PKK’s Destructive Plan

After weeks of speculation, the Turkish government has finally ordered military strikes on the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq in an effort to stamp out PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party), a separatist terrorist group. Although a ground incursion has yet to be deployed, air strikes may be a precursor to a full-scale invasion. And this is exactly what PKK wants.

Turkey has long struggled to assimilate the roughly 15 million Kurds living in its territory. The PKK, forming in the 1970s, seeks to create an independent Kurdish state and has used terrorist means to achieve its goal. Waging a guerilla war in the 1980s, PKK’s conflict with Turkey has claimed over 37,000 lives.

In recent years, the situation has settled down a bit. PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in 1999 and urged the movement to conduct a peaceful struggle, and the group announced a ceasefire last September. Kurds participate in the political process, taking up seats in the Turkish parliament.

Now, there is a threat of all out war, which would open another front in Iraq and likely destabilize the only relatively peaceful area in the country. The U.S., along with the Iraqi central government, has pleaded with Turkey to refrain from military actions in Iraq.

But after succumbing to numerous guerilla attacks—a recent PKK cross-border assault left 12 Turkish soldiers dead—Ankara is fed up. Military actions have ensued. The Turkish military announced yesterday that 30 Kurdish rebels were killed near the Iraq border.

Why would PKK so willingly antagonize Turkey and its vastly powerful military? PKK knew it was on thin ice and Ankara was poised for an invasion to wipe them out, so why did they commit another atrocity, killing 12 Turks? They must have known air strikes and a ground assault were to follow.

PKK knew exactly what it was doing. It wants to lull Turkey into a military conflict in Northern Iraq. With concrete results from its assimilatory program, the Turkish government has helped placate the fiery Kurdish minority, and PKK fears its separatist goals are slipping away. To reinvigorate the pan-Kurdish separatist movement it seeks to extract Turkish revenge.

This is a common terrorist tactic, regularly employed by the Basque separatist group ETA, known as the spiral of action-repression-action. When fearing marginalization, terrorist groups carry out attacks on enemy government forces to inhibit a repressive response, which will rally nationalists and provide legitimacy for more terrorist attacks, producing a cycle of violence.

PKK is using this method because it wants the wrath of Turkey to rally its Kurdish brothers in Iraq. It seems this strategy may work. Upon hearing the Turkish threat of military force, Kurdish regional president, Massoud Barzani, declared: “We are fully prepared to defend our democratic experience and the dignity of our people and the sanctity of our homeland.” This must have been music to PKK’s ears.

Aside from playing into PKK's hands, Turkey also has military limits to its objectives. An invasion would not only stir up Kurdish nationalist sentiment and likely become a PKK recruiting tool, but strategically and militarily it might not do much good.

PKK, in similar fashion to Al-Qaeda in Tora Bora, hides in treacherous mountain terrain in Northern Iraq, maintaining an underground cave system seemingly impervious to air strikes and capture. Annihilating the terrorist group via a ground campaign is a strategy strewn with pitfalls.

So what is to be done? Politically, PKK’s antics have put both Turkey and the Kurdish regional government in a bind. Ankara cannot appear weak to its domestic audience and neither can the Kurds in Iraq. Washington is also in a crunch: it must convince Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to show restraint, knowing full well that it would react similarly to attacks on its forces.

To avoid all the problems associated with a Turkish invasion, Iraqi and American officials must provide Ankara with military and intelligence assistance and conduct missions to rid the area of PKK rebels. To be sure, U.S. troops are under enough duress in the country without taking on another enemy. Yet small-scale missions, or air strikes and intelligence gathering would be tremendously helpful in alleviating the situation. All sides must do everything possible to disrupt PKK’s destructive plan.