8 Mart 2016 Salı

The growing risk of civil war in Turkey

, 2016



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.”