Who Are The Good Guys?

What a tangle the Middle East is, with countries composed of tribal and ethnic rivalries in which many of the factions tolerate each other at best, and openly form battle lines, or resort to terrorist strategies when the best cannot be achieved; and the best frequently cannot be achieved. Here in the U.S. there are ethnic tensions as well, with some places seeing more discord than others, but generally, the concept of a complete breakdown of law and order is totally foreign. Most of us can't even imagine living in a place where one terrorist group controls one area of a country or city, another may hold a different section, and the official government, which may or may not be legitimate, has its lines drawn to stake out yet another. To most Americans, gang activity in some of our more dangerous city neighborhoods may be an approximation of the uncertainty and danger of living in some Middle Eastern regions, but it's on a much diminished scale. We know there is conflict here, spawned from longstanding grievances, but we do not base our entire world view on the notion of us and them, nor expect us and them to roam the streets armed with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades.

I've been doing a smattering of reading on various ME countries for a long time. Writers like Michael Totten and Michael Yon have taken me into such strongholds of ethnic and religious strife as Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and one of the things that always amazes me is how blurred the lines are between good guys and bad guys, or at least how much each side in these age-old conflicts thinks that they are in the right, and thinks that being in the right justifies any action they may take. Maybe it's because these conflicts are so very old, and the origins of the hatred are so buried in tradition, but the hatred itself seems to become a virtue to the poor souls indoctrinated with the poison of self-righteousness from the cradle.

What I read today was an essay by Peter Church, in The Weekly Standard, on the Kurdish people, and the way things stand for them in the countries where they currently live, especially Turkey, where approximately half of them reside. I learned from Church that the Kurds are a people mostly spread through one region, but divided among four countries. They live where Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria meet, and have faced rejection and persecution from all of the governments that have claimed dominion over them. In 1920 they were briefly offered autonomy, via the Treaty of Sevres, but in 1923 it was snatched away by the Treaty of Lausanne before that self-governance ever came to fruition. So, they are a people who are separated by borders--the borders of countries with which they feel little affinity. They have occasionally rebelled in search of independence, but have suffered the consequences. Here's an example:

Under both Attaturk and the Turkish nationalists (following the 1980 military coup), Kurds had their language and ethnicity denied in Turkey. Rather than "Kurds," they were called "Mountain Turks" and speaking Kurdish became a crime. In the 1970s there was a revival of the Kurdish nationalist movement under Abdullah Ocalan, who eventually formed the PKK. The group took up arms in earnest in 1984 and continued their fight until Ocalan's arrest in 1998.

They are a people with which one can truly sympathize. Any people denied the right to their identity has the claim to compassion. The rub comes when that claim manifests itself in ways that deny compassion to others, when it leaps the boundaries of rebellion and crosses into the darkly selfish terrain of terrorism, when it puts its own claim above all others' rights to the same compassion they long for themselves. The PKK, referred to in the quote above is the Kurdish Workers Party, and is acknowledged by the U.S. as a terrorist organization:

The Turkish response to the Kurdish rebels was harsh, crippling the southeast, where today unemployment tops 50 percent. But the PKK were no angels. They targeted teachers throughout the southeast (who they considered "agents of the state") and are known to have slaughtered entire Kurdish villages for not cooperating. Yet, despite its classification as a terrorist organization, the PKK continues to enjoy broad Kurdish support in Turkey. In Van a man told me that without the PKK, Kurds would be unable to speak their own language today--which conveniently ignores the fact that Turkey's pro-Kurd reforms were enacted only after violence ceased following Ocalan's arrest.

Church's article goes on to discuss the PKK and its "political face", the Democratic Society Party (DTP). They are not letting go of the concept of terrorism as a way of achieving their ends, which are laudable on their face, but tempered by their method. Singer interviewed the DTP's Van provincial party minister, Ibrahim Sunkur:

Publicly, the relationship between the DTP and PKK has been somewhat akin to that between Sinn Fein and the IRA: They are known to be linked, but while the DTP does not publicly endorse the PKK, it doesn't disavow it either.

So I asked, "Is the government correct to call the PKK a terrorist group?" Sunkur's response was evasive: "DTP works for all Turkish people," he said. "PKK works only for Kurds."

I asked what the DTP is trying to achieve for the broader Turkish people. Sunkur replied, "Kurdish language rights and the right to practice Kurdish culture, human rights for Kurds, and an economic plan that includes Kurds."

"Is that everything?" I asked.

"And amnesty for PKK," Sunkur added. "The Turkish government must stop attacking PKK and let them enter politics at the negotiating table."

The exchange was instructive. Rather than being a program "for all Turkish people," Sunkur's list of political goals was Kurd-specific. And including amnesty for the PKK in the party platform seems, on the face of it, unrealistic, if not outright antagonistic to the Turkish government. On the other hand, the DTP's reluctance to distance itself from the PKK likely does have broad support amongst its constituents.

"If PKK is fighting after Kurds are given rights to practice their culture, then we will say they are terrorists," said another man I spoke to in Van. "But for now PKK is trying to do something Kurds support."

So what I am reading here is that as long as the people support it, it's not terrorism, that as long as they are being denied their rights, they have the right to kill innocents. Where does that kind of standard come from? From everything I have read in Michael Totten's accounts of his travels, the Kurds are a lovely people, generous and kind, at least the ones in Iraq, and have suffered greatly under intolerant regimes. So what makes a lovely, generous, kind people, who know what it is like to be treated unfairly, willing to support people who target teachers for assassination and slaughter entire villages of their own people who don't cooperate? Perhaps the latter has a fair bit to do with it, fear, but I can't believe that's the sum of it.

This whole situation between the Kurds and the Turkish government puts the U.S. in a very awkward spot. Turkey is an ally, with a terrorist group working within their borders . Kurdish Northern Iraq is an ally, with sympathy for their fellow Kurds who have suffered under harsh oppression. They are on different sides of the argument, but both share what appears to me to be a common Middle Eastern state of mind: "If I do it, it is justified, and comes at the end of my long-suffering patience. If you do it, you are a villain, and in my retribution you are only getting what you deserve." All the major players seem to see themselves in the role of martyr or victim, and the conflicts go back so far that everyone can latch onto a list of grievances, while conveniently ignoring their own culpability. Why do the Turks continue to deny the Kurds the right to their own cultural expression? Do they only see themselves as victims of terrorism, and not as perpetrators of injustice? Why do the Kurds see terrorism as a justifiable means to end their subjugation? Do they not see how they become the thing they hate when they hurt others in the name of their own freedom? I don't know enough to answer these questions, but I do know that what the whole region needs is a lot more grace and mercy. Who are the good guys here?