Kurd Rebels Hope to Exploit US-Turkey Iraq Rift

"With the war in Iraq, a new situation has emerged," said Ocalan’s brother Osman, a senior military and political leader in the PKK and its present incarnation KADEK.

"Before, U.S. ties with Turkey were of the highest strategic importance; after Israel it was the country they trusted most in the Middle East. There has now been a serious setback," he said in an interview at a KADEK military camp, in a remote chain of mountains in Kurdish-held northern Iraq.

In February, Turkey’s parliament voted down a plan to allow tens of thousands of U.S. troops to use Turkish territory for war on Iraq. The United States has since increased its military cooperation with Kurdish factions controlling northern Iraq, sending in special forces that have advanced with groups of Kurdish fighters into territory abandoned by Iraqi troops.

"Our estimation is that a new relationship could be created with the United States. If it adopts a hostile position toward us we must be ready, but our wish is for relations, an alliance," Osman said.

Turkey fears any Kurdish move on the key northern oil hubs of Kirkuk and Mosul could cement the self-rule Kurds have in the northern zone they seized from Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf War, and rekindle separatism among its own 12 million Kurds.

HOPES TURKEY’S LOSS IS KURDS’ GAIN

Ocalan — whose fighters heeded a call for a cease-fire his brother made after being captured — said events in the north showed Washington’s need to strike deals with Kurds, even to the annoyance of NATO ally Turkey.

"The role of the Kurds is developing very quickly, and they need to form an alliance with the Kurds; otherwise the United States cannot succeed in its plans," he said.

"With the intervention in Iraq, there are more grounds for a political solution (with Turkey on Kurdish rights)… As America settles into Iraq, Turkey’s importance diminishes, and its political defenses fall. Neither NATO nor the United States will protect Turkey like before, and this forces it to act."

Washington considered the PKK a terrorist organization, and has applied the same designation to KADEK, established in 2002.

Turkey dismisses KADEK, which linked the halt of fighting to steps toward allowing the use of Kurdish in broadcasting and education and widening Kurdish participation in government, as an attempt to win politically what it couldn’t on the ground.

Ankara has eased bans on the use of Kurdish under reforms aimed at advancing its bid to join the European Union, but Ocalan said he believed more progress was impossible under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Ocalan acknowledged one possible consequence of the war could be Turkish strikes on his group’s bases in northern Iraq. He suggested fighting could resume in Turkey if they were hit.

KADEK commanders claim they have thousands of fighters in northern Iraq, spread out across small camps that Ocalan said they were moving between to minimize the risk of being attacked.