How the Biden presidency might impact Turkey’s Kurdish problem

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Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) hold a picture of jailed former party leader Selahattin Demirtas as they attend a 'Peace and Justice' rally in Istanbul on February 3, 2019. (AFP file photo)
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The 2015 military offensive in the Kurdish-majority regions was part of Erdogan’s drive to rally support behind his party, a policy he continued four years later with an all-out assault on Kurds in northeastern Syria, below. AFP
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A Syrian Kurdish woman joins a demonstration in Hasakeh province on June 27, 2020, to protest Turkish deadly offensives in the northeastern areas of the country. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 24 May 2023
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How the Biden presidency might impact Turkey’s Kurdish problem

  • White House not expected to stay silent as Turkish Kurds’ rights are violated and their Syrian and Iraqi brethren are targeted
  • Biden has openly called Erdogan an autocrat, indicating he may be far less accommodating of Turkish president’s whims

MISSOURI, US: A good many Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere will be celebrating the departure of US President Donald Trump when he leaves office on Jan. 20. 

Those in Iraq will remember when his administration hung them out to dry during their Sept. 2017 independence referendum, allowing Iran, Baghdad and Shiite militias to launch punitive attacks, while Turkey threatened to blockade them. 

Turkey, meanwhile, had little reason to fear American outcry over its human rights violations as it arrested and jailed thousands of pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) activists and their elected representatives.

And in case this did not prove sufficiently disappointing for the Kurds, Trump withdrew US troops from the Turkish border in northeastern Syria in October 2019, giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade the Kurdish enclaves there and ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands from the area. 

Kurdish forces in Syria, who had just concluded the successful ground campaign against Daesh, found themselves betrayed by a callous and unpredictable American administration. Just days before Trump greenlit the Turkish operation in a phone call with Erdogan, the Americans had convinced the Syrian Kurds to remove their fortifications near the Turkish border to “reassure Turkey.”

Most Kurds therefore look forward to President-elect Joe Biden taking over in Washington. In Turkey, from which roughly half the world’s Kurdish population hails, many hope the new Biden administration will pressure Ankara to cease its military campaigns and return to the negotiating table with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 




In this April 28, 2016 photo, then US Vice President Joe Biden talks to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani (R) during his visit to the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Turkish Kurds are hoping to get help from the US, now that Biden has been elected president. (AFP file photo)

At the very least, they hope a Biden-led administration will not remain silent as Erdogan’s government tramples upon human rights in Turkey and launches military strikes against Kurds in Syria and Iraq as well. 

Judging by the record of the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice-president, Kurds may expect some improvements over Trump. But they should also not raise their hopes too high.

One need only recall how Erdogan’s government abandoned the Kurdish peace process in 2015, when the Obama administration was still in power. At that time, the HDP’s improved electoral showing in the summer of 2015 cost Erdogan his majority in parliament. He responded by making sure no government could be formed following the June election, allowing him to call a redo election for November.

Between June and November, his government abandoned talks with the Kurds and resumed the war against the PKK. The resulting “rally around the flag” effect saw Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) improve its showing in November, boosted further by the Turkish army siege of entire Kurdish cities, which in effect disenfranchised them.

Following the November 2015 vote, Erdogan formed a new government with the far-right and virulently anti-Kurdish National Action Party (MHP).

The militarization of Ankara’s approach to its “Kurdish problem” increased even further under the AKP-MHP partnership. In 2015 and 2016, whole city blocks in majority Kurdish cities of southeastern Turkey were razed to the ground as part of the counterinsurgency campaign. In the town of Cizre, the army burned Kurdish civilians alive while they hid in a basement. 




Mourners lower into a grave the coffin of Kurdish leader Mehmet Tekin, 38, who was killed at his home in Cizre by Turkish troops, during his funeral in Sirnak on Decembe​​​​​r 23, 2015. (AFP file photo)

In Sirnak, footage emerged of Turkish forces dragging the body of a well-known Kurdish filmmaker behind their armored vehicle. In Nusaybin, MHP parliamentarians called for the razing of the entire city.  

Urban warfare is never pretty, of course, and the PKK held part of the blame for the destruction as a result of its new urban warfare strategy. Many aspects of the Erdogan government’s counterinsurgency actions of 2015 and 2016 went beyond the pale, however, and should have earned at least some rebukes from Washington.

The Obama administration stayed largely silent during this time. Policy makers in Washington had finally gained Turkish acquiescence to use NATO air bases in Turkey in their campaign against Daesh and Ankara has also promised to join the effort. 

What Obama really received from Ankara, however, were a few token Turkish airstrikes of little significance against Daesh and a rising crescendo of heavy attacks against America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. 

Erdogan’s government duly reported every cross-border strike and various incursions and invasions into Syria as “operations against terrorist organizations in Syria” — conveniently conflating Daesh and the Syrian Kurdish forces.

Turkey even employed former Daesh fighters and other Syrian radical groups among its proxy mercenaries in these operations, further aggravating Syria’s problems with militant Islamists.

INNUMBERS

  • 87 Media workers detained or imprisoned for terrorism offenses.
  • 8,500 People detained or convicted for alleged PKK ties.

The quid pro quo of this arrangement involved Washington turning a blind eye to Turkey’s human rights abuses against Kurds both in Syria and Turkey. Even Turkish airstrikes in Iraq, which at times killed Iraqi army personnel and civilians in places like Sinjar, failed to elicit any American rebukes — under Obama or Trump.

If the new Biden administration returns to the standard operating procedures of the Obama administration regarding Turkey, little may change.

Although a Biden administration would probably not callously throw erstwhile Kurdish allies in Syria or Iraq under the bus as Trump did, they might well continue to cling to false hopes of relying on Turkey to help contain radical Islamists. 

Many in Washington even think Turkey can still help the US counter Russia and Iran — never mind the mountain of evidence that Turkey works with both countries to pursue an anti-American agenda in the region.

Alternatively, Biden may prove markedly different to his incarnation as vice president. Biden knows the region well, has called Erdogan an autocrat on more than one occasion and has repeatedly shown sympathy for the Kurds and their plight in the past. 

In charge of his own administration rather than acting as an aide to Obama’s, Biden could conceivably break new ground regarding Turkey and the Kurds.

If so, he might start by pressuring Turkey to abide by human rights norms. Selahattin Demirtas, the former HDP leader and 2018 Turkish presidential hopeful, as well as tens of thousands of other political dissidents have been languishing in pre-trial detention in Turkey for years now.




In this October 8, 2020 photo, a woman and her child are seen at the Washukanni refugee camp near the town of Tuwaynah, west of Syria's northeastern city of Hasakah. The are among tens of thousands whose homes and belonging have been seized or looted since the Turkish offensive in October 2019. (AFP file photo)

In December 2020, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Demirtas’ detention is politically motivated and based on trumped-up charges and that he must be released.  

Although Turkey is a signatory to the court, it has repeatedly ignored such rulings. A more human rights-oriented administration in Washington might join the likes of France and others in pressuring Ankara on such matters.

A determined Biden administration might also try to coax or pressure Ankara back to the negotiating table with the PKK. A return to even indirect negotiations, especially if overseen by the Americans, could go a long way towards improving things in both Turkey and Syria.  

Little more than five years ago, Turkey’s southeast was quiet and Syrian Kurdish leaders were meeting as well as cooperating with Turkish officials.




Turkish ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AFP)

If Erdogan and his MHP partners nonetheless remain adamant in maintaining their internal and external wars, then Biden should look elsewhere for American partners. 

Biden said as much only last year, expressing his concern about Erdogan’s policies. “What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership ... . He (Erdogan) has to pay a price,” Biden said.

Washington should embolden Turkish opposition leaders “to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process,” he added.

This kind of language from the new Biden administration might go a long way towards changing the current policy calculus in Ankara.

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David Romano is Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University


Kurds deny torturing detainees in north Syria camps

Updated 03 May 2024
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Kurds deny torturing detainees in north Syria camps

  • Rights group alleges cruelty against Daesh militant prisoners and their families

JEDDAH: Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria on Thursday denied claims by Amnesty International that they tortured Daesh militants and their dependents detained in internment camps.
More than 56,000 prisoners with links to the Islamist militant group are still being held five years after Daesh were driven out of their last territory in Syria. They include militants locked up in prisons, and Daesh fighters’ wives and children in Al-Hol and Roj camps.
Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard said Kurdish authorities had “committed the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment, and probably committed the war crime of murder.”
The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in northeast Syria said it “respects its obligations to prevent the violation of its laws, which prohibit such illegal acts, and adheres to international law.”

Any such crimes that may have been perpetrated were “individual acts,” it said, and asked Amnesty to provide it with any evidence of wrongdoing by its security forces and affiliates.

“We are open to cooperating with Amnesty International regarding its proposed recommendations, which require concerted regional and international efforts,” it said.
Kurdish authorities said they had repeatedly asked the international community for help in managing the camps, which required “huge financial resources.”

Al-Hol is the largest internment camp in northeast Syria, with more than 43,000 detainees from 47 countries, most of them women and children related to Daesh fighters.


Hamas is sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks in the latest sign of progress

Updated 03 May 2024
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Hamas is sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks in the latest sign of progress

  • US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas a proposal -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — that sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages

BEIRUT: Hamas said Thursday that it was sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks, in a new sign of progress in attempts by international mediators to hammer out an agreement between Israel and the militant group to end the war in Gaza.

After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the ceasefire efforts appear to have reached a critical stage, with Egyptian and American mediators reporting signs of compromise in recent days. But chances for the deal remain entangled with the key question of whether Israel will accept an end to the war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas.
The stakes in the ceasefire negotiations were made clear in a new UN report that said if the Israel-Hamas war stops today, it will still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed by nearly seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza. It warned that the impact of the damage to the economy will set back development for generations and will only get worse with every month fighting continues.
The proposal that US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages, but also negotiations over a “permanent calm” that includes some sort of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to an Egyptian official. Hamas is seeking guarantees for a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end to the war.
Hamas officials have sent mixed signals about the proposal in recent days. But on Thursday, its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a statement that he had spoken to Egypt’s intelligence chief and “stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the ceasefire proposal.”
The statement said that Hamas negotiators would travel to Cairo “to complete the ongoing discussions with the aim of working forward for an agreement.” Haniyeh said he had also spoken to the prime minister of Qatar, another key mediator in the process.
The brokers are hopeful that the deal will bring an end to a conflict that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, caused widespread destruction and plunged the territory into a humanitarian crisis. They also hope a deal will avert an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought shelter after fleeing battle zones elsewhere in the territory.
If Israel does agree to end the war in return for a full hostage release, it would be a major turnaround. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack stunned Israel, its leaders have vowed not to stop their bombardment and ground offensives until the militant group is destroyed. They also say Israel must keep a military presence in Gaza and security control after the war to ensure Hamas doesn’t rebuild.
Publicly at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that is the only acceptable endgame.
He has vowed that even if a ceasefire is reached, Israel will eventually attack Rafah, which he says is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza. He repeated his determination to do so in talks Wednesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel on a regional tour to push the deal through.
The agreement’s immediate fate hinges on whether Hamas will accept uncertainty over the final phases to bring the initial six-week pause in fighting — and at least postpone what it is feared would be a devastating assault on Rafah.
Egypt has been privately assuring Hamas that the deal will mean a total end to the war. But the Egyptian official said Hamas says the text’s language is too vague and wants it to specify a complete Israeli pullout from all of Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations.
On Wednesday evening, however, the news looked less positive as Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official, expressed skepticism, saying the group’s initial position was “negative.” Speaking to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, he said that talks were still ongoing but would stop if Israel invades Rafah.
Blinken hiked up pressure on Hamas to accept, saying Israel had made “very important” compromises.
“There’s no time for further haggling. The deal is there,” Blinken said Wednesday before leaving for the US
An Israeli airstrike, meanwhile, killed at least five people, including a child, in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. The bodies were seen and counted by Associated Press journalists at a hospital.
The war broke out on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants broke into southern Israel and killed over 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, taking around 250 others hostage, some released during a ceasefire on November.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Hamas is believed to still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster, with several hundred thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the UN More than 80 percent of the population has been driven from their homes.
The “productive basis of the economy has been destroyed” and poverty is rising sharply among Palestinians, according to the report released Thursday by the United Nations Development Program and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
It said that in 2024, the entire Palestinian economy — including both Gaza and the West Bank -– has so far contracted 25.8 percent. If the war continues, the loss will reach a “staggering” 29 percent by July, it said. The West Bank economy has been hit by Israel’s decision to cancel the work permits for tens of thousands of laborers who depended on jobs inside Israel.
“These new figures warn that the suffering in Gaza will not end when the war does,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. He warned of a “serious development crisis that jeopardizes the future of generations to come.”
 


Syria says Israeli strike outside Damascus injures eight troops

Updated 03 May 2024
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Syria says Israeli strike outside Damascus injures eight troops

  • A security source said the strike hit a building operated by government forces
  • Defense ministry acknowledged only that the strike caused some material damage

An Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Damascus injured eight Syrian military personnel late on Thursday, the Syrian defense ministry said, the latest such attack amid the war in Gaza.

The Israeli strike, launched from the occupied Golan Heights toward “one of the sites in the vicinity of Damascus,” caused some material damage, the Syrian defense ministry said in a statement.
The strike hit a building operated by Syrian security forces, a security source in the alliance backing Syria’s government earlier told Reuters.
The Israeli military said it does not comment on reports in the foreign media.
Israel has for years been striking Iran-linked targets in Syria and has stepped up its campaign in the war-torn country since Oct. 7, when Iran-backed Palestinian militants Hamas crossed into Israeli territory in an attack that left 1,200 people dead and led to more than 250 taken hostage.
Israel responded with a land, air and sea assault on the Gaza Strip, escalated strikes on Syria and exchanged fire with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah across Lebanon’s southern border.
The security source said the location struck in Syria on Thursday sat just south of the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine, where Hezbollah and Iranian forces are entrenched.
But the source said the site struck was not operated by Iranian units or Hezbollah.


Turkiye halts all trade with Israel, cites worsening Palestinian situation

Updated 02 May 2024
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Turkiye halts all trade with Israel, cites worsening Palestinian situation

  • Turkiye’s trade ministry: ‘Export and import transactions related to Israel have been stopped, covering all products’
  • Israel’s FM Israel Katz said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was breaking agreements by blocking ports to Israeli imports and exports

ANKARA: Turkiye stopped all exports and imports to and from Israel as of Thursday, the Turkish trade ministry said, citing the “worsening humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories.
“Export and import transactions related to Israel have been stopped, covering all products,” Turkiye’s trade ministry said in a statement.
“Turkiye will strictly and decisively implement these new measures until the Israeli Government allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
The two countries had a trade volume of $6.8 billion in 2023.
Turkiye last month imposed trade restrictions on Israel over what it said was Israel’s refusal to allow Ankara to take part in aid air-drop operations for Gaza and its offensive on the enclave.
Earlier on Thursday, Israel’s foreign minister said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was breaking agreements by blocking ports to Israeli imports and exports.
“This is how a dictator behaves, disregarding the interests of the Turkish people and businessmen, and ignoring international trade agreements,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X.
Katz said he instructed the foreign ministry to work to create alternatives for trade with Turkiye, focusing on local production and imports from other countries. 


Palestinian groups say top Gaza surgeon died in Israeli custody

Updated 02 May 2024
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Palestinian groups say top Gaza surgeon died in Israeli custody

  • Dr. Adnan Ahmed Atiya Al-Barsh died at the Israeli-run Ofer prison in the West Bank last month: advocacy groups
  • Latest deaths brought to 18 the number of deaths in Israeli custody since the war began on October 7, groups said

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian advocacy groups said Thursday that the head of orthopedics at Gaza’s largest hospital Al-Shifa has died in Israeli custody, alleging he had been tortured during his detention.

Dr. Adnan Ahmed Atiya Al-Barsh died at the Israeli-run Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank last month, the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Committee and the Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a joint statement.
Contacted by AFP about the reported death in custody, the Israeli army said: “We are currently not aware of such (an) incident.”
Barsh, 50, had been arrested with a group of other doctors last December at Al-Awda Hospital near the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
He died on April 19, the prisoners groups said, citing Palestinian authorities.
“His body is still being held,” they added.
The groups said they had also learnt that another prisoner from Gaza, Ismail Abdel Bari Rajab Khadir, 33, had died in Israeli custody.
Khadir’s body was returned to Gaza on Thursday, as part of a routine repatriation of detainees by the army through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the groups said, citing authorities on the Palestinian side of the crossing.
The groups said evidence suggested the two men had died “as a result of torture.”
They alleged that Barsh’s death was “part of a systematic targeting of doctors and the health system in Gaza.”
The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said the surgeon’s death amounted to “murder,” adding that it brought to 492 the number of health workers killed in Gaza since the war erupted nearly seven months ago.
The prisoners groups said the latest deaths brought to 18 the number of deaths in Israeli custody since the war began on October 7.
There have been repeated Israeli military operations around Gaza’s hospitals that have caused heavy damage.
Medical facilities are protected under international humanitarian law but the Israeli military has accused Hamas of using Gaza’s hospitals as cover for military operations, something the militant group denies.
The Al-Shifa hospital, where Barsh worked, has been reduced to rubble by repeated Israeli military operations, leaving what the World Health Organization described last month as an “empty shell.”
The war started with an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel estimates that 129 captives seized by militants during their attack remain in Gaza. The military says 34 of them are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas, has killed at least 34,596 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.