Turkey, and Washington, consider the PKK a terrorist outfit. Confirming Turkey’s Kurd-targeting attacks inside Iraq, the office of the Turkish PM said: “Strikes were carried out on targets of the Daesh [Isil] terror group in Syria and the PKK terror group in Northern Iraq.”
This might sound like a causal official announcement. But it’s actually a morally loaded, and morally warped, statement.
For the conflation of Isil with the PKK — with both depicted as “terror groups” Turkey wants to demolish — suggests there’s a moral equivalence between them; between a barbaric group that seems to have been teleported form the Middle Ages and a Marxist guerrilla outfit that wants to create a Kurdish homeland on Iraqi, Turkish and Syrian territory.
Yet whatever you think of the PKK — whether you agree with Western capitals that brand it terroristic or with Kurds who think it’s a legit army — there’s simply no comparison between these Left-wing militants and the Islamic forces currently plundering, statue-smashing and beheading their way through Syria and Iraq.
Some Western observers say Turkey is only pounding PKK positions, rather than indiscriminately targeting all Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq, and that’s why Western leaders aren’t too worried.
But it’s way more complicated than that. The PKK has close links with the YPG, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units in Syria, who have been among the bravest battlers against Isil.
In the words of Kani Xulam of the American Kurdish Information Network, the YPG, assisted by the PKK, have been allies of the West in the attempt to snuff out Isil — in fact, they’ve been Washington’s “most effective boots on the ground against [Isil]”.
So for Washington to turn a blind eye to Turkish attacks on Kurdish positions in Isil-threatened territory is not only immoral — it’s also really dumb, threatening to rupture links that the West has built up with certain Kurdish forces.
more at www.telegraph.co.uk
