The PKK’s imperialist mask

Question: Why should the West, which is unhappy with Saddam, wish to see Turkey grow stronger?

Öcalan: However, this will also create a Kurdish autonomy. That will weaken Turkey, will know how to weaken her.

Question: Do you mean that Kurdish autonomy will also restrain Turkey?

Öcalan: This pro-Western Kurdish autonomous region will restrain Turkey for the West. It will retrain the Arabs and Iran. From that point of view, I think the West will delight in Kurdish autonomy. They will spread this region out toward Turkey and Iran. That is what the West wants, of course.

Bartu Soral, Paralel Kürdistan Kumpası (The Parallel Kurdistan Stratagem), p. 65 (Rafet Ballı – The Kurd File)

These words, taken from an interview PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan gave to Rafet Ballı in 1991, are quite sufficient to reveal the heart of the matter. Some forces in the West long to see Kurdish autonomy in Turkey. The goal here, just as Öcalan says, is to restrain Turkey, the Arabs and Iran. A Kurdish region extending to Turkey and Iran is just what the forces in question in the West want to see. That is highly compatible with the interests of the deep state services discussed in detail above.

The plan in question was actually discovered by Öcalan in the early 1990s. Those were years when the PKK suffered severe losses in Turkey, when the organization suffered a veritable hemorrhaging of manpower, lost a vast number of supporters and was unable to muster new recruits. According to their own statements, the actions they perpetrated as a Marxist-Leninist organization to a large extent came back to haunt and seriously weaken them.

That same period was also when the Gulf War began, when a safe zone was established to the north of the 36th Parallel as a result of that war and when Iraqi Kurds were placed under protection. Losing strength, the PKK went towards a major tactical policy of change based on regarding the protection of the Kurds by the coalition forces as a sign of a future autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. So wide-ranging was that change that the PKK adopted a mask that gave no indication of its Leninist heart, hid its true face under a mask of imperialism and declared itself to be the most fervent ally of the entire West, and particularly the USA. So much so that the PKK, whose ultimate aim is the destruction of capitalism, and the USA at its head, has changed everything, from its own flag to its language in order to enjoy U.S. protection.