ISTANBUL ? For nearly three weeks this summer, Turkey?s military and Kurdish guerrillas have fought one of the longest battles in their decades-long conflict, experts say.
The guerrillas usually carry out spectacular attacks in the summer and fall, but the fight this year has been especially long and intense.
The clashes have taken on new significance given the conflict in neighboring Syria, a country with a large Kurdish population of its own. Syria?s Kurds have made significant gains in recent months, which experts say may be inspiring Turkey?s Kurds to fight harder.
The Kurdistan Workers? Party, or PKK, has been battling the Turkish state since 1984 and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. At least 40,000 people have died in the conflict as the guerrillas have fought for autonomy in the southeast of the country, cultural rights and the release of their leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was captured in 1999.
In recent weeks, the Turkish government has accused the group of reviving its past connections to the Syrian government in what many see as a growing regional conflict.
Details are sketchy, but in mid-August the Turkish military ended an operation against Kurdish guerrillas who had taken up positions in Turkey?s eastern Hakkari district, which borders Iraq and Iran. The guerrillas had set up checkpoints on public roads, prompting the military to respond. According to a local Kurdish politician, the militants discontinued their traditional ?hit and run? strikes and instead attempted to retain control over areas around Hakkari.
Not long before the fighting began in Hakkari, government forces in Syria had abandoned several Kurdish towns and villages along the border with Turkey, leaving them largely under the control of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD. That has left Syrian Kurds effectively in control of parts of the border with Turkey, alarming the Turkish government.
The Syrian Kurds have remained at arm?s length from the rebel uprising against the Syrian government. But the Turkish government says the Kurds in Syria are, in fact, collaborating with Damascus in order to gain the greatest possible benefit from the situation there. From early on in the conflict, the Syrian government offered Kurds concessions to keep them from joining the opposition, observers say.
?The Syrian regime has left some places in the Kurdish-dominated areas of its territory,? said a Turkish official speaking on the condition of anonymity. ?It shows cooperation.?
While Turkey?s Kurds might find some inspiration in the Kurds? gains in Syria, the situations in the two countries differ greatly, analysts say. The Syrian Kurds were able to make gains largely because the Syrian government needed to send troops stationed in Kurdish areas to the war-racked city of Aleppo, said Jordi Tejel, a Kurdish expert at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
?The PYD can count on the government?s complicity so far. That will never be the case in Turkey. Even in Syria, the so-called liberated zones are fragile,? he said.
The near-daily clashes have continued in the Hakkari district.
?When we think of the PYD success in Syria, the PKK would think that they can do the same thing in Turkey,? said Emrullah Uslu, a Turkish terrorism expert.
The Turks also blame the PKK for an Aug.�20 bombing that killed 10 people in the city of Gaziantep, which is near the border with Syria. The PKK has denied responsibility for the attack.
Roj Welat, a spokesman for the guerrillas fighting in Turkey, said the militants were trying to push government forces out of the eastern part of the country. In August, the PKK kidnapped several soldiers and two parliamentarians. The politicians were later released unharmed, but Welat warned that the group would continue to target Turkish government representatives.
?All the people working for the Turkish state and its government in the Kurdish region should leave their work and go back to their homes, otherwise we have every right to arrest and question all those people working for the fascist state,? he said, speaking via telephone from a PKK base in northern Iraq.
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=018e98d27d7282507a12069b89b7e460
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