http://themilitant.com/2015/7929/792901.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 29 August 17, 2015
(lead article)
Stop the murderous assault on Kurds!
Washington, NATO back Turkish gov’t bombings
Reuters/Osman Orsal
Rally in Istanbul Aug. 1 calls for halt to Turkish government bombing of
Kurdish camps in northern Iraq and raids against those accused of ties
to Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey.
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
The Turkish government’s assault on Kurdish fighters, now into its
second week, is being conducted with the support of Washington and NATO.
Massive bombings on Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in
northern Iraq have killed and injured hundreds. At the same time more
than 1,000 Kurds accused of supporting the PKK have been arrested in
Turkey.
The Turkish rulers are alarmed over advances made by Kurdish fighters in
Syria in driving back Islamic State and the impact this has on the 15
million Kurds in Turkey, giving confidence to those fighting for Kurdish
self-rule.
The Kurds, some 30 million people residing in Iraq, Iran, Syria and
Turkey, have been fighting against national oppression and for a
homeland for decades. This was denied to them by the imperialist powers
of London and Paris a century ago when they carved up the region. The
division has been backed by Washington and enforced by the local
capitalist rulers ever since.
In a deal giving Washington access to the strategic Incirlik Air Base in
southern Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced plans
to set up a buffer zone in northern Syria. Ostensibly airstrikes would
drive Islamic State from this border area. The zone, however, would be
situated to prevent further advances westward by Kurdish People’s
Protection Units (YPG) in Syria toward the Kurdish-run area of Afrin.
Erdogan is determined to block the unification of all of Syria’s Kurdish
regions along Turkey’s border.
It is abundantly clear Ankara’s target is the Kurds, not Islamic State.
“Between July 23 and July 26, 75 Turkish jets flew 155 sorties against
400 or so PKK targets,” reported Time magazine. “Number of ISIS [Islamic
State] targets hit? Three.”
Police raids in Turkey
Erdogan also launched police raids that he claimed are aimed at Islamic
State supporters and the PKK. Of the more than 1,300 people arrested in
39 provinces, however, nearly 85 percent were Kurds accused of being
members of the PKK or its youth group and some members of the
pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). The Turkish government,
which reached a cease-fire agreement with the PKK in 2013, brands the
Kurdish group as a terrorist organization, as does Washington.
As residents of the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, banged pots and
pans from their windows and balconies to protest the airstrikes, “police
used tear gas, sometimes fired from helicopters, to quell
demonstrations,” reported the Wall Street Journal July 29.
As Ankara launched its assault on the Kurds it requested and received
backing from the U.S.-led NATO military alliance. A statement issued at
a special July 28 meeting condemned “the terrorist attacks against
Turkey” and said that NATO member states “stand in strong solidarity
with Turkey.”
About 260 members of the PKK were killed and some 400 injured through
airstrikes in northern Iraq, reported the Turkish Anadolu Agency Aug. 1.
The bombings have spread fires and destroyed a health clinic serving
several villages.
A statement issued Aug. 1 by Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish
Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan, called for the Turkish military
to stop the airstrikes. It also said the PKK should “keep the
battlefield away from the Kurdish region, to ensure the civilians of
Kurdistan don’t become victims of that fighting and conflict.”
Several days earlier PKK fighters attacked an oil pipeline in southeast
Turkey that the KRG uses to export oil through Turkey’s Ceyhan port on
the Mediterranean Sea. A statement issued by the PKK Aug. 2 said its
units “did not know to whom the pipeline belonged,” reported Rudaw, a
Kurdish online news agency. Turkey has become the main trading partner
of Iraqi Kurdistan, with some 1,200 Turkish companies operating there.
Erdogan seems “more alarmed by the prospect of Syrian Kurds establishing
another self-governing entity on Turkey’s frontier, alongside the
quasi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq,” than
about IS, the Financial Times noted. When the YPG captured Tel Abyad in
June, “clearing Isis from that part of the border and cutting its supply
lines out of Turkey, Ankara did not celebrate but warned Syrian Kurdish
fighters against moving any further.”
Ankara targets Kurds in Syria
The YPG accused the Turkish government of targeting its fighters at
least four times over the past week. On July 30 Turkish aircraft flew
over Kobani, Syria, as Islamic State attacked the nearby town of Sarrin
that YPG forces had succeeded in taking from IS forces three days
earlier. “We consider recent movements of the Turkish military as
provocative and hostile actions” and demand they “immediately stop,”
said an Aug. 1 statement from the YPG General Command.
Erdogan is seeking to strip People’s Democratic Party legislators of
immunity from prosecution if they can be linked to PKK. The Diyarbakir
Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation against
Co-chair Selahattin Demirtas for his role in backing protests in October
protesting the government’s refusal to help fighters in Kobani fend off
the siege imposed there by Islamic State. If convicted he could be
imprisoned for 24 years.
HDP’s other Co-chair Figen Yuksekdag is also being investigated for
remarks she made at a June rally in Suruc, Turkey, about Kurdish
fighters in Syria. “We lean back on YPG, YPJ and PYD,” Yuksekdag said,
according to Firatnews. YPJ is the women’s militia fighting alongside
YPG. PYD is the Democratic Union Party of which YPG is its military
wing. “If you lean back on the terrorist organization, you are going to
pay for it,” responded Erdogan.
Meanwhile, Washington is deepening its military role in Syria’s civil
war beyond ongoing airstrikes against Islamic State. President Barack
Obama has authorized use of airstrikes to back the relatively small core
of U.S.-trained forces on the ground in Syria, setting up a potential
military conflict with Syrian government forces or other groups, such as
al-Qaeda-based Nusra Front.
Related articles:
Join protests to demand end to anti-Kurd attacks!
NY protest condemns bombing of Kurds
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home