Kurdish advances and problems in 2016

This analysis may be published by a student organization, Association des États Généraux des Étudiants de l’Europe. The request for comment is in German:   KOMMENTARE ZU DIESEM ARTIKEL.  If if this is a student magizine, that adds to its interest.  In any event, the analysis rings true to me.

ANALYSIS Kurds enjoy their gains in Iraq, Syria, but eye Turkey nervously By Jan Kuhlmann und Can Merey, dpa | EUROPE ONLINE  

Europe 25.12.2016

By our dpa-correspondent and Europe Online         

The year 2016 brought a swirling tide of mixed fortune for the Kurds. They enabled the West to fight Islamic State forces in Syria, and grew stronger through their part in offensives in neighbouring Iraq. But those wins came as Turkey made life tough at home for its Kurds. 

Istanbul (dpa) - Only two years ago, Kurds in Syria emerged victorious from a fight that could have sealed their extinction. 

While Islamic State forces seemed certain to take the border city of Kobane, Kurdish fighters repulsed the onslaught and marked a turning point, in the civil war and their own history. 

The oppressed ethnic minority has since emerged as a leading power in the six-year conflict wracking Syria. Today, the Kurdish YPG militia controls most of the border with Turkey. To the west, the YPG crossed the Euphrates River and is pushing south towards the IS-stronghold of al-Raqqa. 
Politically, the Kurds have also effectively advanced their demand for a fully self-run autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria. 

Kurdish units became the key partner of the US-led international coalition against Islamic State, doing the ground fighting and sparing the military alliance from having to deploy troops. Never has global political recognition of the Syrian Kurds been as great as now. 

The same applies to the Iraqi Kurds. True, they have taken losses from Islamic State forces, but they have also benefited from supplies of weapons and training given to the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters by the US, Germany and other Western states. Until recently a crude guerrilla-style force, the Peshmerga have now evolved into an army in its own right.
While pushing back Islamic State forces, the Kurds extended their dominion in the north of Iraq, much to the dismay of the central government in Baghdad, which looked on powerlessly. Today, the long- cherished prospect of Kurdish independence no longer seems an illusion. 

And yet 2016 was mixed for the Kurds. Compared with Iraq and Syria, the Kurdish minority in Turkey has nowhere near as many reasons to optimism.
In June 2015 they celebrated the entry of the Peoples‘ Democratic Party (HDP) as the first pro-Kurdish party to enter the parliament in Ankara. It was a short-lived joy. A year later the immunity of almost all HDP deputies was lifted at the behest of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who sees the party as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers‘ Party (PKK). 

Ten HDP deputies are now under investigation, including both party leaders, and many of their colleagues also face trial. Under emergency measures Erdogan imposed after a coup attempt in mid-July, the authorities also shut down Kurdish media and organizations the government accuses of having ties with the PKK.  

Meanwhile, the PKK has also done its part in escalating violence after a peace process collapsed in the summer of 2015. 

Some Kurds in Turkey consider the situation worse than during the civil war in the 1990s, when the conflict took place mainly in rural areas. This time the PKK is waging its fight in Kurdish cities, entrenching its fighters in residential areas while the Turkish army uses tanks and artillery against them, razing whole districts. 

It‘s possible that the PKK‘s goal was to tie up the army in the urban struggle in south-east Turkey so as to delay military action against the Kurdish militia in northern Iraq. 

Whatever their strategy, the cost was high - hundreds of people have been killed, including many civilians. 

Meanwhile, a splinter group of the PKK - the TAK - has sown terror in western Turkey, killing dozens in bomb attacks in Ankara and Istanbul. And there is no visible end to this escalation, let alone a new peace process, with Erdogan pledging to destroy the PKK with an "iron fist". 

At the same time, the president does not limit his tough stance to the borders of his country. 

Forces from the NATO member country have invaded Syria in support of rebel militias like Islamic State, but also against the YPG militia, which has close ties with the PKK. 

Ankara wants at all costs to prevent the Kurds from uniting their enclave at Afrin in the west of the country with areas they hold further east. The two sides have battled for weeks, putting the West in a difficult situation in Syria, where it is allied with two sides fighting each other. All attempts to mediate have so far failed, making a swift peaceful solution to the conflict even more unlikely. 

Away from the frontlines, the crisis faced by Iraq‘s Kurds has slipped from the world‘s attention. Low oil prices have hammered the Kurdish autonomous regions, and the many half-finished buildings in the once booming Kurdish capital of Erbil now only remind of better times. State employees regularly take to the streets because their salaries are not paid. 

Kurdish President Massud Barsani, a respected partner of the West, is also fuelling the crisis by staying at the region‘s helm more than a year after his term of office expired. The opposition accuses him of imposing a dictatorship, while the Kurdish parliament currently only exists on paper.
It‘s a situation that is acutely felt by the speaker of the Kurdish Parliament, Yusif Mohammed, from the opposition party Gorran (Change). In a stark reflection of the challenges facing the Kurds and the path into their future, he remains barred from Erbil by Barani‘s security forces.