Amassing
Power at Ballot Box and on the Battlefield
Published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
Recently,
Kurds on each side of the Turkey-Syria border have made significant advances in
their quest for autonomy. In Turkey, those gains were won at the ballot box,
while in Syria they were won on the battlefield. After garnering global
sympathy and the support of U.S. airpower with their defense of Kobani against
a formidable siege by the Islamic State (also called ISIS), Syria’s Kurds went
on to capture the strategic town of Tel Abyad from ISIS on June 15. And as a
result of Turkey’s elections a week earlier, the Kurdish-led People’s
Democratic Party (HDP) has entered parliament, irrevocably altering Turkey’s
political landscape. Indeed, seating the first Kurdish-oriented party in
parliament constitutes a milestone for civil rights in Turkey. But in the
context of events on both sides of the border, the true winner is Turkey’s
outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a party and militant group that
initiated the HDP’s creation and whose Syrian affiliate, the Democratic Union
Party (PYD),is responsible for the recent victories against ISIS.
The
HDP’s entrance into Turkey’s parliament and the PYD’s control of Syrian
territory mark a new chapter in the PKK’s decadelong attempt to create a
pan-Kurdish confederation that would bring together the Middle East’s 30
million Kurds.
The
PKK leadership has already outlined a path for Kurdish autonomy that obviates
the need for independence. The HDP, with whom the PKK shares its grassroots
support, has made sufficient gains in Ankara to begin making the PKK’s vision
for a pan-Kurdish confederation a reality. In March 2005, PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan issued the Declaration of a Democratic Confederalism, which created a
road map for establishing a confederation out of four autonomous Kurdish
regions, each tied to its country of origin—Iraq, Iran, Syria, or
Turkey—through federal relationships. Political advances like the HDP’s victory
and military victories like the PYD’s advances in Syria are helping Ocalan’s
plan become a reality. In other words, the PKK’s future has never looked
brighter.
NEW PARTNERSHIPS
In
2012, the PKK-affiliated PYD established three autonomous cantons in Syrian
Kurdistan, a major breakthrough for Ocalan, whose plan began with the
establishment of affiliated political parties within the Kurdish-populated
territories of Iran, Iraq, and Syria that would later pave the way for a
cross-border confederation with Turkish Kurdistan. The PYD’s cantons became
known as Rojavaye Kurdistane (Western Kurdistan), or more commonly as Rojava
(the West), implying that the KRG’s Iraqi Kurdistan was merely its southern
counterpart. Ultimately, Ocalan seeks to subsume Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish
Regional Government (KRG), led by the rival Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP),
into a PKK-dominated confederation.
The
KRG, however, was not content to let this happen without a response. The group
subsequently dug a 10.5-mile trench between Rojava and Iraq’s Kurdish areas in
April 2014 ostensibly to protect against Syrian ISIS fighters. The trench
established a flimsy land boundary between the PKK’s growing sphere and the
KRG’s territories. Months later, the KRG’s peshmerga abandoned the region in
the face of ISIS’ advance into northern Iraq.
People
march in solidarity with people of Kobani in Diyarbakir, Turkey, June 26, 2015.
When ISIS militants laid siege to
Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq, fighters from the PYD-affiliated People’s
Protection Units (YPG) created a corridor from Rojava to rescue 10,000 besieged
Kurdish Yezidis. Media images of PKK and YPG fighters rescuing Yezidis from
ISIS militants earned the PKK widespread appreciation and enhanced its
pan-Kurdistan mission.
Similarly, the ISIS attack on the Syrian town of
Kobani may have cemented a partnership between the West and the PKK-aligned
Kurdish forces, seeing an alliance as a way forward against the advances of
ISIS within Syria. The Western-led anti-ISIS coalition adopted a policy of
supporting Rojava through air strikes. This was a marked shift in the West’s
approach to PKK-affiliated organizations, which had previously been
adversarial. The United States relied on Kurdish troops to fight ISIS on the
ground, providing air strikes during the Sinjar offensive and airdropping
weapons and munitions to PYD forces during the siege of Kobani.
The West may have warmed up to the PYD’s fighting
groups, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan maintained a cool distance
from Rojava. Eight months after the PYD established autonomous Kurdish cantons
in Syria, Ocalan declared a historic unilateral cease-fire with the Turkish
state, halting a 30-year insurgency that cost over 40,000 lives. The resulting
peace talks between the government of then Prime Minister Erdogan and Ocalan
enjoyed broad public support and presented an enormous opportunity for Erdogan
to strike a grand bargain. If Ankara were able to reach an understanding with
Ocalan and provide Turkish Kurdistan with some semblance of autonomy, an
Ankara-oriented PKK/PYD-led Kurdish confederation that subsumed the KRG would
prevent Kurdish independence while transforming the KRG and Rojava into client
entities. Turkey’s southern borders would be secured by a Kurdish buffer zone
and Ankara’s diminishing status as a regional power would be restored.
Nevertheless, Erdogan demurred.
As late as October 18, 2014, a month into ISIS’ siege
of Kobani, Erdogan continued to push the notion that the PYD, as a PKK
affiliate, was a terrorist organization and therefore no different from ISIS.
Turkey’s Kurds were further astounded by Erdogan’s apparent delight in the
impending collapse of the Kurdish stronghold to ISIS when the Turkish president
exultantly declared, “Kobani is on the verge of falling.” The United States
came to the PYD’s aid. Ankara subsequently allowed 200 KRG peshmerga to transit
through Turkey to join the defense of Kobani, but continued to reject the PYD’s
requests to open a land corridor for resupply efforts.
For those Kurds who had relatives suffer and die at the
hands of ISIS during the siege on Kobani, Erdogan’s decision to walk away from
broader cooperation was a defining political moment. The Kurds now had
momentum, legitimacy, and blossoming international support. The ballot box
would be their next battlefront for political legitimacy.
ROCK THE VOTE
Both Kurds and non-Kurds who opposed the ruling AKP
had much to gain by voting for the leftist HDP. And as a result, the
Kurdish-oriented party obtained enough support from Turkey’s non-Kurdish left
to receive 13.1 percent of the vote—comfortably passing the nation’s 10 percent
electoral threshold to gain 80 seats in parliament. The HDP’s triumph ended the
AKP’s parliamentary majority and prevented Erdogan from changing the nation’s
constitution to discard its parliamentary system in favor of a presidential
one, a move that otherwise would have given him unbridled executive power.
A Kurdish People's
Protection Units (YPG) fighter walks near residents who had fled Tel Abyad, as
they re-enter Syria from Turkey after the YPG took control of the area, at Tel
Abyad town, Raqqa governorate, Syria, June 23, 2015.
The
HDP’s success marks a new era for Kurdish political representation. The Peace
and Democracy Party (BDP), the HDP’s predecessor, sat on the sidelines during
Turkey’s nationwide Gezi Park protests in 2013, which occurred only two months
after Ocalan’s declaration of a unilateral cease-fire and the onset of
negotiations with the AKP government. Many on Turkey’s left believed that the
BDP’s abstention was a political quid pro quo between Ocalan and Erdogan. To
quell a growing movement to separate Kurdish rights from broader liberal
efforts, Ocalan called for the BDP to reform into a new, inclusive party in
order “to bring the Kurdish movement and the Turkish left together.”
In
the run-up to the June 7 elections, the HDP ran a disciplined campaign aimed at
building support beyond its Kurdish base, reaching out to Turkish left-leaning
youth, women, and minority voters. After the party’s electoral successes, HDP
co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş called the results a victory of “all the oppressed
people.”
Despite the gains the HDP made among Turkey’s non-Kurdish
left, the bulk of its votes came from conservative Kurds. According to the
statistical analysis conducted by Stockholm School of Economics professor Erik
Myersson, approximately 1.5 million conservative Kurds switched their support
from the AKP to the HDP. A Turkish polling and research firm estimates that
approximately a third of the HDP’s vote total came from AKP voters who crossed
over to the HDP.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Now
that the HDP has been voted into parliament, it will have to make good on its
promises to both the Kurds and Turkey’s urban left. Doing so will hinge on its
program to expand rights and entitlements to all of Turkey’s lower classes and
minority groups. In Turkey’s Kurdish heartland, however, party support will be
based on how well the HDP advances the cause of Kurdish autonomy. Given that
the nation’s Kurdish regions boast the highest birth rates in the country, with
total fertility rates reaching either 4–5 children or 3–4 children, depending
on the particular province, the Turkish left must accommodate the Kurdish
autonomy agenda if it wants to remain a political force in parliament.
Before it even had time to start on that agenda, though,
YPG forces captured Tel Abyad, the Syrian town strategically located at the
border crossing to the Turkish town of Akcakale. In capturing Tel Abyad, the
YPG cut off a vital north-south supply route from ISIS’ capital in Raqqah. This
strategic victory advanced PYD efforts to link Kobani with the Kurdish Cizire
canton in Syria’s northeastern triangle, creating a contiguous territory
eastward from Kobani to the Iraqi border. The PYD must now clear ISIS from
territories between Kobane and the autonomous Kurdish canton of Efrin. The YPG
has already begun a campaign to capture the mixed Kurdish-Arab town of Jarabulus
in order to achieve this objective. As Turkey’s foremost voice in support of
PYD forces fighting ISIS, the HDP will now be able to rally domestic and
international support from the halls of Turkey’s Parliament.
With continued Western support, the PYD could soon
establish a contiguous Kurdish territory in Syria that spans most of the region
along Turkey’s southern border, despite President Erdogan’s new, hard-line vow last week to “never allow a state to be formed in northern Syria." In
Turkey, the PKK-sympathetic HDP will be an increasingly powerful advocate for
granting the Kurds some semblance of autonomy within the nation. As the
cease-fire between the PKK and Ankara continues, it is becoming more and more
possible that the Kurds can achieve their dream of autonomy through democratic
means. Whether the PKK’s ambition to establish autonomous Kurdish regions on
both sides of the Turkey-Syria border is ever realized, the progress it is
making toward that goal has already altered the political maps of Turkey and
the Middle East.
