Turkish Kurds' fight for autonomy heats up; leadership jockeys for maneuvering room

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in Iraq: Kurdish guerrilla movement in Turkey claims to have Genocide against the Kurdish people is by no means limited to Iraq, which Washington now considers an enemy state. It has in fact been carried out most consistently by Turkey, where the largest numbers of Kurds live and which is one of Washington's most reliable allies in the region. Needless to say, this conflict has gotten much less attention from the U.S. politicians and media.

Since the founding of modern Turkey, Kurdish forces have waged repeated desperate struggles against the fate assigned them by the Turkish rulers. In recent years, this conflict has been escalating. The Turkish air force has been bombing Kurds in Iraq, claiming that it needs to destroy training bases for the guerrillas of the PKK (the Kurdish Workers' Party), which has been waging a guerrrilla campaign in the eastern part of the Turkish state since 1984.

March 21, the Kurdish new year, saw the sharpest clashes yet between Kurds and Turkey's repressive forces. In Cizre, near the Iraqi border, the Turkish army and police attacked a funeral procession of several thousand, who were marching to the local cemetery to honor fallen PKK guerrillas. Scores were killed. Fighting was reported in a number of localities The deputy head of the Turkish Human Rights Association, Akin Birkal, observed the fighting in Cizre. He commented: "They [the Turkish repressive forces] have put out the fire of Nowrouz [the Kurdish new year] with the people's blood." The fires of the Kurdish struggle, however, are certain to grow and no one can say how far they will spread. The following article describes the development of the most recent Kurdish struggle in the Turkish state and its problems.

6000 armed militants.

ment that would further reinforce dual power in the region.

The complexity of the present situation is illustrated by the open admissions of both "Apo" and the new prime minister, Suleyman Demirel, that they do not know what the other is up to, and are not quite sure what to do next! "Apo" has stated that he is not sure whether the government has a serious intention to end state terror in the region-and is only being prevented from doing so by its inability to confront the Turkish military—or whether the statements made so far are only designed to disarm the struggle.

In fact, 19 people were murdered and hundreds more wounded during a funeral procession Dec. 24, 1991, when, despite the insistence of many high officials that the procession be allowed to proceed, a colonel ordered his men to open fire.

Many military officials have made statements to the effect that only genocide will stop the PKK, and they would be happy to carry it out. On the other hand, the government and the ruling class have tended to lean more and more in the direction of making concessions.

Regardless of whether the PKK leadership is actually contemplating selling out the struggle at the negotiating table, as similar movements have done in the past, or its conciliatory-sounding statements are part of a maneuver to test where the government is headed, it is clear that not everyone in the PKK agrees with these statements.

The most interesting developments can observed by following the PKK's semiofficial monthly Ozgur Halk, which is published in Istanbul. A series of articles on subjects such as internationalism, the disintegration of "actually existing socialism," and a criticism of petty-bourgeois reformism, indicate an evolution toward revolutionary Marxist positions on the part of some cadres.

These cadres have followed the implications of consistent struggle for national liberation to their logical conclusions and have come up with results that seem to be in the same vein as Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution.

It is hard today to determine how influential such views are, or to know how much "Apo's" calls for a consensus are being challenged in the organization. In any case, it is clear that there is a trend toward an independent Kurdistan and that it is growing day by day.