Is the Gaza conflict spreading into Kurdish territories?

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan24) –  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Wednesday with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. It was their third exchange just this month, following Fidan’s trip to Washington on Dec. 9 and a phone call on Dec. 17.

According to the U.S. read-outs of the three exchanges, they focused on two issues. One was the war in Gaza, including “increasing the speed and scale of humanitarian assistance,” as the U.S. summary of their latest exchange stated.

The second issue was “the timing of Sweden’s accession to NATO,” which a Turkish parliamentary committee just approved.

But, notably, none of those three exchanges included discussion of the recent Turkish attacks on sites in the Kurdistan Region and in northeast Syria, which is administered by the civilian wing of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), America’s main partner in the fight against ISIS in that country. 

The Turkish attacks on Kurdish territory in Iraq and Syria were triggered by a recent action of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in which it attacked Turkish troops, killing 12 of them.

For twenty years, from 1979 to 1998, the PKK was based in Syria. It was supported by the Syrian regime, as well as the regime’s key ally in Iran. 

In 1998, coordinated U.S. and Turkish pressure obliged Syria’s Baathist regime to expel the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan. He ended up in Kenya, and in 1999, a joint U.S.-Turkish intelligence operation captured him there, and brought him to Turkey, where he was tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

Notably, Iran is a long-time supporter of the PKK, and that support continues to this day.  

PKK Attack on Turkish Troops and Turkish Response

On Friday and Saturday, the PKK attacked Turkish forces in the Kurdistan Region. Nothing comparable to the PKK’s killing of 12 Turkish soldiers had occurred for nearly three years. The last such instance was in Feb. 2021, when Ankara launched an operation to free 13 Turkish soldiers and police, whom the PKK had taken hostage. Before they could be reached, however, the PKK executed them.

That was the last time—until this week—that the PKK had killed a significant number of Turkish soldiers. Predictably enough, that has triggered a series of Turkish retaliatory attacks directed against the PKK, even as many of those strikes probably fell wide of the mark.

On Wednesday, Turkey’s Defense Minister announced that Turkish forces had attacked 71 sites in Iraq and Syria linked to the PKK, and at least 59 fighters had been killed.

In addition, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has ties with the PKK, and Turkey struck areas under its rule.

As a knowledgeable source told Kurdistan 24, “The PUK has never hidden its ties and relations with the PKK,” adding, “The PKK has some small military bases not far from Sulaimani, like Chamchamal town, and others.”

Thus, on Wednesday, there was a Turkish drone strike on Chamchamal.

Read More: Drone strikes target Chamchamal village, casualties feared

A few days earlier, already on Saturday, Turkey announced it was extending a ban on flights to and from the Sulaimani airport and closing Turkish airspace to planes coming from or traveling to that airport.

Read More: Turkish ban on Sulaimani airport ‘politically motivated,’ says governor

Why Now?

What would explain why the PKK would carry out an attack against Turkish forces that was bound to draw a heavy-handed Turkish response?

We might look to developments elsewhere in the Middle East, above all how Iran has exploited the war in Gaza to mobilize its proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen to assault American and other international targets.

As the highly-regarded Institute for the Study of War has summarized the situation, “Iran and its so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ are exploiting the Israel-Hamas war to support their objective of expelling US forces from the Middle East.”

The Biden administration has been extraordinarily slow to acknowledge Iran’s role in these attacks. 

It would not even say that the militias carrying out the attacks were backed by Iran until Dec. 8, when the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was targeted in a mortar strike, and several bases in Syria and Iraq, including in Erbil, which hosted U.S. troops were targeted by rockets and drones.

But later on that day, administration officials began to say that the groups carrying out the attacks were “Iranian-backed.” That was the first time they had done so!

Read More: U.S. Cites Iran, as Militias Attack Numerous Sites in the Kurdistan Region, Iraq, and Syria

As regards Houthi attacks on international shipping, it took even longer. Another two weeks passed before the Biden administration publicly stated that Iran was “deeply involved” in them.

Read More: White House: Iran is ‘Deeply involved’ in Houthi Attacks on Red Sea Shipping

The Houthis could not carry out their attacks without the weapons and intelligence that Iran was providing, the White House finally explained.

As John Bolton, Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor and U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under George W. Bush, wrote last week in The Washington Post, “Only the credulous doubt that Iran’s regional surrogates are acting in concert in the current crisis.” 

Why shouldn’t the PKK be among them: attacking Turkish forces to provoke a military response, targeting sites in the Kurdistan Region, as well as northeastern Syria? And, thereby, further roiling the region, as the Israeli-Hamas war, and all its brutalities, continues.

Bolton complained of the lack of strategic thinking about this issue in the Biden administration. If it has such difficulty even recognizing that Iran is organizing a concerted campaign among its proxy forces to undermine the position of the U.S., its allies, and partners, how can it even begin to consider the possibility that the PKK’s assault on Turkish forces, killing a dozen Turkish troops, might be part of it?