Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

For Turkey and Kurds, ('Total Warfare'
By Alan Cowell
N/!W York Times Service
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - One year after Turkish generals said
they had broken the spine of a Kurdish separatist insurgency in the~e
wild and remote uplands. the war has become more violent and more
intractable than ever.
Since the breakdown in May of a cease.fire declared by the rebel
movement, the avowedly Marxist Kurdish Workers Party, more than
1,600people, many of them civilians, have died, the government says.
That toll amounts to the worst wave of killing in a nine-year war that
has claimed more than 7,400 lives and raised fundamental questions
about the stability of an area c~ntral to U.S. policy in the re~on.
The fighting in the hiddeli war is murky, depicted in the mutuallv
exclusive versions of both sides as either a liberation struggle champi-
OIung Kurdish rights or outrighi terrorism. Death tolls, battles 1I11d
guerrilla attacks in the remote southeastern region are difficult to
verify, particularly because of glaring discrepancies in the reports of
the combatants.
Nonetheless, the accounts of Turkish government officials. Kurdish
nationalists and diplomats in Ankara suggest that the antagonists
are locked in an accelerating spiral of violence. The ferocity of the
attacks has left the United States and other Western allies of Turkey
wondering whether the war can ever be ended without political
concessions and a major shift from whatthe Turkish government calls
"total warfare."
"The U.S. point is that this is an approach that can be predicted to
fail if you look at it in exclusivelv military terms," said a Western
-l'tJESDAY, OCTOBER 19., 1993
PROCHE-ORIENT
IRAK
Tarek Aziz à Paris
pour « raisons médicales»
le vice-premier ministre irakien,
Tarek Aziz, se trouve «en
France pour des raisons mlldicales
If, ont annoncé dimanche
17 octobre les autorités françaises,
qui entourent de la plus
grande discrlition ce séjour.
tt Il n'y a pas lieu d'en faire
un Ilvllnement politique. La
ligne politique de la France vis-
.-vis de l'Irak est toujours la
m4me If, a commenté Alain
Juppé, ministre des affaires
étrangères, qui participait au
sommet de la francophonie il
l'ne Maurice. tt Les autoritlls de
l'Etat ont toutes Iltll consultlles
lorsque cette demande a 11M
prtlsentlle. Elles ont donnIl leur
accord If, a-t-il ajouté, parlant
de tt geste humanitaire If et précisant
que l'autorisation de
s'jour a ét' donnée tt pour la
durN des soinu. De son cOté,
le porte-parole de l'Elysée,
Jean Musitelli, a souligné que
tt Ctl n 'tlst pas une nouvelle
IIffllire Habliche, et tout le
monde Iltait au courant If. le
Quai d'Orsay insiste sur le fait
que ce séjour «ne changera
rien à la politique de la France»
ni aux «obligations de /'Irak
vis-à-vis de la communauM
internationale AI.
Selon des sources bien.informées,
M. Aziz, qui souffrirait
de problèmes cardiaques, se •
trouverait en France depuis ('I)
jeudi dernier et pour une hui- 0)
taine de jours. ~
Un mouvement de l'opposi- ~
tion irakienne jusqu'ici inconnu, .0
les Comités nationaux pour S
sauver l'Irak, a indiqué, dans un (.)
communiqué, que la visite de 0
M. Aziz «se prllpare depuis ~
deux moiu et que l'ex-chef de :s
la diplomatie irakienne «envi- ...
sage de tenir des rllunions à ~
haut niveau avec des responsables
français en vue d'accorder •
à la France et à des socillMs ~
françaises des privilèges impor- c:
tants en Irak et une mainmise 0
sur le plltro/e et sur l'llconomie ~
irakiennes AI. .s
diplomat in Ankara. Of the rebellion,
the diplomat added. 'This is
now a popular insurgency."
But Western governments do not
press that argument with the Turks,
who are armed by the United
States, in part because they agree
with Ankara's depiction of the rehels
as terrorists.
Equally important. Turkey is a
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
member and plays a crucial
role in Western efforts to keep up
economic and military pressure on
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
That is a higher priority for the
United States than the Kurdish insurgency.
The rebel movement touches an
extremely raw nerve for the Turk.
ish government, which sees the war
as an outright challenge to the very
cornerstone of the state - the
model of linguistic, cultural and
political unity championed by
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
founder of tht' modern Turkish republic.
From 10 million to 12 million
people, or about a fifth of Turkey's
population. are Kurds. While
Turkish leaders permit the publication
of Kurdish-Iangua~e newspa-
..per~: an~ '"."; ,< ~.Jl'ùg.~wi-a. they
terni a 'KHrdl~h I..:ality." the government
does lIot allow the Kurds
to use their own language in
schools or in broadcasting or acknowledge
a separate Kurdish national
identity. Kurds. who are
largely Sunni Muslims. enjoy the
same political rights as other Turks
but may not express them in a,
KurdIsh linguistic. political or regional
context.
TURQUIE ! le -PKK menace la
presse. - Vendredi Is octobre,
près de Diyarbakir, la ville la
plus importante du Sud-Est anatolien
à majoril~
homme, accompagné
kurde, un
d'un groupe
armé, se présentant comme un
responsable du Front national de
libération du Kurdistan (ERNK),
émanation du Parti des travailleurs
du Kurdistan (PKK, séparatiste),
a mis en garde les correspondants
locaux des principaux
quotidiens turcs et de l'agence
semi-officielle Anatolie contre
« la vente de leur quotidien au
Kurdistan» à partir de lundi.
C'est la première fois qu'un
avertissement est lancé à
tel
la
presse par les séparatistes. -
(AFP.)
For many people in southeastern
Turke)', such restrictions are part.
of thf, basic grievance of Kurdish
nationalists: While many Kurds
probably do not wish to secede
from Turkey, as the insurgents do,
their identity as a people is denied.
The war, though, has brought them
neither progress nor hope.
"The people have had enough,"
said Fathi Gumus, a Kurdish rawyer
and chairman of the bar association
in Diyarbakir. "The war is
bloodier than ever. Both sides are
'getting rougher and rougher. The
picture is very bleak."
. The Turkish $ovemment has
long believed that If its forces could
sever the ties between the. rebels
and Turkey's hostile neighbors, the
battle would be all but won.
A year ago, therefore, Turkey
enlisted the tacit support of Kurds
:in northern Iraq, who have dependç,j
on Turkey for their survival
since the Gulf War, in a campaign
of air strikes and infantry advances
against Turkish Kurds who were
operating in part from bases just
across the border. The Turkish military
declared that it had dealt the
rebels a lethal blow. When a Syrian-based
guerrilla leader, Abdullah
Ocalan, offered to stop fighting in
March, the move seemed to reinforce
Turkey's view.
Since the rehels called off the
cease-fire in May with an attack in\
which 33 Turkish soldiers were
killed, they have kidnapped and
released 26 foreign tourists; dented
Turkey's tourism industry with
low-level violence in Mediterraneiln
resorts and in Istanbul, and
organized demonstrations outside
Turkish offices in Europe.
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