Former PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, pictured in 1992.

The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds

by IHSAN DAÄžI, Today’s Zaman, October 14, 2008

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) attacks from northern Iraq on Turkish targets have turned the Kurdish region in Iraq into a primary target of Turkey.

It is time for the regional Kurdish administration to stop using the PKK as a bargaining chip against Turkey; it is not a time for the Kurdish people of Iraq to side with the PKK out of Kurdish sentimentality. While the former produces no advantages and incites the animosity of Turkey and pressures of the US, the latter ignores the fact that the PKK threatens to undo the gains Iraqi Kurds have made through their long struggle.

What Iraqi Kurds have today, after decades of struggle, is certainly worth preserving and consolidating, and those gains should not be risked by protecting the PKK. Continue reading The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds →