Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris

• 10 • Information and liaison bulletin n° 272 • November 2007
READ IN THE TURKISH PRESS :
THE KURDISH QUESTION SEEN
BY THE TURKISH GENERALS
“The Turkish Republic has been fighting
for several years against the most
important problem in its history (…)
Military intervention into Northern
Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) is again on the
agenda (…) The government has
obtained parliaments authorisation for
cross-border intervention. Operations
and fighting persist on the border.
How have the Turkish Armed Forces
conducted this struggle? How has this
Army, which is after all a regular one,
emerged victorious from this struggle
called “the asymmetrical war”? What
have been the repercussions of this
struggle on the State, on the Turkish
armed forces and on the PKK? What
have been the mistakes made by
Turkey during this period of struggle?
Does the State, does the Army, have
the same line and orientation today as
at the start of the struggle in 1984?
What are the views of the commanders
who conducted this struggle against
the PKK and led the Turkish Armed
forces? What are their views of the
future?” To try and answer these
questions, Fikret Bila, a Turkish
journalist on the daily paper Milliyet,
close to Army circles, carried
out a series of interviews with five
Turkish generals during the month
of November. The following are
extensive extracts from these interviews,
published in the Turkish
daily as from 3 November:
It was 16 September 1998. Atilla Ates,
commander in Chief of the Army had
just made his famous speech of warning
to Damascus, in Reyhanli district
of Hatay. Damascus would have to
hand Ocalan over to us of face the risk
of war with Turkey. General Aytac
Yalman, Commander of the Army’s
2nd Division, who was accompanying
Ates Pasha that day, set to work as
soon as his chief had left for Ankara …
What would have happened if Damascus
had not taken Turkey’s threats
into account? (…) We would have
entered Syria. The plans were
ready for going right through to
Damascus. We were not joking.
Had Syria not taken any measures on
its borders?
It was not in any position to stop
us. The majority of its troops were
stationed on the border with Israel
… Following the collapse of the
USSR Russia could not come to its
aid. Syria was short of spare parts:
its planes could not take off, its
tanks were pinned down. And we
were determined. I myself knew
the region very well. … (…)
It was then that the news came via the
Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak
(…). Mubarak phoned the Turkish
President, Demirel, and informed him
that Hafiz al-Assad had decided to
send Abdullah Ocalan away from
Syria. After he left Syria, Ocalan was
finally delivered to Turkish officials in
Nairobi on 15 February 1999. The following
year, Aytac Pasha became
Commander of the Gendarmerie and
in 2002 Commander in Chief of the
Army. He retired in 2004, leaving his
command to General Yasar Buyukanit
(today the Chief of Staff of the Turkish
Armed Forces).
The handing over of Ocalan to the
Turkish authorities is viewed somewhat
differently by Aytac Yalman: “In
my opinion, the USA had already long
decided to intervene in Iraq. That is
why the Americans handed Ocalan
over to us. They wanted to be able to
rely on the Kurds when they intervened
in Iraq. They had planned to
carry out this intervention with the
help of Barzani and Talabani. Ocalan
was an alternative to Barzani and Talabani.
I think the Americans delivered
Ocalan to strengthen Barzani and Talabani’s
margin of manoeuvre. (…)
Questioned on the non-military
aspects of the Kurdish question, General
Yalman stressed: “The social
dimension of the problem is very old.
In reality Turkey aught to have seen
the problem and made a just interpretation
of it when it was still just a
social question. A solution could then
have been found at that time if what
was needed had been done. (…) What
are the social aspects of the (Kurdish)
problem?
It can be described as a question of
“self expression”. They want to speak
their own language, sing and listen to
their songs. At that time we were