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PKK 5th Congress Update
PKK 5th Congress Update
Analysis(*)
Unlike other armed guerilla movements which have left traces in
contemporary world history mainly owing to their humanitarian and
just cause at final analysis, the PKK is known for gaining more
popularity owing to its somewhat precarious dedication to rough
internal discipline and its obsession of setting new goals every four
years, keeping up with a changing world and vital changes in
regional conditions.
Along with its tight and professional organizational structure which
is made out of a political nucleas, the party, its full-time fighting
force the ARGK and a wide-spread popular front, the ERNK, The
PKK owes much of its existence to this adaptability and more
important of all, Turkey's own policy mistakes.
The mistakes and ignorance of Ankara placed aside, it can be seen
that the PKK, one of the most expansive guerilla organizations in
the Middle East, survives mainly through its adaptability. An
adaptability which, according to many organizational sources, is
closely linked to the scores of meetings held in its 20 years of
history.
Prior to Turkey's prolonged incursion into northern Iraq last month,
the PKK held such a major meeting in the region during which it
not only reviewed 20 years of warfare but boasted to have taken
major decisions to boost the organization into the ranks of a
contemporary, more credible, guerilla movement.
Looking at it in practice though, both western and Turkish experts
are highly sceptical. The PKK, despite its mass support, is regarded
as a "terrorist organization" by a majority of countries and although
there is criticism of Ankara's handling of its Kurdish crisis, foreign
capitals intend to differentiate the PKK from this.
Although the exact meeting place for 317 delegates is not yet
known, Ankara-based Turkish intelligence experts believed the so-
called "5th Victory Congress" was held in Haftanin, a camp area
which was the focus of recent Turkish raids.
Between January 8 to 27, 1995, hundreds of Kurdish guerilla
leaders and representatives flooded into a massive underground
meeting hall, fully equiped with infrastructural facilities, to discuss
the past and future of this movement. As they met in what PKK
publications described as "a victorious atmosphere," the death toll
of Turkey's bloody Kurdish crisis steadily rose to over 15,000 with
at least 9,000 of them being alleged militants according to Ankara's
recently announced figures. The rest of the casualties were either
civilians or Turkish security personel.
The importance of the January Congress of the PKK was that it
coincided with major diplomatic moves on part of Turkish Kurds.
Efforts to set up a Kurdish Parliament in Exile were finalized after
the meeting. Immediately before, the PKK issued a "Declaration of
Intention" to abide by humanitarian laws and rules specified by the
Geneva Convention. In the Congress itself, only 231 delegates had
the right to vote while 86 had the right for representation without
voting. Elections were reportedly held to choose a new 29-member
Central Executive Board as well as to name the new members of the
chairmanship, military, political and training councils. Also, new
members were elected for the central disciplinary board and a
special council for front activities.
Among the most important decisions taken during the Congress
was the PKK's termination of the use of "General Secretary" to
describe its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Instead, a new Chairmanship
Council structure was established in which Ocalan, as chairman,
will precide over six more members. Those elected to the council
other than him were Cemil Bayik, Duran Kalkan, Murat Karayilan,
Halil Atac, Haydar Kaytan and the PKK's former European flank
representative Mustafa Karasu.
Another highlight of the meeting was a resolution adopted to
abandon the traditional Cold War symbols of the hammer and
sickle and drop them completely from the PKK's party flag and
amblem which were promptly renewed. The PKK later boasted for
being the first post-Cold War group to take such a "pioneering
step" to drop "the burdens of real socialism." Indeed the movement,
which started off twenty years ago as a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish
group in Turkey, also rejected during the Congress the concept of
Soviet socialism and "other dogmatic policies," emphasizing once
again that real socialism and organizational structure had to keep
up with changes in world history. It denounced Soviet socialism as
"the most primitive and violent era of socialism."
The Congress decisions included a major reference to the
importance in this new era of political and diplomatic activities to
be carried out along with guerilla warfare. Diplomacy in this period
was thus accepted as important as military struggle and its
significance was stressed in related decisions to boost the PKK's
diplomatic and political activities throughout the world.
Decisions taken during the Congress included the restoration of
credibility for PKK members killed in the past by mistake or
through misjudgment and changing certain commanding positions
in Kurdish regions of Turkey. Also a decision was taken to
announce a partial amnesty for state-armed Village Guards, noting
that they had until May 1995 to drop their weapons.
An outstanding debate during the meeting, according to PKK
sources, was the essential element of preserving human rights
during guerilla operations and to refrain from causing any harm to
innocent civilians, be they of Kurdish or Turkish origin. Military
targets for future guerilla warfare were thus carefully selected and
outlined with the main aim coming out as the creation of a full
fledged Kurdish army. "The army is to contain, along with its
current regular guerilla units, major task forces and special storm
units trained and capable to carry out more centralized and active
operations against enemy forces," a PKK source said.
Despite this Congress though, the Turkish incursion into northern
Iraq appeared to have struck a wrong chord in PKK ranks as
grassroots mainly in Germany went amock with attacks against
Turkish business places and even mosques. The incident followed a
major PKK attack on the Kurdish civilian settlement of Hamzali
where nearly two dozen people, mainly women and children, were
gunned down. Over last month, mass demonstrations spread
throughout Europe while Ankara claimed that at least four civilians
had recently been killed by the PKK again.
In early April, the organization further marred its diplomatic drive
by kidnapping two Turkish reporters working for the foreign press.
It also threatened tourism interests. Ankara officials said they had
actually seized new PKK plans to attack tourism sites in Turkey.
Turkish officials argue now that the PKK is aware of western
concern related to human rights in Turkey and is aiming to exploit
the conditions through bogus promises of respecting human rights.
Since 1991, with the government's abandoning of Kurdish policy
issues to the military, Turkey's human rights has been placed under
the magnifying glass by the West.
The PKK, on the other hand, accepts this is in its benefit and says
its record is clearly observable and cleaner than that of Ankara --
blamed for torching and evacuating more than 1,500 villages in
Turkey alone. Turkey's human rights record was further darkened
with reports of civilian abductions and killings, along with village
bombings, coming out from northern Iraq.
The new leadership structure of the PKK, determined in the last
Congress, implies that military cadres have more dominance on the
organization's policies but that activities will be more centralized in
the future. Ocalan has vowed to create special "storm units" to carry
out armed attacks and is seeking to justify his struggle in the eyes
of the West, using Turkey's denial of basic cultural and social
rights for the Kurds. Already, he appears to have succeeded in
establishing the most expansive guerilla organization in the Middle
East region.
Despite previous Turkish claims that the PKK was no more than "a
handful of terrorist bandits," the Chief of Staff office issued
astonishing casualty figures this month. According to the military, a
total of 9,691 PKK militants had been killed by troops since 1984
and along with those arrested, 16,970 PKK militants had been put
away.
Officials said in April, several weeks into the north Iraqi incursion,
that over 300 PKK militants were killed in this region as well. But
the figure was in sharp contrast to Ankara's original figure to justify
the invasion, that 2,000 militants were in northern Iraq. Both
Kurdish sources and Turkish soldiers accepted that the PKK had
abandoned its Iraqi positions two weeks before the incursion and
left behind only a token resistence force to harrass Turkish units.
With its new organizational structure and policy that have gone
through a face-lift, the PKK appears to become an even more
difficult problem to solve for Ankara. Turkey has fallen at odds
with its western allies for pushing some 35,000 troops into
northern Iraq and although Prime Minister Tansu Ciller seems to
have gained some popularity back at home, more western attention
is now concentrated on the essence of the problem.
Western demands on the Kurdish issue seem hardly limited to the
Iraqi incursion. Turkey, throughout its republic order, is accused of
denying basic social and cultural rights for the Kurds, attempting to
forcefully assimilate this population of 12 million into its dominant
Sunni-Turkish culture. Many of its allies regard the PKK as an end
result of the persecution of the Turkish-Kurdish community and
economic hardships in the Southeast. The PKK is still condemned
as a terrorist organization, for its acts of violence, but the solution
is sought in the marginilization of terror through cultural autonomy
and improved rights for the Kurds. Ankara, much under the
influence of its own military propaganda, maintains that any
additional rights would only lead to a division of the country.
Now with the PKK accompanying its military activities with a
diplomatic drive supported by pro-Kurdish newspapers, magazines
and television broadcasts along with a western audience
sympathetic to plain Kurdish demands, Turkey is bound to face
new problems on the international platform.
The operation in northern Iraq, continuous reports of human rights
violations and its insistence not to address the Kurdish problem
separately from PKK terrorism appears to be endangering the
country's relations with its essential allies and increasing the risk of
a fatal isolation.
Ciller, as always, seems to have abadoned the Kurdish policy issue
to the hands of the military who, evidently, have no such concern...
*(CR) T.Briefing>Ismet Imset
[Ismet Imset is the author of the book called the PKK. This article
was posted to Soc.Culture.Kurdish]
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