On the other hand, the PKK is still a danger for Turkey, Iraq, and the United States. Whether Turkey will go about solving the PKK question by repeating America’s mistake in Iraq – by using sheer force to solve a problem of law and order – is yet to be seen.

What is the PKK?

Contrary to what almost all Western media outlets have claimed for the past few weeks,[2] since 1984, the PKK has not been fighting for autonomy or for the political and cultural rights of Turkish Kurds. For twenty odd years, the PKK has aimed at establishing a breakaway Stalinist state in Southeastern Turkey.

The Joseph Stalin connection is much to the point; the PKK’s currently imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, is a great fan of the bloody Soviet tyrant. Öcalan fashions “Uncle Joe’s” moustache. Similarly, before his capture in 1999, Öcalan always responded to criticism from his cadres and those Kurds critical of the PKK with the sort of ruthlessness that only Stalin showed toward his subordinates and the Soviet people.

Abdullah Öcalan’s PKK has killed more Kurdish civilians (possibly 20,000 of them) than anyone else in modern history, save Saddam Hussein. Quite indicative of his affinity with Stalin’s maxim on death and statistics (“when you kill one, it is a tragedy; when you kill ten million, it is a statistic”), Öcalan once said in the 1990s that he could kill “one-hundred thousand people a day” if he wanted to. The PKK, in other words, claimed to fight for the very people that it mercilessly killed in the past; hardly the best way to fight for one’s rights.

On the same line, it is interesting to note that the PKK’s operating language is not Kurdish, but Turkish. Pamphlets, intra-organizational memoranda, and even tactical communications on the field are carried out in Turkish. Similarly, Abdullah Öcalan is not fluent in his “native” Kurdish. Prior to his capture, he used Turkish to convey his message to PKK militants and Turkish Kurds.

It is essential, then, to label the PKK for what it is: a terrorist group and not a “rebel” faction fighting for “Kurdish autonomy.” Everyone should come to grips with the fact that engaging in terrorism – for whatever purpose – is tantamount to the analogy drawn by the American comedian George Carlin on war, peace, sex, and virginity.

Turkish Choices at Home

Looking at this picture, it is easier to see why Turkey is frustrated with the United States and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). The PKK operates out of Northern Iraq, which is under the KRG’s control. Since 1984, the PKK has used the mountain ranges on the crossroads of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran to launch attacks against unarmed civilians and government officials in Turkey.

These points, however, should not eclipse the fact that fighting the PKK requires more than guns and bullets. The Turkish government should not treat the PKK question as if it came from outer space. The PKK feeds on Turkish Kurds’ economic, social, and political troubles.

Ankara should disentangle the PKK issue from the Kurdish question. Mr. Erdoğan’s government has to take the PKK as a question of peace and order and fight it within the parameters of the rule of law. In that regard, the Turkish parliament should amend the criminal code (particularly the notorious Article 301) in order to separate Turkish Kurds’ peaceful demands from the PKK’s propaganda. By doing that, Ankara will help Turkish citizens of Kurdish background to become a part of the solution and not the problem.

On the economic and social side, Eastern Turkey still has the least percentage of school attendance in the country. Furthermore, in comparison to the rest of Turkey, the eastern parts of the country are still the most economically underdeveloped area with astonishingly low income levels. Continuing to encourage the private sector to invest in the region and embarking on a school-building spree will weaken the PKK like nothing else can.

Turkish and KRG Choices Vis-à-vis the PKK

As for solving the ongoing crisis with the central government in Baghdad and the KRG over the PKK, the crux of the matter is to not repeat America’s mistake in 2003. After the Turkish assembly passed the resolution authorizing a military operation into Northern Iraq on October 17, 2007, President Bush urged Turkey not to launch an offensive. In a press conference that same day, Mr. Bush pointed out “that [i]t is not in [Turkey’s] best interests to send troops into Iraq.”[3]

Whatever one’s opinions of Mr. Bush, we all have to concede that he hit the nail on the head with that statement. If there is only one useful piece of advice that he can ever give to anybody, it is to stay away from Iraq. Turkey should stay out of Iraq. Mr. Bush’s war tragically demonstrates the repercussions of a military operation to that country.

Ankara should impress upon the KRG that it will not use the PKK as a pretext to destroy Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. Although Turkey has every right to self-defense per Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations (which partially reads: “Nothing [s]hall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations”), political wisdom must extend beyond international covenants. A massive operation is not Turkey’s best (or even only) option.

The KRG must help Ankara in that regard by doing more. Mesut Barzani’s government in Erbil needs to curb the PKK. There are means short of attacking PKK militants in their mountain hideouts (which is very hard to do anyway). Even the New York Times, which is normally quite sympathetic of the PKK, reported a few weeks ago on how PKK militants move around Northern Iraq “in full view of [the] authorities.” As the former U.S. ambassador to Ankara, Mark Parris, states, “they [the KRG] have allowed the PKK to be up there; that couldn’t have happened without their permitting them to be there.”[4] Granted, it is dangerous to mess with cunning terrorists but an all-out war in the Middle East is even more ominous. It is within Mr. Barzani’s and Iraqi President Celal Talabani’s power to stop that from happening.

It should not take too much to convince Kurdish leaders that Turkey is not seeking to occupy their lands. This is the question that one should ask: What is Turkey going to do with the Kurdish part of Iraq? What real use does it have for Turkey? None! Turkey’s only problem with the KRG is that it is allowing the PKK to use its territory to launch attacks against Turkish people (again, most of PKK’s victims are Kurds on the Turkish side of the border).

Avoiding a Cataclysmic Mistake

Since the end of Turkey’s War of Independence in 1922, Turkish Armed Forces has always prided itself for following Atatürk’s guiding principle on military affairs: “Unless it is absolutely necessary, war is murder.” Turkey followed that golden rule throughout the twentieth century. Even the Cyprus operation in 1974 had originally aimed at reversing a coup d’etat against the Greek Cypriot President Makarios III.

Similarly, since the end of the Cold War, the Turkish military assumed peacemaking and peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, the West Bank, and Lebanon. The Turkish military, then, has always perceived itself as an instrument of peace, not war.

Fighting the PKK on its own terms in Northern Iraq will be bloody, painful, and will constitute a gross infringement on the above-stated principle, which the Turkish army has loyally followed. A war that entails unspeakable civilian suffering is not what Turkey should choose. The United States made that mistake in Iraq; there is no reason why Turkey should repeat it.

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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia and a regular contributor to the Journal of Turkish Weekly.

E-mail: kayaoglu@virginia.edu