Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 48
plan represented an important step toward Kurdish
autonomy in Syria, something Syrian Kurds aspire
to. Sinem Khalil, a member of the Kurdish Supreme
Committee, said in their first meeting on 24 July
2012 that the Kurdish people in Syria were thirsty
for unity that would help achieve their aspirations,
and that was their main focus at the time.15 He also
said he believed their Kurdish dream (autonomy)
was coming true.
Kurds in Turkey are closely following these
developments. Leyla Zana, a Kurdish member of
the Turkish parliament, has called on Kurds from
Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria to unite and to strive
together for their causes, saying that after centuries,
a gate for freedom has been opened for the Kurdish
people.16 Separately, PKK leader Murat Karayılan
said in a 2012 interview with an English-language
newspaper in Erbil that Kurds seeing other federal
systems springing up around the world feel they
have the right to establish a state; they consider
themselves a nation.17
Turkey has a painful history
with the Kurdish separatist
movement PKK. In this conflict,
almost 40,000 lives have been
lost over the last 30 years.
Thus, a new Kurdish region is taking shape. The
Kurdistan Tribune, a platform for Kurdish news and
opinion with an optimistic view for Kurdistan, claims,
“What the Kurds are doing now in the west [Syria]
lays the basis for a semi-autonomous region which
can link with her sister in the south of Kurdistan
[Iraq] ... This is not a dream; this can become a reality.”18 These statements reflect that the Kurds view
autonomy as the second piece of the greater Kurdistan
project, which Turkey considers a threat to its territorial integrity. A Kurdish National Conference, the
first of its kind, had been planned for November 2013
but was postponed indefinitely for political reasons.
The group had aimed to gather all Kurdish political
groups to set a roadmap for the Middle East’s Kurds.
46
Another Northern Iraq? The PKK
Issue
Turkey has a painful history with the Kurdish
separatist movement PKK. In this conflict, almost
40,000 lives have been lost over the last 30 years.
Currently, there is an ongoing dialogue in place to
end the armed violence and get the PKK to lay down
its arms, a precarious process with high hopes but
also high risk. In the early 1990s, the PKK had found
a safe haven in the Qandil Mountains of northern
Iraq, which it used as a base to launch attacks on
Turkey. Ankara is concerned that, if the peace process
fails, the group could exploit the chaos in Syria to
expand its base and influence. The PYD’s control
over much of the Syrian side of the Turkey-Syria
border allows the PKK a much larger space for its
organization and operations, which strengthens the
PKK’s position in Turkey.
In fact, when the Syrian crisis first emerged,
clashes between the Turkish army and PKK militants
intensified. During the last two weeks of July 2012,
the PKK waged one of their fiercest battles in recent
years against the Turkish army. Army forces fought
the PKK using helicopters and fighter jets in the
mountainous terrain close to the town of Şemdinli
in southeastern Turkey. The ongoing peace negotiations have stopped the fighting and attacks, but from
the Turkish military’s point of view, northern Syria
is another northern Iraq, another potential PKK
strongh