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The
threat of a Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan is sharpening a
contradiction that has been developing since the U.S. imposed its
military domination over the region. But its roots go even further back
and are spread wider.
Washington's
exploitation of the Kurdish struggle for national rights for short-term
gains conflicts with its long-term objectives in the region. The U.S.
encouraged the Iraqi Kurds in their war with the Iraqi central
government in 1970-1975. It is, according to many accounts, supporting
the Iranian Kurds today to attack the Iranian central government as a
means of putting pressure on it for its own purposes.
Kurdish
freedom fighters have thus benefited at various times from U.S.
hostility to the governments that deny them their national rights. But
the U.S. has always betrayed them in pursuance of its longer-term
objectives. Its long-term aim is to dominate and exploit the region, and
that requires alliances with the most reactionary and oppressive
forces.
The
Kurdish people, who have been divided throughout their modern history
between various states, have a long experience of dubious allies. It is
expressed in the Kurdish proverb, "The Kurds have no friends but
the mountains."
In
the case of the 1970-1975 war, U.S. documents that came to light later
openly avowed that the interest of the U.S. was not that either side
win but simply that the war continue. When the Iraqi government
conceded to the demands of the U.S. and its ally, the shah of
Iran,
the Kurds were abandoned by their false friends and suffered the worst
defeat in the history of their national struggle.
Today,
indications are that the U.S. is definitely, if discreetly, aiding
Turkey in its war on the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas. Thus,
an article in the Oct. 29 Christian Science Monitor quoted the U.S.
commander in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus, as stating: "I am not going to
say anything about what we may be doing with our long-standing NATO
ally Turkey, although we clearly are doing things with them. Nor will I
say what we are doing with our Iraqi partners to endeavor to stabilize
the situation and to ensure that the sides are talking and taking
actions to reduce the tension."
The
U.S. is obliged to be discreet in its suppression of the PKK because of
the sympathy of the Iraqi Kurdish population with the
national-liberation fighters and because the Kurds have been their most
reliable allies in Iraq. The real desire of the Kurdish people of Iraq,
however, is national independence. They have made that clear in a
number of ways, including a referendum. That is why they sympathize
with the PKK.
For
nearly a century Kurds in all the states among which they have been
divided have struggled for national rights, the culmination of which
would be a national state in which they could be united. The Turkish
state, however, the most powerful in the region, is based on a
genocidal policy of liquidating all the non-Turkish nationalities
within the territory it rules, of which the largest and the only one
capable of resisting this policy is the Kurds.
Thus,
Turkey rejects any concessions to Kurdish national demands within the
Turkish state and views any such concessions in the neighboring states
as a threat. It sees its future as dependent on the liquidation of the
Kurdish nation.
The
Iraqi Kurds were able to take advantage of the U.S. conflict with
Saddam Hussein after 1991 to establish virtual independence in their
area. But even before this, as a result of the Iraqi revolution of
1958, the Kurds gained a cultural autonomy that their compatriots in
other states never enjoyed.
Publication
in Kurdish has always been banned in Turkey and Iran, and in Turkey
even speaking Kurdish was outlawed. For many years the contradiction
existed that although speaking Kurdish was punishable under the law,
the Turkish state denied that the language existed.
In
fact, the present conflict is a consequence of the Turkish rulers'
refusal to offer even the slightest concessions to the Kurds. After his
capture in 1999 (which was aided by the U.S.), the PKK leader, Ocalan,
abandoned the demand for Kurdish independence and offered to make peace
with the Turkish state in return for some purely cultural concessions.
The Turkish rulers would not accept even that, and so the PKK slowly
went back on a guerrilla warfare footing.
The
U.S. government has no interest in a conflict with Turkey for the sake
of the Kurds, any more than it is prepared to annoy the Turks by
offering historical recognition to the Armenians who suffered genocide
at their hands. But it remains to be seen if the discreet
collaboration
of the United States is going to be enough to satisfy the Turkish chauvinists and military.
Given
the history and the political character of the Turkish state, there has
always been an fascistic nationalist current capable of whipping up
hysteria against the Kurds and eager for expansionist adventures.
Also,
suppressing Kurdish nationalists is not the only interest that Turkey
has in northern Iraq. It has always had the aspiration of annexing this
territory, which was part of the Turkish state before World War I and
which has important natural resources and a significant minority that
speaks a language closely related to Turkish.
The
threat of a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq is another example of the
dangerous juggling game the U.S. became involved in when it occupied
Iraq. It is also another expression of the fact that there can be no
liberation of the region from imperialist domination without granting
full national rights to all the oppressed nationalities.
This
is also demonstrated positively by the example of the Iraqi revolution
of 1958, the most radical anti-imperialist revolution to date in the
region. In its early period,
when this revolution was a real threat to the imperialists, it offered
national rights to the Kurds. It was only as the revolution degenerated
and the Baghdad governments moved to the right and toward
reconciliation with imperialism that they started trying to oppress the
Kurds again, and opened the way for the Kurds to be manipulated by
imperialism.
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