Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Analysis: An unwelcome cuckoo in the nest
by Derk Kinnane Roelofsma - United Press International, 8 January 2001
Posted: Monday, January 15, 2001 02:27 am CST

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- The money on which the Kurdistan Workers Party, a Turkish Kurdish Marxist revolutionary party, the PKK, runs comes from Moscow, Iraq, Greece and elsewhere, Ibrahim Mammadov reported in the Baku newspaper Azadlyg. Germany is also well-known source of funds for the PKK. It is highly organized, raises considerable funds by contributions, both voluntary and extorted, from among the 500,000 Kurds living there as well as from involvement criminal activities, including drug trafficking.

In Armenia, the PKK has camps at several locations as well as a hospital for the treatment of party fighters wounded in Turkey and Iraq.

PKK members, coming from Russia's "near abroad" and Eastern Europe are sent directly to the mountains under the supervision of the Armenian security services. PKK guides then take over, provided with communications equipment, night-vision and mine-clearing devices and weapons. On the border with Iran, the guides hand over to the party's Iranian guides. Iran is assisting some ten PKK bases in villages along the Iran-Iraq border in the region of the Iranian city of Urmia.

In April to June 1999 alone, at least 300 people were trained in one camp in Iraq before a Turkish Air Force raid forced it to move elsewhere, Mammadov reports.

But the PKK also has its troubles. Finances, military equipment and other supplies are not at the desired level and conditions are difficult for PKK forces still in southeastern Turkey. Winter doesn't make things easier, except that it imposes a virtual prohibition on fighting.

But the winter will give way to spring and Turkish politicians and generals are asking themselves what the PKK forces will do then? It would seem likely they would raise present level of their low-intensity war in Turkey while seeking to consolidate their position in Iraq.

Turkey may be expected to resume doing as much as it can to destroy the PKK. If this involves further deep penetrations of Turkey, all kinds of questions may arise. In Iraqi Kurdistan, both Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan called on the Turkish military for assistance that was promptly delivered. If the Turks were to become a habitual presence deep inside Iraqi Kurdistan, serious questions would arise as to the integrity of the Iraqi state, something that so far Washington appears to wish preserved as much as Baghdad does. Fortunately, for the United States, long-term Turkish goals of building up diplomatic and important trade relations with Baghdad, with or without Saddam's presence, are a countervailing force to any ambition to colonize the Kurdish area.

Similarly, its seems unlikely at this time that Ankara would bring up the Mosul question -- the Turkish claim that it was unjustly denied the oil-rich Ottoman province awarded to Iraq in 1926. Still, it is only a decade since the flamboyant Turkish prime minister, Turgut Ozal, briefly revived the issue.

As for the United States, if it is serious about changing the regime in Baghdad, it can hardly be pleased with the prospect of a guerrilla force of several thousand, hostile to the West and in effect a proxy of Moscow and Tehran, being placed where they can destabilize the north of Iraq and possibly once again adjacent areas of Turkey. For one thing, a return of a revived PKK to Turkey in force would revive doubts about the security of a strategically important Turkish-U.S. project for a pipeline to carry oil from the Caspian Basin to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

Given the president-elect's campaign statements about reducing U.S. military commitments abroad, it may be that Washington will be glad to leave it to the Turks alone, with their tough and experienced soldiery, to continue to deal with PKK.

One thing is certain, such action would be bound to renew and probably intensify the odium in which Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, is held by so much of the European political establishment. But that is another story.

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