Turkish offensive against the PKK since 2015

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The Turkish offensive against the PKK was started by President Erdogan in June 2015. The trigger was the killing of two police officers by members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the USA, among others. In the shadow of the Syrian civil war , the conflict between the Republic of Turkey and the PKK that had been going on since the mid-1980s became bloody again.

Constantly updated map of the war in Turkey
  • Turkish military presence
  • Conflict areas

    • initial situation

    Turkish President Erdogan initially initiated the peace process with the Kurds, which began with secret negotiations in Oslo in 2009 and finally led to a ceasefire in spring 2013 .

    Violent protests broke out in October 2014 , in the course of which dozen people died. Against the backdrop of the Battle of Kobanê, the events began with a call by the then HDP co-chair, Selahattin Demirtaş, to the supporters of his party to retaliate for the attacks on HDP buildings. As a result, marauding HDP supporters committed acts of violence against Kurdish supporters of Hüda-Par, a successor to the Kurdish Hezbollah, as well as against ethnic Turks and alleged supporters of Daesh. There was lynching, pillage and pillage. Nevertheless, on February 28, 2015, representatives of the government and the pro-Kurdish Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) signed a roadmap to finally end the conflict. HDP MP Sırrı Süreyya Önder read in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan a call to the PKK by the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to lay down their arms, broadcast live by several television stations . Observers at home and abroad saw this as a “great opportunity for a historic step”. However, the following day the PKK leadership boycotted their leader Öcalan's call for disarmament and set conditions. Erdogan subsequently declared the agreement null and void two weeks later. Some observers said this was a reaction to HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtaş saying shortly after the Dolmabahçe declaration that his party would not support Erdogan's intentions to introduce a presidential system .

    In the parliamentary elections that followed in June 2015 , no party achieved an absolute majority . The AKP, which had ruled alone until then, had lost its absolute majority and was dependent on a coalition partner. The pro-Kurdish HDP's share of the vote, which also maintains links with the PKK, exceeded the ten percent threshold and the party entered the Turkish parliament. Its chairman Selahattin Demirtaş also managed to address non-Kurdish voters who opposed Erdoğan's perceived authoritarian course. With the HDP, a party was represented in parliament that advocates greater autonomy for the Kurdish population. The AKP's plans to introduce a presidential system with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the top were no longer possible after the election due to the new majority in parliament. Observers expressed the hope that this could now lead to a political solution to the conflict. After the IS attack on a Kurdish gathering in Suruç on July 20, 2015, the PKK killed two Turkish police officers in Ceylanpınar in retaliation for the attack, which, like the HDP, believed the state had carried out and at least allowed and carried out makes possible the negligent fight against IS in Turkey. A few days later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared the peace process with the Kurds to have failed. The confession of the murder was published on the website of the armed unit of the PKK. The PKK later revoked the confession. Cemil Bayık stated that Apocu (followers of Abdullah Öcalan) were responsible for the murder.

    In neighboring Syria, the long and confusing civil war is claiming more and more victims. The two countries are not only connected by a long border , but from mid-2015 Turkey joined the international coalition to fight the terrorist warring party Islamic State . F-16s of the Turkish Air Force flew attacks against IS positions, but at the same time also against PKK positions in northern Syria and in at least five locations in northern Iraq . In the fall of 2015, President Erdogan described the PKK as "an equal threat" to IS.

    Parties to the conflict

    Turkish state

    government

    The Turkish government emphasized several times that its actions only apply to the PKK, but not to the Kurdish civilian population. The operation is carried out in strict compliance with the rule of law.

    In his New Year's address in 2016, President Erdoğan threatened to fight the PKK "to the end": "Our security forces are clearing the cities of the terrorists, meter by meter."

    Police and military

    The Turkish police are subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior and were active in operations with specialized anti-terrorist units in various cities in Southeast Anatolia, the Jandarma is the Turkish gendarmerie that performs the tasks of the police in rural areas. Organizationally, it is part of the Turkish armed forces. Türk silahlı Kuvvetleri are the Turkish Armed Forces , they resorted to the armed services army and air force into the conflict.

    Rebel forces

    Democratic Party of the Peoples

    The HDP is a collection of left-wing Turkish and Kurdish groups. At the beginning of the conflict, its chairman Selahattin Demirtaş also called on the Turkish government and the PKK to stop hostilities in order to revive the peace process. Erdoğan and his AKP accuse the HDP of being a run-up to the banned PKK. Meanwhile, the HDP shows solidarity with the fighters in the provinces.

    Kurdistan Workers' Party

    The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Öcalan and his fellow campaigners. The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by the USA, Turkey and the European Union. As a Marxist-Leninist underground organization at the beginning, it fought for its own Kurdish state in eastern Turkey . In the meantime it has officially given up on the idea of ​​a Kurdish nation state or any state at all and demands “democratic autonomy”, as the HDP does. Öcalan has been in Turkish custody since 1999. The fights from 2015 onwards were mainly carried out by the youth organization of the PKK, the YDG-H .

    Contested areas

    Southeast Anatolia in Turkey

    Since at least September 2015, the Turkish army has been launching a massive offensive against Kurdish forces such as the PKK in the predominantly Kurdish provinces of Mardin , Şırnak and Diyarbakır in Southeast Anatolia . According to its own admission, the Turkish state is at war against terrorists. Kurdish politicians say the state is at war with its own people.

    At the beginning of December 2015, the Turkish military moved soldiers and equipment to the Şerafettin-Elçi airport near Cizre with several military machines. At the same time, armored vehicles of the Turkish army were deployed on the hills above Cizre and in the vicinity of the provincial capital Şırnak, 45 kilometers away on the border with Iraq . The airline Turkish Airlines has been canceling all flights to Şırnak since mid-December 2015 for "operational reasons". The Ibrahim Khalil Turkish-Iraqi border crossing on the Chabur River has been closed.

    In the provinces mentioned there were street battles between Kurdish activists against the Jandarma and the military . These violent protests intensified. Armed activists and the Jandarma as well as the Turkish military sometimes fought house-to-house in some cities with light weapons. The youth organization of the PKK, the YDG-H, dug trenches in the districts they controlled and erected barricades to block access to the districts. Turkish governors imposed thereupon in these villages curfews .

    In Kurdish settlement areas, so-called people's parliaments were proclaimed in some cities from August 2015, often with the participation of the Democracy Bölgeler Partisi (DBP).

    Mardin Province

    Clashes broke out in Mardin and Nusaybin in the province of Mardin .

    Diyarbakır Province

    Diyarbakır

    On November 28, the chairman of the local bar association and prominent human rights lawyer Tahir Elçi was shot dead by unknown assassins at a peace rally. The Kurdish lawyer, 49 years old when he died, had campaigned for a dialogue between the PKK and the state and had spoken out against violence. 50,000 people attended Elçi's funeral.

    Since December 2015, fighting has been going on in the Sur district , which was surrounded by Turkish security forces. According to statements by Kurds documented by Frank Nordhausen in the Frankfurter Rundschau, the “revolutionary-patriotic youth” (YDG-H) in Sur was active with around 200 activists and fought with Kalashnikovs against Turkish security authorities. After protests and sit-in strikes by residents in front of the governor's seat on December 11, 2015, the curfew in Sur was lifted.

    The Armenian St. Giragos Cathedral from 1371 was destroyed, the Aramaic St. Mary's Church from the 3rd century AD damaged. The Ottoman Fatih Pasha Mosque (or lead mosque ) from 1522 was badly damaged and, according to eyewitness reports, burned out completely inside.

    Çınar

    On January 13, 2016, the PKK carried out a car bomb attack on a police station in Çınar . At least five people were killed and 39 injured. The police station was badly damaged and nearby police shelters were subsequently attacked and women and children were injured by police officers.

    Lice

    On February 18, 2016 , at least six Turkish military personnel were killed by an explosive device that destroyed a military vehicle in Lice .

    Şırnak Province

    In July 2015, F16 fighter jets of the Turkish Air Force attacked PKK positions in southeastern Turkey. According to Ankara, the combat operation took place in the province of Şırnak near the border with Iraq . The army said the PKK had previously opened fire on Turkish security forces. As a result, the Air Force repeatedly flew missions against targets in the province.

    Şırnak

    In Şırnak , three police officers were killed when their vehicle hit a mine in mid-January.

    There was outrage in Turkey that at the beginning of October 2015 the police tied the body of Leyla Birlik's brother-in-law to a police vehicle and dragged it through Şırnak. The man is said to have been killed in combat. Such behavior is unacceptable, wrote Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu in a statement. According to the newspaper Hürriyet , the Interior Ministry said that according to initial information, the body was dragged behind the vehicle because the police suspected that it was equipped with a booby trap.

    Cizre

    Leyla Îmret ( BDP ) has been the city's mayor since the 2014 local elections . On September 11, 2015, she was removed from office by the Turkish Interior Minister Selami Altınok for “terrorist propaganda” and “inciting rebellion”. The allegations were based on an improperly quoted statement from İmret, after which she said that in Cizre it was like a civil war. She was then temporarily arrested by the police. and came into custody.

    According to media reports from January 2016, Cizre is now a ghost town in many districts, entire districts have been devastated and looked like the images of the embattled Syrian cities. Many people have fled. Oppositionists accused the AKP government of massacring several cellars in houses in the city.

    On February 7, 2016 alone, 60 people were killed by the Turkish military. The Turkish government stated that these were PKK fighters.

    On February 11, 2016, the Turkish government declared the military action against the PKK in the southeast Anatolian city of Cizre to be over. The operation was "very successful," said Interior Minister Efkan Ala. The curfew in Cizre remains in effect until further notice.

    Silopi

    Silopi is a district town in the south of the Şırnak province and borders Syria (20 km) and Iraq (51 km). There has also been a curfew here since December 2015. According to Doğan Haber Ajansı (DHA), the governor of Şırnak said it was relaxed again and is now only valid at night.

    Syrian border region

    In Turkey's view, the YPG are an offshoot of the PKK. For many Western states, however, the Kurdish militias of the YPG in Syria are important allies in the fight against IS. Washington supports the PYD and the YPG with training, weapons and money. The USA and France have repeatedly called on Turkey to end their attacks on Kurdish positions in Syria.

    Humanitarian situation

    Human Rights Watch Turkey representative Ema Sinclair-Webb said she had received calls from people who said, “We have been sitting in a basement with our children for weeks with no food or electricity. It's cold and there is shooting all around us. ”About her work, she said:“ And the bad thing is that in this situation we can hardly clarify the death circumstances of the many civilian victims. Because hardly any journalist has access to the areas to document or film that. "

    Media representatives, lawyers, NGOs and even doctors are sometimes banned from any access to the disputed neighborhoods by Turkish security forces.

    Victim

    There is no reliable information about the people killed in the fighting. Kurdish organizations and the Turkish state each issue different numbers.

    On November 12, 2015, the human rights association Insan Hakları Derneği (IHD) published a report on the extent of violence between June 7, 2015 and November 9, 2015. The report noted that on October 10, 2015 , the KCK announced that it would not take action, but that the state had increased the use of force. 150 Turkish soldiers, police officers and village guards were killed during the reporting period. The PKK counted 181 deaths. According to the report, 9 civilians had died in the fighting.

    According to the Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) party , a total of 82 civilians were killed in Sirnak province between mid-December 2015 and mid-January 2016. During the same period, the Turkish military claims to have killed around 470 PKK fighters in the Silopi and Cizre districts.

    reporting

    Independent journalists have little access to the contested cities. According to the Istanbul media scientist Ceren Sözeri, the large information gap, not only in Europe but also within Turkey, has a system. “The equipment will be removed from journalists who try to report from there anyway and their pictures will be deleted. During their pre-trial detention, their social media accounts are searched and if they have written something useful in private, they face long prison sentences for terrorist propaganda, ”Sözeri told Deutschlandfunk at the beginning of January 2016.

    Reactions in Turkey

    In the petition “ Academics for Peace ” on January 11, 2016, over 1,100 domestic and foreign intellectuals condemned the harsh military actions of the Turkish security forces in the southeast. The content of the petition was the accusation that the Turkish security authorities were pursuing a "policy of extermination and displacement" in south-east Turkey and the demand that a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict should be negotiated instead. As a result, the Academics for Peace process came about .

    Reactions in Germany

    In Germany, opposition politicians commented on the offensive. Cem Özdemir criticized Ankara for imposing criminal collective punishments on the Kurdish minority in the country. “A kind of war is being waged against its own people”. The Turkish special forces deployed had a completely free hand and thus referred to the measures imposed from Ankara. “They can arrest whoever they want, torture whoever they want, kill whoever they want. One cannot speak of human rights or the rule of law. "

    PKK supporters attacked a Turkish-Kurdish "peace demonstration" in Cologne, while PKK sympathizers carried out an arson attack on a Turkish mosque in Stuttgart.

    Geopolitical classification

    Kurdish politicians accuse the German government that they and the EU are jointly responsible for ensuring that the Turkish government can take action against the Kurds to the same extent. Because of the refugee crisis, the Turkish government can act even more freely than it usually does.

    Because of the fighting, many Kurds fled to other parts of the country and became internally displaced. Around 300,000 people left their cities and towns by the end of December 2015 because of the fighting in the east. Western politicians feared that these tens of thousands of people could make their way to the EU. 10,000 people fled from Diyarbakır alone .

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ a b Southeast Turkey: Two police officers die in the PKK attack. In: stern.de . June 23, 2015, accessed March 9, 2018 .
    2. ^ Banned Kurdish Workers' Party PKK: Öcalan calls for disarmament against Turkey. In: sueddeutsche.de . February 28, 2015, accessed March 9, 2018 .
    3. ↑ Mike Szymanski: Kurds in Turkey - Great opportunity for a historic step. In: sueddeutsche.de . March 6, 2015, accessed July 5, 2020.
    4. ↑ PKK takes a stand against Öcalan. PKK does not want to lay down its arms. In: taz.de . taz Verlags u. Vertriebs GmbH, March 1, 2015, accessed on July 2, 2020 .
    5. ↑ Deniz Yücel : “It is up to Erdogan to make peace” , Die Welt, September 19, 2016.
    6. ↑ Parliamentary elections in Turkey: the ruling AKP party loses an absolute majority. In: SPIEGEL ONLINE . June 7, 2015, accessed May 7, 2016 .
    7. ^ A b Military strikes against the PKK and IS: The Turkish way. In: Spiegel Online . July 26, 2015, accessed February 9, 2016 .
    8. ^ "Nobody can control IS" by Özlem Topçu in Die Zeit (online edition) of July 21, 2015, accessed on March 25, 2016
    9. ↑ Deniz Yücel : “Yes, there were internal executions”. In: welt.de. August 23, 2015, accessed November 2, 2019 .
    10. ↑ a b Kurdish conflict in Turkey: Turkish police allegedly desecrated the corpse of a Kurd. In: sueddeutsche.de . October 5, 2015, accessed May 7, 2016 .
    11. ^ Civil war in Eastern Turkey: Erdogan threatens the PKK with "purge". In: Spiegel Online . December 31, 2015, accessed February 11, 2016 .
    12. ↑ Reinhard Baumgarten: The war in the Kurdish area. In: tagesschau.de. February 10, 2016, accessed February 11, 2016 .
    13. ↑ a b Gerd Höhler: Is Turkey threatened with civil war? In: handelsblatt.com . December 16, 2015, accessed February 11, 2016 .
    14. ^ Frank Nordhausen: How the Turkish Police Terrorized Kurds, in Frankfurter Rundschau October 16, 2015
    15. ↑ Thomas Milz: Diyarbakir / Southeast Anatolia - Erdogan's war against the Kurds. In: zvw.de . January 4, 2016, accessed November 4, 2019 .
    16. ↑ PKK burns down historic mosque. TRT German, December 8, 2015, accessed May 7, 2016 .
    17. ↑ PKK should be responsible. At least five dead in the attack in Turkey. In: n-tv . January 14, 2016, accessed February 16, 2016 .
    18. ↑ Turkey - Six dead in a new attack. In: fr.de. February 18, 2016, accessed December 8, 2018 .
    19. ↑ secim.haberler.com
    20. ↑ Leyla Imret - ex-mayor of Cizre arrested. In: radiobremen.de. November 19, 2015, archived from the original on November 20, 2015 ; accessed on December 10, 2018 .
    21. ↑ Michael Knapp: In the cellars of Cizre. Telepolis, February 11, 2016, accessed May 7, 2016 .
    22. ↑ Kurds in Iraq demonstrate for PKK - many dead in Cizre. Abendblatt.de, February 8, 2016, accessed May 7, 2016 .
    23. ↑ Fighting in Eastern Anatolia: Turkey announces victory against PKK in Cizre. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 11, 2016, accessed May 7, 2016 .
    24. ^ A b Luise Sammann: Kurdish conflict in Turkey. The secret war . DLF, January 8, 2016, accessed February 11, 2016.
    25. ↑ a b Civil war in the Kurdish region: numerous dead in southeast Turkey. In: Spiegel Online . January 18, 2016, accessed February 11, 2016 .
    26. ↑ Kurdish areas: Turkish army is said to have killed more than a hundred PKK fighters. In: Spiegel Online . December 19, 2015, accessed February 11, 2016 .
    27. ↑ PKK supporters attack participants in Turkish-Kurdish peace demonstrations. In: FOCUS Online . September 21, 2015, accessed May 7, 2016 .
    28. ↑ Berkan Çakir, Holger Gayer, among others: Stuttgart-Feuerbach: Kurdish group professes to attack. stuttgarter-zeitung.de, December 16, 2015, accessed on May 7, 2016 .
    29. ^ Wieland Schneider: Kurdish conflict: Eastern Turkey in the swamp of violence. In: The press. December 29, 2015, accessed February 11, 2016 .
    30. ↑ Diyarbakir in Turkey - More and more people are fleeing the fighting. In: tagesspiegel.de . December 14, 2015, accessed October 22, 2019 .