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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters My enemy's enemy
By Hamza HendawiThose converted to the cause speak of "Turkish-occupied Kurdistan". Others draw parallels between Abdullah Ocalan's PKK and the struggle of Nelson Mandela's ANC or Yasser Arafat's PLO, while opposition leaders insist they would have gladly given their passports to the guerrilla leader if it meant saving him from languishing in a Turkish jail.
The capture of Ocalan by Turkish agents has touched a raw nerve with many Greek Cypriots, but also highlighted the wide support he enjoys among a people who have for years viewed the PKK's violent, 14-year-old campaign against Turkish rule as a noble and honourable struggle for freedom.
The 15 February operation by Turkish agents in Nairobi also displayed a measure of bravado on the part of the Turks, served as a grim reminder of Ankara's long arm and projected a dangerous level of self-confidence arising from key foreign policy triumphs achieved by the Turks in recent months. The affair, perhaps more importantly, has also significantly heightened tensions between NATO allies and traditional enemies Greece and Turkey.
If that were not bad enough, experts say, any disclosures by Ocalan during his upcoming trial suggesting that his PKK had received more than moral support from Athens or Nicosia could spell serious trouble.
"Turkey is not about to seize any Aegean islands, but a great deal depends on what transpires during Ocalan's trial concerning the role of Greece and its ambassador in Nairobi," said William Hopkinson, a Middle East expert from Britain's Royal Institute for International Studies. "There could be an ugly confrontation if during the trial it becomes obvious that the Greeks have given material support to Ocalan," Hopkinson said in a telephone interview from London.
Such a scenario, experts say, would hardly be played out without Cyprus, a close Greek ally and home to a heavily-armed 35,000-strong Turkish army that has occupied its northern third for nearly a quarter of a century. Already, Turkey appears to be spoiling for a fight, prompting Greece to put its armed forces on the highest alert and organise the exit of three Ocalan female aides from Nairobi only after receiving written assurances from Kenya about their safety and arranging for EU diplomats to be present. Their departure from the Greek Embassy in Nairobi, where the Kurdish leader was holed up for 12 days before his capture, was carried live by Greek TV.
Beside any confessions implicating Athens further vis-à-vis its ties with Ocalan, Hopkinson believes that Greece may have more to worry about from increasing domestic tensions in Turkey. Citing a growing Islamic movement, a Kurdish insurgency that he said cannot be ended militarily and economic strains, Hopkinson said Turkish leaders may want to manufacture a situation that calls for "rallying around the flag". "Turkey is a society under such stress that [it] could actually weaken its role as an international player and EU candidate," he said.
Ankara has also over the past two weeks repeatedly claimed that President Glafcos Clerides' government was harbouring PKK camps. The Greek Cypriot leader categorically denied the charge, saying foreign observers were welcome to come to the island to look for such camps themselves. "Allegations of PKK bases on the island are fairly fantastic," commented a Cyprus-based Western observer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Turkey has also charged that the government knew or colluded in giving Ocalan a Republic of Cyprus passport carrying the name of prominent journalist and well-known Kurdish sympathiser Lazaros Mavros. The government countered by saying the passport was a fake, but Mavros' decision to use his constitutional right not to cooperate with a police investigation into the matter did not help the government's case.
"There are one or two Greek Cypriots who are extremely involved with the cause of the Kurds," said the Western observer. "But the government's attitude toward them falls way short of what qualifies as official sanctioning."
Turkey's track record of ending by any means active support for the Kurds fighting for autonomy in the southeast of the country already has a Cyprus chapter. Greek Cypriot Theofilos Giorgiades, who headed the Cyprus Solidarity Committee with Kurdistan, was gunned down outside his Nicosia home in March 1994. His killers, widely believed to be Turkish agents, were never arrested.
The committee, now 10 years old, has survived Giorgiades and, perhaps as a precaution against a repeat of the fate of its late chairman, rotates its chairmanship and the designated role of its members. Stelios Ioannou, a spokesman for the committee, said the organisation has helped spread awareness of the Kurdish cause on the island, transforming the misconception many Greek Cypriots had of the Kurds as "other Turks".
"The support for the cause of the Kurds among Greek Cypriots is now tremendous," declared Ioannou. The committee, he said, had not raised funds for the Kurds for several years. The last time it did, he said, was for children made homeless after troops destroyed their villages in southeast Turkey. Ioannou declined to say how much money was raised then, saying only it was a satisfactory sum, but pointed out that the purse strings of Greek Cypriots were pulled in several directions in recent years -- Bosnia, Rwanda, the Armenian earthquake.
Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, whose administration suffered a humiliating embarrassment at home over Ocalan's capture, could hardly qualify for the support and sympathy reserved by Greek Cypriots for the Kurds. His handling of the Ocalan affair and his dismissal later of three cabinet ministers did little to endear him to the islanders who, ironically, have in Greece their strongest foreign ally.
"To say that we feel dismayed about Greece's handling of Ocalan is putting it very mildly," said Ioannou of the Solidarity Committee. "Greece handled the matter in the worst possible way."
The circumstances of Ocalan's capture have also deepened suspicion by many Greek Cypriots of Simitis' commitment to their "struggle" against Turkey, stoking a widespread resentment that began with the Greek leader's allegedly crucial role in persuading Cyprus to cancel the deployment of Russian missiles which Turkey had threatened to take out if they came to Cyprus.
Furthermore, Cypriots saw in the West's reluctance to offer Ocalan sanctuary in the months which followed his expulsion from Syria late last year as fresh evidence of bias in favour of Turkey, with the United States, suspected of helping the Turks incarcerate Ocalan, increasingly seen here as unashamedly pro-Turkish. Washington officially views the PKK as a terrorist organisation, a label that Britain is also thought to have given the guerrilla group.
"Unfortunately, the United States and Europe are supporting Turkey," said House Deputy Marios Matsakis of the opposition Diko Party. "They've created a monster and that monster is getting more monstrous and will soon be out of control," he said.
The sympathy felt by Greek Cypriots for Ocalan and his PKK, according to Matsakis, Ioannou and other Kurdish sympathisers on the island, is not a simple case of "my enemy's enemy is my friend." "The PKK is the same as the Palestinian freedom fighters or the EOKA fighters," said Matsakis. "I view the PKK as a political fighting force for freedom and democracy."
"The PLO was for many years labelled as a terrorist organisation but the doors of the White House were eventually opened for Arafat," added Ioannou.
Not everyone agrees, however. "We Cypriots say a lot in public," said a prominent Nicosia banker who did not want to be named. "But if an opinion poll is conducted on a representative segment of the population, there will not be so much support for the Kurds."
Supporting a separatist group such as the PKK, he added, weakened the government's argument for a bi-zonal, bi-communal solution to end the division of the island. "It could very well boomerang."
