish president in 33 years. (For an analysis of the visit's implications, take a look at this report by the Jamestown Foundation. This RFE/RL article also talks about some of the progress Gul's visit might herald in Turkey-Kurdish relations. ) But what made the headlines in Turkey was that, in sharp contrast to previous Turkish policy, Gul -- while talking to Turkish reporters on his plane -- referred to regional government in northern Iraq as the “Kurdistan Regional Administration.” It was the first time a top Turkish official had mentioned the “K” word.

Turkey does not recognize the administration in northern Iraq by its official name for fear that by doing so it will create a precedent for the use of the term “Kurdistan,” which could then be used in its own territory. In an article headlined “Yet another taboo dies in ’Kurdistan,’” Hurriyet reported:

While calling for stronger efforts to end terrorist activities by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish official to refer to northern Iraq as "Kurdistan." Speaking to Turkish journalists aboard his plane en route to Baghdad on Monday, Gül said the "Kurdistan Regional Administration" holds the primary responsibility for ending terrorist activities targeting Turkey. He also emphasized that an amnesty -- suggested by the prime minister of the regional administration in northern Iraq as a way to help resolve the PKK problem -- was a domestic concern for Turkey.

Asked by the press about his use of the term "Kurdistan," the president said it was the region’s official name, as articulated in the Iraqi constitution. "What shall I say? We do not refuse to say Macedonia because Greece refuses to do so," Gül said.

"This is written in the [Iraqi] constitution. It is a fact that those in northern Iraq should calculate the possible outcome of losing Turkey."

In a column in Today’s Zaman, Yavuz Baydar praises Gul’s move as the dawn of a new era in Turkey’s approach to the Kurdish issue:

The change has come to Turkey's 80-some-year-long denial of the Kurdish reality. The word "Kurdistan" was used for the first time, not just by any Turkish official, but by the highest authority, President Gül, while visiting Iraq….

….Finally the taboo of Kurds, undermined for years by the Turkish press, has finally collapsed. Now, both the Turks and Kurds can talk business -- with a real language, without beating around the bush. Surprises haunt us here.

Or maybe not. Unsurprisingly, reaction to Gul’s uttering of the “K” word was swift. "The Justice and Development Party government has caused a grave break in the fight against terrorism,” said one member of the right wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Members of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main opposition group, also accused the government of selling Turkey out by recognizing the existence of “Kurdistan” without getting a firm commitment from the Iraqis about how they plan to root out PKK bases in northern Iraq.

Upon his return to Turkey, Gul was already backtracking, saying he had never mentioned the “K” word. "In fact, I did not use that term (Kurdistan) but as I said this is a reality. The country who attaches the biggest importance to Iraq's unity and integrity is Turkey. There is a regional Kurdish administration in the north of Iraq according to the Iraqi constitution. This is what I had said. I held a meeting with (the regional administration's) prime minister," Gul told reporters at a press conference in Ankara. (As another Hurriyet article makes clear, the now growing debate over whether Gul said "Kurdistan" or not is now reaching farcical levels.)

As is usually the case these days, the Turkish government seems to be making great strides abroad, only to return and find that the real problem is still in its own divided house.

(Photo: A sign at the Iraqi side of the Habur gate, a Turkey-Iraq border crossing. By Yigal Schleifer)

Before "The Shoe," there was "The Suit"

I just spent some time today in the factory of the Turkish shoemaker who claims that it was his company's shoe that was thrown at George W. Bush and that his sales are now booming. Hard to verify his claims: the offending shoes have apparantly been destroyed, although I did see a group of men in the company's workshop feverishly making pairs of the shoe -- now renamed the "Bye Bye Bush" model -- for delivery to Iraq.

There certainly is a precedent for this intersection of politics and fashion (if that's a word we can use in connection with a very chunky, though suprisingly light, pair of shoes). In late 2005, Istanbul suitmaker Recep Cesur made headlines and then reaped a harvest of increased sales after Saddam Hussein appeared in a Baghdad court wearing a pinstriped Cesur suit. Cesur's sales skyrocketed in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, his suits now carrying with them the scent of power while making the statement that "I'm sticking it to the Americans" (or, more likely, to George Bush). During a visit to Cesur's Istanbul showroom, I even met an Iranian wholesaler who was snapping up Cesurs. The Iranians, who suffered terribly during the long war with Iraq in the 1980's, are no fans of Saddam, he told me. But a Cesur suit now had cache, he said. "If Michael Jackson drinks Coke, people will go to the supermarket and ask for Coke, not something else," he said.

You can read the article about Cesur and his suits here.