Tuesday 26 January 2016

Oral evidence, 26 January 2016.

Witnesses

Gareth Stansfield, Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute, Zeynep Kaya, Fellow, London School of Economics, and Güney Yıldız, Turkish and Kurdish Affairs Analyst, gave evidence.

Chair

Thank you for coming. My apologies for our slightly over-running and keeping you waiting. Please identify yourselves for the record. I know you want to be clear about the guise in which you are speaking. So let us know who you are and the organisations you are associated with.

Güney Yıldız

My name is Güney Yıldız. I am an analyst focusing on Turkey, Kurds and Syria. I am a visiting fellow in an institute in Vienna and I am speaking in a personal capacity here.

Zeynep Kaya

I am Zeynep Kaya. I am a research fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and I work on the Kurdish politics of the Middle East. I am here in an academic capacity, so what I am saying here does not represent the Middle East Centre’s position.

Gareth Stansfield

My name is Gareth Stansfield. I am a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Exeter and a senior associate fellow at RUSI. I specialise particularly in the politics of Iraq, Kurdistan and increasingly ISIS.

Chair

Thank you very much indeed. During the question session, if you think you have more to say when a colleague has answered, please chip in. If you are in agreement, there is no need to reinforce what has already been said.

Stephen Gethins

Thank you for coming along today. I have a straightforward question. Do you think that Turkey’s current stance in regard to the Kurds is undermining the fight against Daesh?

Zeynep Kaya

ISIS?

Stephen Gethins

Yes.

Zeynep Kaya

To answer the question, we need to look at it from Turkey’s perspective. For Turkey, what is at stake is the PKK and PYD. Turkey is part of the coalition and part of the fight against ISIS. It also experiences attacks from ISIS. ISIS did not claim they were their attacks, but that is the case. For Turkey, the fight with the PKK is the priority. It is more important because Turkey sees the PKK and the PKK’s connection with the PYD, and the increasing strength of the PYD in Syria, as a threat to its territorial unity. If the connection between the PYD and the PKK strengthens, and the border between Syria and Turkey becomes a border where Kurds on both sides are becoming more connected, this might in the long term have implications for territorial unity, so Turkey is thinking about this issue in those terms, whereas ISIS never threatened Turkey’s territorial unity.

Stephen Gethins

Sure, but what impact do you think that that has on Turkey and the broader coalition’s fight against ISIL/Daesh?

Zeynep Kaya

I think it is weakening the coalition and the fight.

Gareth Stansfield

I share those views and would perhaps go even further. It is absolutely undermining the ability of the PKK/HPG/YPG—however you want to call these different PKK fighting formations on that side—to prosecute the fight against ISIS. It is both in military terms—the PKK is having to redeploy, either back to Qandil or into south-east Anatolia—but also in straightforward diplomatic terms. The Syrian Kurds and especially the YPG are increasingly more concerned about the threat that Turkey poses to them, rather than the threat that Raqqa and other places may pose to them going forward. It affects them diplomatically in terms of inclusion in the different talks, such as Geneva III. There is also another dimension here, which is how it undermines the Kurdish ability to fight. That is not just the PKK, but the integrity of the Kurds of Iraq. Turkey’s involvement in terms of fighting the PKK is introducing a split in the integrity of the Kurdish political scene in Iraq—that could be very dangerous going forward—to the extent that all these groups, which are the most effective war fighters against ISIS on the ground, are increasingly more limited in their ability to prosecute that fight and support it.

Stephen Gethins

So this is undermining the fight that is being carried out by the Kurds against ISIL, in your view?

Gareth Stansfield

It is an unqualified yes to that.

Stephen Gethins

If I may ask one final question, which reflects on a question that I asked Mr Levy, do you think that that makes a long-term political settlement a lot more unlikely, especially if you look, for example, at some kind of decentralisation as part of a solution to the situation in Syria, with more power therefore for Syrian Kurds?

Zeynep Kaya

To realise it, we need to think about what is happening in Syria and the other Syrian groups’ position towards Kurdish autonomy. If the de facto autonomy turns into de jure autonomy, who will be part of that? We know that Kurds on the ground in Syria are divided. The KNC is sidelined right now and the PYD is dominating the area and is running the administrative parts. The YPG is the main military operation taking place there. The KNC does not have those capacities. If there is a coalition and an understanding among Kurdish groups in Syria on such a formation, that is possible, but you also have to think about other opposition groups within Syria and the regime and Turkey, and what they are going to say. It might be part of a solution, but reaching the solution might become part of the problem.

Güney Yıldız

I want to put this into a different context. I believe that Turkey has followed Western policies vis-à-vis Syria.

Chair

Güney, you are speaking slightly more clearly than your colleagues, so thank you, but I ask all of you to speak up a bit. I was struggling.

Güney Yıldız

I was just making the point that Turkey has been following Western policies towards Syria from early on, but Turkey diverted from Western policies when the West was becoming increasingly less active in the region. They followed the policies that were set out by their Western partners and tried to pursue them, but on undermining the fight against ISIS, we have to look at other actors. We can argue that Russia is undermining the fight against ISIS by also attacking other rebel groups. Assad is undermining the fight against ISIS by focusing on other groups. Turkish diversion from the rest of the Western coalition in the Syrian civil war happened when ISIS and al-Nusra started attacking the Kurdish groups in northern Syria. As Zeynep mentioned, Turkey sees more of an existential threat from that than from ISIS. To bring Turkey more on board, it is necessary to help Turkey and the Kurds solve their problems. The West, including the EU and the US, did not play its role when there was a peace process in Turkey with the Kurds and the Turks. The two sides need to be brought together, because Turkey used to have better relations with Syrian Kurds. In preparation for this meeting, I spoke to a top Syrian Kurdish leader and also to senior Turkish officials. I came to the conclusion again that, for Turkey and the Kurds, the problems are so difficult to solve among themselves that they clearly need external help.

Chair

Who needs external help?

Güney Yıldız

Both the Kurds and Turkey need external help to bring them to the table. The role that the UK can play is to push both sides to come to the negotiating table again.

Chair

How would you construct that help? Turkey appears to have behaved in a way in the past six months that has been largely reckless to the interests of the wider international community, by seeking any opportunity to find a casus belli to reopen the Kurdish insurgency through the PKK.

Güney Yıldız

Both sides are in a position now. Turkey has been struggling to constrain the uprising in the south-east. The PKK is a military—

Chair

There was no uprising before July, was there? There was a ceasefire, wasn’t there?

Güney Yıldız

There was a ceasefire.

Zeynep Kaya

There were ongoing small attacks. It was not a full peace.

Chair

I am trying to understand Turkish policy. There was an opportunity to treat those crimes being committed against Kurdish and Turkish and other people in that region as crimes and to prosecute them and police them in that way. Or there was an opportunity again to declare war on the PKK, tear up the ceasefire and go for it, in the way that they have done.

Zeynep Kaya

We have to look at what happened in the domestic context. It appears that the AKP wanted to gain majority rule again. One way to do that was to feed into the Turkish nationalist feeling.

Chair

So your interpretation of Turkish policy towards the internal Kurdish question in the late summer was, therefore, all about winning the election in November?

Zeynep Kaya

No, it was not all about that. I wouldn’t say that. But I think that played a huge role in restarting the war with the PKK. It led to a positive outcome for the Government. In November, they won the majority and became the majority Government again. There is no proof for that. That is the interpretation that is out there.

Chair

But that is a reasonable interpretation to place on it.

Zeynep Kaya

It is, because, in a sense, when the AKP started to engage with Turkish nationalist feelings, especially against the PKK, we know that during the elections a big share of the vote passed from the MHP, the Turkish nationalist party, to the AKP. So it worked for the AKP. The outcome shows that it worked for them, and they might have followed it as a strategy.

Güney Yıldız

Turkey’s problem was to try to separate its own Kurdish problem from the Kurds in Syria. They wanted to have a settlement or at least try to buy time with a ceasefire with the Kurds inside Turkey and try to sort out Syria in a way that would weaken the Syrian Kurds, so that they can push the Turkish Kurds to the negotiating table when they are in a better position. But the opposite to that happened. When the Kurds stood their ground against ISIS and al-Nusra and got US support, the opposite of that happened. Kurds captured more areas from ISIS than any other group in Iraq and Syria, including the Assad Government. The problem for Turkey was in separating Kurds. I think that is also a problem for the West. We are all trying to understand whether we can help and negotiate with the PYD. The US position is that; the UK position is more or less that, but when it comes to the PKK, it is a different matter. That was the mistake that Turkey made in this issue as well. In my opinion, another mistake the Western Governments are making is to apply an either/or policy when it comes to Turks and Kurds. For example, the UK thinks that it can have good relations with either Turkey or the Kurds and that it has to choose between the two. What happened with the Obama Administration’s decision to help Kobane Kurds last year was that the Obama Administration decided to have good relations with both. Despite being advised otherwise, President Obama saw that they could have good relations with the Kurds without pissing off the Turks too much. I think that is the policy to follow.

Gareth Stansfield

I think President Erdogan of Turkey is quite simple to understand in this regard. He had an open policy of wanting to reform the constitution to promote a presidential system—some would say to centralise more power around him—and the threat to that was not the PKK at all. There was a peace process; they had to some degree stood down. The threat was the HDP of Selahattin Demirtas, which had become far too powerful as a legal political party. What we then saw was a heightening of anti-Kurdish rhetoric in Turkey and a response from the PKK that saw Syria as an opportunity to resurrect itself and re-expand. Now what we see is an increasingly aggressive anti-Kurdish policy from the Turkish state, led by Erdogan, and an increasingly reactive and very militant response from the PKK, in the cities as well. The victim in this, as it were, is the HDP. The legal political party is being squeezed out as the AKP and the PKK fight for the support of the Kurds going forward. The plan is working: opinion is polarised in Turkey now in a way that, arguably, we have not seen for many years, if not decades. The anti-Kurdish sentiment among Turks is very high, and that is mirrored increasingly by the Kurds.

Mr Hendrick

I think the three panellists are all agreeing with each other, and I agree with them. The point that has been made quite bluntly is that, basically, domestic Turkish politics is getting in the way of Turkey playing a more proactive role in helping to solve the problems in Syria. The example you gave, Mr Yıldız, on Kobane was an exception rather than the rule, in that America had the self-confidence to push the Turks into a position, in exchange for a base—I think a base was involved—to allow Kobane to be taken from ISIS by helping those Kurdish forces to win it back. Obviously, it was won back—there is not much of a town left now, but it is not under ISIS control. The major problem is that, other than Assad’s troops on the ground, the other disparate forces that are against Assad are not being facilitated in any constructive way by Turkey or anybody else for that matter. We talked about—

Chair

Question?

Mr Hendrick

I will come to that. We talked about whether it is 7,000, 70,000 or 700,000. Daniel Levy on the previous panel was saying it does not matter. To my way of thinking, it does matter. I don’t think we can get involved to any great extent, obviously because of domestic problems in this House; the Prime Minister cannot count on it. That is why, Mr Yıldız, the FCO is not getting as involved as it should be. I ask you all whether you see any possibility—or whether there should be a possibility—of Western ground forces getting involved. At the moment, other than the Russians and the Assad forces, what there is on the ground that is fighting ISIS and against Assad is not substantial.

Zeynep Kaya

Can I just respond to your comment about Turkey’s domestic context having an influence? There is a regional context as well. PYD is supported by Russia; the Kurdish groups in Syria are supported by external forces as well. Turkey has been wanting to increase its regional influence. Having Russia at its border supporting an unfriendly political group there is not what Turkey wants. So there is a regional political dimension as well that is hindering Turkey from maybe supporting ISIL in the engagement.

Mr Hendrick

So domestic and regional.

Zeynep Kaya

Yes.

Gareth Stansfield

I understand where you are coming from with that question. If we take Iraq, you can make the case that there is the possibility at least, if there were political will, for Western military intervention again in Iraq. But there is no political will and the evidence of that intervention succeeding in the past does not give us a lot of confidence. At least there is a relationship with the Government of Iraq and with the Kurdistan Regional Government that could perhaps facilitate something like that. There is a far bigger problem with regard to Western forces in Syria, apart from working with the YPG and PYD Kurdish forces. But that introduces a further problem because those forces are not aligned against Bashar al-Assad. They are aligned against ISIS. In fact, there is a de facto agreement—maybe even stronger than that—between the PYD and the regime. I suppose it is an arrangement of convenience that they look after the north-east, they are no threat to the regime and the regime will not threaten them. Whether that unravels in the future if the PYD pushes for something more remains to be seen. It creates a whole series of uneasy bedfellows if we start saying that western military forces should be intervening more forcefully with the YPG against ISIS and we also have it in our mind that Bashar al-Assad is persona non grata in our wider plans.

Mr Hendrick

Well, you partly answered the question. You are describing the problem excellently between you, but short of western forces getting involved, how do you think this should and could play out and how would you like to see it play out?

Güney Yıldız

In response—together with your previous question—the saying goes that no ground troops have surrendered themselves to planes. In order to defeat ground troops, you need to have ground troops. Whether those need to be western troops is another matter. The pattern of the conflict is such that it started as a proxy war—Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States were supporting groups—but increasingly those external supporters came to the scene themselves. The main groups, such as Iran, came to fight early on, rather than relying solely on their proxies. Russia is there now. We see indications that the United States is getting involved even more. The only other groups who are solely relying on proxies are Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and they are not doing that well here. Before coming to the western ground troops, there is a whole area that has not been exploited: bringing together the opposition. The opposition is not getting together mostly because of their external support. Kurds cannot come together with the FSA mostly because of Turkey’s concerns. The different FSA groups and rebels cannot come together because they used to be supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey, and those powers have different interests that do not mirror each other. In that sense, the main path should be trying to unify the opposition. It is interesting that Russia is trying to push for Kurds to be at the Geneva table—it is not out of love for Kurds. The rise of Kurds in Syria has worried not only Syria and the Assad regime, but Iran and Russia. The Russian, Iranian and Assad’s position towards Kurds is that they should not get too much stronger and that their force needs to be limited. This is being done, in a way, with the fight against Turkey. When the YPG got help from America, for example, I know for a fact that Iran put a lot of pressure on all its proxies trying to push Kurds away from the west.

Mr Hendrick

Okay, the point you are making—

Chair

We have to move on or we will not finish the session.

Ann Clwyd

I was interested in what you said. There are several things that I would like to follow up on but we do not have the time. I have followed very closely over a long period of time the Kurds in the south-east of Turkey as well as in other parts of Iraq. It seems that everybody praises the Turks when they fight a battle for them, as they did in Syria with the Yazidis in particular. For the Foreign Office almost, it seems to me, to equate all Kurds with a terrorist group is very misleading. What role is the Foreign Office playing in trying to get these people included as part of the talks, which is essential? It is not just the Turks.

Zeynep Kaya

The concept of what constitutes terrorism should be clearly defined. None of the parties involved in the peace process are sure about what terrorists are, or what and who a terrorist group is. For PYD, Ahrar ash-Sham is a terrorist group but, from a western perspective, that might not be the case. From Turkey’s perspective, PYD is a terrorist group but PYD does not consider itself a terrorist organisation. From a—[Interruption.]

Chair

Order. I am afraid there is a Division. We will reconvene at 4.45 pm if you will forgive us while we go to vote. Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. On resuming—

Chair

Order. While we are briefly quorate again, let me bring the session back to order. Thank you very much for giving evidence. Sadly, the two Divisions mean that we have run out time. I am hosting a further meeting with a delegation from Pakistan at 5pm. It is now 3 minutes to 5, so I shall be late getting there. Thank you for your evidence. There are more questions that we wanted to ask you. If it is okay with you, we can submit them in writing and invite your comments. If additional questions have occurred to my colleagues, as they have to me, I ask them to include those as well. I would be grateful if you looked at our wider terms of reference and the transcript of today’s session and previous ones. If there is more you could help us with, referring to articles that you or others have written that you think we should take as evidence, I will be grateful for your wisdom and guidance. Thank you for your evidence today; I am sorry it has been curtailed. Oral evidence: The fight against ISIL: the UK’s role, HC 683 18