Turkey’s unwinnable war
ISTANBUL — If 2016 is anything like the year that just passed, we are in for real trouble.
Beneath the world’s radar, a serious insurgency has been simmering in Turkey’s Kurdish regions for months. Urban clashes, with three or four casualties each time, are a daily occurrence. Youth groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are controlling parts of major Kurdish cities, fighting government forces for greater autonomy. And the Turkish government is responding with a harsh military crackdown that not only targets the militia but ends up affecting civilians.
Things are looking far from stable in the most stable country in the region.
But somehow, the fact that NATO’s second-largest army is fully mobilized on the Syrian border in a war against 16-year-old kids with AK-47s who have carved out “liberated zones” in their neighborhoods is getting almost no coverage in international media. European institutions — happy that they secured a money-for-refugees deal with Ankara last November — are mum, and Washington is unwilling to rock the boat in its complicated relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Turkish government has, of course, been fighting the PKK for decades; and the tranquility over the past few years was a result of the peace negotiations between the two sides, which abruptly ended this summer. Each side blames the other for ending the ceasefire, but the truth is that neither is much in control of the catastrophe we are witnessing now.
Even for a decades-long war, this is a whole new level of escalation. Let me explain. Much of what took place in the 1990s was in the countryside, between Kurdish guerrillas and army units. This time, it is urban, just as deadly, and far more explosive.
To be clear: We are not talking about a skirmish here or there; this is a conflict about tanks, artillery, snipers and heavy fire in densely populated areas. Last month, the Ministry of Education sent text messages telling over 3,000 public school teachers doing mandatory service in restless Kurdish towns to leave. Schools are shut down and thousands of students have no access to education.
And then there are the curfews, which last for days. According to Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation, there have been 52 intermittent curfews in seven Kurdish towns where 1.3 million people live, sometimes lasting as long as 14 days. The organization puts the civilian death toll since the summer at 124.
One of Turkey’s leading human rights lawyers, Tahir Elçi, died in November when he was caught in crossfire between police and PKK militias in the meandering streets of Diyarbakir’s old town — moments after he finished a press conference asking for a cessation of hostilities in urban areas.
I feel nervous even admitting this to myself but some of the photographs coming out of the region have an unnerving similarity to early images from Syria in 2011 — with buildings bearing signs of last night’s fighting or smoke rising on the horizon from gray, concrete-colored towns...............