Peace With Kurds Now Linked To Kobane

Turkey's already fragile peace process with its own Kurds has been seriously endangered, mainly because Ankara has come under serious criticism for turning a blind eye to the plight of Syrian Kurdish fighters in their ongoing armed conflict in the Kurdish Syrian border town of Kobane with militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has renamed itself the Islamic State (IS). Despite alleged Turkish pressure not to do so, US-led coalition forces nonetheless staged air strikes against IS targets last week in the Syrian Kurdish region bordering this NATO-member country.
Kobane has been besieged by the IS for more than 10 days, forcing many Syrian Kurds to flee to Turkey. Kobane has, at the same time, also become a rallying point for Turkey's Kurds, not just against the IS but also against the Turkish state, endangering a fragile Kurdish peace process with Ankara.
In December 2012, Ankara disclosed that it had been in talks with Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), to end an almost three-decade-old armed conflict through peaceful means that had taken the lives of about 50,000 people.
Since a cease-fire was declared last year in March, there has been a relatively peaceful atmosphere in Turkey because there have not been significant clashes taking place between the Turkish security forces and the PKK militants. However, several incidents in recent months have occurred, mainly in the predominantly Kurdish southeast Turkey, as the Turkish Kurds have been pressing for Ankara to start a meaningful dialogue to meet their requests, including Kurdish being recognized as a second official language after Turkish, putting Öcalan under house arrest with the hope that he will eventually be freed, as well as changing the Constitution to treat the Kurds of Turkey as equal citizens. In addition, Turkish Kurds seek an autonomous administration.
The government's plans to publicize a roadmap to put mechanisms in place to enable the two sides to begin advanced negotiations have been delayed, given the escalation of the conflict between the IS and the Syrian Kurdish fighters supported by the PKK.
The emergence of the Syrian Kurds as a powerful group in Syria, engulfed in a civil war between radical groups and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for some three-and-a-half years, has, in fact, further complicated Turkey's Kurdish peace plan. This is partly because Turkish Kurds have begun gaining the upper hand and are imposing their terms on Ankara.
The fact that the Kurds of Iraq have become an important actor in the anti-IS coalition led by the US and composed of some Western as well as Arab countries, has irritated Turkey, prompting it to exert pressure on its close ally Washington not to arm the Syrian Kurds against the IS. The coalition declared that it will arm the peshmerga -- Iraqi Kurdish fighters -- in the campaign against the IS.
The People's Protection Units (YPG) are the defense force of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the most powerful Kurdish party in Syria, and have established a de facto autonomous Kurdish region in Rojava, where Kobane is located. Turkey, however, has accused the PYD of being a front for the PKK. Ankara also believes the PYD is a tool of Assad's regime.
Yet, while many Turkish Kurds have been moving to Syria to join the YPG fight against the IS, Ankara has found itself with a dilemma of how to move the peace talks forward while turning its back on the YPG in Kobane in their fight against the IS.
As a matter of fact, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's weekend statement that he is targeting the PKK raised questions about his sincerity in furthering peace talks with this organization.
Addressing a meeting of the World Economic Forum in İstanbul on Sunday, Sept. 28, Erdoğan criticized the world for not speaking out against the PKK as the international community is uniting in the fight against the IS. Paradoxically, Erdoğan also declared while in New York last week that NATO member Turkey will take part in the anti-IS coalition in its effort to thwart this terrorist organization's efforts in areas that it has occupied in Iraq. The IS is currently fighting with the Syrian Kurds in Kobane, next to the Turkish border.
With these bizarre and contradictory statements Erdoğan might have been trying to influence the Turkish Parliament ahead of a planned debate on Oct. 2 regarding two separate decrees that will allow Turkish forces to be dispatched abroad. The contents of the decrees are not yet known, but both will give a clue to the nature of Turkish involvement in the anti-IS coalition.
The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the minor opposition party, in particular is a fierce opponent of the government's efforts to reach peace with the PKK. Hence, Erdoğan might have sought to ease MHP concerns about the PKK by blasting the organization. Yet, such remarks also suggest that Erdoğan, who initiated the process with the Turkish Kurds to end the armed conflict through peaceful means in his capacity as prime minister in 2012, is, in fact, not ready to come up with radical moves to meet Kurdish demands ahead of the 2015 June national elections.
In the meantime, however, the peace process is in real danger of collapsing in the face of Ankara's failure to support the PKK-backed YPG in its fight against the IS, though, ironically, it has declared itself to be part of the coalition created to defeat this radical Islamist group.

LALE KEMAL (Cihan/Today's Zaman)