Turkish Paramilitaries during the Conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK

This paper focuses on how the paramilitary organisations of the Turkish state have transformed and been used over time as a ‘useful’ tool against dissidents, especially the Kurds. Paramilitary groups have been one of the main actors in the war between the Turkish state and the PKK, which has been ongoing for nearly forty years. These groups have sometimes been used as auxiliary forces and at other times made into death squads operating alongside the official armed forces, and they have mainly been used against Kurdish civilians who allegedly support the PKK, especially at the height of the war in unsolved murders, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings since the 1980. In this article, I argue that the Turkish state elites use this apparatus not only in domestic politics but also in conflicts in the Middle East and the Caucasus and that this paramilitary tradition of the state even extends to western Europe.

Intervensi Turki dalam Krisis Suriah (2011-2014)

This research aims to explain Turkey’s intervention in Syrian crisis due to the perception of threat toward its security or domestic stability. Syrian crisis has directed threat indirectly to Turkey related to the existence of Kurd rebel group Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK’s activity in Syria. Syria makes the PKK affiliated to Syrian Kurd group Democratic Union Party or PYD an important actor particularly in northern area of the state during the crisis. Amid the instability caused by armed conflict in Syria, Turkey believes both political and military force of the PKK-PYD’s can injure its security or domestic stability now that the PKK still demands either territorial secession or autonomy for Kurd’s southeastern area. The research applies the worldview of international relations realism to describe Turkey’s behavior as a state with its power in responding to its surrounding. To strengthen the approach used, the research applies intervention theory which can explain the relation of Turkey’s intervention to the threat toward its security or domestic stability which it perceives as a vital national interest. Indeed, the result of the research shows a finding that such perception of threat encourages Turkey to commit intervention in Syrian crisis. Turkey’s intervention aims to remove the leadership of Syrian current regime with that of Syrian opposition group in which it trusts to be capable of creating stability, controlling, and restricting the political and military movement of Kurd groups in Syria.

Kurdish liberty

Most politically minded Kurds agree that their people need liberty. Moreover, they agree they need liberation from the domination they suffer from the four states that divide them: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. What is less certain is the precise nature of this liberty. A key debate that characterizes Kurdish political discourse is over whether the liberty they seek requires the existence of an independent Kurdish nation-state. Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed intellectual leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has argued that Kurdish liberty can only be achieved through liberation from the nation-state model itself. Instead of founding an independent Kurdistan, Öcalan proposes regional autonomy for the Kurds through a strictly egalitarian and directly democratic confederalism reminiscent of Murray Bookchin’s anarchist-inspired libertarian municipalism. We argue, in response to Öcalan’s approach, that employing an anarchist rejection of the state is largely mistaken. We diagnose certain historical and conceptual problems with the anarchist understanding of the state and develop the admission made in passing by certain anarchists, including Öcalan, that anarchist liberty could only be achieved after a long period of statist existence. Mostly counter to the anarchist model of non-domination, we propose a republican model of liberty and liberation, also as non-domination, that necessitates the formation of an independent state, at least in this historical period, for Kurds and hence any dominated people to count as truly free. We conclude by attempting to combine certain elements of the anarchist and republican conceptions and offer a synthetic communitarian view that could serve as a better foundation for Kurdish aspirations for liberty.

Exploring Kurdish Islamist Civil Society and Conflict in Turkey (2015–2018)

This article addresses the role and impact of religious civil society in situations of armed conflict through a case study of Kurdish Islamist civil society organisations and activists in Turkey. The focus is on the period following the collapse of the peace process and resurgence of violence in mid-2015 between Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkêrên Kurdistanê). Based on 40 in-depth interviews conducted in the city of Diyarbakir, I identify three main challenges to the effectiveness of religious civil society in peacebuilding processes: (1) relations with the state, (2) legacy and relationship with institutional violence, and (3) advocacy and representation of community needs. This article shows how ethnicity and Islam are shifting, contingent interactions in the construction of Kurdish identity, especially in response to violence. Although the public expression of pro-Kurdish rights claims altered under a securitisation rubric during this period, the demand for a peaceful settlement to the conflict transcends ideological and social differences across many Kurds.

Party leadership shift may promote Iraqi Kurdish unity

Significance Co-leader Lahur ‘Sheikh Jangi’ Talabani on July 19 formally handed over his powers to his cousin and co-leader Bafel Talabani, who had moved comprehensively against him during the preceding week. Bafel was backed by the PUK's old guard, which resented marginalisation by Lahur. Impacts Lahur’s recent alliances with the Gorran party and local tribes in KDP areas could be weakened. A common front in Baghdad would strengthen the KRI in budget talks and post-election government negotiations. Bafel might be cooler towards the Syrian Kurds and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which would benefit Turkey. Lahur retains some popular support and is likely to plan a comeback, possibly via a new party, trading on Iran links.

Fighting Insurgency, Ruining the Environment: the Case of Forest Fires in the Dersim Province of Turkey

Environmental destruction has long been used as a military strategy in times of conflict. A long-term example of environmental destruction in a conflict zone can be found in Dersim/Tunceli province, located in Eastern Turkey. In the last century, at least two military operations negatively impacted Dersim’s population and environment: 1937–38 and 1993–94. Both conflict and environmental destruction in the region continued after the 1990s. Particularly after July 2015, when the brief peace process that began in 2013 ended, conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) resumed and questions arose about the cause of forest fires in Dersim. In this research we investigate whether there is a relationship between conflict and forest fires in Dersim. This is denied by the Turkish state but asserted by many Dersim residents, civil society groups, and political parties. We use a multi-disciplinary approach, combining methods of qualitative analysis of print media (newspapers), social media (Twitter), and local accounts, together with quantitative methods: remote sensing and spatial analysis. Interdisciplinary analysis combining quantitative datasets with in-depth, qualitative data allows a better understanding of the role of conflict in potentially exacerbating the frequency and severity of forest fires. Although we cannot determine the cause of the fires, the results of our statistical analysis suggest a significant relationship between fires and conflict in Dersim, indicating that the incidence of conflicts is generally correlated with the number of fires.

The Legal Rayonnement of Rebel Justice: Recognition, Complementarity, and Kurdish Courts

Chapter 4 analyses the possible legal recognition of insurgent justice by other actors, using the judicial practice of three independent Kurdish non-state armed groups in the Middle East as a case study. The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK, Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has been engaged in a bitter armed struggle with Turkey since 1984, with rear bases in northern Iraq and Syria. The Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD, Democratic Union Party) is a Kurdish insurgent group that joined the anti-Assad uprising of 2011 and now controls parts of the north-east part of Syria, in a precarious coexistence with the Syrian government. Finally, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) has operated independently since 1991 and remain in a military standoff with the central Iraqi government. All three Kurdish groups operate courts at trial and appeal levels, for civil and criminal matters. The chapter considers the possible application of the principle of complementarity under the Rome Statute in relation to a prosecution before the courts of a non-state armed groups. Likewise, the right or duty of third states under international law to give recognition to the operation of insurgent courts is examined. More radically perhaps, there is a possibility that even the territorial state might in some cases give legal effect to rebel court decisions. Finally, the Kurdish courts offer examples in which one non-state armed group is confronted with the need to determine the validity of the decisions of courts of other armed insurgents.

How Much Does the Compellence Theory Explain?

This chapter focuses on the case of Turkey against the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party; PKK) in 1984–1999, which involves a democracy conducting a counterinsurgency campaign on its own territory against its own populace. Elite accommodation in Turkey took the form of government support for the great Kurdish landowners of the southeast, providing impunity for illegal smuggling and other accommodations in exchange for the provision of organized violence, controlling civilians to cut the flow of resources to the insurgency. The militia and military campaigns cleared vast areas of the region of their inhabitants. Indeed, the campaign defeated the PKK threat militarily. It captured and imprisoned its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, with U.S. assistance, and the insurgency withered. It was the structural change of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that created the opportunity for remnants of the PKK to regroup and reopen their campaign from northern Iraq, as well as within Turkey. Ultimately, Turkey shows the external validity of the compellence theory because it is considered a particularly brutal campaign and thus should bear little similarity to successful campaigns conducted by democratic great powers and lauded as models if the governance approach explains counterinsurgency success.

The Kurdish Movement in Turkey

The prolonged conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), spanning four decades, has resulted in 4,000 villages evacuated, and more than 3 million people displaced. Despite this profound impact on people’s everyday lives, studies on people’s perceptions of the Kurdish movement are still limited. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Kurdish participants in Turkey, this chapter explores how Kurds from different backgrounds, of different ages, and politicized to different degrees, perceive the Kurdish movement and what motivates their commitment to it. Guided by an interpretivist methodology and drawing on findings from fieldwork, the chapter proposes that everyday experiences and understandings of the Kurdish movement are embedded and salient in a political sense. It concludes that by mobilizing people’s everyday perceptions and experiences and translating them into political engagement, the Kurdish movement shifts the scale of politics from a national to transnational and local levels. This shift implies that conducting extensive qualitative research among ordinary people brings a novel understanding of political movements and ethnic conflict in terms of both people’s motivations and movements’ strategic choices.

Applying Humanitarian Law: A Review of the Legal Status of the Turkey–Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk) Conflict

This article assesses the applicability of the criteria for non-international armed conflict to the situation in South-Eastern Turkey. It demonstrates that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (also known as the pkk), as a party to the conflict, fulfils the three main criteria laid down in conventional international humanitarian law and developed by indicative factors in international jurisprudence for assessing the existence of a non-international armed conflict in the context of Common Article 3 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions: being an organised armed group, having the ability to engage in ‘protracted violence’, and complying with law of armed conflict. It establishes that the pkk qualifies as an organised armed group under responsible command and has the operational ability, structure and capacity to carry out ‘protracted violence’, to respect fundamental humanitarian norms of international humanitarian law and to control territory. The article also ascertains that Turkey is clearly bound by the provisions of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, including Common Article 3, and customary international humanitarian law. Accordingly, it concludes that the conflict between the pkk and the Turkish security forces qualifies as a non-international armed conflict within the meaning of both Common Article 3 and customary international humanitarian law.