‘TURKEY MAY GIVE US ID CARDS, BUT THEY ATTACK US BECAUSE WE ARE KURDS’
Separated by a border but united in a common cause, Kurds in Turkey and Syria have been forced to regroup
For residents of Turkey’s Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, the thunderous boom of warplanes was all too recognisable, even before the Turkish army’s most recent incursion into nearby Syria.
Ankara launched Operation Peace Spring on October 9 to drive away the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces from its border. For Turkey’s Kurds it was the latest extension of a war that has raged in their communities since 2015.
With the aim of building a buffer zone to which Turkey could return some of the more than 3.3 million mainly Arab refugees the country has hosted since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, the assault was triggered by US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was to withdraw his troops from the region.
Ankara has long accused Syria’s People’s Protection Units (YPG) – which formed the backbone of the SDF – of being an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. The PKK is considered to be a terrorist organisation by Ankara, Washington and the European Union.
Although separate in command structure, focus and leadership, both movements are fighting for a common national cause and are ideologically shaped by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK founder who was jailed by Turkey in 1999.
Turkey also regards the autonomous Kurdish-led enclave in north-east Syria known as Rojava as a threat to its security.
The violence that erupted in the spring of 2015 in Turkey’s south-east between the state and the PKK is rooted in the group’s insurgency that began in 1984 and which is estimated to have claimed more than 40,000 lives. Yet it was the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) gains in an election that cost President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) its parliamentary majority that was the catalyst for the current upsurge in violence.
An escalating Turkish security crackdown in southeast Kurdish communities followed, prompting an armed uprising by the PKK and its offshoots across Turkey, ending a ceasefire that began in 2013. By the time voters went back to the polls the following November, the nascent peace process was scuttled and Mr Erdogan regained his majority.
I travelled through Turkey’s Kurdish region as fighting raged in early 2016, covering what had become a brutal war between the Turkish security forces and PKK fighters that largely escaped international scrutiny. I saw the people of Cizre, Nusaybin and Diyabakir’s old city, Sur, endure carnage.
That February, photojournalist Lazar Simeonov and I were the first foreign reporters to be granted access to the reconquered city of Cizre by Turkish security forces after a siege that lasted nearly three months. Beyond the armoured vehicles and checkpoints, which had severed the city of about 125,000 people from the outside world, lay a wasteland of rubble and war-ravaged buildings.
The smell of decaying corpses that were still being pulled from the piles of shattered concrete hung over the city. Children kicked a ball over shell-damaged streets littered with twisted metal and a resident pulled pieces of the family home’s front wall from their living room.
Locals pointed to where tanks and artillery had been positioned in the surrounding hills, raining shells on them for a week, and to where fighting in the streets followed. The PKK had resisted the army with small arms and improvised explosive devices. Residents claimed hundreds of civilians were burnt to death or blown apart in basements as they hid from Turkish bombardment.
“Turkey may give us [Turkish] ID cards, but they attack us because we are Kurds,” middle-aged Cizre resident Ramazon Sakci said at the time, standing in front of his bullet-riddled home.
The wrecking of Cizre is a testament to what Turkey is willing to do in its pursuit of a military solution to demands for Kurdish autonomy, yet I saw similar determination from the militants, from behind urban barricades built from ripped-up paving stones in Nusaybin. The town is on the border, adjacent to Qamishli, Rojava’s capital, and its young rebels looked to Syria’s Kurds for inspiration.
In the neighbourhoods gripped by rebellion, a system of sheets was strung up to provide cover from snipers, trenches were dug and a labyrinth of street barricades erected. Turkish drones watched from above, while Kurdish fighters reinforced defences and planned hit-andrun attacks on the military.
“We are not fighting to replace the Turkish state; we are fighting for rights,” a PKK commander said. “It’s OK if there are Turkish soldiers on the border, but not their police in our streets.”
Within two months, the neighbourhoods had been razed to the ground after a sustained Turkish assault.
The example set by Syrian Kurds when they liberated their territory from government control and ISIS was a powerful symbol for their counterparts in Turkey after the implosion of the peace process. As the YPG advanced in Aleppo’s countryside in 2016 under Russian air power, as they captured patches of territory from the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army, it was a time of terrorism and optimism for them.
In Diyarbakir’s bustling streets, where Turkish military bases and barracks carve out chunks of the city centre, it was impossible then to ignore the Turkish water cannon constantly patrolling, watching residents with suspicion. Protests calling for an end to military and police domination were swept off the streets. Despite defeats, the conflict continues to simmer four years on and the discontent of Turkey’s Kurds persists. The Syria operation has already claimed some of the Kurdish-controlled border territory and forced the YPG to work with the Syrian government, putting an end to Kurdish local rule.