PKK – Informed Comment https://www.juancole.com Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion Fri, 21 Aug 2015 01:57:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.10 Crisis in Iraqi Kurdistan: Attacked by ISIL & Turkey; and Now Leaderless https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/kurdistan-attacked-leaderless.html https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/kurdistan-attacked-leaderless.html#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2015 04:36:46 +0000 http://www.juancole.com/?p=154495 Honar Hama Rasheed | Erbil | (Niqash.org) | – –

As the issue of Iraqi Kurdistan’s vacant presidency heats up, delegations from the US, Turkey and Iran have all visited to have their say. But what do they really want?

The current Iraqi Kurdish presidency officially ended yesterday. Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdish Democratic Party, or KDP, has held the post for a decade now. For eight of those years he was a legally elected representative and for the past two he has served after his term was extended by the Iraqi Kurdish Parliament.

Iraqi Kurdistan is a semi-autonomous region in the north of Iraq and has its own borders, military and parliament and the Barzani family are in charge of many aspects of the region’s system.

Despite this – or perhaps because of this – the issue of Barzani’s ongoing presidency is an extremely sensitive one, not least because Iraqi Kurdistan purports to be a democracy. If Barzani stays in power, all those claims that Iraqi Kurdistan is actually his fiefdom or a sultanate will be hard to argue with.

Politicians inside Iraqi Kurdistan are trying to resolve the issue. Other than Barzani’s own KDP, one of the two most popular and powerful parties in the region, all other political actors want him to step down.

Barzani’s party, the KDP, has 38 seats in the 111-seat [Kurdistan] Parliament here and they say the President should stay on until elections are held and Iraq’s security crisis has ended; the region needs a strong leader at a time like this, they argue. However all other major parties – the Change movement with 24 seats, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan with 18 seats, the two Islamic parties with 16 seats together – think Barzani should go.

But of course, who runs Iraqi Kurdistan is also of importance to the region’s neighbours, Iran and Turkey, and other foreign powers like the US. And in the space of less than two months, there have been visits by delegations from Iran, Turkey and the US, ostensibly to discuss this issue and to encourage a solution that benefits the visitors best.

Turkey has many interests inside the region, related to security and the economy. Unofficial estimates put the volume of trade between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey at around more than US$12 billion. And from a strategic point of view, Turkey believes that Iraqi Kurdistan can be it’s gateway to the Middle East and it has put a lot of effort into increasing its influence there; Turkey also competes with Iran along these lines.

It is well known that Turkey is closer to the KDP than any other Iraqi Kurdish political party and that it considers the areas of Dohuk and Erbil, its spheres of influence. Its second-best political friend is the Kurdistan Islamic Union, or KIU, a smaller islamic party in Iraqi Kurdistan. In fact, some insiders say Turkey has been encouraging the two parties to join forces on the issue of the presidency.

At the end of June, a delegation from Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Feridun Ihsanoglu, was in Iraqi Kurdistan for two days. Insiders say their purpose was to discuss the presidency. They met with Barzani, his nephew Nechirvan Barzani, the region’s Prime Minister and the head of the Kurdistan Islamic Union, Mohammed Faraj. They then headed to Sulaymaniyah – which is not as much within the Turkish sphere of influence because it is mostly controlled by Kurdistan’s other ruling party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK – where they met senior members of the PUK and another party, the Change movement.

The PUK is closer to it’s Iranian neighbours than it is to Turkey. And although the PUK’s influence has been waning over the past few elections for various reasons – including the illness of the party’s leader and senior members breaking away to form the Change movement – Iran is still hoping to cement it’s influence in the Iraqi Kurdish region through the PUK.

And Iran has been trying particularly hard to ensure that the PUK gets a larger share of power both during and after decisions are made about the future of the presidency. There have been two delegations in Iraqi Kurdistan in the past month, although one was apparently less official.

The first delegation was led by Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danaii Fir, and arrived in early August. During the two-day trip the delegation met with senior members of the same parties that the Turkish delegation had met with; the KDP, KIU, PUK and the Change movement.

Following this visit there was another more clandestine delegation, this time led by none other than the infamous Qasim Soleimani, a senior military commander who is known as one of Iran’s most secretive, most influential envoys. The visit wasn’t announced in local media and Soleimani’s delegation quietly met with the Kurdish President, the Prime Minister and a delegation from the PUK party.

“The main reason for the visits was to discuss the presidency,” confirms Mohammed Tawfiq Rahim, the coordinator of diplomatic relations for the Change movement. “During the meetings with the Iranian and Turkish delegations, we discussed this particular issue.”

It would appear that Turkey wants the issue resolved in the interests of the KDP while Iran wants a solution that doesn’t harm or degrade the PUK’s interests.

“The Iranian and Turkish delegations have taken two directions,” Abu Bakr al-Karawani, a local political analyst, told NIQASH. “The first direction sees them interfering in the internal affairs of the region to protect their own interests and the second direction has them pushing their favourite political parties in the region.”

These neighbours have always played a significant role in Iraqi Kurdistan, al-Karawani concludes, and they continue to do so today.

In turn, the US also wanted to have a say on the matter. On August 6, a delegation that included US Special Envoy, Brett McGurk, the US Ambassador to Iraq, Stuart Jones, and the new US Consul General in Erbil, Matthias Mettmann. This delegation met the same officials that the Iranian and Turkish delegations had met earlier.

Sources inside the meetings told NIQASH that all of the delegations had said they did not want to interfere in Iraqi Kurdistan’s affairs and especially not on this topic. All of the delegations stressed that Kurdish political parties should debate the issue and come to a decision and that all of the countries concerned would respect their decision.

Some Iraqi Kurdish media have published articles saying that insiders told them the delegations had come out in favour of one solution or another. But those who were actually in the meetings say that none of the delegations actually specified whether they wanted Barzani to stay on as President, or whether they wanted him to go. Other reports confirmed this.

“None of the delegations asked us to retain Barzani as president,” confirms Emad Ahmad, a senior member of the PUK and a spokesperson for the party. “From what I know, the Iranian, Turkish and US delegations all wanted one thing: They don’t want the issue of the presidency here to have an impact on security inside Iraqi Kurdistan.”

“They do not want the issue of the presidency to cause problems between the different parties,” agrees Mohammed Tawfiq Rahim, the coordinator of diplomatic relations for the Change movement.

The PUK and the KDP have a long and chequered history – at one stage, the two parties were fighting for control of Iraqi Kurdistan and even today the region is basically split into two zones of influence, with the PUK in charge of the area around Sulaymaniyah and the KDP in charge of the areas around Erbil. If there is a political power struggle, there are some fears that those old enmities will be revived.

Al-Karawani believes that this is exactly why all Iraqi Kurdistan’s friends and neighbours have been showing up for talks; all of them have important interests in the area and nobody wants that jeopardised.

“This is why other nations are trying to find a solution for all the parties, instead of splitting them further apart,” al-Karawani argues.

Whether such external influence is good for Iraqi Kurdistan is another question, he notes. Then again, it seems unlikely that political parties with such oppositional and black and white views – should Barzani stay or go? – would be able to come to an agreement without some pressure from outside.

Via Niqash.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

PressTV: “Iraq’s Kurdistan region without a president”

]]> https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/kurdistan-attacked-leaderless.html/feed 2 Turkey Hit by Wave of Attacks as It Continues Mideast Military Strikes https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/continues-mideast-military.html https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/continues-mideast-military.html#comments Sat, 15 Aug 2015 05:04:14 +0000 http://www.juancole.com/?p=154368 By Anne Koopman | ( Global Voices Online) | – –

At least nine people fell victim to a spate of attacks in the Turkey's largest city Istanbul and the south-eastern province Sirnak on August 10. As the country gets knee-deep in the Middle East crisis, the fear of more attacks is pervasive.

Ever since Turkey launched military operations backed by lethal U.S. drone strikes in Iraq and Syria last month it has been beset by a series of small attacks in which at least 20 security officers have been killed as well as dozens of ethnic Kurds.

The focal points of Turkey's military attacks have been fighters belonging to the radical group ISIS and — increasingly — forces loyal to Ankara's old enemy the Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK).

It was a bomb blast in Turkey's eastern town of Suruc on July 20, killing 33 people, that served as the trigger for the country to become involved in a conflict it had previously stayed neutral towards.

A bomb attack at a police station in Istanbul in the early hours of August 10 injured three policemen and seven civilians. A fire caused by the bomb destroyed part of the building. The Istanbul governor’s office said the suspected bomber was killed during the explosion. Kurdish militants from the PKK later claimed the attack.

Pictures published and spread on Twitter show the aftermath of the attack.

Later on Monday two gunmen — reportedly women — opened fire on police investigating the scene of the earlier bomb attack. Ensuing gunfire led to the death of a police officer and at least two others.

Meanwhile a roadside bomb in Sirnak killed four policemen and in a separate attack a soldier was killed when a gunmen fired at a military helicopter.

On the same day, the U.S. Consulate was also attacked by two assailants. The attack was claimed by DHKP-C in a statement on their website. They described the United States as the “chief enemy of people in the Middle East and in the world”.

Pictures tweeted by @metesohtaoglu show the aftermath of the attack.

Tweets circulating the internet identify one of the suspects as Hatice Aşık, a far-leftist militant women from the DHKP-C. She was reportedly shot and arrested.

Asik had been released from jail only 33 days ago. She had been in prison for three years and was released as she awaited the verdict in a trial regarding her alleged participation in a bomb attack on a police station in Yenibosna, Istanbul, in 2012.

According to an eyewitness the second woman escaped the scene.

The U.S. Embassy in Turkey subsequently said the ‘security incident’ at the U.S. Consulate did not lead to wounded among personnel or customers.

The Consulate was closed for the rest of the day and reopened one day after the attacks on August 11.

Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, expressed in an official statement “his deepest sympathies with the victims” of the attacks, “as well as with the Government and people of Turkey.” He says he hopes the attackers “will be swiftly brought to justice.”

After weeks of drone airstrikes on ISIS in Syria, the U.S. launched the first manned airstrikes from a base in Turkey against ISIS forces on August 12, only two days after the attacks in Turkey took place.

Via Global Voices Online

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Turkey: ‘no concessions’ in attacks on PKK | DW News

]]> https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/continues-mideast-military.html/feed 3 Controversy: Did Turkish anti-PKK Airstrikes hit civilian Kurdish village of Zargeli? https://www.juancole.com/2015/08/controversy-airstrikes-civilian.html Mon, 10 Aug 2015 06:25:47 +0000 http://www.juancole.com/?p=154257 BBC | (Video News Report) | – –

“Turkey may have joined the air war against Islamic State militants across the border in Syria. The nation has also been taking action against Kurdish fighters that it accuses of launching attacks within Turkey. One such airstrike took place last Saturday over the border in Iraq, where the Kurdish village of Zargeli – was hit by Turkish warplanes. The families of those killed have now returned home for the first time, as Jiyar Gol reports.”

BBC News: “Turkey denies killing civilians in anti-PKK air strikes – BBC News”

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