U.S. should follow Belgium’s lead and end PKK terror designation
Michael Rubin | Washington Examiner
Just under a decade ago, the Turkish government demanded Belgium, France, and Italy arrest several dozen Kurdish civil society activists on accusations that they were members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The Europeans complied, taking over 40 Kurds into custody. At the time, Turkish officials celebrated. “We are very pleased because Belgium fulfilled its responsibility,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu remarked, adding that the raids were “a clear message to those who provide resources to acts of terror.”
In hindsight, the Turkish government’s celebration was premature and its victory Pyrrhic. In Turkey, the government strictly controls the courts; judicial independence is more theoretical than real. This is especially the case under Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime, in which both defense attorneys and judges understand they can face charges and prison terms if they provide rigorous defenses or uphold protections. Put another way, in Turkey, guilt is contagious for anyone who runs afoul of Erdogan, his son, or his son-in-law.
Outside Turkey, however, courts are willing to look at evidence impartially. Often, this leads to high-profile defeats for the Turkish government. In 2005, for example, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on headscarves in Turkey that Erdogan vociferously opposed. Turkish evidence against U.S.-based dissident theologian Fethullah Gulen, alleging that he sought to overthrow their government, was found to be unconvincing by U.S. courts.
The Erdogan regime is now zero for three. The Kurdish defendants in Belgium countered that the PKK was not a terror organization. On March 8, 2019, the Brussels Court of Appeal dismissed the cases of 41 individuals accused of being leaders or participants in a terrorist organization’s activities. Specifically, the court determined that the PKK was not a terrorist organization, but rather “a party in a noninternational armed conflict.” Therefore, the court found, Belgium should apply international humanitarian law rather than anti-terrorism legislation to the case.
The Belgian prosecutor appealed this finding but, on January 28, 2020, the Court of Cassation let the previous ruling stand. There are no further appeals. From now on, Belgium will not treat the PKK as a terrorist organization, a ruling that would never have occurred had Turkey not tried to extend its authoritarianism beyond its borders.
That does not mean that the PKK is beyond criticism. Its genesis was bloody, and many innocents, both Kurds and Turks, have been caught up in its fight. Its founder, Abdullah Ocalan, now languishing in a Turkish prison, embraced Marxism in the 1970s and 1980s, although the movement has long since evolved. Some offshoots of the PKK, such as the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, still engage in terrorism, although other groups which have evolved from PKK roots (the Democratic Union Party in Syria, for example) have not embraced such tactics and, indeed, have a track record far better than the Turkish military when it comes to battling extremism and minding the rights and security of civilian populations.
Perhaps with Belgium taking a fresh look at the PKK, it is time for the United States also to reconsider the evidence that led to the PKK’s terror designation under U.S. law. It is now clear that Turkish evidence is not reliable and is often fabricated. Further, the circumstances of PKK designation in 1997 — thirteen years after its insurgency began and apparently timed to be a sweetener to a Clinton administration arms sale to Turkey — suggest that its original designation is more diplomatic than objective.
Removal of the PKK from terror listings does not mean the U.S. needs to embrace the group. But with Turkey enabling al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and Turkey’s troubling relationship with the Islamic State becoming clearer every day, removal of the PKK designation would rectify the diplomatic problems that have undercut U.S. ties with Syrian Kurdish groups. It would also resolve the growing problem of allowing diplomacy to pollute terror designations, a phenomenon that delegitimizes the stigmatization of real terror groups. It might also jump-start peace and reconciliation inside Turkey by signaling to Ankara that Turkey’s size and NATO membership do not mean the outside world needs to embrace its irrational and racist policies or stigmatize peaceful civil society groups or even insurgents as terrorists. In Washington and especially in the State Department, U.S. interests should always trump Turkey’s.
Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society. Read more by Michael Rubin.
The article first published at Washington Examiner.
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