9
April 2003
2. "Vengeful Kurds keep their anger in check", the allies are wary of the passions that drive Kurdish fighters. Russell Skelton reports from Erbil, northern Iraq.
3. "Kurdish PKK hopes America's rift with Turkey will help acceptance of its cause", Kurds want to use Turkey's rift with the United States over war in Iraq to win acceptance of their cause and add pressure for Kurdish cultural and political rights.
4. "Syria and the road map", Mr. Bush is talking about a road map for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and his words can't be dismissed as mere rhetoric. In that context, it's worth taking a closer look at Syria's geopolitical situation and Israeli-Palestinian peace.
5. "Turk General Faces Tough Choice in Iraq", general Hilmi Ozkok, chief of the Turkish armed forces, receives a briefing every day about the position and strength of Iraqi Kurdish militias advancing slowly toward the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq.
6. "For Turkish Kurds, war renews hopes and fears", now America's war in Iraq could signal the revival of Kurdish society. Or it could plunge millions of Kurds in this region into another devastating conflict.
1. - AFP - "Turkey gets US to rein in Kurds":
From a correspondent in Chamchamal
April 09, 2003
KURDISH fighters hoping to seize Kirkuk in northern Iraq and turn it into their new capital are being held back from their goal by the US troops operating alongside them.
Since war broke out on March 20, they have progressed to within 5km of the oil-rich city, after pushing back Iraqi troops with coalition air strikes, directed by US special forces.
But instead of moving against Kirkuk as, further south, US troops enter to "liberate" Baghdad, the Kurds have been told by Washington to stay outside the historically Kurdish city.
Turkey has threatened to intervene militarily in northern Iraq if the Kurds make a move on Kirkuk or Mosul, and Washington, keen to keep Turkey out of the war, has promised to keep the Kurds under control.
According to a senior Turkish government official, US Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged during a visit to Ankara last week that the Kurds would not be allowed to advance "beyond a certain line" around Mosul and Kirkuk.
Turkey fears control of local oil resources around the two cities could embolden Iraqi Kurds to move towards independence, a prospect that could set an example to Turkey's own Kurdish minority.
"There hasn't been any direct confrontations," said one peshmerga, speaking about the advance on Kirkuk.
"All depends on the Americans. If they give us the instructions, we'll go," said another, standing near a bridge that retreating Iraqi forces had dynamited.
Around Kirkuk, forces loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish factions controlling northern Iraq, have been operating with small teams of US special forces, harassing Iraqi positions and calling in air strikes.
Kurdish forces were at the weekend also making progress in securing the strategic town of Guare, 40km southeast of Mosul and 90km northeast of Kirkuk. A road linking Kirkuk and Mosul cuts through Guare, and capturing the town would enable Kurdish fighters to cut off Iraqi lines of communication between the two cities.
The Kurds are waiting for coalition forces to have Baghdad firmly under control, which could be a green light for them.
"We have waited 14 years, we can wait another four days," Kurdish General Mam Rustom said. "Kirkuk is where the heart of Kurdistan beats."
In light of Turkey's threats and US demands, a senior PUK official
suggested last Thursday that Kurdish troops would wait until the capture
of Baghdad by US-British forces before making any move.
2. - The Age (Australia) - "Vengeful Kurds keep their anger in check":
April 9 2003
The allies are wary of the passions that drive Kurdish fighters. Russell Skelton reports from Erbil, northern Iraq.
The scene crudely captured on canvas is worthy of Goya in its ghastliness. One of Kirkuk's "governors in exile" insists on showing it as a reminder, as if one were needed, of what Kurds endured at the hands of Saddam Hussein's security forces during the "Anfal", or "ethnic cleansing", of northern Iraq.
Starkly painted black dogs feed on human remains outside prison gates. Ravens circle in a blue-black sky. The prison is a Soviet-style windowless concrete building.
"I kept this painting because it is the only record of what took place at the Dohuk Fort," Nezamadin Gillie says. "Around 40,000 Kurds were imprisoned there and most disappeared. From a handful of survivors we know they were locked in cells with no sanitation, starved until they were too feeble to stand and dumped outside the walls for the dogs."
Mr Gillie, a 60-plus veteran of the Kurdish cause and a senior official in the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two major parties behind the Kurdish struggle for autonomy, is a lawyer, turned peshmerga fighter, turned party bureaucrat. The horrors of Saddam's 1988 Anfal against the Kurds feed a deep anger.
He was captured and tortured by Saddam's forces and, after escaping, fought in the 1991 uprising that collapsed into another massacre of Kurds.
Today, Mr Gillie is the KDP official responsible for Kirkuk, even though it remains firmly under Iraqi control. The city produces close to 35 per cent of Iraq's oil wealth. But for Mr Gillie, Kirkuk has a greater significance. It is a citadel of Kurdish history, the revered "golden heart" of the yet-to-be-proclaimed Kurdish state in a post-Saddam federation of Iraq.
It is a sacred site waiting to be reclaimed.
Kirkuk, with its estimated 800,000 people, is northern Iraq's equivalent of the south's Basra, where fierce battles have taken place.
But US forces have been reluctant to make an all-out assault on Kirkuk. It is a reluctance driven by pragmatic, political and military necessity. The US strategy has been to chip away at forward positions and key targets. The Iraqis have, according to Kurdish and US intelligence, responded with repressive measures to control the 50 per cent Kurdish population.
While the US does not yet have a fighting force in place capable of taking Kirkuk, it is apparent that US forces are content to isolate the city and nearby Mosul and wait for the regime to collapse. A quiet surrender is preferred, and the reasons are becoming obvious.
Human rights groups fear a bloody battle for Kirkuk could set off a wave of inter-ethnic violence. Human Rights Watch warned in a recent report that the fall of the city, if not carefully supervised by US forces, could unleash reprisal killings and the displacement of Arab families. "Kirkuk is a disaster waiting to happen," said Hania Mufti, a human rights researcher based in Erbil.
Ms Mufti estimates that since 1991, Saddam's regime has expelled an estimated 120,000 Kurds, Turkomans, and Assyrians from Kirkuk and replaced them with Arab families under an "Arabisation" program. It has all been about weakening the power of the Kurds. But now the situation is about to be reversed. Arab families are likely to be targeted.
So far the KDP leadership is working closely with the US. Hoshyar
Zebari, the KDP's External Relations Minister, repeats the mantra
for Kurdish opposition parties: "Our position on Kirkuk and Mosul
is that they belong to the future state of Iraq and must be delivered
to the people of Iraq." Mr Zebari and the opposition front appear
to be playing it by the book. Kurdish intentions may be clearly stated,
but will this be enough to overcome Kurdistan's terrible history of
"ethnic cleansing" and internal feuding?
3. - The Glasgow Herald - "Kurdish PKK hopes America's rift with Turkey will help acceptance of its cause":
by Catherine Lyst / 8 April 2003
Kurds want to use Turkey's rift with the United States over war in Iraq to win acceptance of their cause and add pressure for Kurdish cultural and political rights.
The brother of Abdullah Ocalan, captured rebel leader, said US anger over being denied use of Turkish territory for its assault on Iraq was a window of opportunity for Turkey's Kurds.
Osman Ocalan's comments came as Kurdish militia fighters advanced closer to the major northern city of Mosul yesterday, driving Iraqi troops from one town and struggling to hold newly-won territory at another village.
Washington has so far backed Turkey in a guerrilla war waged by the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK). The PKK campaign for autonomy in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast has claimed more than 30,000 lives since 1984, but fighting has died down since Turkey abducted Ocalan in 1999 and sentenced him to death.
"With the war in Iraq, a new situation has emerged," said Osman, a senior military and political leader in the PKK and its present incarnation KADEK.
"Before, US ties with Turkey were of the highest strategic importance; after Israel it was the country they trusted most in the Middle East. There has now been a serious setback."
In February, Turkey's parliament voted down a plan to allow tens of thousands of US troops to use Turkish territory for war on Iraq.
The US has since increased its military co-operation with Kurdish factions controlling northern Iraq, sending in special forces that have advanced with groups of Kurdish fighters into territory abandoned by Iraqi troops. "Our estimation is that a new relationship could be created with the US. If it adopts a hostile position towards us we must be ready, but our wish is for relations, an alliance," said Osman Ocalan.
KADEK commanders claim they have thousands of fighters in northern Iraq, spread out across small camps they are moving between to minimise the risk of being attacked. Small detachments of US troops along with more than 1000 Kurdish peshmerga fighters have pushed through Ain Sifni, 25 miles north of Mosul.
Coalition forces have sought to control the town and others to secure a ridgeline beyond which the Iraqis have artillery that has threatened the nearby city of Dohuk.
US soldiers said they believed that fewer than 100 Iraqi government soldiers were holed up in the town. The Iraqis fired machine-guns, mortars and other heavy weapons.
Meanwhile, US central command said it was investigating the bombing of a joint convoy of Kurdish fighters and US special forces. At least 18 people were killed, including a BBC translator, and at least 45 others injured, including top Kurdish commanders.
Kurdish forces have been massing near the southern frontier within striking distance of the oil-rich, Baghdad-controlled city of Khaneqin, 90 miles north of Baghdad. US special forces have increased their numbers in the same area.
Turkey fears any Kurdish move on Mosul and Kirkuk could cement the
self-rule Kurds have in the northern zone they seized from Baghdad
after the 1991 Gulf war, and rekindle separatism.
4. - The Washington Times - "Syria and the road map":
One thing has become clear about President Bush in the wake of the Iraq campaign — he's not your typical politician who plays rhetorical games in an effort to obfuscate the truth about his policies. For months now, President Bush has spoken with extraordinary candor about his intention to see to it that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was disarmed. When the U.N. Security Council reneged on its promise to do this, Mr. Bush formed his own coalition to get the job done. Now, Saddam is on his way out. So, we operate on the assumption that, when Mr. Bush announces a major initiative, he means it. Mr. Bush is talking about a road map for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and his words can't be dismissed as mere rhetoric. In that context, it's worth taking a closer look at Syria's geopolitical situation and Israeli-Palestinian peace.
These are uncomfortable times for Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — the region's foremost military
superpower — have their forces just 40 or so miles from Damascus,
and could vanquish Syria on the battlefield. To the north, there is
Turkey. Turkey is a NATO member which four years ago threatened to
go to war unless Mr. Assad's father expelled the Kurdish Workers Party
(PKK), one of many terrorist groups Syria plays host to on its soil
and in neighboring Lebanon. Assad the elder meekly complied, and the
PKK has been seriously weakened as a fighting force ever since.
But, right now, Bashar Assad's biggest worry lies to the east in Iraq,
now home to upwards of 100,000 American troops. In less than three
weeks, the U.S. military has routed Saddam's military, and is likely
preparing for an extended stay. Although Damascus never had any great
love for Saddam, Mr. Assad has to be decidedly uncomfortable when
he surveys what has just taken place next door. Like Mr. Assad, Saddam
was a Ba'athist dictator armed with chemical and biological weapons,
which proved to be worthless when it came to deterring a far superior
U.S. military machine headed by a purposeful, determined commander-in-chief.
The Bush administration also made it unmistakably clear that it views
Damascus' willingness to permit the smuggling of night-vision goggles
to Iraq as a "hostile act."
To avoid meeting the same fate as Saddam, Mr. Assad would do well to consider getting out of the terrorism business. But this has become the source of a heated debate within the administration. State Department officials, arguing that the Syrian regime is not identical to Saddam's Iraq, claim it has been helpful to the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda. This would not be unprecedented. There have been other instances where Syria has belatedly acted against terror. Still, Damascus grants sanctuary to Palestinian terror groups. If Syria refuses to stop obstructing Israeli-Palestinian peace, it may have to answer to Mr. Bush.
But, in the context of the road map, were Syria to stop supporting
terror, we would expect that Mr. Bush will become less reluctant to
lean on Israel over matters like settlements in order to achieve a
comprehensive Mideast peace. Cynics — Arab, Israeli and American,
justified by Middle East history — quietly laugh at the road
map. But, President Bush may well surprise them, just as he has surprised
the cynics in Baghdad.
5. - The Washington Post - "Turk General Faces Tough Choice in Iraq":
Military Could Step In To Block Kurd Gains
ANKARA / April 9, 2003
by Philip P. Pan
General Hilmi Ozkok, chief of the Turkish armed forces, receives a briefing every day about the position and strength of Iraqi Kurdish militias advancing slowly toward the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq. With the help of U.S. airstrikes and Special Forces, these peshmerga fighters have moved within 20 miles of both cities in recent days.
Turkey considers Kurdish control of the Iraqi oil fields a security threat, and if the Kurds enter either city, Ozkok will face the most important decision of his 44-year military career: whether to order an invasion of northern Iraq that could lead to clashes between his troops and those of the United States and its Kurdish allies.
In theory, Turkey's elected leaders have the final say over any deployment into Iraq. But the politically vulnerable and relatively inexperienced government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan almost certainly will defer to the judgment of the military, which has a long tradition in Turkey of intervening even in matters unrelated to national security.
Whether that should be of comfort or concern to the United States now is a matter of quiet debate in Washington and Ankara, where diplomats and others have been scrutinizing Ozkok's background and public statements for clues to what he might do in a crisis. Several thousand Turkish soldiers are already based in northern Iraq, and about 40,000 more are massed along the border awaiting orders.
An owlish, soft-spoken man who unlike his predecessors has kept a low public profile, Ozkok, 63, does not fit the mold of a military strongman. He spent several years in Brussels as Turkey's NATO representative, and diplomats and officers who have worked with him say he is more supportive of democratic reform and strong ties with the United States and Europe than many of his colleagues. The Pentagon welcomed his appointment in August as a good sign for relations with Turkey.
But Ozkok's failure to strongly endorse the U.S. proposal to open a northern front from Turkey, which parliament rejected last month, and his push to send Turkish troops into northern Iraq have led some to question his willingness and ability to contain rising nationalist and anti-Western sentiment among his generals.
Despite weeks of diplomacy, including a tense meeting last week between Ozkok and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Turkey has not ruled out a move into northern Iraq. Instead, it agreed to consult the United States before taking any action. Turkey has also warned that any move into Kirkuk or Mosul by Kurdish groups, even unarmed civilians, would trigger a military response. With the Kurdish fighters gradually seizing ground abandoned by Iraqi soldiers -- and the U.S. deployment in the north still too small to take the cities alone -- this is the scenario most likely to cause a crisis, Turkish and U.S. officials say.
"The closer the Kurds get to Kirkuk, the more worried we become," said one senior Turkish official, who asked not to be identified. "We've made our position very clear to the Americans. It's up to them what happens next."
Turkey fears the Kurds would expel ethnic Turkmen residents from Kirkuk and Mosul and use their control of the oil fields to buy weapons and establish an independent Kurdish state. That in turn could fuel a violent separatist movement among Turkey's large Kurdish population, which is concentrated in the southeastern region bordering Iraq.
To reassure the Turks, the United States has promised that its forces will take control of Kirkuk and Mosul. It also won pledges from the Iraqi Kurds to discourage people from staging uprisings or moving into the cities. "The Kurdish militias are under the command and control of U.S. forces," said Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the Iraqi opposition. "They will not move anywhere without U.S. and coalition leadership."
Still, both sides say there is room for misunderstanding. Turkish officials point out the United States has not ruled out Kurdish participation in an attack on Kirkuk or Mosul. They question how the estimated 3,000 U.S. troops now in northern Iraq could capture those cities alone, or prevent Kurds from rushing in if there is an uprising or the Iraqi forces suddenly surrender.
U.S. officials acknowledged they would like to use at least some of the estimated 70,000 Kurdish fighters in an attack on the cities if they could do so without angering Turkey. Turkey has sent mixed signals about what it would tolerate. A senior military official told reporters that even one Kurdish fighter in Kirkuk for one hour would be a provocation, while a senior civilian official said a few hundred Kurdish guides assisting several thousand U.S. troops would be acceptable.
U.S. officials say they prefer this ambiguity because it preserves "operational flexibility" for U.S. military commanders. They are also resisting requests by the Turkish military to commit to contingency plans that would allow Turkey to quickly send in troops in response to specific problems, insisting instead on addressing problems as they arise.
The U.S. position has put Ozkok in a difficult spot. So far, he has played a moderating role within the military, but retired generals who have worked closely with him said he is under pressure from senior commanders who want him to be more forceful with the United States. "There are many people who think he should be more aggressive," one general said.
In another sign of trouble for Ozkok, two Turkish columnists with close ties to the military have suggested in recent articles that he is too soft on the West, one after arguing Turkey needs to take a stronger position in northern Iraq. Because public criticism of the military is rare and can result in arrest, some Turkish analysts concluded the columns represented a warning to Ozkok from within his own ranks.
Ozkok took office in August after a failed attempt by the previous military chief, Gen. Huseyin Kivrikoglu, to extend his four-year term, a move that would have blocked Ozkok from ever taking the top job, according to retired officers and others close to the military. But before retiring, the sources said, Kivrikoglu succeeded in promoting several allies, including Gen. Aytac Yalman, now commander of land forces, the number two job in the military.
As a result, said one retired officer who served under Ozkok, "the commanders in place now aren't members of his team. . . . Of course, they will obey orders, but they can also make things difficult."
The officer said Ozkok represents a faction in the military that emphasizes strong ties with NATO. He championed the decision for Turkey to take command of peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan, for example. By contrast, the officer said, Kivrikoglu and Yalman represent an increasingly influential group that advocates building stronger ties with nations such as Russia and China and is more suspicious of Europe and the U.S.
Much of that suspicion can be traced to Western support of the Iraqi Kurds after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and European criticism of the military's human rights record in its campaign against Kurdish separatists. Some of these generals worry the United States wants to establish a Kurdish state so it can have a reliable source of oil.
The military is also wary of the European Union's demand that it withdraw from politics as a condition of Turkey's bid for membership, and it has been reluctant to surrender the broad authority it enjoys in the nation's governance, which covers even the content of school textbooks.
Those who have worked with him say Ozkok supports democratic reform and wants to limit the military's involvement in civilian affairs, noting that he has refrained from speaking out on a variety of issues and ordered his generals to keep quiet as well. But Ozkok appears unwilling to abandon the military's traditional role as a guardian against Kurdish separatism and Islamic fundamentalism.
Ozkok accepted the November election that put Erdogan's Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party in power, but he later warned the new government not to challenge the military's right to expel soldiers accused of religious extremism or laws banning women from wearing a head scarf in schools and government offices.
He also refrained from taking a strong position on the proposed U.S. troop deployment in Turkey, a move that many analysts interpreted as an attempt to weaken Erdogan's party by forcing it to take sole responsibility for the decision.
The issue of northern Iraq is especially important for the military because it fought a 15-year guerrilla war against Kurdish separatists that resulted in more than 30,000 deaths, and it worries that its victory will be undermined if the Iraqi Kurds establish a state.
"They are much more sensitive about the developments in northern Iraq than anybody else," said Mehmet Ali Birand, a prominent journalist who has written books about the military and once was blacklisted for it. "They were the ones fighting for so many years."
At the height of the fighting, in the heaviest-hit region, Ozkok
served as a senior army commander.
6. - Deepika (India) - "For Turkish Kurds, War Renews Hopes and Fears":
HENDEK, Turkey / 9 April 2003
In the stony mountains of southeast Anatolia, an ancient Kurdish village echoes with the rasp of a saw on wood, the shouts of children, the laughter of an elderly couple.
All these sounds are fast fading from the hills.
The Kurds have lived in this region for 4,000 years, making them one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Middle East. But their language, culture and traditions have been eroded by almost two decades of civil conflict, poverty and political repression.
Now America's war in Iraq could signal the revival of Kurdish society. Or it could plunge millions of Kurds in this region into another devastating conflict.
Once, Hendek, which overlooks the Tigris River as it flows into the plains of Mesopotamia, was a thriving hamlet. But residents here say two-thirds of their neighbors fled over the past two decades. Hundreds of other villages such as Hendek were emptied, bombed and torched as Turkish soldiers fought separatist guerrillas. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish Kurds were driven from their homes.
The Kurds of northern Iraq, perhaps an hour's drive south, have suffered their own series of massacres, expulsions and consignment to ``Victory Cities''--virtual concentration camps--by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Today, about half of all the world's 25 million Kurds are thought to live outside their ancestral lands.
Despite chaos and episodes of vicious infighting, the Kurds of northern Iraq have ruled themselves for more than a decade, and have recently achieved a measure of economic and social stability.
If the United States and Britain defeat Iraq's Baathist regime, the Kurds are poised to create an internationally recognized, semiautonomous region inside Iraq that would serve as a haven for one of the Middle East's oldest cultures.
But if the Kurds overreach and seek to create a full-fledged independent state, experts fear, they could trigger a devastating regional conflict. All of Iraq's northern neighbors--Turkey, Syria and Iran--have Kurdish minorities.
All of these neighbors fear that an independent Kurdistan would trigger unrest or even insurrections.
``The Kurds will be very vulnerable'' if they move to create an independent state in northern Iraq, said Dogu Ergil, professor of political science at Ankara University. ``This time, it will not be the Iraqi Arabs whom the Kurds will be fighting with. This time it will be all the neighboring countries that have Kurdish enclaves and see an unruly Iraqi Kurdistan as a threat.''
There are 12 million Kurds in Turkey, the largest Kurdish population in the world. The Turkish military has stationed troops just inside Iraq since 1997 to hunt down the remnants of the Kurdish Marxist guerrillas hiding in the mountains. In the past few months, the number of Turkish troops has swelled to 20,000, according to news accounts. Generally, they have remained within about 10 miles of the border.
But if the Kurds move toward independence, Turkish military authorities threaten to dispatch 80,000 troops about 170 miles into Iraq, Newsweek has reported. And, Ergil said, Syria and Iran could decide to follow Turkey's lead.
The trigger for intervention, experts say, would be the Kurd's seizure of the Iraqi oil fields near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk and Mosul, which would provide a strong economic foundation for an independent state.
Now it is up to the United States to restrain the Kurds, their staunchest allies inside Iraq. If they don't, northern Iraq could dissolve in ethnic conflict. U.S. troops could be caught in the cross-fire, and the war effort could be jeopardized.
So far, the Iraqi Kurdish fighters, called the ``pesh merga,'' have fought effectively under the direction of American special forces. In recent days, they have used overwhelming firepower to rout Ansar al-Islam, a Taliban-style group of about 650 Kurdish Islamic radicals who have attacked mainstream Kurdish groups opposed to Baghdad.
In Hendek, war has been a constant companion. One more just south of here doesn't seem all that remarkable.
Femseddin, 56, who wears a red-checked kaffiyeh, is the ``Mukhtar,'' or head man, in Hendek.
He invited strangers to tea but did not offer them his family name. (He said the commander of a nearby military base has questioned him about earlier visits by foreigners.)
Femseddin opposed military action against Baghdad because of the suffering he knew it would bring. Neither is he surprised at the tenacity of Iraqi troops. ``Saddam's troops are more experienced,'' he said. ``They waged war against Iran. They waged war against the Kurds.''
Technically, the Iraqis don't have the equipment to fight. ``But this is their land,'' he said.
He expects a U.S. victory, and will not mourn the toppling of Saddam Hussein. But his real concerns are closer to home.
Three of his four sons fled their village in the early 1990s, during the height of fighting between Kurdish separatists and the Turkish military. He doesn't expect them to return. ``There is nothing to come back to,'' he says. ``It's not the land of my childhood. Now, we are not a family. So we are suffering.''
So are his neighbors. About a mile away stand the ruins of the village of Keraso, which residents said was evacuated in the 1990s during vicious fighting between the Turkish Army and the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, guerrillas.
After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United Nations imposed a trade embargo on Iraq. A lively and illegal oil trade grew, winding through Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and into Turkey.
Drivers from Turkey delivered potatoes, flour and cement to Iraq, and returned with oil. The trade undermined the sanctions, of course, but it also formed the basis of the economy of northern Iraq and southeast Turkey.
Most fighting with the PKK ended with a cease-fire in 1999. But two years after the war halted, in September 2001, Turkey's Kurdish region was hit by another calamity--the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the United States.
Under pressure from Washington, the Turkish government drastically restricted traffic at the border here six days after the Sept. 11 attacks. Today, the former farm boys are trying to sell their trucks for scrap, for perhaps 23 cents on the pound. Many have little to do every day but play cards and backgammon at tea houses.
Despite its remote location and miserable economy, Hendek is a tidy place. There is electricity here and gravel roads. White television satellite dishes sit on the roofs of mud-brick homes. At the bottom of the hill sits a one-room school and the home provided to the teacher.
But these amenities carry a price.
Turkish television broadcasts in Turkish: It rarely or never carries programs in Kurdish.
Schoolchildren here, like all other public school students, are taught by a Turkish teacher in Turkish, not in Kurdish.
Until recently, the Turkish state did not recognize the Kurds' right to practice their culture, teach their language or assert their identity--referring to them, officially, as ``Mountain Turks.'' Emblazoned on a hillside near Turkey's unofficial Kurdish capital of Diyarbakir is the slogan: ``How happy is he who says he is a Turk.''
Under pressure from the European Union, Ankara last year eased some of its cultural restrictions--allowing, for example, limited television and radio broadcasts in Kurdish, and the teaching of the Kurdish language in private schools.
So far these reforms are only on paper. And the government still appears eager to crack down on any activity that hints at support for an independent Kurdish state.
After the Kurdish Worker's Party in late 2001 called on Kurds to give their children Kurdish names, the Turkish Interior Ministry ordered regional governors to ensure parents named their children ``in a manner appropriate to our national culture, moral values and customs.'' Authorities in the town of Diyarbakir annulled registration of 600 children's Kurdish names.
The Kurds are familiar with repression, and betrayal. ``They've been gassed, massacred, exiled,'' said Ergil, the political scientist.
Twice in the past 28 years, he pointed out, the Kurds were betrayed by the United States, which reneged on assurances of support for Kurdish independence in order to pursue grander geopolitical goals.
To win Turkish support for basing 62,000 American soldiers on Turkish soil a few weeks ago, Washington agreed to let 40,000 more Turkish troops move into northern Iraq. That deal fell apart only because the Turkish parliament rejected it.
The Kurds are disappointed that any Turks are moving in, of course. ``But now the Kurds have no choice but to depend on the United States, which seems to be more serious than ever,'' Ergil said.
For now, Iraq's Kurds face a perilous moment of truth. Turkey's Kurds,
too, seem to be holding their collective breaths, hoping that years
of repression will soon come to an end.