Turkey's War This Week | No. 1
Drone strikes ongoing in Sinjar and North and East Syria, high-profile critics of cross-border military operations under pressure, new survey data on Kurdish public opinion in Turkey, and more.
This is Turkey's War This Week, a newsletter on Turkey's cross-border military operations in Iraq and Syria and repression of Kurdish politics domestically and internationally.
Drone War Watch: Four Turkish drone strikes have killed at least two people and injured at least four more in Sinjar and North and East Syria so far this month.
On November 1, a Turkish drone strike targeted the Hesin Meman Dome in central Sinjar. Video footage shared by local news outlets showed extensive material damage. No casualties were reported.
On November 3, a Turkish drone strike targeted a car in Sinjar city, reportedly killing a Yezidi man named Mehsin Şemo and injuring one unidentified woman.
By my count, these were the eighth and ninth Turkish drone strikes in Sinjar this year.
For background on Turkey’s drone campaign in Sinjar and its impact on Yezidi genocide survivors attempting to rebuild their lives there, see:
Free Yezidi Foundation Executive Director Pari Ibrahim’s March 2022 speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, as well as FYF’s other work raising awareness of this issue.
This study, conducted by Amy Austin Holmes, Diween Hawezy, and Brett Cohen for the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, which created the first dataset tracking Turkish strikes in Sinjar and found that Turkey had bombed the region every year since 2017.
And this one, conducted by Ben van Der Merwe for the New Statesman, which built on the ICSVE dataset to find that 60% of Turkish strikes in Sinjar caused civilian harm.
This report from the New Humanitarian looking at how Turkey’s drone campaign is hindering IDP returns. One Yezidi civilian quoted in the article sums it up: “We are afraid of only one thing really, and that is the Turkish military.”
On November 2, a reported Turkish drone strike hit the village of Jarqali near Kobane, Syria, wounding one Syrian government soldier.
On November 6, a Turkish drone strike targeted a car in Qamishlo, killing one SDF fighter and injuring two civilians.
The SDF identified the fighter who lost his life as Kamal Muhammad Ali Dodo, a 27-year-old man from Serekaniye. They said that he was on leave visiting his family when he was killed.
The wounded civilians were not identified.
According to the Rojava Information Center, these were the 87th and 88th Turkish drone strikes on the territory of North and East Syria this year.
International criticism mounts as opposition figures face criminal investigations and imprisonment over calls for investigations into Turkey’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Human rights defender and Turkish Medical Association chair Dr. Sebnem Korur Fincanci remains in pre-trial detention after being arrested in late October on terror and ‘disinformation’ charges after she stated that the allegations of chemical weapons use should be investigated.
Jailed HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas is accused of “terror propaganda” and “insulting the Turkish nation and state” for a series of Tweets, sent through his lawyers from prison, in which he called for an international investigation into the allegations.
CHP MP Sezgin Tanrikulu faces an investigation that could lead to the removal of his parliamentary immunity over a Tweet in which he said he would submit a parliamentary question about the allegations. A Turkish court has claimed that the Tweet served the ‘strategic goals and actions’ of the PKK.
Rights organizations have raised alarm about the use of anti-state charges against individuals who have done nothing more than ask for investigations into alleged breaches of international law. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a group of United Nations experts all called for Fincanci’s immediate release and criticized the use of terrorism laws to silence human rights defenders in Turkey.
Rather than put the allegations of chemical weapons to rest, as Erdogan likely hoped, these cases have put a global spotlight on Turkey’s conduct of its military operations in Iraq and its repression of pro-peace opposition domestically. With elections approaching, they’re unlikely to be the last of their kind.
As a result, this crackdown may well lead to greater international scrutiny of likely Turkish violations of human rights and international law at home and abroad—including, but not limited to, claims of chemical weapons use.
For background on the allegations of Turkish chemical weapons use in Iraqi Kurdistan, see:
This report from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which examined existing allegations and called for an extensive international investigation based on its findings.
ANF footage showing two PKK fighters allegedly exposed to chemical weapons, released after the IPPNW report in October. (Warning: the videos included at the link are graphic and upsetting).
Reporting from Community Peacemaker Teams and Rudaw on the case of a civilian family impacted by alleged Turkish chemical weapons use in September 2021. Notably, Iraqi Kurdish authorities blocked the IPPNW investigators from meeting with this family.
Two new surveys measuring Kurdish public opinion in Turkey provide important context on the status of the Kurdish issue today.
An October study conducted by the Tahir Elci Human Rights Foundation and Kurdish pollster Rawest Research looked at Kurdish perceptions of human rights issues. In November, Spectrum House Research released a study focused on Kurdish voters’ attitudes towards major parties in the run-up to elections.
Read together, these provide us with five important takeaways:
First, the numbers make it clear that human rights, democracy, and the Kurdish question matter to Kurdish voters.
The Tahir Elci Human Rights Foundation/Rawest Research study found that 79% of Kurds believe human rights are being violated in Turkey today, 73% believe the human rights situation has deteriorated over the past 10 years, and just 17% believe it will improve in the next five.
Women and Kurds were listed as the two groups whose rights were violated the most in Turkey. Most respondents who reported experiencing discrimination said that they faced discrimination based on their ethnic identity.
The Spectrum House study found that 35.7% of respondents think the Kurdish question is the primary problem in Turkey, coming after 36.6% of respondents who listed the economy as the biggest problem. 19% put the Kurdish issue as the second biggest problem in Turkey, again following the economy.
Second, securitized approaches to the Kurdish issue and the institutions that implement them are unpopular and viewed as illegitimate.
The Tahir Elci Human Rights Foundation/Rawest Research study asked several questions about justice issues and trust in state institutions. More than ⅔ of respondents named the state as the actor responsible for the most human rights violations. Majorities said that abuses like torture, police violence and strip searches were on the rise.
Just 24% think the legal system in Turkey treats everyone fairly and just 29% think a person detained by police is more likely to be guilty. On average, respondents had low levels of trust in the courts, the presidency, and the security forces.
Both studies found that most Kurdish voters oppose the appointment of trustees to municipalities. 61% of respondents to the Tahir Elci Human Rights Foundation/Rawest Research study said that they did not find the appointment of trustees to municipalities to be right. The Spectrum House study asked about the appointment of trustees to HDP municipalities specifically. It found that 89.5% of respondents do not support trustee appointments, while just 5.2% support them.
The Tahir Elci Human Rights Foundation/Rawest Research study also found that most voters saw the lifting of MPs’ parliamentary immunities–a move used to enable the imprisonment of HDP MPs—as a rights violation.
Third, there are important differences in how Kurdish voters who support the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) perceive these issues and how Kurdish voters who support mainstream Turkish parties perceive them.
The Tahir Elci Human Rights Foundation/Rawest Research study found that HDP voters had drastically lower levels of trust in state institutions like the judiciary, presidency and security forces, were more likely to say that human rights conditions had deteriorated, and were more likely to report having experienced discrimination when compared to AKP voters.
The Spectrum House study found that 47.4% of respondents who support the HDP see the Kurdish issue as the primary problem in Turkey. 28% see the economy as the primary problem.
In comparison, just 4.9% of respondents who support the AKP and 5.7% of respondents who support the CHP see the Kurdish issue as the primary problem in Turkey. More than half of respondents who support these parties see the economy as the primary problem.
Fourth, the HDP represents most Kurdish voters—and repression has not weakened its support base.
The Spectrum House study found that 67.4% of its respondents supported the HDP in 2018, while 18.5% supported the AKP.
Asked about how they would vote in an upcoming elections, 73% of respondents said they would vote for the HDP. 9% said they would vote AKP.
95.8% of 2018 HDP voters surveyed said they would vote HDP again, while just 46.3% of 2018 AKP voters surveyed said they would vote AKP again. Notably, 14% of 2018 AKP voters indicated that they would now vote for the HDP.
This aligns with recent polling that has shown the HDP with a consistent 10-12% of the vote despite over half a decade of concentrated state pressure on the party—including an active closure case.
And finally, that base may not have an alternative if the party is closed and unable to regroup.
The Spectrum House study found that about 70% of the HDP voters it surveyed would vote for a HDP successor party if the HDP is shut down. About 20% of HDP voters surveyed said they would not vote, are undecided about what they would do, or would prefer not to answer.
There’s no guarantee that HDP voters will be able to support an alternative pro-Kurdish party if the HDP is closed before 2023. The pro-Kurdish political movement has been able to adapt to repression and overcome party closures several times before. It may be able to do so again. However, the government has also learned from its previous unsuccessful attempts to shut down pro-Kurdish politics.
Changes to election laws, a political ban list encompassing nearly all of the HDP’s most prominent current and former elected officials, and the potential of mass arrests could prevent the HDP from reconstituting itself in time to win representation in 2023.
The survey did not assess what the 70% of HDP voters who would support a successor party or alternative would do if the HDP were shut down and no pro-Kurdish party were able to replace it. It’s likely that they would end up excluded from national politics altogether
What this means: Millions of Kurds in Turkey support greater collective Kurdish civil, political, and cultural rights and vote for the pro-Kurdish political movement currently represented by the HDP in order to further those goals. Repression has not changed their preferences.
This constituency already lacks trust in state institutions, does not approve of policies that securitize the Kurdish issue, and views the state as an actor responsible for deplorable human rights conditions that are likely to get worse. It perceives high levels of discrimination on the basis of Kurdish ethnic identity.
Erdogan’s government is set to increase the repression of this constituency as elections approach, heightening these perceptions of persecution, discrimination and exclusion. The opposition is not reaching out to this constituency at all—meaning that the closure of the HDP is likely to leave it without representation in Turkey’s national politics for at least the next five years. This is bad news for democracy, human rights, and peace and stability in the region, and should be taking it seriously.
What I’m Reading
Two reports on North and East Syria’s water crisis illustrate how Turkey’s effort to crush the AANES and SDF goes beyond bombs and bullets:
From Human Rights Watch, a look at how Turkey’s restriction of the flow of the Euphrates River to Syria and stoppage of service from the Alouk water station has contributed to a deadly cholera epidemic.
From Yiyao Yang and Khabat Abbas for the The New Arab, a report on the impact of water shortages exacerbated by Turkish intervention on female farmers.
Turkish policy choices facilitate environmental, economic and health challenges in the region that threaten lives and livelihoods just as much as all-out war does—and directly contravene the AANES’ efforts to build stability and address issues like gender equality. While guarantor powers have tolerated these pressures, much like they tolerate the drone campaign, as an ‘alternative’ to a third Turkish incursion, it’s becoming more and more clear every day that this is unsustainable.