Türkiye froze the local assets of 20 organizations and 62 individuals based in Australia, Japan and a number of European countries, citing alleged ties with the PKK terrorist organization, a decision published in the country’s Official Gazette showed on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Treasury and Finance said the decision was “based on the existence of reasonable grounds” that they committed acts falling within the scope of the law on preventing the financing of terrorism.

The list included three organizations from Germany and another three from Switzerland. It also named two organizations each from Australia, Italy and Japan.

Other affected organizations were in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom and Iraq-Syria.

A spokesperson for “Insamlingsstiftelsen Kurdiska Roda Solen,” the one organization on the list in Sweden, claimed they are a “humanitarian aid organization” with no operations and no assets in Türkiye.

Sweden as well as Finland requested to join NATO in May last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised objections to both requests, citing the Nordic nations’ protection of terrorists, as well as their defense trade embargoes. Türkiye endorsed Finland’s bid in April, while the decision on Sweden’s membership is in the hands of the Turkish Parliament.

Türkiye has been pushing Swedish authorities to take concrete steps to alleviate its security concerns, especially regarding support for terrorist groups such as the PKK and FETÖ, whose 2016 defeated coup bid claimed over 200 lives.

Along with Hungary, Türkiye is yet to ratify Sweden’s accession protocol, as membership requires unanimous approval of all NATO members.

In its nearly 40-year-long terrorist campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of some 40,000 people, including innocent women, children and infants.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who met Tuesday with his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, provided a likely timeline for the Nordic country to formally join the alliance, which could take place before the end of the year, a senior U.S. State Department official said.

Source: Daily Sabah

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PKK’s Murat Karayılan has called on Turkey to “abandon its policy of genocide” in a message marking the anniversary of the PKK’s first armed action against Turkey on 15 August 1984. In a direct address to the Turkish people, Karayılan said that the officials who gave orders for Turkish soldiers to attack PKK guerrillas were the real culprits for the soldiers’ deaths. He said: “We are fighting a defensive war. We didn’t attack anyone.”

Responsibility for the casualties of the Turkish army lies with the Turkish authorities themselves, said Murat Karayılan, commander of the People’s Defence Centre Headquarters (HSM), in a Sterk TV message broadcast on Tuesday.

“We are fighting a defensive war, we have not attacked anyone,” Karayılan said. “Those who gave orders to the soldiers to attack the guerrillas are the real culprits.”

Karayılan recalled the heavy losses Turkey suffered recently in military offensives against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas in Iraqi Kurdistan and asserted that the Turkish authorities could not achieve results in this way.

The commander argued that Turkey’s increased military activity aimed to “destroy the will of the people in the region” and called on Turkey to “abandon its policy of genocide”.

The HSM commander and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) executive committee member Karayılan was speaking on the anniversary of the PKK’s first armed actions against Turkey on 15 August 1984.

Regarding the 1984 actions, Karayılan has said that the subsequent developments have ushered in a renaissance for the Kurds. “The 15 August breakthrough was a step towards existence and freedom against the policy of genocide and annihilation,” he said.

According to Karayılan, these actions have sparked a cognitive change among Kurdish people, leading to social change, empowerment of women, and political shifts in Kurdish areas.

Referring to the Turkish elections in May, Karayılan acknowledged the tactical dimension of the elections but stressed that the real Kurdish liberation would come from activism, the revolutionary people’s struggle and an all-encompassing socio-political effort towards a democratic nation.

Source: Medya News

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Turkish FM discussed oil exports blocked by Turkey in March after a longstanding arbitration case filed by Baghdad.

Turkish drone attacks in northern Iraq have killed seven members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), authorities said, as the country’s foreign minister met the president and prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

“A Turkish army drone struck a PKK vehicle, killing an official and two fighters”, the KRG’s counterterrorism services said on Thursday.

The attack took place in Sidakan district, north of the regional capital Erbil.

Later, the counter-terrorism services said that another drone strike in Sidakan had killed four PKK members, including two medical personnel.

The PKK has fought a rebellion against Turkey since 1984, and has bases inside KRG territory.

While the attacks were not mentioned by either Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan or KRG Prime Minister Masour Barzani during a news conference after their meeting, Fidan did reference the fight against the PKK, and Ankara’s continuing military operation there, which began in April 2022.

“We have settled this question in Turkey once and for all,” Fidan said. “We are working with Baghdad and Erbil to protect Iraq from the PKK.”

During a visit to the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Tuesday, Fidan had urged the federal government to brand the PKK a “terrorist” organisation, as it is labelled in Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

Oil exports, which Turkey has blocked from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq since March, were also on the agenda for the Turkish delegation to the KRG, which included Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar.

“We discussed a range of regional issues, including bilateral Iraq-Turkey relations and also with the Kurdistan Region, as well as the mechanism of exporting the Kurdistan region’s oil,” Barzani said in the joint news conference with Fidan.

Neither official gave any further information on Iraq’s northern oil exports and did not say if a deal had been reached to resume crude flows through Turkey.

Longstanding Iraq-Turkey tensions over oil

Turkey halted flows on March 25 after an arbitration ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion for unauthorised exports by the KRG between 2014 and 2018.

Iraq – the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) – had filed for arbitration against Turkey in 2014 after the KRG sidelined Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) and began exporting crude oil through the neighbouring country. Iraq claimed that all oil exports had to go through state-owned SOMO under a 1973 agreement with Turkey.

Recent talks held between Turkey and Iraq

Iraq’s oil minister had been in Ankara earlier this week to discuss the issue, but he and his Turkish counterpart failed to reach an agreement to restart the oil exports, although both sides agreed on further talks.

An Iraqi oil ministry official with an understanding of the northern oil exports operations told Reuters on Tuesday that the Turkish energy ministry informed Iraq’s SOMO last month that it needed more time to check the technical feasibility of resuming flows through the pipeline.

Iraqi energy officials said that the visit of their oil minister was aimed at reaching common ground with Turkey regarding a clear date when oil exports should be resumed.

“It’s not an easy job to reach an agreement soon, and we have a lot of thorny issues. Turkey has demands and conditions that require further talks to allow oil flow restart,” said an oil ministry official with knowledge of Tuesday’s meeting.

Source: Al Jazeera

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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has just won an unprecedented third term in the face of tough competition in Turkey’s presidential election. With that win, and a majority in the Turkish parliament, Erdogan is likely to remain Turkey’s leader, and a thorn in the side of the West, for years to come. But Turkey, with its strong G-20-sized economy, diplomatic expertise, military strength and above all, location, is absolutely essential during this perilous time.

As the Biden administration states in its October 2022 National Security Strategy, “we are in a strategic competition to shape the future of the international order,” and thus “we will partner with any nation that shares our basic belief that the rules-based order must remain the basis for global peace and prosperity.” Turkey meets that ‘any nation’ criteria, albeit with caveats and, given its importance, dealing effectively with it in this strategic competition is critical.

But that will require an “engage, understand, and overcome” policy to deal with obstacles to positive relations: Erdogan himself, underlying issues, and abiding mindset frictions.

Trouble in the near abroad

Engaging with Erdogan is the most important but most difficult step. He, like most Turks, harbors deep and justified (to some degree) resentment of American and European treatment over the past twenty years. But unlike many Turks, Erdogan is more anti than pro-western in cultural and emotional terms.

The good news is that he is transactional. However, Washington and Brussels expect ‘subordinate’ partners not to be transactional but compliant, at least publicly, something Erdogan does not do well. Nevertheless, the global situation is so dangerous, and Turkey so important, that the Biden administration, particularly the president himself, must engage with him; Biden’s call to Erdogan on May 30 was an important first step.

Engagement is only a necessary, not sufficient, approach. Problems with Turkey beyond Erdogan also flow from issues mainly in Ankara’s ‘near abroad,’ which have long brought Turkey repeatedly into conflict with Washington and the EU. Moreover, solving or even managing tensions is hampered by hard-wired, long-term mindsets in Turkey and the West. Maintaining good relations with Ankara thus requires the West at least to understand those issues and overcome entrenched mindsets. While the EU has closer economic ties and is more dependent on Turkish security decisions, its diplomatic weaknesses (i.e. Greece and Cyprus) suggest that these tasks will require a Washington lead. 

However, one problem is the near constant tendency in American foreign policy to downplay states’ near abroad security concerns until it is too late: the 1950 march to the Yalu; Iran countering the US presence in Iraq; or Pakistan undercutting America’s Afghanistan mission. Thus to deal productively with Ankara on near abroad issues such as Russia, the PKK, Greece and Cyprus, and the Caucasus, it is important to understand how Ankara sees them. 

The PKK

Turkey is existentially opposed to Russian expansionism, as seen since 2020 by its actions against Russia in northwest Syria, Libya, the Caucasus and most importantly, Ukraine. But Turkey also has critical interests and vulnerabilities managing Moscow that require extreme care. Its two-way trade with Russia is over $60 billion, twice that with the United States, and includes 40-50 percent of gas imports—Turkey’s  main power source.

Moreover, Russia (and Iran) have proven capability to exploit Turkey’s biggest internal security concern, the PKK. Thus, on Russia policy, from NATO’s standpoint the Turkish glass is only two-thirds full. But trying to fill it, say demanding Turkey impose NATO sanctions on Russia or reverse the S-400 purchase, will generate constant headaches for little gain.

The PKK, a Turkish-Kurdish terrorist insurgent movement active since 1984, is the most intractable US-Turkish issue. Unlike in neighboring countries where Kurds are concentrated in border regions, much of Turkey’s large Kurdish population (up to 20 percent overall) is scattered about the country and integrated with the rest of the population. Thus, were the PKK to succeed with its break-away agenda, Turkey would face not another moment like Kosovo in 1999, but a Rwanda in 1993.

Furthermore, the PKK has military forces across the border in Iraq and Syria, adding to the threat. There is some irony to the prominence of this issue in bilateral relations as the United States has long branded the PKK a terrorist movement and assisted Ankara against it. The shift came in 2014 after the US supported the Syrian PKK military offshoot YPG (later renamed the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, to camouflage its PKK links) against the Islamic State. This was not initially a major problem; Ankara then had a ceasefire with the PKK and was carrying on a dialogue with YPG-associated Syrian Kurds.

Northeast Syria

This all changed in 2015-16, due to political changes in Turkey that collapsed the PKK ceasefire and produced a much harder anti-PKK position. Meanwhile, American ambitions for the SDF to spearhead a 100,000 strong force to take down the Islamic State’s Euphrates strongholds led to its control of 20 percent of Syria and millions of Syrians. This generated considerable tension in bilateral relations, leading to an American commitment that supporting the SDF would only be “tactical, temporary and transactional,” with no larger vision for the SDF “mini-state” which Washington largely created.

The Turks didn’t buy that temporary and transactional stuff, noting that despite commitments by then Vice President Biden and later Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Washington did not compel the SDF to withdraw from the town of Manbij across the Euphrates to the west. Rather, it started arming the SDF in 2018 after the Islamic State had largely been defeated and positioned American troops along the Turkish border seemingly as a screen (although the US had never committed to militarily oppose a Turkish incursion).

In short, the Washington message was hopelessly mixed. The result was a Turkish military incursion into SDF territory in 2019, which risked the whole US-SDF effort against the Islamic State, until a ceasefire was negotiated with Erdogan. It is holding, but the issue poisons relations as the fate of the SDF, and its relations with Ankara, Damascus and Washington, are unclear. 

Cyprus and the Caucasus

Greek-Turkish tensions have historical roots but currently hinge on sovereignty granted to the Greek Aegean islands by international agreements between 1914 and 1948, and the 1960 London-Zurich Accords establishing Cyprus’ independence.

Those agreements however protected Turkish interests like Aegean islands demilitarization and Cypriot Turkish minority rights. But since the 1970s, mainland and Cypriot Greeks have challenged elements of those international arrangements, generating Turkish reactions, including the 1974 Cyprus invasion to prevent union with Greece, and air and sea freedom of navigation operations in the Aegean.

More recent problems have emerged with seabed gas rights. But Turkey’s argument that it’s just pushing back on treaty challenges is repeatedly undercut by its aggressive actions—from a second Cyprus offensive in 1974 to overflights of unquestioned Greek territory and a drumbeat of war threats.

In the Caucasus, Turkish interests containing Russian and Iranian expansion and supporting Azerbaijan, with whom it has ethnic, linguistic, geostrategic, and energy relations, collide with Armenia, which is still at odds with Baku and seen as too close to Moscow and Tehran.

But the ability to explain all these issues is severely undercut, even beyond Erdogan’s unacceptably aggressive tone, by underlying mindset frictions. On the Turkish side, these include a mix of insecurity and condescension (Turkish officials are world-class at mastering portfolios), as well as overly one-sided demands.

Understand and Overcome

Washington and Brussels’ ability to understand the Turkish viewpoint is hampered by systematic opposition from various lobbies, ranging from ethnic Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish groups, to anti-Erdogan neo-conservatives, defense officials miffed at the S-400 purchase and actions in Syria, and human rights organizations. 

Even when Turkey has responded to Western requests, such as under Turgut Ozal in the 1990s or Erdogan initially by accepting the Annan Cyprus plan, the lobbies persist in demanding surrender on any number of issues. In response, Turkish public opinion has become far more anti-western, limiting government flexibility. Progress on specific issues thus can only be sustained if Washington can overcome these obstacles.

Fortunately, Erdogan’s electoral victory offers the United States and Turkey a chance to start anew. Beyond rapid, highest level engagement, Washington and Ankara should work on quick wins which are now feasible: NATO accession for Sweden, F-16 sales, ceasefire with the PKK (or at least continued Turkish restraint in Northeast Syria), calm with the Greeks, and progress on recent Armenian-Azeri rapprochement promoted by Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Given the obstacles above to better relations, there are no guarantees, but neither Washington nor Ankara can afford to ignore these obstacles to satisfactory bilateral relations.  

Source: Wilson Center

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The Lavrio refugee camp has been targeted by the Turkish government, which claims the site has been providing shelter to the members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other outlawed left-wing groups from Turkey, calling it a “terrorist training camp”.

The tense relations between the two neighbors have thawed since the 6 February earthquakes that hit Turkey’s south, but the decision on the refugee camp was made before the disaster, the Greek daily said.

The Municipality of Lavreotiki have several times warned against the poor condition of the refugee camp building, which to a large extent hosts Kurdish refugees.

After the municipality was notified about the approximately 150 refugees residing at the camp, 100 were transferred to other shelters in Attica, Ekathimerini said, adding that the remaining refugees will soon be transferred to other facilities.

Source: Greek City Times

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