Turkey's AKP pits Kurd against Kurd
Attempts by the leaders of Turkey's ruling party to cast a Kurdish Islamist party as an alternative to the PKK are raising serious questions and feeding old rivalries.
As Turkey’s Kurdish peace process seems to devolve into a “crisis process,” government quarters have begun suggesting the idea that the Kurdish Islamist Free Cause Party (Huda-Par) is the sole force capable of finishing off the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and could eventually join the settlement talks. While some are promoting Huda-Par, an offspring of Turkey’s Hezbollah, old feuds between Hezbollah and the PKK are being revived. Many believe this is no coincidence.
Hezbollah, which has no relation to the Lebanese group, defines itself as a “Muslim Kurdish” movement, while the PKK comes from a Marxist tradition. Their rivalry in the past was inevitable, and it appears to still be so today.
In its 1990s heyday, Hezbollah failed to achieve its goal of becoming the sole Kurdish force against the regime. Similarly, the PKK failed to eliminate other Kurdish groups and suffered heavy casualties at the hands of Hezbollah.
The PKK, which sees Hezbollah as “contras” used by the state against the Kurdish movement, has branded the group “Hezbol-Contra,” while Islamist groups have called it “Hezbol-Shaitan” (Party of Satan) because of its murders of rival Islamists. After its leader Huseyin Velioglu was killed in a police raid in Istanbul in 2000, Hezbollah sank into silence for a few years before making a comeback in the civil realm. In 2012, it set up Huda-Par as a legal political force. In last year’s municipal polls, the party’s overall vote stood at only 0.19%. Yet, it garnered 7.8% in Batman and 4.32% in Diyarbakir, proving to be a force to be reckoned with in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
