From: TEX5HAD@CMS1.LEEDS.AC.UK (Haluk DEMIRBAG)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: DIVIDED KURDS PUT PARTY BEFORE STATE
Date: 2 Oct 1992 01:01:17 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
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DIVIDED KURDS PUT PARTY BEFORE STATE

Hugh Pope  in Istanbul untangles  the labyrinthine politics  of a
people who are still frustrated in their search for a homeland

There may  be only  about 20  million Kurds in  the world,  but a
proliferation    of   Kurdish    parties,   groups    and   their
representatives abroad can confuse their friends, let alone their
many enemies,  with such abbreviations  as KDP, PUK,  PKK, KDP-I,
PAK, Komala. And if that's not enough, try ERNK and ARGK.

Some are mass movements, others are  tiny. But they all share a K
for Kurdistan,  and, as the  Kurdish movement gains  momentum and
street collections start for helping displaced Iraqi Kurds, it is
becoming important to tell them apart.

Last year  a group of  church congregations in  Germany, thinking
(!)  they were  helping  refugees, gave  3.6m  pounds to  Marxist
guerrillas fighting in Turkey. Others may well have cashed in.

So who  is who in  this mostly  underground world? The  Kurds are
mainly  split   between  the  mountains  joining   Turkey  (10-12
million),  Iraq  (4  million),  Iran (3  million)  and  Syria  (1
million), but  also have communities  in the former  Soviet Union
and Lebanon. They speak many  dialects and have never been united
or organised as  a truly independent nation state.  Many hope for
such a  Kurdistan as  promised in  the 1920  Treaty of  Sevres, a
would-be  carve-up   of  the  Ottoman  Empire   rejected  by  the
republican movement  of Kemal  Ataturk. Furthest  on the  road to
self-rule is  the Iraqi Kurdistan  Front, an alliance  of several
groups that has governed 3 million  Kurds in north Iraq since the
end of the Gulf war.

In theory, the front's mandate should have passed to a parliament
elected  in May,  but  the two  biggest  Iraqi Kurdish  guerrilla
parties still dominate.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)  is the father of most Iraqi
Kurdish groups, founded in 1946  by the legendary Mustafa Barzani
and  now  led by  his  son,  Masoud.  The  KDP is  mainly  rural,
traditional   and    based   in   the   western    and   northern
Kirmanci-dialect  areas. Although  Mr  Barzani  always notes  the
Kurdish  dream  of a  united  Kurdistan,  he favours  signing  an
autonomy deal wit Baghdad.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)  split from the KDP in the
mid-1970s under  its leader,  Jalal Talabani. Famous  for kissing
Saddam Hussein  as autonomy  negotiations started after  the 1991
refugee  exodus,   Mr  Talabani  now  espouses   an  anti-Baghdad
position,  to the  point  of calling  for  a neo-Ottoman  Kurdish
federation with  Turkey. The PUK is  more urban than the  KDP and
its power base in the Surani-speking  areas of the south and east
makes it  dominant in Sulamaniyah, the  Kurds' most sophisticated
city. The PUK is slick and well-funded.

Smaller Kurdish parties in the  Iraqi Kurdistan Front merged this
year into a United Party of  Kurdistan, led by Mahmoud Othman and
Sami Abdul-Rahman,  long known  as negotiators with  Baghdad. The
National Turkmen Party, backed by  Turkey and the Iraqi Communist
Party, also  operates in  the region. Sheltered  by the  front in
northern  Iraq are  the  few remaining  bases  of Iran's  Komala,
founded in the early 1940s,  and the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic
Party  (KDP-I),  which  led  the  one  year  independent  Kurdish
republic  of Mahabad  in the  year  of its  founding, 1945.  Both
Iranian parties have suffered  reverses: the veteran KDP-I leader
Abdul-Rahman  Qassemlu was  murdered in  1989 and  his successor,
Sadik Sharafkandi, died in Berlin  last week, both presumably the
victims of Iranian agents.

Beyond the  Iraqi front  are two  small newcomers,  the Kurdistan
Islamic Party  and the  Kurdish Freedom Party  (PAK). The  PAK is
much more of  a threat to the Iraqi  Kurdish establishment, being
an  affiliate  of Turkey's  Kurdistan  Workers'  Party (PKK)  and
sharing its aim of a united, independent Kurdistan.

The Damascus-based PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, founded his party
in  the 1970s.  It began  its  ruthless armed  struggle in  1984,
deploying its civilian  and military wings, ERNK and  ARGK. It is
now launching attacks with  hundreds of guerrillas, turning parts
of south-east Turkey into war zones.

PKK  attacks  from northern  Iraq  into  Turkey have  angered  Mr
Barzani and Talabani, who are  eager to curry favour with Turkey.
The latter two have only recently been reconciled.

THE INDEPENDENT, 26 September 1992
            _
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