The Syrian Problem is Turkey – Part II
Sheri Laizer | Ekurd.net – Read Part I – The Syrian Problem is Turkey
Turkish lies and ambitions
Turkey’s claim to have killed 900 Kurdish fighters, or ‘terrorists’, is false: those they are killing are predominantly ordinary people. 1 Afrin’s innocent civilians are being slain by Turkish forces in the course of implementing far wider geopolitical and economic goals in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian News Agency, SANA, claims the Syrian Foreign Ministry has formally written to the UN Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council concerning “Turkish “lies, which no longer convince anyone…Syria called on the Security Council not to allow Turkey’s use of force contrary to international law.” 2
No Kurdish future is safe – What is the solution?
Temporary allies of the US forces, the Syrian Kurds are being sacrificed to the Turkish war machine by slow-acting West – even before the object of defeating ISIS can seriously be achieved. America is a fickle ally, whose self interest in the region determines its every move. The Americans will never abandon Turkey, whatever crimes Turkey commits – even when these crimes are increasingly heinous.
Toppling the Turkish dictator promises to be much harder than dislodging ISIS.
Undoing secular reforms: Islamic education for the new Turkish generation
Understanding what drives Erdoğan involves a correct reading of his religious background. Erdoğan was educated in the Imam Hatip religious schools in Turkey – a religious education system that he now directly promotes.3
The schools formerly came under the direction of the Müftülük (Office of the Head of Islamic Affairs observing Islamic Law) and the Ilahiyat (Theology Department) but are now run by a government department under the Diyanet Isleri Bakanliği (Ministry of Religious Affairs 4) and increasingly dominate education in Turkey.
Once fundamentally concerned with the education of Imams, the Imam Hatip schools disseminate a message of traditional Islamic values: girls are educated to protect Turkish ideology and Islamic conventions. Their role is to become mothers and to tend the home.
Erdoğan is also promoting a return to Islamic marriage to be performed under a Mufti. It includes acceptance of polygamous marriages. He has also advocated a return to the use of old Ottoman Turkish claiming it is better suited to conveying the philosophy of his vision.
The total number of Imam Hatip religious schools has radically risen since the AKP first came to power in 2002 from just 450 to around 2000 schools at the current time. Last November, Erdogan boasted of the number of students enrolled in Imam Hatip schools as having reached 1,300,000 at primary and secondary school levels at the opening ceremony of his old Istanbul school renamed the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Anadolu Religious High School. Erdogan’s son, Bilal Erdogan drives their expansion.5
Last year, Erdoğan publicly called upon students of religious high schools to “stand against people trying to divide the Muslim ummah” – the global Muslim community.6
The schools have also rapidly been expanding throughout Europe, particularly since 2013, and are aimed at promoting the politico-religious vision spearheaded by Erdoğan in Turkish migrant communities.
Compulsory Islamic religious education has been introduced in regular schools and more than 17,000 new mosques have been built. Ottoman era mosques have been renovated and money spent on Ottoman mosque renovation in countries like Algeria. Instruction in the Koran is also available whatever the age of the child, even for pre-school children lifting a former ban stating that a child had to have reached the age of 12. 7
The contemporary face of political Islam in Turkey derives from Rabita (World Islam Union) based on the concept of Sufi communities bound to a Sheikh. The Rabita organization was established in 1962 by Saudi Arabia and began to make its impact felt in Turkey in the mid 1980s in promoting political Islam seen in vehicles like the Muslim Brotherhood. Enter Necmettin Erbakan, Erdoğan’s mentor and the foundation of the Millî Nizam Partisi (National Order Party) founded in 1970 and banned in 1972 – ‘Nizamiye’ was the name of the regular army of the Ottoman empire. The present Turkish brand of political Islam develops from there through the MNP’s successor, the National Salvation Party (Millî Selâmet Partisi, MSP) that formed a coalition with Bulent Ecevit’s secular CHP (Republican People’s Party). It was closed down after the 1980 military coup only to re-surface in further successive guises as Milli Selamet (National Deliverance), Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party) and then Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) that was still led by Erbakan. 8
Put very simply, this chain of Pan Islamic parties espouses an ideology known in Turkish as Milli Görüş – National Outlook 9 – a Pan-Islamic world vision. This is the ideology that Erdoğan was brought up in and that to which he wholeheartedly subscribes 10. It is essentially anti-Western and anti-colonial.
Islamist allies split over Erdoğan corruption links and Ergenekon
Islamist cleric, Fethullah Gülen, also subscribed to the Milli Görüş vision. “It was the Turkish military’s threat to the AKP which turned Gülen into a key ally of Erdogan for a decade. Gülen’s followers provided crucial support for the AKP, which subsequently secured them three election victories. In return, Erdoğan offered protection to the Gülen community’s opaque businesses and pious activities…The movement operates a global network of business, education, media and charitable organisations. Hizmet runs schools in over 150 countries, including more than 100 chartered schools in the US, and has grown into what is possibly the world’s largest Muslim network with millions of followers…”11
The 2013 split with Erdoğan came about over the corruption scandal involving money laundering and nepotism benefitting close allies, aides and family. The latest phases are being heard in a high profile case in New York over smuggling gold for oil from Iran and over an off-shore company, Bellway Limited, established in 2011 on the Isle of Man belonging to the UK said to involve huge transfers of capital in the millions of dollars by members of Erdogan’s family.12
Erdoğan closed down Gülen’s private schools and residential dormitories known as ‘houses of light’ and the wider, ongoing purge of the “Fetocu” Hizmet supporters and drive to extradite Gülen himself began.
End of Sykes-Picot – Erdoğan’s Neo-Ottoman Pan-Islamist Expansion
At the “Diyarbakir Meeting” of November 2013 speaking alongside his business partner, KRG President, Massoud Barzani and in the presence of Kurdish singers, Sivan Perwer, and past rival, Ibrahim Tatlises, Erdoğan unrolled his vision of essentially a new dawn aiming to break the power of the PKK. In the same period, the PYD had declared its interim administration in Rojava. There was also the strategic timing of new oil deals being cemented with Barzani and the pipeline to be built under Erdoğan’s son in law, Berat Albayrak, and his Powertrans company 13. “The semi-autonomous region has finalised a package of deals with Turkey to build multi-billion dollar pipelines to ship its oil and gas to world markets, sources involved in the negotiations told Reuters last week.”14
Oilprice.com, an energy specialist website observed late last year: “The abuse of Turkey’s energy sector by a variety of power players has triggered opaque and questionable transactions, many of which appear to have ultimately benefited the political elite, and businessmen who have proven their loyalty to Erdogan and the AKP. “
Former Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, had made frequent reference to the lapse of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 prior to its centenary, rejecting the historic boundaries and advocating a wider Turkish role in the region claimed by Pan-Arabs, including Syria and Iraq.
Davutoğlu had claimed in 2016: ‘We have always opposed Sykes-Picot because Sykes-Picot divided our region and alienated our cities from each other…’15 His misadventure in Syria is proof of this using the pretext of pursuing the YPG. He had emphasized: “Now Turkey’s enemies are working to create a “new Sykes-Picot” by dividing up Iraq and Syria, he said, as Kurds in particular seek their own autonomous regions…”16
From PKK to PYD
If they knew how to look in the mirror they would see each other’s faces: the hijab-clad Erdoğan females holding aloft the leader’s airbrushed portrait; the red, green and yellow clad 17 Kurdish females holding aloft portraits of Öcalan now some 25 years out of date.
Syrian Kurds not affiliated with the PYD and its YPG forces decry the constant brandishing of banners of Abdullah Öcalan in public and object to the PYD’s enforcement of child military conscription; their imposition of a pro-PKK/Öcalan curriculum in schools and essentially behaving as if Rojava belongs to them. Just days ago, a Turkish drone destroyed a giant portrait of Öcalan on the rooftop of a building in Afrin – proof of Turkish state pettiness.18 19
To date, Kurdish opposition detainees are still being held in the Democratic Union Party’s jails (PYD). Abdulrahman Apo, a politburo member of the KDP-Syria, for example, who originates from Afrin has been imprisoned since 12 July 2017 for criticizing the so-called ‘Self Governing authorities’. Other detainees are reportedly still missing since the middle of last year after being taken prisoner by the PYD. 20
Many commentators consider that the PYD’s supporters when brandishing banners of Abdullah Öcalan incite Turkey’s heavy handedness and provided Turkey with a ready pretext for a further invasion of Syria – the recent invasion of Afrin launched on 20 January, 2018.
Previous attacks on Kurdish settlements by the misnamed Free Syrian Army’s mercenary fighters can also partly be blamed on these displays but it is ordinary civilians that are being targeted and who are dying and injured – not the YPG fighters. Turkey’s claim to have killed 900 Kurdish fighters or ‘terrorists’ is false: those they are killing are predominantly ordinary people. 21
Clearly, the functioning of the PYD/PKK is much akin to its nemesis, the Turkish state, in reaction to which it has historically modelled its ethos, originating in the course of the left-wing and right wing struggles in Turkey through the inter-coup years. The PKK was educated in the Turkish state system and this has shaped its mentality. For Erdogan, the traditional opposition and the PKK are in fact ‘apostates’ – part of the community of non-believers to be overcome in the name of God.
If they knew how to look in the mirror they would see each other’s face: the hijab clad Erdogan females holding aloft the leader’s airbrushed portrait; the red, green and yellow clad Kurdish females holding aloft portraits of Öcalan some 25 years out of date.
At the end of January 2018, PYD security (in Kurdish, Asayish) members prevented a demonstration from being staged by the Kurdish National Council. The KNC (ENKS) is an umbrella body close to the KDP-Iraq. 22
“The PYD clearly seeks to monopolize the Afrin crisis by implying that they are its only stake-owners and victims – they are not,” lamented one opposition activist, dismayed at the violence the PYD’s policies have brought to his home region.
“PYD continues to crack down on Rojava parties which are under ENKS umbrella whose political views are different from those of PKK…” observed pro-KDP Bas news. 23
The PYD is also preventing some 5,000 Syrian Kurdish peshmerga trained in Iraqi Kurdistan from defending their homeland, pro-KDP-Syria sources argue.
The internal Kurdish dissent in Syria mirrors that between the PKK and the traditional Kurdish parties just across the river in Iraqi Kurdistan. Erdogan plays divide and rule using the KDP and its support base as he did at the Diyarbakir Meeting when seeking to secure wider regional domination in the guise of peace with the Kurds – as a fellow Sunni and business partner, Barzani represents the ideal ally.
The PYD’s so-called Social Defence Forces (YPG/HPC) show poor judgment in waving banner of PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan banners during mass demonstrations and parroting the outdated slogans of the PKK in decrying Turkey’s brutal invasion of Afrin: “Thousands of HPC members from Qamishlo region gathered in front of HPC headquarters in Girke Lege, holding banners that read “We condemn Turkish state’s attacks against Afrin’s people”, “We are all Afrin”, “Rojava will be a grave to the enemy”…24
Ignorance leads to ordinary civilians paying the price with their lives- just as for more than thirty years, Turkey relies on the lie of pursuing terrorists.
Recall, that same Turkey had refrained from designating ISIS a “terrorist group” in the early days, claiming they were just “angry young Muslims.”
“It is high time a fresh Kurdish vision was expressed in action” Says Kurdish thinker, Husen Aga “– instead of trying to ‘democratise’ Turkey, they have to educate and democratize themselves. Kurds need leaders with a clear programme and a strong partner to achieve the United States of Kurdistan…” 25
1 http://www.rudaw.net/mobile/english/middleeast/syria/010220181?ctl00_phMainContainer_phMain_ControlComments1_gvCommentsChangePage=2_20 See also the report of the Kurdish Red Crescent, Heyva Sor a Kurd, dated 2.2.2018 Efrin Situation. https://rojname.com/3665750
2 https://www.turkishminute.com/2017/09/29/erdogan-praises-number-of-religious-imam-hatip-school-students/ http://www.rudaw.net/mobile/english/middleeast/syria/010220181?ctl00_phMainContainer_phMain_ControlComments1_gvCommentsChangePage=2_20
3 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01416200.2015.1128390?src=recsys&journalCode=cbre20
4 http://istanbul.diyanet.gov.tr/
5 http://ilmfeed.com/7-ways-turkey-has-become-more-islamic-under-the-leadership-of-president-erdogan/
6 https://www.turkishminute.com/2017/09/29/erdogan-praises-number-of-religious-imam-hatip-school-students/
7 http://ilmfeed.com/7-ways-turkey-has-become-more-islamic-under-the-leadership-of-president-erdogan/
8 https://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/yarim-yuzyillik-orgutlenme-rabita-nin-cocuklari-125021.html
9 http://t24.com.tr/haber/4-partisi-de-kapatilan-milli-gorus-lideri,129869
10 http://www.turkeyanalyst.org/publications/turkey-analyst-articles/item/563-the-tale-of-the-split-that-brought-down-turkey.html?platform=hootsuite
11 www.opendemocracy.net/dr-ayla-gol/turkey-s-clash-of-islamists-erdogan-vs-g-len
12 https://armenianweekly.com/2017/12/06/turkish-president-erdogan-embroiled-new-15-million-scandal/
13 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Turkeys-Opaque-Private-Energy-Sector.html
14 http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=123047
15 http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/resentment-over-sykes-picot-deal-still-drives-turkey-foreign-policy-1388324353
16 Ibid.
17 Kesk zor u zer – the Kurdish national colours.
18 https://www.ntv.com.tr/video/turkiye/afrindeki-dagda-Öcalan-resmi-uydu-goruntusu-abdnin-iddialarini-curuttu,ghzcjQab-EC_flA225on_A
19 https://www.dailysabah.com/war-on-terror/2018/01/31/turkish-armed-drone-destroys-monument-dedicated-to-pkks-jailed-leader-Öcalan-in-afrin
20 http://www.basnews.com/index.php/en/news/middle-east/351846
21 http://www.rudaw.net/mobile/english/middleeast/syria/010220181?ctl00_phMainContainer_phMain_ControlComments1_gvCommentsChangePage=2_20
22 http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/82f736bb-98a8-45bf-b156-508dea788293
23 http://www.basnews.com/index.php/en/news/middle-east/351846
24 https://kurddaily.com/index.php/2018/01/30/hpc-qamishlo-members-we-are-ready-to-go-to-afrin/
25 Telephone Interview, 6.2.2018
Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for Ekurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below. www.mesop.de