When Syrian Kurdish-led forces declared victory against the Islamic State in Raqqa last October, a group of women fighters unfurled a giant banner amid ululating and cheering. The canary yellow cloth was emblazoned with a portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose fate is of growing concern for Kurds worldwide. The move sparked furor in Ankara, casting a pall over celebrations to mark the collapse of the so-called capital of the IS “caliphate.”
“How is the US going to explain this,” growled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Was the United States still going to pretend that its Syrian Kurdish allies, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have nothing to do with the PKK? The PKK, the rebel outfit that oversaw the establishment of the YPG, has killed thousands of Turkish soldiers, targeted hundreds of civilians and has been designated a terrorist organization by the US Department of State.
The Pentagon hastily rebuked the YPG, but the groups' members displayed no regrets. “The writings and the philosophy and the influence of Abdullah Ocalan, were very, very decisive in motivating the soldiers with an ideology of peace and democracy that allowed this liberation to be possible,” intoned a YPG fighter in a videotaped statement.
Until recently, Erdogan and his conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) government might have agreed. With its enigmatic spy chief, Hakan Fidan, in the lead, Ankara had been steeped in peace talks with Ocalan, universally known to millions of doting Kurds as “Apo,” Kurdish for “uncle.” The two-and-a-half-year effort to end more than three decades of mutual bloodletting, however, collapsed in 2015 under the weight of Erdogan’s domestic political calculations, Turkish fears of the PKK’s expanding heft in Syria and deeply ingrained mutual distrust. Turkish authorities have since restricted access to Imrali, the prison island off the coast of Istanbul where Ocalan has been held since his capture by Turkish special forces in Nairobi on Feb. 15, 1999.
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