Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVlEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RWISTA
STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASIN ÖZETi
turkish daily news- January 29, 1994
Analysis
laleh had to be hit
By Ismet G.lmset
Turkish Daily News
ANKARA- On Friday, Turkish
warplanes conducted what Prime Minister
Tansu Çiller referred to as "the
most important operation of the past
10 years" and bombed a major training
camp of Kurdish separatists based
on the Iran-Iraq border.
The operation, the deepest ever into
Iraqi territory, came amid reports
that the PKK was gearing up to launch
a wave of atlaèks targeting Kurdish
civilians in the Southeast. The
Zaleh camp which was bombed and
almost completely destroyed, was
used by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK) not only for trainins
purposes but, as Iraqi Patriotic
Umon of Kurdistan leader Jalal Ta]abani
also accepted, to conduct cross
border operations into Turkey.
Accordin~.t0 information the Turkish
Daily News obtained during a
November ]993 trip to the area, the
PKK was not only using Zaleh for
shelter, but was expandins its influence
both inside Iran and In the Kurdish-controlled
parts of Iraq close to
the border.'
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KOP)
Chairman Masoud Barzani readily
accepted when interviewed by the
TON in Zakho that it was a great
mistake from the very beginning to
allow the PKK to move into the area.
Talabani said at about the same time
thatthey had no other alternative.
The PKK's "transfer" to Zaleh came
in 1992 with the October Turkish
incursion into Iraq tightening the grip
on this organization and WIllI a makeshift
surrender of the separatists to
the Iraqi Kurds.
As Turkish officials boasted back
in Ankara that some 4.000 casualties
were recorded in successfulland and
air attacks, Iraqi Kurds were putting
the number of PKK losses at about
180 at the most.
Instead of agreeino that the result
of the incursion fell Short of expectation,
officials had electora] priorities
and insisted thatthey had crushed the
terrori sts.
In reality, and as the TON then reported
at the cost of angering officials,
hundreds of PKK militants were
placed in trucks and buses, carried
off to Kurdish-controlled Iraqi cities
and from there, transported to Zaleh.
The only practical result of the
Turkish operation then was to force
the PKK more Inan a nundred kilometers
to the south of the Turkish
border and make it more difficult for
the separatists to reach back into southeastern
Turkey.
But. despite agreements made with
the Iraqi Kurds~ the PKK \\aç allowed
to keep most of its weapons. Thus it gradually
grew and, allowed initially to live exactly on
the border region, expanded into Iran.
Soon, it even took control of the whole area to
the extent of declaring this smugglers' route a
"military zone" on behalf of its so-called popular
liberation anny ARGK. It moved a main guard?
post out onto the main road from Iran to northern
Iraq and started to "tax" smugglers using this route.
Moreover, it increased ItS influence amon&
Iranian ~d Iraqi Kurds in the region and startea
even to Infiltrate the PUK.
In November, only about a kilometer away
from the Iranian border, the PKK flag could be
seen across this post -- marking the organization's
territory. Even Iraqi-Kurdish peshmergas feared
to enter this zone.
"There is an army here," one PKK militant, armed
with a Kalashnikov, had explained there.
Even the sight of PKK militants forced the PUK
peshmergas, highly professional "mountain soldiers,"
to hide theIr weapons!
About 2,000 militants were initially taken.
down to Zaleh which is over a hundred kilometers
south of the Turkish border. "But they never
once abided by the agreement," Barzani recently
argued. "We were against the Zaleh plan from the
very beginning. Now they have Iran right behind
them and we have no control."
The PKK had turned into a big problem for the
Iraqi Kurds as well since they truly lost control
over its activities. It is still questionable, however,
whether this was a mistake owed to coincidences
or was somewhat intentional.
TURKEY
IRAQ
f)
Mosul
@
Kirkuk
.. A slip of the tongue by PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan in a press conference earlier last year somewhat
answered this question: "Thanks to
them," he said with regard to the Iraqi Kurds "we
have no problems."
'
Until Talabani warned him in what sounded like
Kurdish gibberish. Öcalan had already given
the news that "a corridor has been opened to us
and we are free to move."
The corridor was opened on the Iranian side of
the border and it was easy enouoh for a number
of milita.l,lts to cross Iranian territory back into
T~:key. ~~al~ was bl~~t enough to confess this.
Z~leh, saId Barzam In November. "was a great
mistake from the day the a"reement (with the
PKK) was signed." 0
.A;ccording to. this agreement, the PKK was promISing
to drop ItS weapons, had aoreed to limit its
activities to political ones and n~ver to conduct
attacks on Turkey from northern Iraq. "Now," added
Talabani, "they are crossing into Turkey from
Iran."
And either over the Iranian border, or crossing
back into Iraq and then into Turkey, the PKK was
atlackino.
In 1993 alone, a total of 1,249 civilians were
killed in these attacks and 1,389 civilians were
wounded.
But why were the Iraqi Kurds, who have insistently
stressed their friendship with Turkey. unable
to do anything about this? Asked why they did
~ot completely destroy the PKK but preferred
Instead to accept a surrender, Talabani's response
was that "there was no other way."
What Barzani referred to as a great mistake is
for Talabani a necessity. "We could not destroy
them," he said. "When they were in Khakurk (the
area where the borders of Iran, Turkey and Iraq
meet) they had Iranian support. Iran gives them
arms and ammunition. If we had tried to destroy
the PKK, it could have fought with us for years
and years."
Another reason Talabani cited was that Kurdish
public opinion would not have accepted an outright
attack on the Kurds. Finally, he said, the
PKK had the power to stop traffic -- vital aid material
-- from entering northern Iraq as it did during
a self-styled embar~o it imposed on this territory
in the summer of 1992.
It was evident that to reach its goals, the PKK
would refrain from doing nothing and could even
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