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Ankara

Kurd Nuisance

Why Turkey is wary of Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO bid.

By Dr Samreen Bari Aamir | July 2022
Abdullah Ocalan, Leader, Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Anthropologists, archaeologists and historians believe that the Kurds and Armenians were among the earliest to arrive and settle in eastern Turkey. Kurds lived in the Mesopotamian plains and mountains as long as 3,500 years ago, according to Dr. Knappert, a specialist in Oriental studies. The Middle East is home to an estimated 20 to 25 million Kurds. They are one of the world's largest ethnic groups without their own state. Their country is divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Turkey has the largest Kurdish population. According to the CIA Factbook, Kurds make up around 10% of the Syrian, 18% Turkish, and 15% of the Iraqi population.

At the time of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the British separated the three southeastern provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, together with a significant chunk of Iranian land east of the Tigris, and renamed it Mesopotamia, or Iraq in Arabic. All of this was done due to Arab and Turkish phobia, as the Western allies in London were ready to establish Israel on Palestinian territory. To give their invasion credibility, the British installed Faysal of the Hashim dynasty as King of Iraq in 1921. They promised the Kurds independence, but it never materialized.

According to Bruinessen (anthropologist and author), the new secular Turkish state considered the Turkish nation as a homogeneous entity and ideologically negated the recognition of any ethnic minority including the Kurds. Any other identity was viewed as a threat by the secular government. Scholars such as Kirişci and Winrow said that for years, Turkish governments have repeatedly ignored Kurdish presence. Until the 1990s, the Turkish state discouraged or openly prohibited a separate Kurdish ethnic identity, including the restriction of Kurdish publications, radio and television shows, and Kurdish-language religious activities, among other forms of political and economic repression. In fact, Kurds were portrayed as traitors and villains in Turkish society.

“Iraq: The Valley of the Wolves,” was a film released in 2006 with the highest budget and viewership in Turkish cinema history. The film is about a dark and deadly location where howling and violent ‘wolves,’ namely Americans and Kurds, congregate... and convey the notion that “Kurds are traitors of the state... They are accomplices of external powers in all the states in which they live.”


Because of the Turkish government’s secular policies and denying of recognition of any ethnic minority and because of the interference of the international community in the internal affairs of Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan created PKK in 1978, asking for an independent state within Turkey. Six years later, the organization launched an armed campaign. Again the international media started a campaign against the Turkish government and claimed that more than 40,000 people had been killed and hundreds of thousands had been displaced since then, according to the BBC. Since the mid-1980s, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has fought Turkish forces on and off in its quest for an independent territory for Kurds within Turkey.The Turkish government considers the Kurdish issue to be an internal one and has never recognized or regarded it as a serious concern for the state. It also criticizes foreign countries who speak out in support of Kurds. Turkey has long suspected Nordic states, particularly Sweden, of supporting banned Kurdish terrorists as well as the supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based man accused of involvement in the 2016 coup attempt. Kurds migrated from Turkey to Sweden. This group primarily comes from Kurdish towns and villages in Turkey’s central Anatolia region. Sweden has a significant immigrant population that is organized into associations. Over 50 national immigrant organizations and over 1,000 local associations currently benefit from the country’s relatively liberal immigration policies.

Similarly, new Kurdish diasporic movements emerged in Finland. According to statistics, there were roughly 10,075 Kurdish people in Finland, with a substantial proportion of them belonging to the second and intermediate generations. (Hassanpour and Mojab). According to Dr. Sten Wahlbeck from the University of Warwick In 2011, there were around 8000 Kurds in Finland, while the overall number of persons who identified as Kurds was probably around 10,000. In the local Finnish context, this is a sizable population, given that Finland’s total population is only 5.4 million.

The Turkish government claimed that over the years, many Kurdish and other exiles have sought safety in Sweden and Finland, and the individuals who sought asylum had ties to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants or are followers of Gulen’s movement. Turkish state media also reported that Sweden and Finland had not provided permission for the return of 33 people Turkey had asked for because of their alleged links with terrorist organizations. According to TRT Haber, the two countries rejected 19 requests and left five unanswered. Separate phone calls were made by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to the leaders of the two countries, demanding that they discontinue financial and political assistance for “terrorist” groups jeopardizing Turkey’s national security.

Because of these factors, Turkey, which was a strong supporter of NATO’s eastward expansion, has decided to reject Sweden’s and Finland’s participation in NATO. This comes as a surprise to the Nordic countries and their allies, as the new aspirant is supposed to seek a vote from all NATO members. Countries have begun to criticize the Turkish government because they believe Turkey has formed good relations with the Russian government and that this gesture is an attempt to appease Russia.

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