The Kurds and Turkey’s ambitions

Submitted by Matthew on 2 March, 2016 - 10:45

Aso Kamal, a member of the Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan, spoke to Solidarity. This is the second part of the interview. We published the first last week.


There is no stability in the Middle East. Kurdistan stretches across different countries — Turkey, Iraq, Syria. There is conflict between the big powers: Russia and US. In the region there are two poles: on the one hand, Iran and Assad, and on the other, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Political parties and powers are divided between those two poles in the region.

Erdogan sees the local administration of the Kurdish people in Syria as a threat to his power, and the Turkish state has a long long-running conflict with Turkey’s Kurds. In the last election in Turkey, the Kurdish party, HDP, won seats in parliament.

The Turkish government started to attack Kurdish cities in Turkey, killing hundreds of people. They want to prevent the raising of the Kurdish question in the Middle East. Turkey has also attacked Kurdish cities in Syria, to prevent Kurdish fighters from fighting Daesh.

Turkey allows the border with Syria to be used to pass weapons and fighters to Daesh and al-Nusra. The Kurdish fighters want to close that border traffic. In Iraqi Kurdistan too, in the Kandil mountains, there are Kurdish fighters, under attack from Turkey.

Turkey is intervening in Turkey, Iraq and Syria - it’s like a declaration of war on Kurds everywhere. Yet Turkey has good relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government, and with the KDP, the ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey gets oil very cheap from the KRG.

There have been protests outside Turkish embassies. Yet the Turkish government has killed several hundred people inside Turkey and won’t want stop there. The Turkish government has a plan to dominate the region. It wants influence in Syria, Iraq and other countries, and it wants to rival Iran.

The Turkish government sees Kurdish resistance as standing in the way of of this planned “new Turkish empire”. In the event of a collapse in Syria or Iraq, the Turkish regime wants to have a hand in the changes that will follow.

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