[TamilNet, Friday, 31 July 2015, 12:57 GMT]The Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has authorized the state armed
forces to carry out air strikes against the Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK) and People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) positions in Southern
Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), North Iraq (Southern Kurdistan) and
Northern Syria (West Kurdistan). On 23 July and 26 July, Turkish war
planes pounded PKK bases in North Iraq and South-Eastern Turkey. Whereas
Turkey claims to have launched attacks on the IS (Islamic State) in
Syria, reports indicate that it is the PKK and YPG/YPJ who are the prime
targets of the Turkish aggression. On 21st July a NATO Security Council
meeting was called for by Turkey, and the Washington centred defence
alliance granted its approval to its allies in Ankara, promising
political support for Turkish military efforts. Consequently, on 29th
July, the Turkish government annulled the ceasefire with the PKK.
Kurdish sources also allege that Turkish troops are mobilized near the
Syrian border in an attempt to initiate ground attacks against PKK in
Syria and Iraq.
In a statement, the YPG has accused the Turkish
Army of shelling the positions of YPG and allied troops near the village
of Zormikhar near Kobane on the 24th and 26th of July.
Garlanding
a war on terror to conceal its war on Kurds, Turkey opened its bases in
the south of the country to the U.S. led coalition forces under the
pretext of joining the fight against IS.
The pro-Kurdish HDP Party has condemned the Turkish aggression against the Kurds.
The
HDP won a landmark victory in the last Turkish parliamentary election,
partially ending the AKP and Erdogan’s single party majority, and marked
the entrance of a Kurdish party into the Turkish Parliament.
President
Erdogan’s anti-PKK campaign stirs up anti-Kurdish sentiments to serve
the AKP’s parliamentary interests. The HDP forming the single largest
constituency of the opposition is also sought to be proscribed by the
government for its alleged links with the PKK. Such a move would restore
the AKP’s majority within the Turkish parliament.
The sinister
manner in which parliamentary politics and electoral democracy is tied
up with anti-Kurd violence and racism parallels the state system in Sri
Lanka. Consequent ownership over State violence against Eezham Tamils
has proven to be a matter of prestige in Sri Lankan electoral politics
among various political camps in the Sinhala polity.
HDP
chairman Selahattin Demirtas in an interview to the BBC, decried the US
– Turkish plan to create a ‘Safe Zone’ in Northern Syria, within the
Kurdish homeland as an insidious move to prevent Kurdish self-rule and
accused the war against IS as a cover to battle the PKK.
Turkey
and USA have agreed to establish the safe zone, and are in
deliberations on which Syrian opposition group to support against ISIS
and Syrian government forces. Such a scenario could imply that the
YPG/YPJ will lose the meagre US coalition support which would then be
facilitated to proxies of Turkey or the USA within Syria. Such a
development would tilt the military balance against the Kurds.
Within
the plethora of opposition groups operating in Syria, Turkey has been
supporting an alliance of jihadist groups such as the Al-Nusra Front and
the Ahrar Al-Sham.
In September 2014, during the three-pronged
IS siege of Kobane in Syria, Turkish forces blocked the border crossing
into Kobane from Turkey and vice versa, preventing Kurdish refugees from
fleeing into Turkey. Reports showed that while the Turkish military
blocked the border for Kurds, the IS were able to access resources
across the border; such actions displayed the actual intent of Turkey in
the region.
The establishment of a Kurdish self-rule aligned
with the PKK in the region is against Ankara and the AKP interests in
Syria and Iraq and reflects the Turkish state’s institutionalized
violence against Kurdish democratic and national aspirations.
Despite
the tactics of Turkey and the onslaught of IS, the Kurdish people’s
resistance triumphed and the Islamists were repelled from Kobane. The
Kurdish peoples resolve to safeguard their sovereignty and homeland has
effectuated a phenomenal defence of the regions in which the PKK aligned
YPG/YPJ have established self-rule governments.
As reported in
TamilNet earlier, the independent and sovereign politico-military
mobilization of Kurds in Syria and Iraq under the YPG/YPJ amidst the
bloody civil war in Syria accentuated by geopolitics between world
establishments remains a beacon for the oppressed.
For Eezham
Tamils and other oppressed people in the present, deprived of their
politico-military power and strangled between the rivalling geopolitics
between various world establishments, the Kurdish experience in Rojava
provides a stark reminder on the necessity of independent and
struggle-centric political mobilization for the oppressed.
Only
an independent and sovereign political formation among the oppressed can
cultivate the national culture and create the political acumen and
environment required to articulate and safeguard the principle rights of
homeland, nationhood and self-determination.
* * *
Western geopolitics and Turkish interests:The
Turkish airstrikes against YPG and HPG/PKK in Rojava in North Western
Kurdistan and Southern Kurdistan on the 23rd of July follows a period
during which Kurdish forces have gained foothold in repelling the IS out
of Kurdish areas to the North of Syria and Iraq.
As a result, the IS have suffered several set-backs at the hands of the YPG led forces.
Thus
the current weakening of the PKK–YPG alliance, the only force resolved
to combat the IS, will only be favourable to the IS against the Kurds.
The
Turkish aggression and NATO’s approval, illuminates the workings of
hypocrisy in the international community in which the definition of
terrorism and humanitarian concern is conditioned by the interests of
international and regional establishments.
On 20th July a IS
suicide bomb attack in the Kurdish region of Suruc in Southern Turkey
killed 32 youths, predominantly Kurdish youth and Turkish leftists who
were on route to Kobane to help rebuild the city.
The Suruc
attack, the role of the Turkish authorities in suppressing solidarity to
Rojava, and the Turkish aggression towards PKK led to Kurdish protests
throughout Turkish cities and town.
The Turkish court banned
circulation of images from the Suruc massacres and prohibited
anti-Islamist demonstrations, while anti Kurd/PKK protests are given a
free reign. Furthermore the authorities are sweeping through the country
in an effort to imprison Kurds under the pretext of fighting the PKK
and terrorism. In an act of vengeance, the PKK assassinated two Turkish
police officers near Suruc.
Surprisingly in the aftermath of a
terrorist attack targeting Kurds in Turkey resulted in the state’s
decision to attack and persecute Kurdish fighters and activists in three
countries. Such a coordinated attack in the wake of ongoing battle
between the IS and Kurds, is evidently driven by an agenda pursued by
Ankara and its international allies to dismantle the Rojava
self-governance and to neutralize the influence and popularity of the
PKK.
While publicly displaying an image of fighting the IS and
‘terrorism’, the US-led coalition has only provided tactical airstrikes
since last year, while the PKK and its allies the YPG/YPJ have been
leading the battle against the Islamists on the ground since 2011.
The
USA has also until recently provided military and financial assistance
to Islamist groupings vowing to fight Assad. It was earlier known that
the Al-Nusra Front and the IS were under the patron of Turkey during the
2013 attacks on Western Kurdistan where several massacres were carried
out against Kurdish civilians.
Despite USA’s rhetoric,
Washington has granted Turkey the permission to carry out its military
actions, which in effect targets the PKK and YPG. While being allied
with the Kurdish fighters in Syria in fighting IS, USA retains its
pro-Turkish character by maintaining the terrorist proscription of the
PKK.
Such a double standard might be difficult to grasp unless
one accounts for the geopolitical dynamics in the Middle-East and the
designs of international and regional establishments to gain and
maintain their interests.
The US axis of powers deceived the
LTTE and Eezham Tamils in the form of a Norwegian mediated peace
process, which later revealed its ultimate designs in tilting the
political and military balance in favour of the Sri Lankan state and its
genocidal military solution to the Tamil national question.
The
IS had until 2014, free reign in organizing and consolidating in Syria
and is alleged to have used neighbouring Turkey as a rear base.
The
US axis and its Saudi and Turkish allies were involved in channelling
resources to a range of groups to topple the Iran allied Assad regime.
The
IS consolidated its power among the Syrian opposition and eventually
fought sections of the Western supported Free Syrian Army.
In
addition to fighting other opposition groups and the Assad regime, the
IS has since its formation taken keen interests in carrying out ethnic
cleansing and genocidal measures against the Kurds. Such an agenda is
compatible with the Turkish state’s structural interests concerning
Kurdish rights and political power. In such terms, the IS and Turkish
authorities find a common nemesis in the Kurds and their national
political mobilization.
The ultimate designs of the USA are to
topple or destabilize unfriendly regimes and allies who are a liability
for US interests in the Middle-East.
A regime change in Syria
following the model in Libya is thus a major priority, yet the Kurdish
peoples efforts in mobilizing military and political power independently
through self-rule governments, has arguably complicated the
geo-politics of the USA, which in the region is aligned with that of
Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Within these dynamics, the interests in
disintegrating Kurdish power in order to subjugate their sovereignty
seem to prevail among regional and world hegemons.
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