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Written by James M. Dorsey
US and European acquiescence in Turkey’s long-standing refusal to honour Kurdish ethnic, cultural, and political rights has come home to roost with Turkish opposition to Finnish and Swedish NATO membership.
The opposition has sparked debates about Turkey’s controversial place in the North Atlantic defense alliance.
Turkey’s detractors point to its problematic military intervention in Syria, relations with Russia, refusal to sanction Moscow, and alleged fuelling of tension in the eastern Mediterranean, calling the country’s NATO membership into question.
Its defenders note that Turkey, NATO’s second-largest standing military, is key to maintaining the alliance’s southern flank. Also, Turkey’s geography, population size, economy, military power, and cultural links to a Turkic world make it a critical link between Europe and Asia. In addition, Turkish drones have been vital in Ukraine’s war with Russia, while Turkey has been a mediator in the conflict, albeit with limited success.
Kurdish rights hardly figure in the debates, and if they do, only as a prop for taking Turkey to task for its slide into authoritarianism.
An ethnic group spread across southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northern Syria, and western Iran, Kurds are seen at best as assets in the fight against the Islamic State and at worst a threat to Turkish security and territorial integrity. Turkey’s estimated 16 million Kurds account for up to 20 per cent of the country’s population.
Turkey, or Turkiye as it wants to be known going forward, has used the security argument to make its agreement to Swedish and Finnish NATO membership dependent on the two Nordic countries effectively accepting its definition of terrorism as including any national expression of Kurdish identity.
Turkey has demanded that Sweden and Finland extradite 33 people, some of whom are Swedish or Finnish nationals, because of their alleged support for the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) or exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds responsible for a failed military coup in 2016.
Turkey accuses the two Nordic countries of allowing the PKK to organize on their territory. Alongside the United States and the European Union, Turkey has designated the PKK as a terrorist organisation. The PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkey in which tens of thousands have been killed.
Turkey also wants Sweden and Finland to support its military operation against the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a US-backed Syrian Kurdish group that played a crucial role in defeating the Islamic State. Turkey asserts that the YPG is an extension of the PKK.
Mr. Erdogan recently announced that Turkey would launch a new military operation to extend the Turkish armed forces’ areas of control in Syria to a 30-kilometer swath of land along the two countries shared border. The offensive would target the YPG in the towns of Tel Rifaat and Manbij and possibly Kobani, Ain Issa, and Tell Tamer.
Past US and European failure to stand up for Kurdish rights, as part of Turkey’s need to meet the criteria for NATO membership that include “fair treatment of minority populations,” has complicated the fight against the Islamic State, stymied Kurdish aspirations beyond Turkey’s borders and enabled repression of Kurdish rights in Turkey.
More immediately, the failure to hold Turkey accountable for its repression of Kurdish ethnic and political rights within the framework of the Turkish state has enabled Ankara to establish Turkish policies as a condition for NATO membership even if they violate NATO membership criteria.
Those policies include defining the peaceful expression of Kurdish identity as terrorism and the rolling back of Kurdish language and cultural rights since the collapse in 2015 of peace talks with the PKK. Turkey lifted the ban on Kurdish languages and the word Kurd in 1991. Until then, Kurds were referred to as ‘mountain Turks.’
The governor of the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir, widely seen as a hub of Kurdish cultural and political activity, forced this writer under treat of death to leave the region for using the word Kurd rather than mountain Turk in interviews in the 1980s.
Kurdish language programs in universities have dwindled in recent years amid administrative hurdles, while Kurdish parents complain of pressure not to enroll their children in elective Kurdish courses.
Most Kurdish-language services and activities created by local administrations were terminated by government-appointed trustees who replaced dozens of Kurdish mayors ousted by Ankara for alleged links to the PKK. Many of the ousted mayors and other leading Kurdish politicians remain behind bars.
The failure to take Turkey to task early on takes on added significance at a time when NATO casts the war in Ukraine as a battle of values and of democracy versus autocracy that will shape the contours of a 21st-century world order.
For his part, US President Joe Biden has sought to regain the moral high ground in the wake of the Trump presidency that broke with American liberalism by declaring “America is back” in the struggle for democratic and human rights.
Mr. Biden and Europe’s problem is that their credibility rides on cleaning up at home and ensuring that they are seen as sincere rather than hypocritical.
That’s a tall order amid assertions of structural racism on both sides of the Atlantic; controversy over gun ownership in the United States; preferential arrangements for Ukrainian refugees as opposed to non-Europeans and non-whites fleeing war, persecution, and destruction; and foreign policies that treat violations of human and political rights differently depending on who commits them.
The obvious place to start is at home. Kurds could be another starting point, with Finnish and Swedish NATO membership on the front burner. Meeting Turkish demands regarding perpetrators of political violence is one thing; acquiescing in the criminalization of legitimate Kurdish political and cultural expression is another.
That may be a tough bargain to drive home in Ankara. However, it would offer a compromise formula that could serve everyone’s interest and help Turkey solve a problem that promises to be one of the Middle East’s multiple exploding powder kegs.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, a Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
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No “double standards” with Russia?…
Tell that to the first Russian Aerospace pilots shot down in the beginning stages of the war in Syria and the countless thousands that have died wearing Russian uniforms since 2015… As well as the Turkish arms and mercs in Ukraine that certainly aren’t fighting on the side of Russia!?…
Then as the reward for killing Russians in Syria… Putin gifts them with SA-400s???…
The contradictions DO abound!…
P.$.
Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov RIP!…
Turks (aka Otoman Empire or Anciente Constantinopla) is in a very odd geopolitic zone. You have Russia in the north, also in the south Syria Israel ( Russia / USA), west (Greece EU Germany EU / USA) and the east Iran Iraq (Persia) . If I was Turkey I probably would do the same as Erdogan but would use more diplomacy and soft power to try to adjust better Turkey into the zone. Turkey fears Russia and its not without reasson. Turkey is safe inside NATO but their domestic population and mafia’s stills fear Russia thats why they killed the ambassador). Turkey is trying to haves more gains from NATO, and would not permit Sweden or Finland (nordics countries) join NATO without taking advantage from, they haves threats from every direction… Mediterranean sea is the only safe neighboor they had. So, expect Turkey would play his weak Poker Hand the Best they can in order to exist as a tiny Empire in the XXI Century of Big Powers Competition.
stupid Oregon hillbilly nazi cannot comprehend double standards—you morons are farcical
halfwit nazi cannot comprehend standards
Tell that to the Russian Ambassador to Tukey Andrei Karlov’s family and the Russian servicemen who have given their lives to their Country in Syria and now Ukraine!…
Be careful who you call a traitor!… I see that SouthFront removed my initial comment which is telling
That shit-eater russian troll altering his nick continously removed your comment.He finally achieved his goal 😀.Pathetic,desperate looser all day long reading peoples post,answering everyone(all of his posts worthless shit btw) is only thing he does.His way of life.Sad,he can rest in piss with his whore mother now.
If double standards ever haunted their puppet masters they would all be long ago criminally insane. Let’s see should we start with the “most bloodthirsty form of government the world has ever seen” according to Ben Franklin, who was there in Paris witnessing it first hand? Or should we go bqck to the beginning? The Spanish Inquisition?
Turkey refuses NATO admission to terrorist vassals, Sweden Finland—so much for NATO unity decaying failing angloshere/nato isolated from the civilized world
A wanderng nomadic people who did not have a nation to themselves but who instead pastured their animals, wandering from country to country, the Kurds were kindly given Syrian citizenship but instead of integrating, becoming part of Syria and contributing to the nation, they instead want to steal Syrian lands for themselves, lands with oil wealth. Is it any wonder that citizens of nations which adopted the Kurds are against these people who are ingrates, who steal, who do not integrate and contribute to the nations where they were given citizenship? Why should Kurds steal other nations resource rich parts for themselves, carve out parts of other peoples’ nations for their own use and rule over those who were kind to them? The US sets these people against those with whom they live, promising them prosperity higher than others living in the same nations. Russia, it was Syrian girl who explained to me about the Kurds. Nothing has challenged what she told me. Do not stand up for these people but throw them back onto the US who made all of the promises to them, the US made Kurds promises that they would own the richest parts of the nations where they were welcomed. Note that the US promised the Kurds parts of Iraq and Syria, the US promised the Kurds resource rich lands which neither of them had any right to own. Kurds, once given citizenship of a nation are like the birds called cuckoos who shove the other chicks or eggs out of the nest. Please Russia, there are reasons that the US uses Kurds to further their evil agendas and there are reasons that nations which host the Kurds have bad blood between them and these people. Russia please STOP defending these Kurds. Make the US leave and take these proxies of theirs with them. Stand closer to Turkey and stop challenging them re their Kurd problem. The Kurds do not merit your sympathy to the extent to which you give it to them.
The 40million Kurds must have an independent Kurdistan. The Walachs became an independent Romania, Kosovo and other small countries too. The problem is the Oil region in Syria is kurdish, and in Iran too.
It is not exactly like that. You mean PKK/YPG not Kurds in general. There are many Kurdish groups in all 4 countries who support Erdogan and fight against PKK.
You can always tell when “they” are close by because they bring their double standards with them. And self contradictions. And their projection.
Russia, Turkey hates the Kurds and they have REASON for it. Stop defending these Kurds who are the lackeys of the US. The Kurds always betray the otyher peoples of the nations which accepted this nomadic people and gave them citizenship. The US promises them that they will grab the resources and rule over those who allowed them in. The Christians in Iraq, living under Kurdish rule suffered under their rulership. Erdo really has a point about these Kurds, so stop allowing the Kurds to drive such a wedge between you and Turkey.
moron anglos and Scandinavians cannot think dialectically—observed by many including Kierkegaard—“take paradox away from a thinker and you have a poor professor”….many of the moron oregun hillbillies cannot comprehend this. the impoverished language ensures their impoverished thinking….kurds have been duplicitous throughout history—they have no allies except for amerikant nazis
Both Soviet Union and Russia have supported Kurdish separatists. This is fact.
YPG has not been “instrumental” in defeating ISIS, nor the US & Coalition. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi PMFs and Syrians have that glorious honour. What the Kurds have been instrumental in doing is providing the US/Israel a foothold in keeping the festering insurgency alive in Syria. And while I am not a fan of Türkiye, as long as they remain a thorn in the side of the Empire of Lies, the better!
Treat them like the US treats al quaida just the other way around. Arm them as long as they attack the turks and bomb them when they dare to attack the syrian army. Dont forget bayraktar and other stuff the turks deliver to ukraine for them to kill russians.
Kurds and Turks murdered the christians in the ottoman empire as brothers. Then they got into an argument over who get’s the real estate off the murdered. They both deserve each other.
Yes
Turkey is pulling both Russia and the USA by their noses. The only country except for Germany that ever commited a genocide, over Armenians, and it doesn’t even have to apologize every year to their victims as Germans routinely do.
halfwit nazis cannot comprehend geopolitics—Turkey Russia now more aligned than turkey is w nato
I am a Finn and our sold out globalist politicians were put in their places by CIA, f. ex. the president now. Our prime minister looks like a swedish reality-tv royal. Non of this, or the 1994 EU membership was legal. In Finland, less babies are born now than in the notorious hunger years of the 1850’s. We have a criminal government. So, could they give in to Turkey? The lifting of the arms embargo they already talked about in public, but the extradition of Kurds is more difficult. It might happen, but in secrecy. The media athmosphere here..well, we dont have free media.
This is what is happening in Romania…the total takeover by the globalists…the media and the political class promote Romanianphobia and idolization of what is not Romanian. They systematically destroy with a sick pleasure everything related to Romanian culture, religion, history, language and (Christian-Orthodox) traditions.
The Kurds were a nomadic people and wandered through many nations. Syria allowed them citizenship as did Iraq and Turkey. These Kurds want to carve out the best portions of these nations for themselves, particularly those richest in natural resources such as oil. Americans want to help them to do it so as to get proxy ownership of said resources. I can understand why nobody would get along with the Kurds. The Russians defence of the Kurds against Turkey, that is much more difficult to get.