.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
News outlets have consistently reported developments in Afghanistan and Iraq since US-led forces invaded to topple the Taliban and the government of Saddam Hussein respectively for the past few years.
.
The media has also closely monitored the movements of Al-Qaeda and endlessly speculated on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden, but another war, which has largely escaped the attention of the American press, may be a larger long-term threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a conflict nearly a century old, and its contestants remain as determined as ever to win by military means.
.
In Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq, a low-intensity struggle between Kurdish nationalists and the government of Turkey still continues unabated and has claimed the lives of 40,000 people since 1984. As the case in most conflicts, the Turkish-Kurd conflict has deep historical roots.
.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, World War I came to an end. Europe was in utter ruins, and the once great Ottoman Empire had collapsed. Statesmen from the Triple Entente (Britain, France and Italy - Russia had been taken over by Lenin and the Bolsheviks) had to redraw large parts of the European map in an attempt to accommodate all the ethnic and territorial claims from peoples residing in the former Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman territories. According to one provision in the Treaty of Sevres (1920), the Kurds were to be given their own state - Kurdistan. Its borders were configured on paper to include significant sections of what is now Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq.
.
Turkish nationalists and their lionized leader, Kemal Ataturk, vociferously denounced Kurdish claims and set out to wage a campaign to take all of Anatolia (Asia Minor) by diplomacy and force. Only three years after the Treaty of Sevres (1920), European statesmen, partially responding to the rise of the Turkish state, wholly reneged on the creation of Kurdistan in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). Why had the Allied Powers reversed course? Most likely, they perceived Turkish superiority in Anatolia to be inevitable, and Kurdistan was sacrificed in part to gain a potential alliance with the new Turkish state and obtain a Turkish concession to protect the minority Greek population inside its borders. By the creation and subsequent denial of a Kurdish nation-state, the seeds had been sown for decades of regional strife.
.
In 1974, the tension between Turks and Kurds reached new heights with the creation of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) headed by Abdullah Ocalan. Similar to Castro in Cuba and Gaddafi in Libya, Ocalan adopted a Marxist-Leninist program to gain the backing of the Soviet Union for his nationalist cause. Ocalan and his followers employed indiscriminate violence, labeled as 'terrorism' by the West, to achieve political objectives, and the Turks responded with several heavy-handed, ethically-questionable military campaigns of their own. Ocalan was finally captured in 1999, and he asked his followers in the PKK to end all violent attacks. From his statement, a relative period of peace ensued - until the US invasion of Iraq four years later on 20 March 2003.
.
Iraq, which held and contains a large population of Kurds in the northern area bordering Turkey, collapsed under the might of the invasion by May. After years of brutal and occasionally murderous oppression under Saddam Hussein, many Iraqi Kurds understandably called for independence - or the revival of 'Kurdistan'. Turkey, fiercely protective of its sovereignty and fearful of a Kurdish movement on both sides of the Turko-Iraqi border in a drive to self-determination, denounced any attempt to carve out a new nation from its territory as awarded by the Treaty of Lausanne.
.
Due to intransigence on both sides, some factions of the PKK returned to violence and the Turks responded in kind.
.
The PKK-Turkish war continues. Last week, Turkey conducted an airstrike on Kurdish rebels after claiming that the PKK had been responsible for a terrorist bombing in Istanbul. Alarmingly, these events seem to be virtually oblivious to the State Department and the Bush administration. If American diplomats are in the process of diffusing the potential crisis, it is certainly not apparent in the actions or words of the current government.
.
Considering that a full-scale conflict between the Turks and the Kurds could lead to the disintegration of Iraq and a wider war in the Middle East, the latest outbreak of violence between these longtime combatants should raise enough eyebrows across for world for statesmen to call for a cease-fire and a substantive round of diplomacy.
.
Indeed, history demands a new intervention of peacemaking.
.
J Roquen
.
For the latest developments on the alleged PKK involvement behind the recent bomb set-off in Istanbul, see the following BBC News link:
.