cale salih

writing & some photo.

[calesalih]

Tahir Elci, Human Rights Defender

By CALE SALIH

It is not often that I encounter someone who makes me think that peace and justice in the hardest of contexts can be more than just quixotic ambitions. Tahir Elçi, the president of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, was one of those rare people for me.

Tahir spent his life advocating for Kurdish rights in Turkey and defending victims of human rights abuses, against the many odds of Turkey’s unjust justice system. On Saturday, just after delivering a speech calling for peace, he was shot dead by an unknown gunman.

Read the rest at NYTimes.com

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Kurds Need More Than Arms

By CALE SALIH and MARIA FANTAPPIE

Since the Islamic State began seizing significant amounts of territory in northern Syria and Iraq, policy makers and analysts have focused primarily on the question of whether America should arm the Kurds to fight the jihadi group.

Read the rest of the op-ed over at NYTimes.

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Turkey, the Kurds and the fight against Islamic State

Europe must prioritise diplomatic support for peace between Turkey and the Kurds as a pre-requisite for a successful strategy against Islamic State.

Since 20 July 2015, the PKK has killed at least 113 security personnel and Turkey claims to have killed over a thousand PKK fighters. The coincidence of new Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish targets and Ankara’s greater participation in anti-IS activities has led many to speculate that the US and its western partners have bumped the peace process down its list of priorities, choosing to focus instead on extracting greater Turkish security cooperation that could result in more short-term gains against IS.

In her report, Salih asserts that, while Turkish cooperation is undeniably valuable for the anti-IS coalition, a policy that traded participation against IS for the breakdown of the PKK-Turkey peace process would risk the spill-over of that conflict into northern Syria, weakening one of the coalition’s only effective non-Islamist partners on the ground in northern Syria (the YPG), and making it ever more difficult for the coalition to pull together a coordinated fight against IS.

Salih calls for European diplomatic attention to supporting the revival of the Turkey-PKK peace process, and greater political engagement with the PYD and conditional support to the YPG in the areas it already controls.

Stronger backing to the PYD/YPG should be tied to conditions that: dissuade the YPG from making unilateral advances into additional territories that are not predominately Kurdish and excluding FSA-affiliated partners from meaningful decision-making roles; discourage any policies that could result in the displacement of local Sunni inhabitants; and encourage the PYD to establish governance institutions inclusive of non-PYD affiliated Kurds, Arabs and other local ethnic groups in the areas it already controls.  

Read the full report here.

[calesalih]

ECFR: Ankara’s Risky Offensive

Over the past several days Turkey has taken unprecedented steps in support of the anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition. After years of being hesitant to confront IS, Turkey has now bombed the group in Syria for the first time, arrested suspected IS members in Turkey, and conceded to a longstanding US request – the use of the Incirlik airbase to launch attacks against IS.

Read the rest of the piece over at ECFR and a Spanish translation over at esglobal.

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BBC: Is Tal Abyad a turning point for Syria's Kurds?

By Cale Salih - Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations

The capture of the strategic northern border town of Tal Abyad from Islamic State (IS) is the latest in a string of gains by the dominant Kurdish militia in Syria, the YPG, and its political branch, the PYD, across the north of the country since 2011. Last October, their fighters grabbed world attention when they drove IS out of Kobane, another border town further east.

Read the rest of the piece here.

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CNN: The Kurdish women fighting ISIS

By Cale Salih - Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations

The image of the braided Kurdish female fighter, donning military camouflage and taking up arms against the militant group ISIS, may have done more to promote the Kurdish cause in the West than anything else in recent years.

The Iraqi Kurds have long been pro-Western in orientation, but Western powers have often only moderately addressed their pleas for support, in part out of fear of empowering the secessionist minority to seek independence. Now, with soccer moms in Middle America tweeting photos of Kurdish female fighters, Western governments may find it harder to explain their tepid Kurdish policies to their constituencies.

Read the rest of the piece here. 

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Kurdish women at Newroz in Cukurca, Hakkari province. Hakkari witnessed some of the deadliest violence between the Turkish military and PKK guerrilla throughout the war. Since March 2013, when jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan announced a unilateral ceasefire, its residents have enjoyed a respite from the violence. But the region remains heavily militarized, and visitors frequently encounter Turkish army outposts and checkpoints. Turkish soldiers can still be seen searching the road for IEDs, a reminder that the war is not yet a distant memory.

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Shukran Koc, 23, prays by the grave of her sister in Hakkari, southeastern Turkey. Her sister, who went by the nom de guerre Zilan Hakkari, was a PKK guerrilla for six years. Zilan was one of 36 PKK guerrilla killed in the Kazan Valley of Cukurca in 2011 in a Turkish military attack on the PKK. Shukran, and many other activists at the time, said that the guerrillas’ bodies bore signs of chemical weapons use (Turkey denied the allegations). Cukurca, strategically located near the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, – where the PKK maintains its operational bases – witnessed some of the worst fighting between the PKK and the military throughout the war.

 Zilan was active within the Kurdish national movement, and ended up in prison for her political activities. She was let go after one year, with her trial pending. One week later, she told her family she was going on a picnic and never returned. “The next time I saw her was when they brought her body home,” says Shukran.

When Zilan died, Shukran’s brother, who came to be known by the nom de guerre Dilges Zilan, left home for the mountains to join the PKK. He was fourteen years old. Shukran and her family have not seen him since, but they found out by watching television that he is now fighting in Sinjar in Iraq.

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Khatoun, a Kurdish villager, helps milk her family’s 200 goats inside a gorge between Sirnak and Hakkari in southeastern Turkey.

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Al Jazeera: Anger brews among youth in Turkey's Cizre

Text and photo by: Cale Salih

Cizre, Turkey - Since December 27, at least six people - mostly youths - have been shot dead in Cizre, a majority Kurdish town in southeastern Turkey. As evidence emerged to suggest Turkish security forces were responsible for at least two of the deaths, those of Umit Kurt (reportedly 14 years old) and Nihat Kazanhan (reportedly 12 years old), authorities quickly placed secrecy orders on the investigations. But anger in the city has continued to brew, especially among the youth. The YDG-H, a youth group linked to the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), is gaining considerable power in Cizre, where many youth view it as their only outlet - a way to stay busy in a city with dim employment prospects, and a way to respond to perceived state insults. "The YDG-H is trying to demonstrate that it can be a security force in Kurdish areas, a kind of young urban police force that shows the PKK is active in the cities," Yilmaz Akinci, a Turkish-Kurdish journalist, told Al Jazeera. "They are demonstrating to the Turkish state that they can be a threat, especially if the peace process doesn't go well."

Read the rest at Al Jazeera. 

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"She was a martyr of #Kurdistan," wails this man at the funeral of his 24-year-old niece. She was killed three days ago while fighting as part of the #PKK-linked forces in #Kobani. Although she was a #Kurd from #Turkey, she trained with #PKK guerrilla in the #Qandil mountains of Iraqi #Kurdistan, and died fighting in a #Kurdish city in#Syria. Her family makes no distinction among the three regions. "Kurdish fighters from all parts of Kurdistan went to Kobani," her father told me. "This means that the #Kurds are coming together."

See more photos from southeast Turkey on my instagram.

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Zubeyde Zumrut, a veteran #Kurdish politician, became a political prisoner in Turkey on the night of New Years Eve, 1995. She was three months pregnant at the time. "I lost my baby during the torture," she said.

See more photos from southeast Turkey on my instagram.

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On the outskirts of Batman, Turkey, a young#Kurdish girl grieves at the funeral of her sister, a 24-year-old #PKK fighter killed in #Kobani. As the bodies of #Turkish #Kurdish children killed in#Syria or #Iraq come home to rest, feelings of cross-border #Kurdish solidarity grow in their communities. #rojava #Bashur #bakur

See more photos from southeast Turkey on my instagram.

[calesalih]

Derya's (right) daughter was politically active in the Kurdish movement in Turkey in the 1990s. She was taken into police custody a number of times, and tortured, says Derya. "One night, the police came for her again, and she went to the roof of our building and committed suicide." She was 22. Sultan's (left) son, also a politically active youth in the Kurdish movement, made a different choice to avoid imprisonment: when he was 16, he fled to the mountains to join the PKK guerrilla. See more photos from southeast Turkey on my instagram.

[calesalih]

Al Jazeera: How Turkey misread the Kurds

Three days before this photo was taken, a 14-year-old #Kurdish boy was killed in clashes with Turkish police in #Cizre, a rough Turkish Kurdish town near the borders of #Syria and #Iraq. Days before that, another boy from #Cizre was killed in #Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq, where he was fighting with the #PKK against the Islamic State. On this day, the town honored both boys as martyrs part of the same #Kurdish struggle. Photo: Cale Salih

How Turkey misread the Kurds

Turkey appears to have overlooked the anger bubbling among its own Kurds towards its Syria policy.

By: Cale Salih and Aaron Stein

Residents of the Kurdish-majority city Cizre, in southeast Turkey near the borders with Iraq and Syria, walk with one eye on the ground, navigating the ditches and blockades created by youth who wanted to block the entrance of Turkish police into the city. 

Walls in Cizre are covered in graffiti, tributes to Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), and to Kobane, a Kurdish-run town in Syria that has been precariously holding out against an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) advance for over four months. 

Riots broke out in Cizre and other Kurdish cities when the Turkish government blocked some Kurdish fighters from crossing the border into Syria to support their brethren. At least 35 people were killed during those clashes in October alone - more than three times the number of people who died during clashes between protesters and police in the Gezi Park protests of 2013. That week, Ocalan warned that he would end the ongoing Turkey-PKK peace process if a massacre were to occur in Kobane.

Read the rest at Al Jazeera.

[calesalih]

BBC: Kurds demand unity amid battle against Islamic State

"She was a martyr of #Kurdistan," wails this man at the funeral of his 24-year-old niece, Gulsum. She was killed three days ago while fighting as part of the #PKK-linked forces in #Kobani. Although she was a #Kurdfrom #Turkey, she trained with #PKK guerrilla in the #Qandil mountains of Iraqi #Kurdistan, and died fighting in a #Kurdish city in #Syria. Her family makes no distinction among the three regions. "Kurdish fighters from all parts of Kurdistan went to Kobani," her father told me. "This means that the #Kurds are coming together." Photo by Cale Salih

Kurds demand unity amid battle against Islamic State

By Cale Salih - Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations

Outside the morgue at Diyarbakir cemetery in eastern Turkey, Hanifi Cam waits for the body of his 24-year-old daughter, Gulsum, to be draped in Kurdish nationalist red, yellow and green.

Gulsum was a Kurd from Turkey, but she trained with militants from the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) in the Qandil Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, and died in combat in Kobane, a Kurdish-run town in Syria. 

As the bodies of Kurdish children killed in Syria or Iraq come home for burial in Turkey, feelings of cross-border Kurdish solidarity are growing in their communities, despite the deeply divided nature of the Kurdish nationalist movement.

Gulsum's family makes no distinction between the three separate regions. "Kurdish fighters from all parts of Kurdistan went to Kobane," her father said. "This means that the Kurds are coming together."

Funerals for PKK fighters killed abroad are becoming more commonplace in this part of Turkey. 

In recent months, the PKK and its Syrian sister group, the YPG, have emerged among the most prominent and effective forces against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. 

The coffin emerges, hoisted by several women, and the large crowd begins chanting in Kurdish, "Martyrs never die". The women carry the body into a hearse, and the funeral convoy starts driving toward Akbas, the village where Gulsum grew up and where she will be buried.

Read the rest at BBC.com

[calesalih]

Guardian op-ed: Why did the US help the Kurds in Iraq but leave Isis to massacre them in Syria?

New opinion piece in The Guardian on divergent US policy toward Syrian and Iraqi Kurds:

Observing fighters for the Islamic State (Isis) march closer and closer toward the key Syrian town of Kobani over the past week has felt like watching a bitterly suspenseful action movie unfold. Unlike other central Syrian towns that have been pounded to the ground mostly out of sight, Kobani’s looming collapse sits in full view of anyone paying attention – journalists, refugees and Turkish military tanks planted over the border, just a couple of miles away. That very border, carelessly drawn a century ago, now determines life or death for the thousands of people on either side. Every day, Isis marches closer to the heart of Kobani, and every day, Kurds across the region grow more exasperated that everyone seems to know what scene comes next – “a terrible slaughter”, with “5,000 dead within 24 or 36 hours”.

Read the rest in The Guardian.