Turkey's Carrot & Stick Approach to the PKK - December 2007

By Frank Hyland

Turkey's Carrot & Stick Approach to the PKK - December 2007

After months of warnings, reconnaissance flights, cross-border artillery barrages, and forays by smaller numbers of ground troops, Turkey's air forces carried out a bombing attack on the headquarters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) early on December 16th. The raid represents the "stick" side of the two-pronged Turkish policy effort mounted in recent weeks, an effort that holds the promise of success after several years of enduring PKK attacks that have had mounting success.
Underscoring the coordinated nature of the effort, the "carrot" side of the policy - Turkey's Repentance Law - was reiterated little more than a day earlier by the Speaker of Turkey's Parliament. Article 221 of the Turkish Penal Code, also known as "return home law," offers PKK members the possibility of returning to their villages in Turkey rather than continuing to take up arms for the PKK.
The outlines of the policy and several coincident events should leave the PKK with no doubt that its ongoing attacks on Turkey and Turkish troops, which had been demonstrating greater success with the increased use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) this year, will see their efforts diminish in coming years.

First, Turkey waited semi-patiently until most PKK members had likely made their way back to their base in the Qandil Mt. redoubt in NE Iraq. Then, the attack by some 50 Turkish aircraft was carried out in the middle of the night. The level of precision necessary to carry out attacks in this type of terrain in the middle of the night was clear evidence that the promise of US-supplied intelligence on PKK locations and movements has been kept. Underscoring that point, the Chief of the Turkish General Staff stated the next day that the US had, indeed, supplied Turkey with targeting information and had opened the airspace over Northern Iraq to Turkish aircraft. In what the PKK should read as an ominous addendum, General Buyukanit said that the PKK’s camps “are like the 'Big Brother' TV show under our constant surveillance." If the PKK leadership entertains even a shred of hope that the US might restrain Turkish military operations, they were laid to rest by the Deputy Spokesman of the US State Department, quoted as saying on the 17th that the US concern was that Turkey’s military hit only PKK targets and avoid civilian casualties.
This isn’t the end, but it is the beginning of the end - the diehard generation now ruling the PKK has had no alternate existence and has no possibility of an alternate existence in the future except to be hunted until captured or killed.
Future military strikes, conducted with the precision demonstrated on the 16th will force the PKK to disperse, reducing the effectiveness of their training and rest areas between attacks as has been the case; the Qandil Mts area, long thought to be perhaps the top no-go area in the world, is now on notice, day or night, that it is subject to pinpoint bombing.
Younger PKK members, no longer subjected to the harsh training regimen (including death) and seeing the possibility of another life beginning with the Repentance Law, will begin falling away or never joining. If Turkey will work with Iraq to grant the Kurds more autonomy the Pesh Merga represents another potential path for Kurdish youth, as does membership in Turkey’s village guards. Finally, “attacking” the PKK in other than military ways - publicizing the PKK’s drug operations and human trafficking operations, working against the PKK diplomatically in W. Europe, going after PKK financing, will bring about the end of the PKK much faster than trying to do it with military force alone - emulating the successes achieved by the US in the Global War on Terror.

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