A catastrophic mistake for NATO
From the simplified Western media perspective, this is the problem: “Notionally, this is about the presence of a handful of Kurdish militants in Nordic exile. In reality, it is about the fact that Turkey under (President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan has come to resemble Vladimir Putin’s Russia in its basic political character much more than it does any of its NATO counterparts … Erdogan’s real agenda is somewhat simpler: extortion.”
It is simplified, not because its author is a person who had proposed and kept repeated hangings as a criminal punishment for abortion and had no background in research on international issues; The notion that Turkey is objecting to Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership in order to blackmail the alliance is too simplistic because its proponents do not try to see why Turkey uses this opportunity to address the ill-conceived idea that “a handful of Kurdish militants in Nordic exile” have a legitimate existence in Western Europe to express its legitimate demands from the Turkish government.
Until the end of the 1980s, a handful of Kurdish intellectuals needed every opportunity to raise such concerns about the ethnic problems in Turkey. In the early 1990s, the author of these lines had problems with what to do with a Kurdish music cassette after a photographic safari in southeastern Turkey. Our driver had not wanted to keep it if it could be detected in his car. I presented the recording to my longtime friend and then Turkish President Turgut Özal. I remember his heartbroken look at the sky and the desire that escaped his lips: “It should have been better than this.”
Not just Kurdish music; but speaking Kurdish in public was not kosher. They would not arrest you, but you would be the subject of more than a harsh look. Kurdish parents could not name their children in Kurdish; they had a Turkish name for official registration and another Kurdish name among their friends and family. Many ethnic restrictions that they continued from the early days of the republic until the beginning of the new millennium. If the 21st century really gave a new beginning, the Kurds of Turkey felt it more than anyone else. The governments of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), and finally the Erdoğan administration, have reformed more than 50 ethnicity-related restrictive practices in the last 20 years. Did Turkey publish these reforms heavily around the world? No it did not. To begin with, we were not happy to be so late in Europe in resolving such fundamental human rights issues. When I made a presentation on that issue at a meeting with the International Press Institute, I sadly saw giggling international journalists smiling under their mustaches.
At that time, there were some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that praised social, economic and linguistic reforms for the heavily Kurdish areas in the country. But almost overnight, all the sincerely Kurdish and honestly civilist in their attitude to the concept of change disappeared: either the organizers were killed in murders by unknown perpetrators, or they were forced to leave the Kurdish provinces. Now the whole show was stolen by the PKK, an armed terrorist movement. While these civilian Kurdish NGOs could not raise enough donations to rent a local office building, the PKK had enough resources to wage war against NATO’s second largest army! Now we know all about that organization and the forces behind it: as they say, the rest is history.
There are now thousands of PKK terrorists fleeing Turkey, Iraq and Syria living in Germany, Sweden and other EU countries. There is physical evidence of Swedish-supplied heavy artillery and ammunition caught in PKK hiding places in the mountainous areas of Iraq and Syria. It is not a handful of “Kurdish militants in Nordic exile.” There is a member of parliament in Sweden who has fought as a terrorist in Iran and Turkey and is a wanted criminal in both countries. The number of PKK members in Sweden and Finland is higher than the number of active PKK terrorists in the Turkish-Iraqi mountains; Turkey is winning its fight against terrorism and many PKK members end up in these countries.
Turkey does not blackmail NATO into joining Sweden’s Finland and the Western military alliance. Turkey is simply trying to get these two countries to change their laws and stop providing safe havens to PKK members. The terrorists not only run a widespread propaganda machine in these countries, but they also influence the policies of these countries.
The Turkish government demands that the two countries concretely show that they have ceased to support the terrorist group PKK and its Syrian wing YPG. What Ankara means by “concrete terms” is that they lift all embargoes targeting Turkey’s defense industry: Sweden and Finland, specifically, and several EU countries, in general, ban Turkey’s defense industry investments and claim that they target the Kurdish minority in the country. . Several media outlets claim that there was a nationwide crackdown on the Kurdish political movement. Even US President Joe Biden wrongly claimed in an interview with the New York Times Editorial Board on January 19, 2020 that the Kurdish people in Turkey wanted to participate in the political process in parliament, but Erdoğan would not allow them. Biden therefore speaks for them and he wants Erdoğan to “pay a price.”
To ensure that Biden and some other NATO leaders understand what Turkey is struggling with, and that Turkey has no “Kurdish problem” but a “terrorism problem”, Turkey needed a broad and effective platform to express its views. NATO membership requires that a major criterion be met: Member States should support each other’s legitimate national affairs, not the positions promoted by terrorists.
This week, Madrid will host NATO leaders at a summit to complete the 2030 strategic concept for the Alliance. Many believe that the forthcoming meeting is the most important summit in the last 21 years. Erdoğan has already announced that he will react strongly if any leader promotes an anti-Turkish agenda in Madrid. He will tell NATO partners that Turkey is not opposed to NATO expansion, and the inclusion of Sweden and Finland in the alliance; but he will once again declare that Turkey does not want more allies who do not understand, appreciate and support Turkey’s fight against terrorism.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg seems to understand Turkey’s points. He said, “no other NATO ally has suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey.” If NATO wants to achieve solidarity within the alliance, it should not allow its members to undermine each other’s internal security. Germany, France and the United States, with their material support for the PKK and its extensions, are significantly violating their treaty obligations, and Turkey does not need more such allies.
Turkey made its choice in 1952 and joined NATO in the midst of the Soviet Union’s exaggerated threat to Turkey’s eastern provinces and the Bosphorus. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity then was no more than the threat posed by our allies today when they do not understand what Turkey is fighting against. NATO should show this week in Madrid that it appreciates Turkey’s objections, especially Sweden’s support for PKK terrorism. Failing this would be a catastrophic event for NATO; it would end up between stone and hard. It would then answer the question of whether it wants to keep Turkey as a member.