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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 42 November 23, 2015
(front page)
Turkish gov’t makes election
gains on brutal attacks on Kurds
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Following months of Washington-backed attacks against the Kurdish
people, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development
Party (AKP) regained a majority in parliament Nov. 1. Monitors from the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called the vote “unfair”
and “characterized by too much violence and fear.”
The vote took place amidst government-imposed curfews in Kurdish areas,
detentions of thousands and media censorship. Because of the
government’s assaults on the Kurds, many of the AKP’s new votes came at
the expense of other Turkish nationalist parties.
Meanwhile, Moscow has moved fighter planes and troops into Syria and
begun large-scale bombing runs, overwhelmingly targeting forces seeking
to overthrow the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The Kurds — some 30 million people living in Iraq, Iran, Syria and
Turkey — have been fighting against national oppression and for a
homeland for more than a century against imperialist domination by
Paris, London and Washington and local capitalists’ rule.
Preliminary results indicated the AKP got more than 49 percent of the
vote, up from 41 percent in elections in June, securing 317 seats in the
550-seat parliament. The Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP),
which got over 10 percent of the vote in June, winning seats in
parliament for the first time, did so again. In this election its vote
totals dropped from 13 to 10.5 percent, making it the third largest
party in the legislature.
“The HDP could not run an effective election because of repression from
the AKP government,” Harun Ercan, international relations adviser with
the HDP in Diyarbakir, Turkey, told the Militant by phone Nov. 9. “They
bombed and made it unbearable for people in Kurdish cities.”
Turkish special operations forces “were present by polling stations,
intimidating some into not voting,” Ercan said. In the week leading up
to the elections, Turkish authorities seized two newspapers and two TV
channels critical of Erdogan’s regime.
HDP is preparing to challenge election results in six cities — Adana,
Mersin, Dersim, Antalya, Erzurum and Ardahan — where they lost by a
narrow margin.
The results leave Erdogan short of the 330 seats needed to call a
referendum to approve constitutional changes to strengthen presidential
executive power.
Following AKP’s electoral victory, Turkey’s president vowed to step up
military attacks against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) “until all
its members surrender or are eliminated.” He rejected returning to
negotiations with the group, branded terrorist by both Ankara and
Washington.
Turkish warplanes increased airstrikes targeting PKK camps in northern
Iraq and Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey, where clashes with the
military killed at least 20 Nov. 5.
The PKK announced it is ending a unilateral cease-fire it had declared a
month before the election, calling instead for intensifying the fight
for local autonomy.
Ankara’s decades-long oppression and brutal assaults against Kurds led
the PKK to launch a 30-year-long guerrilla war for Kurdish rights until
a cease-fire was agreed to in 2013. But the PKK also has a record of
Stalinist thuggery which has weakened the Kurdish struggle, opening the
door to new attacks by Turkey’s rulers.
In July, reactionary Islamic State forces carried out a suicide bombing
in Surac, Turkey, that killed 33 Kurdish youth who were meeting to plan
efforts to help rebuild Kobani, successfully defended by Kurdish
fighters from IS assault across the nearby border in Syria.
In response, the PKK assassinated two Turkish police in southeastern
Ceylanpinar, saying they were involved in “collaboration with the Daesh
gangs,” using an Arabic term for Islamic State.
Many Kurds and other opponents of the Erdogan regime believe that Ankara
secretly aids IS against Kurdish fighters in Syria.
“Although Islamic State has been held responsible for this attack,” the
HDP said after the killing of the youth, “Turkey’s AKP government, by
resisting the taking of effective measures to prevent Islamic State and
other reactionary forces, bears the real responsibility.”
On July 24 Turkish fighter jets conducted their first-ever attack on
Islamic State in Syria. At the same time they began a much larger and
sustained campaign bombing camps of the PKK in northern Iraq and attacks
against Kurds across Turkey.
A few weeks before the election, bombs, allegedly placed by Islamic
State, killed more than 100 people at an Ankara rally opposing
government attacks on Kurds.
Kurds’ gains in Syria alarm Ankara
The Turkish rulers are alarmed by gains made by the Kurdish People’s
Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, which has been the most effective
ground force beating back Islamic State, and also attracting Syrian Arab
and other allies. With victories in Kobani and Tal Abyad and further
advances in Hasakah province, Kurds now control two-thirds of the
560-mile-long border with Turkey. Erdogan has threatened attacks against
the YPG, which has close ties with the PKK, if Washington provides
military supplies to the YPG.
“As of now, we are not providing weapons or ammunition to the YPG,” said
Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S. commander based in Baghdad.
“The ammunition that we’ve provided in our one airdrop executed, was for
the Syrian-Arab coalition,” a new force Washington is trying to cobble
together. However, the YPG comprises the leading fighters in the
recently formed Syrian Democratic Forces that is organizing to press the
fight against Islamic State in Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital, and
in Hasakah province.
The armed conflict in Syria began when Assad attacked growing protests
against his dictatorial rule in March 2011. Since then 250,000 have been
killed and more than 11 million displaced. Syrian authorities, backed by
Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah, have used shrapnel-filled barrel bombs,
starvation sieges and other brutalities against civilians and opposition
forces.
Washington is seeking to strike a political deal with Moscow and Tehran
in which all parties would focus their fire against Islamic State and
Assad would remain in power during an unspecified political transition
period.
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