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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Birds of a feather
By Graham Usher
For Western governments, the arrest of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan has revealed as never before the political weight of the 850,000 Kurds who now reside in Europe, as their representatives took over Greek and Kenyan embassies in 20 different countries in protest at these governments' perceived complicity in the kidnapping. For the Arab world, the lesson to be drawn from the Ocalan affair is that a new regional order has emerged in which Turkey's foreign policy is rapidly starting to mimic the aggressive and adventurous nature of Israel's.
Kurdish demonstrators with their hands tied with rope, take part in a peaceful demonstration in central Hamburg, Germany to protest Ocalan's arrest
(photo: AP)
Within hours of Ocalan's arrest becoming known, Kurdish demonstrators took to the streets in virtually every Western European capital. If the most harrowing protest was that of 15-year-old Nejla Kanteper setting fire to herself in London on 16 February, it was the Kurdish protests outside Greece's European embassies and the Israeli consulate in Berlin that carried the gravest political consequences.
In London, 79 Kurds occupied the Greek embassy for 59 hours and held a Greek employee captive in protest at a government that had long espoused the Kurdish struggle as its own, but which had failed to offer Ocalan asylum when it mattered. When details emerged that either Greek complicity or incompetence had effectively delivered the Kurdish leader into Turkey's hands in Nairobi, thousands of Kurds took to the streets in Athens and Salonika.
The protests also highlighted the burgeoning security alliance between Turkey and Israel. Fuelled by reports that Israel's Mossad intelligence force had played a direct role in Ocalan's capture, 55 Kurds stormed Israel's consulate in Berlin. In an entirely predictable response, the consulate's Israeli guards opened fire with live ammunition, leaving three Kurds dead and 16 wounded.
Claiming "self-defence," the carnage clearly shook the Israeli government. After the consulate killings, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called a press conference to state publicly that Israel "did not cooperate with any element in Ocalan's capture," while Mossad chief, Ephaim Halevy, took the unprecedented step of dispatching a letter to all operatives "in the field" to deny any Israeli collusion with Turkey over the Ocalan abduction. Israel also put the protection of its diplomatic missions throughout Europe on high alert.
Whether or not Mossad had a direct role in Ocalan's capture, Kurdish anger is based upon a growing security axis between Israel and Turkey, which, since its official inauguration in February 1996, has permeated all levels of Turkey's foreign policy, including its murderous war against the PKK in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.
In May 1996 -- within two months of the pact's launch -- Israeli military and intelligence personnel visited Turkey's disputed province of Hatay (Alexandretta) on the Syrian border, presumably to advise Ankara on how to deal with PKK incursions in the area.
Most Israeli and Arab analysts also see an Israeli hand behind Turkey's escalation last October to "a state of undeclared war" with Syria. Thus Ankara's demands of Damascus then -- that it extradite Ocalan to Turkey, close PKK bases in the Bekaa Valley and "police" Turkey's borders -- bore an uncanny resemblance to the kind of demands Israel routinely makes of the Palestinian Authority in the Occupied Territories and the Lebanese government in occupied south Lebanon. It was fear of a pincer assault of Turkish troops from the north and Israeli firepower from the south that almost certainly persuaded Syria's President Hafez Al-Assad to ditch the PKK and send Ocalan on his long, fruitless odyssey for a haven across Europe, Russia and Africa.
Even Ankara's increasing large-scale military invasions into northern Iraq in November and again last week in pursuit of PKK guerrillas appear to draw their inspiration from Israel's blitzkrieg tactics in Lebanon in 1993 and 1996.
But there are other parallels between Turkey's war against the Kurds and Israel's assaults on the Arabs, be they Palestinian or Lebanese. In 1982, many Israelis viewed the military defeat of the PLO in Lebanon as the beginning of the end of the Palestinian question on the international arena. That particular strategic foresight led to the return of the Palestinian struggle to the Occupied Territories and its unprecedented exposure on the world stage through the Intifada.
Should the Ocalan affair produce a similar political unity within Kurdish ranks not only in Turkey but, critically, through the Kurdish diaspora in Europe, the Turks may find that the price of a single Kurdish leader's incarceration in a jail on the Sea of Marmara will be the renewed legitimacy of the Kurdish national struggle everywhere else.
