Deadliest PKK Strikes in Turkey Since ’90s Risk Destabilization

By Emre Peker - Oct 19, 2011 10:00 PM GMT

• The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is staging its deadliest strikes in Turkey since the 1990s, spurring Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to order incursions into Iraq to hunt down the group’s militants and threatening to further upset a region plagued by unrest.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union, killed 29 members of the security forces in nine attacks over two days in the southeast, just as lawmakers started talks on a new national charter that may help address Kurdish grievances. Erdogan said after yesterday’s violence that the best antidote to terrorism is democracy and freedom, urging unity and vowing to replace the constitution, drafted after a 1980 military coup.
Turkey’s push for expanding rights comes as it vexes some of its neighbors, including Iraq, where it has targeted the PKK. Iran objects to Turkey’s stationing of radar as part of an international missile shield. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad faces protests that have Turkey’s approval.
“We’re talking about the prospect of greater instability in the Middle East, this time because of the cross-border implications of PKK actions,” said Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. “Turkey will be obliged to act in northern Iraq, and all the while keeping an eye on Syria and Iran, which both have interests in northern Iraq.”

Attacks Since Elections

PKK attacks have been rising since June, when Erdogan won a third term with 50 percent of the vote. Yesterday’s coordinated assaults coincided with the first day of talks by the 12-member commission to draft a framework for the new charter, one of the premier’s top campaign promises. The four parties in parliament, including the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, are equally represented on the commission.
“There must be a strong suspicion that the PKK, or Kurdish nationalist forces more generally, could be divided over the wisdom of engaging in the consensus committee and the constitutional process,” said Bill Park, a senior lecturer who specializes in Turkish foreign and security policy at King’s College in London. The latest violence “looks like an attempt to derail the talks, or to send a message to the Kurdish negotiators that they should not too readily concede,” he said.
Speaker of Parliament Cemil Cicek told the constitutional consensus commission’s inaugural meeting yesterday that its members must to work together “with great effort” to deliver a new charter. “There’s no turning back from this path, regardless of how difficult our work gets due to these developments,” he said.

Investors’ Viewpoint

The lira, with the second-worst performance after South Africa’s rand among 25 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg, was little changed after yesterday’s violence, dropping 0.38 percent to 1.8644 to the dollar. The benchmark ISE-100 index declined 1.62 percent to 57,798.73, while yields on two-year government bonds rose 20 basis points to 8.75 percent.
“From an investors’ point of view, it’s not a political- risk event,” said Wolfango Piccoli, a London-based analyst at the Eurasia Group, which monitors political risk. He said the PKK will be limited in its ability to strike due to worsening weather conditions and logistical shortcomings and “will have to wait until spring.”

NATO Defense System

Turkey is facing strained ties with neighbors as it battles PKK violence that has claimed more than 190 lives this year and more than 40,000 since the insurgency started in 1984.
Iran said Turkey’s decision to host early-warning radar installations as part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense system creates tensions and will lead to complications.
Turkish leaders said they lost faith in Assad after the Syrian president failed to follow a road map they drafted jointly to expand freedoms and rights for Syrians. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met this week with representatives of the Syrian National Council, the opposition group founded in Istanbul Oct. 2 that seeks international recognition.
Turkey’s army and air force have been bombing PKK bases in northern Iraq, striking more than 600 targets since Aug. 17 and killing as many as 100 members of the organization, according to the military General Staff in Ankara.
“We stand against the shelling and the direct interference,” said Labeed Abbawi, Iraqi deputy foreign minister. Iraq condemned the PKK attacks and had previously stated its opposition to Turkey’s cross-border military operations, he said.

Treaty Rights

Erdogan said “wide-ranging” operations against the PKK are continuing in the region and that Turkey is using rights granted by international treaties to pursue the group’s members across the border. Turkey also targeted the PKK in airstrikes along the border.
The fighting between Turkey and the PKK comes after efforts by Erdogan to increase rights for the nation’s Kurds. Political tensions have escalated since the June 12 elections, when the courts barred several pro-Kurdish lawmakers from entering parliament. That culminated in a declaration of Kurdish autonomy in Diyarbakir on July 14, which coincided with a PKK ambush in which 13 soldiers died in the outskirts of the province.
The PKK killed 24 soldiers in a four-hour assault early yesterday in eight locations in the Hakkari province, Erdogan said. The previous day nine people, including five policemen, died in a roadside bombing in Bitlis.

Ground Offensive

“Turkish troops are already conducting hot pursuit across the Turkish-Iraqi border,” said Kaan Nazli, director of emerging markets at Medley Global Advisors in New York. “It is possible that a ground offensive will follow, especially when the PKK gets more exposed during their regular withdrawal ahead of the winter.” Turkey’s ties with the U.S. will also make it “more permissive” for cross-border raids in Iraq, he said.
President Barack Obama said the U.S. “strongly condemns” yesterday’s attacks, according to an e-mailed statement. Erdogan had asked the Obama to use unmanned U.S. Predator aircraft and share intelligence to track the PKK during a Sept. 20 meeting in New York. Obama pledged to continue “strong cooperation with the Turkish government as it works to defeat the terrorist threat from the PKK.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Emre Peker in Ankara at epeker2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden in Dubai at barden@bloomberg.net.