Turkey’s Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel, and Russia, 1991 - 2000 Robert Olson Mazda Publishers
This volume, the second in the Kurdish Studies Series by this publisher, focuses on the role of the Kurdish and Islamist questions in Turkey’s foreign policies with Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia from the end of the Persian Gulf War to the end of 2000. The author argues that the Kurdish question, i.e., the transstate aspects of the challenge of Kurdish nationalism coupled with the Islamist question, i.e., the challenge of contending political groups using the discourse of Islam, were the two major challenges to Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies during the decade of the 1990s. He argues further that the overlapping of the two questions presented a potent challenge to the stability of the Turkish state and contributed to the unraveling of the U.S.’s policy of “dual containment” implemented toward Iraq and Iran in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. The two questions were dominant in Turkey’s relations with Iran and with Russia. The Kurdish question, with the attendant issue of water, dominating Ankara’s relations with Syria and the challenge of Kurdish nationalism was one of the main factors compelling Turkey to seek closer relations with Israel in the early 1990s. “The end of the Cold War transformed Turkey’s foreign policy in many ways. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Islamic Revolution in Iran added new twists to the tortuous relations among Ankara, Moscow and Tehran. And the emerging Turkish-Israeli relationship will undoubtedly have far-reaching implications for Turkey’s relations with its neighbors. This book has tied these developments together and has presented us with a remarkable picture of the challenges facing Turkey as it navigates to chart a new course for itself in this geostrategic labyrinth. Robert Olson has an international reputation as a trailblazer in the academic study of Kurdish issues and Turkish-Kurdish relations. In this highly informative, analytically sound, and scholarly rigorous book, Professor Olson sustains that reputation.”
—Nader Entessar, Spring Hill College
Contents
Acknowledgements / ix Note on Spelling and names / x English Translation of Turkey’s Political Parties / xi Maps / xii Preface / xv
Introduction / 1
Chapter One / 11 Turkey-Iran Relations: From the Islamic Revolution to the Persian Gulf War: 1979-1991
Chapter Two / 44 Turkey-Iran Relations, 1997-2000: The Kurdish and Islamist Questions.
Chapter Three / 76 Ankara and Tehran; Reestablishing Diplomatic Links and Consolidating Political Relations: Their Impact on the Kurdish Question
Chapter Four / 105 Turkey-Syria Relations, 1997-2000: Kurds, Water, Israel and “Undeclared War”
Chapter Five / 125 Turkey-Israel-American Jewish Alliance, 1995-2000: Genesis and Implications
Chapter Six / 166 Turkey’s and Russia’s Foreign Policies, 1991-2000: The Kurdish and Chechnya Questions
Conclusion / 201
Bibliography / 205
Index / 223
Note on Author / 233
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dr. Saleha R. Mahmood, editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, graciously gave me permission to use material from my article that appeared in vol. 18, no. 2 of that journal. Dr. Shahid Qadir, editor of the Third World Quarterly, also gave permission to use material in chapter two that first appeared in vol. 21, no. 5 (2000) of TWQ. Cornell Fleischer consented to my using the guide to pronunciation of Turkish names and places that he used in Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600) (Princeton: 1986). Maps 1 and 2 were adapted from Mehrdad Izady, The Kurds: A Concise Handbook and reconstructed by Guyla Pauer. Map 3 was made by Dick Gilbreath, head cartographer of the cartography laboratory of the University of Kentucky. Dick also made the facsimile of the cover with customarily good cheer and efficiency. Thanks Dick.
I am especially grateful to Angelique Glaskis who edited the manuscript and for her corrections and comments which made the book more readable. I could never have finished the manuscript with the deadline imposed upon me without the editing and proof-reading talents of Erin Shelor, Scot Merriman, Bruce Eastwood, David Nichols and Bob Flynn. In addition, Bob proofread and commented on chapters three, four, five and six and improved them greatly. My friend and colleague Art Wrobel read and commented on chapter three. Bob and Scot also helped me with all of my computer anxieties. I hope they will forgive me for the constant jumping up and down they did to help me. I am grateful.
Preface
The contention of this essay is that the “Kurdish Question,” by which I mean the trans-state challenge of Kurdish nationalism, has been one of the main problems in the Middle East since the end of the Persian Gulf war in February 1991. Other criticial issues in the Middle East include the Arab-Israeli conflict, the direction that the Islamic revolution in Iran would take and the eventual status of Iraq. None of these have been resolved as of 2000. The Arab-Israeli conflict was the one issue that had been reduced in scope, albeit much to the detriment of the Palestinians. The movement toward a negotiated settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was facilitated greatly by the U.S. and its Allied forces war against Iraq. That conflict preempted Baghdad from being a major player in inter-Arab and regional politics during the 1990s and left the Palestinians stranded and even more vulnerable to the combination of U.S. and Israel power. The weakening of Iraq also added to the possibility of an independent Kurdish state being established in northern Iraq. By 2000 the future direction of the Islamic revolution in Iran remained in question, although the reformist elements led by President Mohammad Khatami had grown much stronger since their resounding electoral victories in the April 2000 elections. It was these circumstances that allowed the Kurdish question, which affected directly four of the major states—Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq—and the 25 million Kurds who lived in them, to become a major challenge to their regimes.
The challenge of Kurdish nationalism, led by the PKK, Partia Kakaren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), dominated Turkey’s domestic and foreign affairs throughout the last two decades of the twentieth century. The threat of Kurdish nationalism played a significant role in the military coup of 12 September 1980. After the PKK launched its first military action against the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) in 1984, it dominated Turkey’s politics for the next sixteen years and promised to occupy that position well into the first decades of the 2000s. Turkey’s war against the PKK and organized Kurdish nationalism was the longest in its history with the exception of its War of Independence. It has resulted in the death of some 40,000 people with the bulk of them being Kurds. In addition to those killed, the TAF razed, destroyed and evacuated some 4000 Kurdish villages and hamlets in the southeast and east of the country. More than 3,000,000 Kurds were compelled to flee to western Turkey or to the larger cities in the southeast and east, swelling their populations greatly. By the late 1990s, for example, the population of the predominantly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir had swelled from 400,000 to over 1.5 million. The civil war between the Turks and the Kurds thus resulted in the rapid urbanization of the region and, given the lack of infrastructure in the southeast and east, created monumental housing, nutritional and employment problems.
The internal war with the Kurds, and after 1980, against the PKK in northern Iraq, was expensive. It is estimated that Turkey may well have spent on average $8 billion per year from 1984 to 2000 on the war. One wonders what kind of infrastructure could have been built not only in the southeast and east, but all over Turkey if such sums had been spent on industrializing projects. The above said, this essay does not dwell on the Kurdish problem per se in Turkey, i.e., the challenge of the PKK and the Kurdish nationalist movement to the Kemalist state, especially from 1991 to 2000, but it is implicit in the arguments I make regarding Turkey’s foreign relations with Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia.
Likewise, I do not include a special study regarding Turkey’s relations with Iraq. I have made this choice with full realization that Turkey’s relations with Iraq regarding the Kurdish question are fundamental to both countries. After all, it was the consolidation of a Kurdish state in Kurdistan Iraq throughout the 1990s that threatened the territory that had been included in the state of Iraq by the 5 June 1926 treaty between Turkey, Iraq and Great Britain. Ankara’s fear throughout the 1990s was that the Kurds of Turkey would attempt to do what the Kurds of Iraq were trying to do-create a state. It was this fear that called forth the brutal and lethal actions of the TAF throughout the 1990s. The Kurds of Iraq had the support of the U.S., the European Union (EU) and Israel while the Kurds of Turkey had to struggle against the same three groups, all of which were major suppliers of weapons and arms to Turkey that it used against the Kurds. Devoting a study to Turkey-Iraq relations would have demanded a full investigation of U.S. policies in the Middle East, including Israel and Iran. This would have detracted from my choice of using the Kurdish question, its import and evolution, as a barometer of the changes in Ankara’s relations with Tehran, Damascus, Jerusalem and Moscow. Focusing on the Kurdish question allowed me to investigate its impact on other aspects of the multi-layered relations of these four countries and their need to omni-balance their relations, especially Turkey, Iran and Syria.
I do not consider the Kurdish question and Kurdish problem as the most important problem confronting Syria from 1991-2000. But, it was a very significant one, as it was coupled with the water disputes with Turkey. Obviously, Syria’s involvement in Lebanon, relations with Israel and approach to the “peace process”, its alliance with Iran and policies toward the Arab countries were dominant. But Damascus’ sheltering of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan from 1979 to 1998, with all of the risks involved, demonstrates Syria’s intention to use the PKK as a lever to strengthen its position vis-a-vis Turkey regarding the allocation of the downflow of the Euphrates river and to support Kurdish nationalism in Turkey as an instrument to weaken its big northern neighbor. It is important to remember that Turkey began construction of the South Anatolia Project (GAP) / (Gwney Dogu Projesi) in 1974. Damascus’ willingness to shelter Ocalan was connected to Turkey’s decision to go ahead with the giant hydroelectric and irrigation project. Damascus may even have anticipated that the GAP project would eventually result in a strong Turkey-Israel relationship which would be detrimental to its own interests as well as Iraq’s-also a recipient of Euphrates water. Unquestionably, the Kurdish question and the water question were inextricably mixed by the 1980s. Indeed, it may well be, as I argue in the text, that one of the U.S.’s and Israel’s objectives in bombing Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981 was to deter Iraq from using the possession of nuclear weapons to prevent Turkey from using the GAP project as a lever against Syria, Iraq and other Arab states to prevent Turkey from becoming an eventual source of water for Israel.
Since Syria’s domestic Kurdish problem was not as paramount as Turkey’s, it did not challenge the legitimacy of the Ba‘thist regime of Hafiz al-Asad to the degree that it did Kemalist Turkey. This allowed Damascus a freer hand in using the Kurdish card against Ankara and Baghdad. There is, however, some irony in the fact that by the end of the 1990s Syria’s support and sheltering of the PKK and the thousands of young Syrian Kurds who fought with the PKK in Turkey, had increased Kurdish nationalist identity in Syria—a legacy that Hafiz al-Asad left to his son after his long rule (1970-2000) ended on 7 June 2000.
Iran used the Kurdish card and supported the Kurdish nationalist movement for many of the same reasons that Syria did: to weaken Turkey. Tehran also supported the PKK as a lever to curtail Turkey’s growing influence in northern Iraq, especially after 1991. From 1980 to 2000, Kurdistan Iraq became a contested political space in which question continued to play important roles in Turkey-Russia relations until 2000.
If Turkey’s backing of the Chechens had resulted in an independent Chechnya, Turkey would have gained greatly increased influence in Russian’s “backyard.” This appeared to be the direction of developments from 1994 to 1998. As Turkey increased its support for the Chechens, Russia increased its support for the PKK. After Russia invaded Chechnya in September 1999, and until the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) met in Istanbul in mid-October 1999, the Kremlin continue to accuse the Turks of supporting the Chechens. Indeed, Boris Yeltsin’s last official foreign trip was to the OSCE meeting in Istanbul where he demanded that the Turks stop supporting the Chechens. Only after Russia’s second invasion of Chechnya in September 1999 did Turkey substantially reduce its aid to the Chechens and Chechnya. By this time it was clear that Ankara would not challenge a determined Russia under a new and assertive president over Chechnya and thereby jeopardize its growing trade and increasing need for gas and oil or threaten its access to Russian controlled or dominated sources of gas and oil. Just before the OSCE meeting in Istanbul, Turkey and Russia had signed protocols leading to construction of the Blue Stream project (Mavi Akim) which called for laying a gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey under the Black Sea. Land construction of the project commenced in 2000. In addition, by 2000 trade between the two countries had grown to nearly $10 billion. This trade did not include the informal and illegal suitcase trade (valiz ticareti) which was estimated to be around $2 billion. By 2000, Turkey’s need for energy sources super-ceded any advantages that it had hoped to receive by military supporting the Chechens or other peoples in the Caucasus who wanted independence from Moscow.
I wish to note finally that I stopped research on 1 September 2000 in order to prepare the manuscript for publication.
Robert Olson University of Kentucky
Introduction
This essay examines the Kurdish problem and Kurdish question and how they affected the foreign policies of Turkey and Iran from the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 to the present. The Kurdish problem refers to the domestic challenge Kurdish nationalism poses to each state and the Kurdish question to the trans-state aspects of the issue as it affects the geopolitic and geostrategic concerns of both countries.
This essay’s premis is that the Kurdish problem in Turkey has been the dominant foreign policy issue since 1991 and that it played a crucial role from the 1980s onward. Kurdish nationalism and its potentially close alignment with Islamist organizations has been the biggest challenge to the state of Turkey since its establishment in 1923. The challenge became greater with the creation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or Partia-Kakaren Kurdistan, popularly known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, in the late 1970s and its emergence in 1984 when it staged its first armed attack against the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF). From 1984 onwards the major objective of the TAF was to destroy the PKK within Turkey and its organizational infrastructure in Europe and throughout the Middle East, Russia and the other countries of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, TAF’s extirpatory campaign against the PKK was extended to northern Iraq.2 .....
1 David McDowell, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I.B.Tauris, 1996); Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989).
2 Since the list of publications on the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey is becoming extensive, here 1 mention what I consider to be the most relevant works. Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998); Kemal Kirisci and Gareth M. Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of a Trans-state Ethnic Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1997) and its Turkish translation Kürt Sorunu: Kdkeni ve Gelsimi, trans, by Ahmet Fethi (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari, no. 47, 1997); Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds and the Future of Turkey (New YorK: St. Martin’s Press, 1997; Robert Olson, ed.
Robert Olson
Turkey’s Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel, and Russia, 1991 – 2000
Mazda Publishers
Mazda Publishers, Inc. Kurdish Studies Series No. 2 The Kurdish and Islamist Questions
Editorial Board Robert Olson, General Editor University of Kentucky
Shahrzad Mojab University of Toronto
Amir Hassanpour University of Toronto
The Kurdish and Islamist Questions Robert Olson
Mazda Publishers, Inc. 2001
Mazda Publishers, Inc. Academic Publishers Since 1980 P.O. Box 2603 Costa Mesa, California 92626 U.S.A. www.mazdapub.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olson, Robert W. Turkey's Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel, and Russia, 1991-2000: the Kurdish and Islamist Questions/ Robert Olson, p.cm.—(Kurdish Studies Series; No. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 1-56859-133-0 (softcover: alk. paper) 1. Middle East—Foreign relations—Turkey. 2. Turkey—Foreign relations— Middle East. 3. Turkey—Foreign relations—1980- 4. Kurds. 5. Islam and politics—Middle East. I. Title. II. Series. DS63.2.T8 047 2001 27.561'009'049—dc 00-054895
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