The Kurdish Winter?

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani’s most recent visit to Ankara was a highly symbolic move against the backdrop of Turkish troops being deployed to Bashiqa, an Iraqi town outside DAESH-held Mosul.

Mr. Barzani, whom the Prime Minister’s office greeted by raising the Kurdistan flag, assumed the role of a big brother during a subsequent meeting with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), where he called on the PKK to stop digging ditches in residential areas and praised the now-derailed peace process.

At a time when the PKK leadership dreams of a violently-enforced autonomy in certain towns across southeastern Turkey, the KRG president moves to consolidate his role in Kurdish politics by building stronger ties with Ankara. In the meantime, HDP leaders are busy trying to blame violent clashes and the destruction of historical artifacts in Sur, Diyarbakır on the government. Even HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş, once hailed as a prominent player in the political arena, devotes his time and energy to complaining about “closet Erdoğanists” within his party. The sad situation in which the HDP leadership finds itself shows that the PKK/HDP plan to exploit the Arab Spring for their own gain has gone bankrupt. Their greed, it would appear, has ushered in a Kurdish winter.

The Arab Spring revolutions, which kicked off in December 2010, failed to promote social welfare, political participation and freedom. Instead, the region has been faced with a humanitarian crisis, destruction and war. Over the past five years, the spring of democracy turned into a winter of civil war and sectarian clashes.

The most recent period of instability, many observers argue, presented the Kurdish nationalists with vast opportunities by weakening or destroying nation-states in the Middle East. In Iraq, the KRG has been challenging the central government on a range of issues including oil sales and military organization. In Turkey, the PKK/HDP leadership exploited a two-year peace process to assume a more prominent role in the political arena and create the infrastructure for the ongoing terror campaign across the Southeast. The June 2015 parliamentary election marked a new height for the movement. In the meanwhile, the PKK/Democratic Union Party (PYD) forces have played their cards right amidst a raging civil war in Syria. By cooperating with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and presenting themselves as the only ground force fighting DAESH, the movement formed autonomous cantons in northern Syria. The stars were all lined up until PKK militants unilaterally ended the peace process and risked everything to reignite violence against Turkey.

In retrospect, it would appear that the PKK/HDP leadership mistakenly saw themselves as regional players. They were wrong to assume that violence could help integrate northern Syria with southeastern Turkey. Ultimately, the movement did little more than to raise questions about their political power in Turkey: When the PKK militants started launching attacks against

Turkish citizens, the government put the reconciliation process on hold to keep civilians and the security forces safe. As such, the Kurdish nationalists in Turkey traded dialogue for violence. The main reason behind the PKK leadership’s ill-advised choice was their false interpretation of regional developments. It was indeed tempting for the Kurdish nationalists to receive support from Iran, Russia and the United States at the same time. Fighting DAESH, they thought, was a magic wand. In the end, they underestimated the legitimate power of politics.

At this point, the Kurdish nationalists are so obsessed with the idea of shifting national borders across the Middle East that they completely fail to grasp the power of nation-states. Ultimately, they seem to forget that Russia and the U.S. are located in another part of the world. If Kurdish nationalists don’t act more carefully, they will be crushed between Arabs, Turks and Iranians. Although Turkey remains a regional power on which Kurds can rely, Kurdish nationalists are heading for the rocks by trying to take their military campaign in Syria across the border.

In recent months, Kurdish nationalists have ruined the HDP’s potential to play a prominent role in the political arena and deprived a friendly political party of its legitimacy. Nowadays, the PKK leadership ships weapons from Kobani to Nusaybin in an effort to target Turkish citizens in urban clashes. Moving forward, Kobani will be remembered as a transit route for terrorists and weapons as opposed to a glorified resistance – hence the Kurdish winter. Would the Kurdish nationalists hear Mr. Barzani out?

[Daily Sabah, December 14, 2015]