Vol. 79/No. 42      November 23, 2015

 
(front page)

Turkish gov’t makes election
gains on brutal attacks on Kurds

 
 
Following months of Washington-backed attacks against the Kurdish people, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) regained a majority in parliament Nov. 1. Monitors from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called the vote “unfair” and “characterized by too much violence and fear.”

The vote took place amidst government-imposed curfews in Kurdish areas, detentions of thousands and media censorship. Because of the government’s assaults on the Kurds, many of the AKP’s new votes came at the expense of other Turkish nationalist parties.

Meanwhile, Moscow has moved fighter planes and troops into Syria and begun large-scale bombing runs, overwhelmingly targeting forces seeking to overthrow the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The Kurds — some 30 million people living in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey — have been fighting against national oppression and for a homeland for more than a century against imperialist domination by Paris, London and Washington and local capitalists’ rule.

Preliminary results indicated the AKP got more than 49 percent of the vote, up from 41 percent in elections in June, securing 317 seats in the 550-seat parliament. The Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which got over 10 percent of the vote in June, winning seats in parliament for the first time, did so again. In this election its vote totals dropped from 13 to 10.5 percent, making it the third largest party in the legislature.

“The HDP could not run an effective election because of repression from the AKP government,” Harun Ercan, international relations adviser with the HDP in Diyarbakir, Turkey, told the Militant by phone Nov. 9. “They bombed and made it unbearable for people in Kurdish cities.”

Turkish special operations forces “were present by polling stations, intimidating some into not voting,” Ercan said. In the week leading up to the elections, Turkish authorities seized two newspapers and two TV channels critical of Erdogan’s regime.

HDP is preparing to challenge election results in six cities — Adana, Mersin, Dersim, Antalya, Erzurum and Ardahan — where they lost by a narrow margin.

The results leave Erdogan short of the 330 seats needed to call a referendum to approve constitutional changes to strengthen presidential executive power.

Following AKP’s electoral victory, Turkey’s president vowed to step up military attacks against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) “until all its members surrender or are eliminated.” He rejected returning to negotiations with the group, branded terrorist by both Ankara and Washington.

Turkish warplanes increased airstrikes targeting PKK camps in northern Iraq and Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey, where clashes with the military killed at least 20 Nov. 5.

The PKK announced it is ending a unilateral cease-fire it had declared a month before the election, calling instead for intensifying the fight for local autonomy.

Ankara’s decades-long oppression and brutal assaults against Kurds led the PKK to launch a 30-year-long guerrilla war for Kurdish rights until a cease-fire was agreed to in 2013. But the PKK also has a record of Stalinist thuggery which has weakened the Kurdish struggle, opening the door to new attacks by Turkey’s rulers.

In July, reactionary Islamic State forces carried out a suicide bombing in Surac, Turkey, that killed 33 Kurdish youth who were meeting to plan efforts to help rebuild Kobani, successfully defended by Kurdish fighters from IS assault across the nearby border in Syria.

In response, the PKK assassinated two Turkish police in southeastern Ceylanpinar, saying they were involved in “collaboration with the Daesh gangs,” using an Arabic term for Islamic State.

Many Kurds and other opponents of the Erdogan regime believe that Ankara secretly aids IS against Kurdish fighters in Syria.

“Although Islamic State has been held responsible for this attack,” the HDP said after the killing of the youth, “Turkey’s AKP government, by resisting the taking of effective measures to prevent Islamic State and other reactionary forces, bears the real responsibility.”

On July 24 Turkish fighter jets conducted their first-ever attack on Islamic State in Syria. At the same time they began a much larger and sustained campaign bombing camps of the PKK in northern Iraq and attacks against Kurds across Turkey.

A few weeks before the election, bombs, allegedly placed by Islamic State, killed more than 100 people at an Ankara rally opposing government attacks on Kurds.

Kurds’ gains in Syria alarm Ankara

The Turkish rulers are alarmed by gains made by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, which has been the most effective ground force beating back Islamic State, and also attracting Syrian Arab and other allies. With victories in Kobani and Tal Abyad and further advances in Hasakah province, Kurds now control two-thirds of the 560-mile-long border with Turkey. Erdogan has threatened attacks against the YPG, which has close ties with the PKK, if Washington provides military supplies to the YPG.

“As of now, we are not providing weapons or ammunition to the YPG,” said Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S. commander based in Baghdad. “The ammunition that we’ve provided in our one airdrop executed, was for the Syrian-Arab coalition,” a new force Washington is trying to cobble together. However, the YPG comprises the leading fighters in the recently formed Syrian Democratic Forces that is organizing to press the fight against Islamic State in Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital, and in Hasakah province.

The armed conflict in Syria began when Assad attacked growing protests against his dictatorial rule in March 2011. Since then 250,000 have been killed and more than 11 million displaced. Syrian authorities, backed by Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah, have used shrapnel-filled barrel bombs, starvation sieges and other brutalities against civilians and opposition forces.

Washington is seeking to strike a political deal with Moscow and Tehran in which all parties would focus their fire against Islamic State and Assad would remain in power during an unspecified political transition period.  
 
 
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