Rebels Vow To ‘Teach’ Turks a Lesson if Attacked
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq — A defiant spokeswoman for the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party said yesterday that if Turkey attacks the group’s bases in Iraq’s rugged northeastern mountains, the clandestine organization’s fighters “will teach the Turks an unforgettable lesson.”
A member of the party’s political bureau, Sozdar Avesta, said in Iraq’s ungoverned border region that despite international pressure the guerrilla group would not abandon its decades-long struggle against Turkey.
“We are fighting for the liberation of Kurdish people, we are fighting for our identity, language, our legitimate rights, and self-determination,” Ms. Avesta, 35, one of a number of women PKK members, said.
Her remarks came as officials from Iraq and America, at an international meeting in Istanbul, pledged to try to stop cross-border attacks by PKK forces against military forces in Turkey’s heavily Kurdish southeast.
The Turkish government has threatened to send troops into Iraq to chase the insurgent fighters, after a series of deadly clashes between the PKK and Turkish military in Turkey in recent months.
Officials fear that large-scale fighting in northern Iraq could destabilize the relatively peaceful north, and jeopardize gains that American officials say have been made in the rest of the country.
Iraq’s central government has pledged to track and arrest leaders of the PKK, and cut off supplies. But any crackdown would require the cooperation of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.
Turkey has accused Iraqi Kurdistan officials of backing the PKK, a charge that both the regional government and the guerrilla group deny.
Under intense political pressure from Baghdad and America, Iraqi Kurdish officials yesterday closed the Irbil and Sulaimaniyah offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution party, alleged to have close ties to the PKK. The two cities are the largest in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.
Regional authorities have sought to prevent journalists from talking with the PKK leadership by closing roads into the Qandil Mountains, where various Kurdish rebel groups have historically sought shelter.
In a compound in the mountains here, the PKK flew their banned flag and decorated their offices with portraits of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader arrested in Kenya in 1999. He is currently in a Turkish prison.
The compound was far from any village, but the rebels had satellite television, and generators provide electricity.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders say they are urging the PKK members to lay down their arms and seek a political settlement with Turkey. Ms. Avesta suggested that the guerrillas see little reason to negotiate with Ankara.
“Working to obtain rights under dictatorships without resorting to arms is a difficult and impossible matter,” Ms. Avesta said.
She defended the PKK’s assaults on Turkish forces, saying Ankara had a history of “detention and genocide campaigns against the Kurds. Therefore the PKK took up arms to defend itself.”
America and the European Union have labeled the PKK a terrorist organization. The group’s tactics have included car bombings, suicide bombings, and kidnappings.