PKK won't support Erdogan's presidential bid

A female stands near a poster of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan on the grounds of their base deep in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq's Kurdish region, May 5, 2014. (photo by SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images)

Wladimir van Wilgenburg

QANDIL, Iraq — A senior PKK official has ruled out supporting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the presidential elections. Riza Altun, a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), told Al-Monitor, “There is no such thing as supporting the AKP administration and siding with it during the presidential election.”

Kurdish support is important for Erdogan’s presidential candidacy. His advisers and members of the AKP realize that without Kurdish support, he will not be able to become the next president. That’s why some say 47 Kurdish activists were released on April 13 as a gesture toward the PKK.

But the PKK is cautious and wants the Turkish state to take more constitutional steps to recognize the Kurds and release imprisoned Kurdish politicians and activists. “They haven’t taken any of those steps that they were supposed to take,” Altun said.
The most important point for the PKK is constitutional reforms granting the Kurds political and cultural rights and a legal guarantee for negotiations between the PKK and the state, which began in 2009 as part of the peace process.
“A legal guarantee for these negotiations are important because the current cease-fire and dialogue lacks legitimate legal basis. The dialogue meetings have been held with the MIT [Turkish national intelligence],” Altun said.

The PKK wants to have an official dialogue between the government and the PKK, not through Turkish intelligence. “It has to be opened to the public and conducted legally and openly,” Altun said.
Altun is a member of the PKK leadership, the so-called executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK). He is on the Interpol wanted list and used to live in France. The United States and Turkey suspected he was running the PKK’s finances in Europe, and therefore he had to flee Europe to Iraq in June 2007.
Since then he has been based in the PKK camps in the remote Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, where I met him. The United States marked him and two other PKK leaders as drug traffickers in 2009. The PKK have always denied being involved in the drug industry.
Despite a lull in violence due to the ongoing peace talks with Turkey, Altun suspects that Erdogan’s ruling AKP is playing games with the Kurds. “The AKP administration wants to buy time with distraction policies. … At this point, we don’t think the AKP administration would live up to the expectations.”

The PKK co-founder said it’s unlikely the PKK would support Erdogan in the upcoming Turkish elections if they do not take any positive steps to solve the Kurdish question.
“We do not think that the AKP administration has the perspective to make such changes in Turkey. That’s why we don’t have an agenda to support the AKP during the presidential elections process. We will try to express ourselves based on our independent attitude,” Altun said.
However, this doesn’t mean that they will support Turkish opposition parties that lost in the recent local elections in March. “We are different ideologically and politically, and we do not identify with any one of them,” he added.

The PKK also sees no changes in Turkey’s policy toward the Kurds in Syria, although the local Kurdish administration in Kobani allowed a Turkish convoy on April 23 to enter Syria to protect the Tomb of Suleiman Shah. Turkey also allowed Syrian Kurdish officials from the PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party to visit Turkey in March.
“The main strategy of Turkey is regime change in Syria and the elimination of the status of the Kurds in Rojava,” Altun said in a reference to the Kurdish canton administrations in northeast Syria, which Kurds call Rojava — western Kurdistan.

He furthermore alleged that Turkey wants to use the Suleiman Shah tomb as a pretext to intervene in Syria as shown by leaks in March. “You know the leaks from the Foreign Ministry. Turkey has not said goodbye to this mentality.”
The PKK says that Turkey backs al-Qaeda-linked groups, although Turkey denies this. “These forces have been based in Turkey and trained and armed by Turkey. This is very clear,” Altun said.
The peace between the PKK and Turkey remains fragile at best. The imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan warned Turkey that the Kurds will take unilateral steps if the government doesn’t move forward: "We will implement the autonomy unilaterally if the requirements of the process aren't fulfilled."

Ocalan last month called on Turkey to change its policies toward Syrian Kurds. "Turkey must undergo a change in particular in its policy against Rojava, this is my expectation. The digging of ditches will not enable anyone to obtain the result they desire. There also need to be developments for the opening of border gates."
But Dogan Eskinat, a columnist for the pro-government Daily Sabah, hopes that even if PKK supporters don’t vote for Erdogan, they would at least assist the AKP party candidate by boycotting the vote and not supporting opposition candidates.
Ocalan indicated that PKK supporters most likely would vote for their own candidate from the People’s Democracy Party, and not the opposition or the AKP. This might ultimately help Erdogan’s presidential bid.

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