Erdogan plays Palestinian saviour, but what about the Kurds?

Erdogan plays Palestinian saviour, but what about the Kurds?

Turkey's prime minister is championing Abbas's UN appeal – yet still has to resolve the Kurdish issue back home

Turkey's noisy championing of Palestinian rights, a source of growing friction with the US and Israel, jars uncomfortably with Ankara's treatment of its own disadvantaged and stateless minority – the Kurds. Bomb attacks this week in Ankara, blamed on Kurdish PKK militants, highlight the deteriorating internal security situation and stoke fears that Turkey's troubles could spill over into Syria and Iraq, further aggravating Arab spring instability.

Apparently oblivious to possible double standards, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, has been in voluble form of late. His tour last week of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia played upon a common theme – Turkey's support for the justified aspirations of oppressed peoples everywhere. Erdogan's long-running feud with Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians reached new heights when he warned the Turkish navy might escort future relief flotillas to Gaza.

Alarmed at the implications for US interests, Barack Obama took time at the UN in New York on Tuesday to talk Erdogan down, stressing their shared interest in peaceful, negotiated outcomes in Palestine, Syria and elsewhere. Turkey is a leading backer of President Mahmoud Abbas's bid for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood. Obama, flanked by Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu, desperately hopes to shove this uncomfortable issue back in the freezer.

The US also wants to head off renewed ground incursions targeting PKK bases in Iraq, as threatened last week by a senior Turkish minister, given obvious security concerns surrounding the US troop withdrawal. Rising tensions over disputed gas fields off Cyprus are adding to Washington's worries at a time when, to put it mildly, the Greek government and its Greek Cypriot allies are not in the best shape.

Unfortunately for the majority of Turkey's Kurds who want a peaceful settlement, one consequence of resulting American appeasement of Ankara is likely to be ever closer US co-operation with Turkey's escalating military operations against the PKK. Like the EU, the US lists the PKK as a terrorist organisation, a categorisation passionately disputed by the main Kurdish national party, the BDP, which describes it as a "resistance" group. Washington already provides military satellite intelligence to Ankara. Now there is renewed talk of a Turkish base for US Predator drones, which the Turks want to target the PKK inside Iraq.

Erdogan has made important efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue, notably via the so-called "democratic opening" that included talks with the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan. For their part, the PKK and Kurdish political parties have renounced their former separatist agenda. But gains have been limited, hardliners on both sides have obstructed the process, and Erdogan's attention has shifted to the wider stage of Arab emancipation and the "re-Ottomanisation", as some call it, of the Middle East. For him, it seems, the role of grand regional rainmaker is more alluring than that of down-home, hard-slog peacemaker.

The Kurdish parties are still trying to get his attention. The BDP's woefully under-reported congress in Ankara earlier this month produced an eight-point protocol or "road map" for what it called a democratic resolution; and it proposed resumed talks as a matter of urgency. "All identities, cultures, languages and religions must be protected by the constitution. As a basic principle there must be a constitutional nationality that is not founded on ethnicity," it said.

Silav û Rêz
Azad

Re: Erdogan plays Palestinian saviour, but what about the Kurds?

The Guardian- Zeitung:
Erdogan spielt palästinensischen Retter, aber was ist mit den Kurden?
Es ist Zeit, dass Erdogan aufhört palästinensischen Retter zu spielen, er soll zuerst die Probleme in der Türkei lösen.

Die Türkei tut so als würden die sich für die Rechte der Palästinenser sowie für die Reche und Bestrebungen aller unterdrückten Völker auf der Welt (siehe Erdogans Tour letzte Woche in Ägypten, Libyen und Tunesien) unterstützen und einsetzen und unterdrücken gleichzeitig die Kurden.

Die Kurden wollen das ihre Idendität, Sprache, Kultur, Religion durch Verfassung geschützt wird. Das Recht auf Muttersprache, Autonomie etc. sind keine weltbewegende/erderschütternde oder revolutionäre Forderung.

Sicherlich sind das alles nicht so schwer durchzuführen, es ist Zeit, dass Erdogan aufhört palästinensischen Retter zu spielen, er soll zuerst die Probleme in der Türkei lösen.