There are several  internal and external reasons behind the increase in terrorist activities of the PKK, which are principally foreign developments in the last four years, events in Iraq, and parliamentary elections in Turkey on July 22, 2007.

The USA and the Rise of Separatist Terrorism

Turkish-American relations have been shaped by security issues, and combating terrorism occupies a special place in these relations. Turkey is one of the countries cooperating closely with the US in combating terrorism. This cooperation, contrary to the general conviction, has not declined but increased even after the Iraq War. However, the increasing cooperation has been running more in the favor of the US than of Turkey. The range of Turkey’s contributions both in joint operations and intelligence to the USA on combating global terrorism have even reached all the way to the mountains of Tora Bora. Nevertheless, Turkey was punished by the neo-conservative elements dominant in the US administration for not providing the military assistance that was expected by the US in the Iraq War. The main force of this punishment has been concentrated in the security domain, and in the fact that the PKK terrorist organization has been persistently ignored by the US since 2003.

The PKK was afraid of being the target of the US, which vociferously declared after September 11 that terrorists were to be given no chance to prevail. Yet, the PKK was relieved after the rejection of the March 1^st Resolution just like a burglar who is relieved when he notices that the police are after someone else.

This US approach has encouraged the organization and that has been an important psychological drive behind its attacks in recent years.

The EU and the Rise of Separatist Terrorism

The PKK has been alarmed as Turkish-EU relations have developed rapidly since December 17, 2004 and especially as this relationship has reached its peak with the beginning of negotiations for full EU membership on October 3, 2005. The anxiety of the PKK rests on three main reasons which have also engendered another motive for the PKK to increase its activities.

For the PKK, Europe is more important than Kandil as the organization extracts its financial sources by means of many subsidiary companies established in Europe, and with regard to human resources the PKK controls an important area within Europe conducive to recruiting militants. Turkey’s rapprochement with the EU unsurprisingly hinders PKK activities in EU countries. The information taken from captured terrorists and acquired from the secret meetings of the organization has confirmed that the PKK has lost its important advantages in Europe for the last three or four years, and ‘the oxygen’ for the organization’s activities has fallen gradually. In this respect, what the PKK has done is opposing the rapprochement between Turkey and the EU, and resorting to terrorist activities with the aim of sabotaging this process.

Another development in this process is, contrary to the comments made in 1990s, the frequent and unambiguous remarks of the EU officials, who have emphasized that the main source and cause of the conflict and terror in Turkey is the PKK. Such a change and transformation in Europe undoubtedly points to the exclusion of the PKK from Europe where the PKK has been striving to settle in as the main center of Kurdist propaganda. The PKK, whose offices were closed down by judicial decisions, and who is trying to sustain its existence under different names, realizes that its area of maneuver has shrunk during the last five years. The way for the PKK to escape from this circle is to resort to the armed terrorist attacks again, and to ensure that Turkish-EU relations revolve around terrorist activities. Considering the developments in the last one year, it appears that this strategy has served the PKK well. Accusatory attitudes of the people both in the EU and in Turkey, who have desired to plunge this process into a crisis and to terminate the relationships between Turkey and the EU, have increased as a result of the PKK bombings, and the communication between the two societies is now seen in the mirror that has been bloodstained by terrorist actions. And PKK, who has lost its advantages in Europe gradually, definitely will be among the most advantageous actors in case of a breakdown in Turkish-EU relations.

Another reason for mounting PKK attacks is its attempt to provide serious pretexts to those in Europe that are opposed to Turkey by compelling Turkey to regress in its process towards the Copenhagen Criteria. Such a tactic would consequently strengthen the hands of the people opposing Turkey in the EU and these people would be able to criticize Turkey even more stridently. Turkey, having been enmeshed in internal security issues, would not bear these criticisms from the EU and ultimately it would turn to the emotional attitude of ‘let it tear from where it is worn out’. This emotional threshold has been tried constantly for the last one year and the opposition towards the EU has been increasing rapidly. Nobody can claim that PKK terrorist activities have not contributed to this shift in opposition and the emergence or consolidation of ‘an external enemy’ concept.

Problematic relations between EU and Turkey that follow a fluctuating course do not depend on just the PKK’s actions. There are many interest groups who have played roles in the setbacks in Turkish-EU relations. Here, the effect of the course of Turkish-EU relations to PKK’s actions is examined. The interests of the PKK in Turkish objections to the EU process and in the obstruction of this process can be briefly summarized as political propaganda, recruitment of militants and the maintenance of financial resources. The degree of protecting the organization’s interests in Europe is conversely related to Turkey’s eagerness to decrease or break its relations with the EU.      

Northern Iraq and the Rise of Separatist Terrorism

The PKK’s existence in Northern Iraq dates back to the First Gulf War. Non-governmental organizations tried to fill the authority vacuum that emerged in the region after the war. Those organizations that chose the region for armed actions have attracted the attentions of intelligence and security actors of various countries, especially Turkey. What Bekaa Valley was for the extreme leftist organizations in the 1970s Northern Iraq has been for the PKK since 1990s. PKK activities in the region can be summarized as establishing secure and permanent training camps, training the techniques of armed struggle, bombing, sabotage, suicide bombing training, creating new identities for militants, and generating group dynamics.

The most significant contribution of these camps to the PKK is that they provide the militants with a major wall between the real world and themselves, and help them put themselves at the centre of the world by constantly reinforcing their own group dynamics.

After the Second Gulf War (March 2003), Northern Iraq, with its obvious importance for the PKK, has assumed a new outlook, which is to be shaped in accordance with future power balances by the emergence of a new authority. It is conspicuous that Barzani and Talabani are becoming more advantageous day by day in the relentless struggle between the PKK and PUK and KDP that has been continuing outside the Turkish borders. The PKK and Öcalan, very anxious because of this situation, are aware that their authority and their bases in Northern Iraq are gradually dissolving among Barzani and his supporters. Öcalan, who once stated that they would embrace all Kurds as a ‘Modern Kurdish’ movement and establish Kurdistan, has been constantly losing his standing in the last five years against Barzani whom he once defined and humiliated as a ‘primitive tribal leader’. The only way for the PKK and Öcalan to get out of this situation is to increase the attacks and to capture the chance of being the authority again by using the power of ‘force’. Öcalan, who has remained in memories with the expression stated in the 1980’s ‘Let’s kill, so we will be the sole authority’, deems the PKK’s future activities in Turkey as the most important instrument to survive in Northern Iraq.

PKK, trying to be an authority in Iraq through its activities in Turkey and presenting these activities in its propaganda, is pursuing two tactics. The first is to weaken the sway of Barzani rising rapidly over Kurds by drawing Turkish security forces into the region, and the second is to present the Turkish security forces engaging the Barzani forces to the world public as responsible for the possible civilian casualties with an exaggerated media campaign. These two tactics are interrelated, and one involves the risk of engendering the other. There is no doubt that Turkey, which would be presented to the world public opinion as the murderer of civilians outside its borders, would also be depicted as an occupying and repressive force in the region. The only way for the PKK to realize all these contingencies is to move terrorism to ‘a higher gear’ in Turkey.

Developments in Turkey, Ballot Box and Separatist Terrorism

Politics can be defined in many ways but if the issue at hand is ballot boxes then the most meaningful definition would be the race between those who have ideas and projects to elicit the support of the public by articulating these ideas and projects before it. However, the situation is completely different when the issue is a terrorist organization. Before everything else, the PKK does not have any ‘gunpowder for one single shoot’ in the political arena, which is in a normalization process, and where the game is played by its rules. Contrary to that, it has an absolute will to convert politics into a tension strategy and to bloodstain the ballot box.

The only material and skill of all terrorist organizations, and particularly the PKK, is the ability to enslave politics via weapons. The organization does not have any other ability of politicization. The best sentence to denote the impasse the organization faces comes from Maslow:  “The one who has a hammer as the only material in life sees each thing as a nail.” It is possible to analyze the causes of PKK’s recommencement of its activities as follows, with particular reference to domestic developments.

When PKK started to increase its activities in 2004, the general outlook in Turkey involved a rapid democratization and the conveyance of the rights into Turkey that are the requirements of contemporary civilization. It was a period in which all the setbacks, which could be asserted by the Kurds under normal conditions, were vanishing. Each expression of propaganda in the realm of rights and freedoms, which had been exploited by the organization, was taken away and this process was removing the raison d’etre of the organization.

In the reform process, the PKK was extremely uneasy about the possibility of the permanence of a process wherein the hearts and the minds are flowing to ’the pool of the union of country’. The organization’s objective has been the separation of the society and the management of politics through bloodshed as the only alternative of reversing this process, and it has aimed at constituting the language of communication over this objective. It should not be forgotten that terrorism is above all a method of communication , and the kind of communication that the terrorist activities impose entails the substitution of reason, love, sense, virtue and serenity with quarrel, anger, hatred and panic.

The PKK, which is striving to reverse the process of democratization and modernization in Turkey, has at the same time not refrained from murdering even politicians of Kurdish origin who had challenged it, like Hikmet Fidan. The increase in these sorts of activities displays the extent to which the organization is panicked by the developments. Besides not permitting any dissident voices, the PKK also diverts the language of communication in Turkey towards anger and hatred.

The election process in Turkey is another development that leads to an increase in the level of terrorist activities. The nadir of governmental authority in state administration occurs in periods wherein the ballot box appears. Terrorist organizations want to benefit from these periods, and this is what PKK is doing. The advantage of the terrorist organizations over the governments is that they can choose the place, time and target of the incident, and at the same time they do not feel any necessity for bureaucratic processes or prolonged decision mechanisms. States can overcome these sorts of setbacks by ensuring coordination and cooperation among all its institutions through reasonable administration and dominant will. The election periods are the times when this is the hardest to realize.

Another reason for the terrorist organization’s efforts to turn the election periods into special opportunities is their desire to enslave the political excitement sweeping through the arenas to the bombs. Counting on its experiences, the PKK knows that different political parties will not be able to utilize a shared parlance against terrorism in the election process, and it has aimed at turning this to its own advantage.

This attempt of the PKK has made it the most crucial matter in the 2007 elections in Turkey’s political process. The PKK, which started to be forgotten and lost its place in the agenda after the capture of Öcalan in 1999, has brought itself to the top of the agenda with its recent activities.

The confusions, mutual accusations and angry slogans recently witnessed in Turkey demonstrate that the PKK is about to taint ballot boxes with blood. The PKK is narrowing the area of maneuver in politics through bombs, turning the feelings of the public into a flood of anger, and trying to choke the ballot boxes that are the biggest power and chance of solutions in democracies. The PKK seems to have already gone a long way.

The PKK not only taints the ballot box with blood in domestic politics but also affects Turkish foreign policy to a great extent, and desires to regain the advantages it has lost in Europe by attempting to create a Turkey excluded from Europe. The mysteries or the meanings of the bombings that have increased in the last months and years lie in the internal and external developments briefly discussed above.

July 11, 2007

Ihsan Bal

Translated by Eyüp Ersoy