A top
Kurdish leader warned in an interview that Turkey faces a “serious risk” of
civil war as it battles Kurdish militants near its southern border. Selahattin
Demirtas, the leader of the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, spoke of the
growing danger in a telephone interview Thursday from Diyarbakir, the area in
southeastern Turkey that has seen sharp clashes between Turkish security forces
and militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey regards
as a terrorist group.
“By
summer, the tension between the PKK and government could grow,” Demirtas said
through a translator. “Many Kurds and Turks could die, and this could trigger
an ethnic war.”
Demirtas
called for a ceasefire and peace talks to prevent further escalation. “We have
urged the PKK to drop their guns and return to negotiations,” he said. He urged
the U.S. or some other outside power to help broker such talks.
“We see
it in everyone’s interest to end the violence and return to political
dialogue,” a senior Obama administration official said in an interview late
Thursday, when asked about Demirtas’s call for U.S. mediation. The U.S. is
exploring ways to encourage this dialogue.
The
Kurdish conundrum has been compounded by the alliance struck between the U.S.
military and a Syrian Kurdish militia called the People’s Protection Units,
known by its Kurdish initials as the YPG. U.S. commanders say the YPG has been
the most effective group battling Islamic State fighters in Syria.
Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is said to have asked Obama to halt American
military support for the YPG, which has close historic ties with the PKK. But
Obama refused to cut U.S. links, upsetting the Turks. In the strange brew of
the Syrian conflict, a NATO member (Turkey) has been opposing America’s best
ally against ISIS terrorists (the YPG).
Turkey
has taken out its frustration by pounding the PKK in Diyarbakir and other
Kurdish areas of Turkey. Analysts warn that we’re seeing, in effect,a spillover
of the Syrian conflict into Turkey—a much larger and strategically more
important country. “There is a very real possibility that the recent
escalation in violence in southeast Turkey could expand further into a civil
war,” argues one prominent Turkish foreign policy expert. “This would be
particularly dangerous when there is greater international attention than ever
to ‘the Kurdish question’ because of the success of the Syrian Kurdish fighters
against ISIS.”
