Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is livid at the United States for allowing Kurdish forces to fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). And meanwhile, Turkey is still cracking down on the Kurds:
Turkish police detained 90 people on Tuesday over suspected links to outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels, the government said, and the main pro-Kurdish party decried the arrests as a politically motivated crackdown.
The operation across eight provinces was continuing, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The arrests come days after President Tayyip Erdogan warned he would replace any mayors elected in next year’s local elections if they were deemed to have links to terrorism.
Erdogan accuses the main pro-Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), of links to the PKK. The HDP denies this and says it is unjustly targeted by the government.
More than 140 HDP members had been detained over several days, the party said on Sunday.
Ninety-four of 102 municipalities in Kurdish-majority cities and towns are now administered by trustees, rather than their elected mayors. Authorities removed those mayors, elected in the last municipal elections in 2014, in the security crackdown that followed an attempted military coup in 2016.
“Elections are nearing,” Erdogan said at a meeting of his AK Party (AKP) over the weekend, referring to the March 2019 local vote. “If those involved with terror come out of the ballot box, we shall appoint trustees without delay.”
One prominent HDP lawmaker, Garo Paylan, said the arrests were politically motivated, and were part of the AKP’s campaign strategy for the 2019 election….
The despotic Erdogan continues to insist that the HDP, the main means of political expression for Turkey’s 15 million Kurds, is itself tied to the PKK, a Kurdish military force based in northern Iraq and southern Turkey, that once sought independence, but has changed its aim to that of autonomy. Turkey, the United States, and Europe all consider the PKK to be a “terrorist” organization, despite the fact that it has changed its tactics and now no longer includes civilians in its targets, as it once did, but concentrates on attacking the Turkish military. Meanwhile, the HDP, which is the main Kurdish political party in Turkey, had considerable electoral success in the last elections, held in 2014. Erdogan keeps claiming that there are links between that HDP and the PKK — the HDP stoutly rejects these claims — and therefore, when HDP candidates win in local elections, Erdogan has these local elected officials removed. As noted in the article above, “ninety-four of 102 municipalities in Kurdish-majority cities and towns are now administered by trustees, rather than by their elected mayors.” Kurds can vote in Turkey, but a successful HDP candidate will for now likely be replaced by the government’s “trustees.”
Erdogan’s rule has brought great economic and political difficulties to Turkey. His mass arrests of tens of thousands of Turkey’s most senior officers, politicians, journalists (Turkey has more journalists now in prison than does any other country), academics, lawyers, and businessmen, after the attempted coup of July 2016, with some jailed and fined, and with others losing their jobs or forced into exile, has weakened both Turkish society and its economy. He has managed to create a great rift with the E.U. over his rounding-up tens of thousands of his political enemies — few of them “gulenists” as he charged — after the 2016 coup. Turkey is further than ever from becoming accepted as a full member by the E.U. He has managed at the same time to create a deep diplomatic rift, which gives no sign of healing, with the United States, over his long refusal, finally reversed, to free Paster Andrew Brunson, an Evangelical Christian who lived in Turkey for two decades, ministering to a tiny church of some 25 congregants. Erdogan described Brunson, ludicrously, as a “gulenist” — that is, the follower of a Muslim cleric. But at the same time, Brunson was also accused of attempting to “Christianize” Turkey; if, after more than two decades, he managed to convert only 25 people, Erdogan had nothing to worry about.
Erdogan has further damaged relations with the United States by demanding that Fethulleh Gulen be extradited from Pennsylvania, which Washington refuses to do. Finally, in Syria, Turkish forces have been preoccupied not with fighting the Islamic State, but with fighting what has turned out to be the most effective local force against ISIS, and a close ally of the Americans, the Kurdish militias of northeast Syria. This has not been looked on kindly in Washington.
In gearing up for the next election, Erdogan has naturally tried to turn the Turkish electorate’s attention away from these political fiascos onto the putative Kurdish threat, and the supposed “terrorist” connection of the HKP to the PKK. This new emphasis unduly alarms Turkish voters about the intentions of the Kurds, even as it infuriates Kurdish ones. Erdogan must know that support for the HDP takes away, rather than gains, support for the PKK, but he doesn’t care. He refuses to distinguish them. Were he to succeed in eviscerating the electoral victories of the HDP, by deposing its successful candidates and replacing them with government-picked trustees, he would leave Turkish Kurds no other means for expressing their dissent than supporting, or even joining, the PKK. This would not be the first time that Erdogan, forever shooting himself in the foot, had brought about the very result he most feared. After the next elections 2019, he should accept the will of the voters, including Kurdish voters, and let the HDP winners take their offices. He might even preempt Kurdish demands, as a kinder, gentler Erdogan, now willing to give the Kurds more of the autonomy they seek. Why not give them, if they want, courses in the Kurdish language and culture in the schools, and increase economic support — both aid from the Turkish government and investments from abroad — equal to what non-Kurds have been receiving? This is the most sensible way to diminish support for the PKK.
Erdogan could give signs of a welcome sobriety — no more wild charges — even before the next election period. He could stop talking about a “gulenist” conspiracy that few believe in. He could welcome back those who fled the country in the aftermath of the coup, and free any so-called “gulenists” still in jail, including those many journalists whose incarceration has been so embarrassing and so shameful. He could stop threatening a pan-islamic war on Israel, and a war in Europe between the “crescent and the cross.” And he should allow Pastor Andrew Brunson to return to Turkey and his tiny congregation, and to preach his message of peace, in peace.