Kurds Turkey shoot

With Turkey on the brink of attacking Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the potentially great faultlines of the 21st century could be opened. There are 25 to 40 million people that call themselves Kurds. Their misfortune is to be scattered over rugged terrain in some of the most important countries of the Middle East. A Kurdish proverb says 'the Kurds have no friends but the mountains'. This is particularly true today when there is little enthusiasm in the wider world to support the merits of a separate Kurdish nation. The Kurdish nationalist party PKK is declared a terrorist organisation in the US, Europe and Australia.

While Kurds have some autonomy within Iraq, they remain a disadvantaged minority group in Iran, Syria, Armenia and Turkey. Although Iranian troops invaded Iraqi Kurdistan last year, it is the Turks who feel most vulnerable to the Kurdish threat. Turkey does not recognise its Kurdish minority and simply calls them “Mountain Turks”. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now seeking approval from his parliament to launch an “incursion” into Iraq any time in the next 12 months.

This is no idle threat. In May, Erdogan called for an invasion of Iraq to seek out Kurdish militants and take what the Turkish foreign ministry calls “urgent and resolute measures”. It was in response to a suicide bombing in Ankara which killed six people and injured more than 100. The Turks identified Guven Akkus from Turkish Kurdistan as the culprit and said his methods were similar to those of Kurdish militants. The PKK have copped much of the blame even though there is no link between it and Akkus and it denied responsibility. One Turkish commentator described Akkus as a “Communist”.

While Turkey may be looking for an excuse to punish Kurdish militia, locals have promised a tough reception if they invade. A Kurdish rebel commander told AP on Saturday Turkey would face a long and bloody conflict if it launched an attack. Murat Karayilan, head of the armed wing of the PKK, said an invasion would "make Turkey experience a Vietnam war." "Iraq's Kurds will not support the Turkish army," he said. "If Turkey starts its attack, we will swing the Turkish public opinion by political, civil and military struggle."

The PKK was founded in 1973 and gets its initials from its Kurdish name, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party). They first launched an armed independence campaign in Turkey’s southeast almost 25 years ago. More than 37,000 people have died in the ongoing violence with deaths spread evenly between the two sides. Turkey launched a major military crackdown in 1999 and captured PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan causing 5,000 fighters to flee to Iraq. The PKK is not entirely welcome in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are already two Kurdish factions in Iraq which exist in an uneasy power-sharing relationship. The PKK operates as a Pan-Kurdish organisation that rejects Iraqi Kurdish efforts to remain within Iraq.

The 25 million Kurds are not necessarily politically united. They are spread across eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran, and parts of Syria and Armenia. 12 million live in Turkey. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres which fixed Turkey’s border after World War I included the “possibility” of a Kurdish state but Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk rejected it three years later. From the 1980s, the PKK spearheaded a bitter armed resistance in Turkey's Kurdish southeastern provinces.

The PKK gained momentum in the 1990s with the rise of charismatic leader Abdullah Ocalan. But while his supporters call him "Apo" (Kurdish for "uncle"), the Turkish state calls him "child murderer" and "terrorist". Ocalan studied political science at Ankara university where he set up the PKK with fellow students. He left Turkey before the September 1980 military coup and remained in exile until 1999. He was controversially captured in Kenya, with the suspected help of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. Turkey triumphantly paraded their prisoner in blindfold for the world’s media.

Since 1999, Ocalan has been held in solitary confinement as the only prisoner on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, guarded by a thousand Turkish military personnel. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2001. Ocalan appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. Turkey, mindful of the impact to its possible EU membership, agreed to await the court’s judgment. In 2005 the European Court of Human Rights decided Ocalan’s trial was unfair. However Turkey dismissed a retrial request last year.

While Ocalan festers on Imrali, his homeland is about to take a greater role on the world stage. Turkey has used the US congress stand on the Armenian genocide as an excuse to ignore calls for caution in Kurdistan. Now the price of oil has surged to a new record high of $84 a barrel as the crisis threatens some of the nearby oilfields. Analysts are worried that if Turkey attacks Iraq, the PKK will target the Iraq to Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. The “Mountain Turks” will soon find out how many friends they have.

Yazidis fear annihilation

Members of the Yazidi sect fear they face annihilation after Tuesday’s attacks which killed over 400 people in Northern Iraq. The attack was the deadliest suicide bomb attack of the four-year conflict. The attacks were carried out by garbage trucks packed with explosives which flattened entire neighbourhoods in the northern Iraqi town of Kahtaniya. An Iraqi interior ministry spokesman said that the blast used 2 tons of explosives to crumbled buildings, trapping entire families beneath mud bricks and other wreckage. Rescuers dug through the rubble throughout Wednesday in scenes reminiscent of an earthquake zone.

The attacks left the community without power and water. "Their aim is to annihilate us, to create trouble and kill all the Yazidis because we are not Muslims," said Abu Saeed told visiting Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih that he had lost 51 members of his family in the attack. About 100 angry Yazidi men gathered as Salih met local officials. “It’s like a nuclear site, the site of a nuclear bomb,” one of the men told Reuters. Al-Qaeda wants to kill all the Yazidis,” said another villager. “Another bomb like this and there will be no more Yazidis left.”

The Yazidis, who call themselves the Dawasin, are a minority sect regarded by Sunni militants as infidels. This obscure and secretive religious sect is now the victims of the second-worst terrorist attack of modern times after 9/11. Yazidism has about 700,000 members worldwide. Yazidis are mostly ethnic Kurds who live in northern Iraq, near Mosul, but there are also small communities in Syria, Turkey, Russia, Georgia, and Armenia. Smaller Diaspora communities exist in the west, mainly in Germany and the Netherlands.

The word Yazidi or sometimes Yezidi comes from the Persian “yazdan” meaning God. Yazidis regard Mohammed as a prophet, and Jesus Christ as an angel in human form. The religion’s origins are shrouded in Middle Eastern prehistory. The Yazidis speak Kurdish but their syncretistic religion also shows strong Christian, Islam and ancient Zoroastrian and Assyrian influences. Similar to Muslims, Yazidis have five daily prayers and a three-day fast in December. The most important ritual is the annual six-day pilgrimage to the tomb of Sheikh Adi in Lalish, north of Mosul, Iraq. The principal feature of worship, is Muluk-Taus a hundred- or thousand-eyed incarnation of cosmic wisdom, pictured as a peacock.

Muluk-Taus is sometimes called “Shaytan” or Satan which has led to Muslim accusations that the Yazidis are devil worshippers. The Yazidis and Muslims have had grievances against each other for centuries. In recent times their fraught relationship has escalated into outright violence. In April video footage captured the stoning to death of a Yazidi woman who converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim. The video was seen widely and angry Muslims gunned down 23 Yazidis in reprisal.

The latest atrocity comes as the area is due to vote on whether to come under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government later this year. The area is half Arab and half Kurdish. Neighbouring Arab villages had been threatening Yazidis, trying to stop them voting for Kurdistan in forthcoming polls. While the region is currently managed by Iraqi government security forces due to the nearness of the Syrian border, it is likely the impact of the bombing will strengthen Yazidi resolve to join the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Iraqi violence catches up with Kurdistan

The war in Iraq took a new and dangerous twist yesterday. A bomb exploded in Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming many casualties. A suicide truck bomb detonated in front of the offices of the Interior Ministry killing 19 and injuring 70 others. The bomb damaged the nearby Kurdish security services building and left a three-metre-deep crater in the road.

Kurdish officials blamed al-Qaeda linked insurgents Ansar al-Sunnah and Ansar al-Islam for the incident. It was the first major attack on the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region for two years. Kurdistan is the northern-most of Iraq’s provinces and the one least affected by the sectarian violence that has crippled the rest of the country since the US-led invasion in 2003. The last attack of this scale occurred in 2005 when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an Arbil recruitment bureau killing 60 people.

Arbil has a population of about one million and is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world. The city is also called Erbil or Irbil in Arabic but it is known in Kurdish language as Hewlêr - the place where the sun is worshipped. The city was founded around 2300 BC as “Urbillium”. Most of the city rests on a 30 metre tall mound consisting of ruins from Arbil's long history. Alexander the Great won an important battle near the city that led to his conquest of Persia. The Greek historian Xenophon called the city Carduchoi.

The Roman general Pompey took the province 200 years later. The Romans renamed the province Corduene. The name survives today in the name of the people that inhabit the area – the Kurds. Arbil became an important town during the Ottoman Empire as a trading post between two provincial capitals: Baghdad and Mosul. After the First World War ended, Kurds lobbied Britain to create an independent Kurdistan. Instead they were subsumed into the new British Iraqi mandate and launched several revolts which the British put down.

When Iraq became formally independent in 1930, the Kurds launched another bid for independence but Britain quashed the rebellion again. Mustafa Barzani rose to become the new power. Kurdistan’s remote location, astute politicking, support from Tehran and occasional warfare with Baghdad allowed Barzani to come to arrangement with whichever central government was in power.

In the early 1970s Barzani fell out with the new de facto ruler of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. Barzani lost the support of Iran and was forced to flee to the US. In 1975, Arbil became chief city Saddam’s new creation, the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. But real power was now with Baghdad. Arbil’s power returned after the 1991 Gulf War, when with the support of the allies’ no-fly zone it became the capital of semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan. The city descended into civil war between two Kurdish factions. Mustafa Barzani was now long dead, but his son Massoud Barzani returned to Arbil in 1995 to claim victory with the support of Saddam.

Arbil celebrated the overthrow of Saddam in 2003. Since then, only isolated, sporadic violence has hit Arbil. The new Iraqi constitution of 2005 explicitly recognizes the Kurdistan Regional Government. Security in the region is controlled by militias loyal to the Kurdish party. The Kurdistan flag flies everywhere while the Iraqi flag is rarely seen. The relative safety has seen many foreign firms invest in the area in recent years. Arbil has a construction boom and is building a new international airport costing $300 million due to open next year.

Kurdistan is also looking to develop its own oil wells, something always hindered during the Saddam era. Several British companies have approached Kurdistan's government-run Oil & Gas Petrochemical Establishment to discuss deals. Kurdish officials estimate their unexplored oil reserves at about 45 billion barrels, though that figure is questioned by outsiders. Nonetheless Kurdistan’s short distance to Turkey’s pipelines is a major advantage. The other major advantage is safety. The theme among foreign businessmen here is they can work safely by basing their Iraq operations in Kurdistan rather than 320 km south in Baghdad. Yesterday’s bomb attack may force some to re-examine this theory.