Why Egypt’s army can ignore the US (FT)

(David Gardner)
When the army and security forces ignored pleas for restraint from Egypt’s allies in the US
and Europe, moving to crush the Muslim Brotherhood protest camps that spread across
Cairo after the July 3 coup d’etat that toppled President Mohamed Morsi, they had reason to
feel supremely confident.
What General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his colleagues have done is to restore the security
state – an action that should not be confused with re-establishing security.
This restoration is edging towards the status quo ante the Tahrir revolution that overthrew
Hosni Mubarak in 2011. It started before the coup, with the constitution Morsi and the
Brothers railroaded through last December. Most of the controversy excited by this
Islamist-tinged charter was caused by the way it ignored liberal, Christian and women’s
concerns over fundamental rights and freedoms. Alarmingly little attention was paid to the
way the Brotherhood sought to co-opt the military by embedding the army’s privileges and
prerogatives even beyond the powers it enjoyed under Mubarak.
Much good this illiberal opportunism did the Islamists, whose activists have been shot down
in the streets like rabbits since the coup. After the last massacre on July 27, General
Mohamed Ibrahim, the interior minister (originally appointed by Morsi), resurrected the
political and “religious” crime units of Amn al-Dawla or State Security – the most infamous
of the old regime’s secret police agencies, with a vast political underground of informers at its
command. Disbanded in March 2011 after the fall of Mubarak, its operatives are suspected
of a string of subsequent provocations adding to Egypt’s chronic instability. Now, thanks to
the coup backed by the liberals and secular youth who made the Tahrir revolution, they are
back in business. Martial law, the state of emergency under which Mubarak ruled for 30
years, has been reinstated – ostensibly for a month, but that was how it began after Anwar
Sadat’s assassination in 1981. Furthermore, police and army generals have just been
restored to governing Egypt’s neuralgic provinces.
There are three main, interlocking reasons why Gen Sisi and his comrades believe they are
fireproof, and can ignore any finger-wagging abroad and challenge at home.

US leverage on Egypt’s army is more apparent than real

Ever since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, its army has been in receipt of an annual
US stipend of $1.3bn (in addition to lesser civilian grants). Whoever has been in power in
Washington, and whatever the state of relations with Cairo, this military aid has been
sacrosanct, with solid bipartisan support for what is universally seen as a terrific investment:
guaranteeing the peace treaty with Israel; securing safe passage through the Suez Canal, not
just for trade flows but rapid US force deployment; and ensuring near automatic diplomatic
support for the US in the Middle East.
Even substantial provocation seems unable to prejudice the annual US aid envelope for
Egypt’s generals. In June, for example, the trial of 43 NGO workers, begun when the
military was in charge after Mubarak’s fall, resulted in jail sentences (in absentia) for 15
Americans, including the son of an Obama cabinet secretary. Their crime? Receiving US aid.
Might that affect the other US aid? Not so far.
And what have the generals seen the US do since July 3? Refuse to call a coup a coup; hold
up the delivery of four F-16 jets; and (maybe*) cancel a planned joint military exercise –
amounting to a rap on two knuckles. There is no real reason why they should listen to this
tut-tutting.

Sisi has the support of Saudi Arabia and (most of) the Gulf

The army’s restoration of the security state has the enthusiastic backing of Saudi Arabia and
its absolute monarchist allies in the Gulf, who can breathe a lot easier now that: the
democratic potential of the so-called Arab Spring looks as if it is beginning to dissipate; and
Gen Sisi and his colleagues are trashing the rival brand of Islam they most fear, the
Brotherhood’s. Within hours of the coup, Gulf potentates led by King Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia – a country that usually takes a long time to react if it does at all – greeted the
military takeover with indecent haste. Within a day Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
and Kuwait had stumped up $12bn for the new order. This is nearly ten times the American
military rent, and outstrips even the largesse Qatar and Turkey had lavished on the
Brotherhood. The generals will understandably feel there is more where that came from.

Military populism is popular again in Egypt

Gen Sisi’s behaviour since the coup makes plain he senses a wave of popular support for the
army – and maybe the call of history anointing him as the new Gamal Abdel Nasser, still a
nationalist icon in Egypt.
The vast size of the pre-coup demonstrations against Morsi and the Brotherhood, and the
siren calls from liberals, leftists, nationalists and secular youth for the army to do its patriotic
duty, will have reinforced Sisi’s feeling. The same crowds that overthrew Mubarak, and that
howled for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces junta that replaced him to leave, have
now propelled him to power.
Sisi will also have seen opinion polls highlighting the popularity of the army as an institution
– which will have influenced his careful patriotic choreography of the coup.
In particular, he or his aides will have noticed the Zogby Research Services polls, conducted
before and after the coup, showing respectively 94 and 93 per cent support among Egyptians
for the army – with no political faction convincing even a third of Egyptians, who at the same
time hanker after Sadat and Nasser, and regard comedians as worthier of confidence than
politicians.
It has become lamentably obvious in the past two months, moreover, that Egypt’s secular
forces are no closer to organising for power. Too many of them seem to believe they can
subcontract that role to the army.
Yet when they step out of line, the army will find room for them in the jails – alongside Morsi
and his Brothers.
*update after Barack Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard statement: no maybes.

müzakere süreci türkiye'nin k.ırak'taki etkisini artıracak-ft

By Daniel Dombey in Istanbul

President Lyndon Baines Johnson used to say he had one great skill – an understanding
of power, “where to look for it and how to use it”. As events this week are likely to
demonstrate, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, believes he has the same gift.
Mr Erdogan is on a northern European swing this week, but in the southeast of Turkey
history is on the march. On Thursday, before thousands of celebrants, Leyla Zana, one of the
icons of the Kurdish movement, is due to read out a message proclaiming a ceasefire in a
conflict that has killed 35,000 people over three decades and a road map for the months
ahead.
The road map was drawn up by Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan
Workers Party, or PKK, an organisation the US, the EU and Turkey itself classify as
terrorist. The plan has already received the green light from the pro-Kurdish party in
parliament, the PKK’s wing in western Europe and the military arm in its redoubt in the
northern Iraqi mountains. More importantly, the plan is being issued following extensive
contacts – what anyone would normally call negotiations – with Mr Erdogan’s own
government.
It is here that Mr Erdogan sees his Johnsonian opportunity to find and use power. If all goes
to plan – a fairly heroic assumption but a real possibility nonetheless – the events in
Diyarbakir, the self-styled Kurdish capital of Turkey, will turn the country’s internal and
external politics inside out.
Turkey’s geopolitical position has been transformed in the past couple of years, as the Arab
revolutions have rocked the region. Once a country intent on having zero problems with its
neighbours, the Sunni-majority state now finds itself in bitter rivalry with the Shia- (and
Alawite-) led central governments of Iran, Iraq and Syria.
In this context, achieving peace at home and removing a strategic point of vulnerability
becomes all the more imperative and an old Turkish dream has reappeared. That is the
ambition to extend Turkish sway – in de facto terms at least – into the oil and gas-rich lands
of Kurdish Northern Iraq, a mouthwatering goal at a time when Turkey pays Russia some
$2bn a month for fuel and when Ankara’s energy needs are increasing all the time.
A deal with Turkey’s own Kurdish minority, in which the Kurdish language is used in schools
and courts and local government is enhanced, could further propel the process while
reducing the risk that the ever greater autonomy of neighbouring northern Iraq would boost
separatist demands in Turkey itself.
Already about one out of every two foreign businesses in the north of Iraq is Turkish-owned,
but the economic interdependence between Turkey and the region could go much further.
Ankara has been negotiating a large-scale deal in which state-owned companies could take
big stakes in the oil and gasfields in the region, despite furious objections by Baghdad and
warnings from the US.
Peace with the PKK could also eliminate another weak spot. Ankara is painfully aware that a
PKK affiliate has established a strong presence in the border lands of Syria: that may be all
the more reason for coming to an agreement with the mother organisation.
Then there is the situation at home. Mr Erdogan has already suggested and Mr Ocalan
accepted a virtual quid pro quo in which Kurdish linguistic and political rights would be
accepted in return for a new constitution creating a powerful new presidency – which Mr
Erdogan himself is all but certain to occupy.
Old alliances are being undone. Mr Erdogan had already been at odds with one leading actor
in Turkish life that previously provided support – the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a
Pennsylvania-based preacher, whose followers are present throughout Turkish life, running
the country’s biggest newspaper and its most numerous business organisation and
championing politically charged mass trials.
The Kurdish talks increase tensions still further. Many Gulenists are aghast at the
negotiations with Mr Ocalan, a particular enemy of their movement, which the PKK chief
calls “counter-guerrillas”.
These are not the misgivings of a marginal group. The columnist Kadri Gursel says there are
three main actors in Turkish politics today – the prime minister, the prisoner and the
preacher.
The realignment of these forces is a momentous one. But although the Kurdish peace process
has many obstacles ahead – winning around Turkish nationalist opinion for one – it is but a
part of an outsize ambition that might have impressed even LBJ

avrupa'da katolik kilisesi kriz yaşarken afrika'da katolik nüfusta artış var (ft)

African claim to papacy
rests on growth
By Xan Rice in Lagos


In Europe, poorly attended services and emptying seminaries hint at the troubles in the
Catholic church. In Africa, clergymen have a different headache.
“We are struggling to build enough churches to accommodate everyone,” says Archbishop
Matthew Ndagoso of Kaduna, in central Nigeria. “Our numbers keep growing.”
The latest statistics from the Vatican bear this out. The global Catholic population increased
to 1.196bn at the end of 2010, up 15m from 2009. More than 6m of those new members
came from Africa, which now has 186m Catholics.
Part of that increase is due to population growth, which is higher in Africa than elsewhere.
Yet the continent also saw the biggest rise in its overall percentage of Catholics, from 18.1
per cent to 18.3 per cent. In Europe, the proportion of Catholics declined slightly to 39.9 per
cent.
The shifting demographics within the Catholic Church have come into focus this week with
Pope Benedict XVI’s shock resignation. Within hours bookmakers had put cardinals from
Nigeria and Ghana among the early favourites.
While there has not been a pope from Africa for more than 1,500 years, there is growing
speculation that the time may come soon. In 2002, while still a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI
suggested as much in an interview, saying that an African pope would be “a positive sign for
the whole of Christendom”.
Two African candidates have been tipped as possible frontrunners to succeed Pope Benedict
XVI. The first is Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, 80, the current Prefect Emeritus of the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Once the world’s
youngest Catholic bishop, aged just 32, he rose to become one of the main advisers to Pope
John Paul II. Though his age may count against him, he is popular in the Vatican, with
conservative views in line with the church hierarchy.
The other person hotly tipped is Peter Turkson, the 64-year-old Ghanaian cardinal who
heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Schooled in seminaries in his
home country and the US, Cardinal Turkson was archbishop of Cape Coast in Ghana before
becoming a cardinal in 2003. He has a reputation as a peacemaker, having mediated
between the two main parties in Ghana after the closely-contested election in 2008, and is
seen as more progressive than Mr Arinze.
While Nigeria has an estimated 25m Catholics, there does not appear to be any sense of
entitlement when it comes to the next pope. Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of Sokoto said
that if the papacy was allocated as a reward for expanding congregations there would be
have to be a Latin American pope.
“It is only the Holy Spirit who knows who God wants to be pope and will nudge the cardinals
in the appropriate direction, not as a result of somebody granting a concession to Africa. God
is the god of surprises,” he said.
Father Louis Odudu, a director of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, agreed. “This issue is
not on the frontburner here at all.”
Of greater concern for the Catholic clergy in Nigeria, and more broadly in Africa, is ensuring
that the church is able to keep growing strongly while maintaining the quality of its
members’ faith.
Encouraging belief is not a problem. A 2010 survey of Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan
Africa conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that more than threequarters of Africans felt religion was “very important” in their lives. In the US, by
comparison, the figure is 57 per cent. Four in five Christians in Africa attend church at least
once a week – Nigeria tops the list with an 88 per cent attendance rate – and nearly the
same number believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, the Pew study found.
The Catholic church has an advantage over some other forms of Christianity because it runs
a vast network of schools and hospitals in Africa that touch many millions of lives. But
Pentecostal churches, with their boisterous music, fiery preachers and promises of
prosperity, have made strong gains in recent years, especially among younger people. The
biggest megachurches in Nigeria draw tens of thousands of people to a single Sunday service.
“People are being tempted by these sorts of churches, especially in times of crisis” said Fr
Odudu. “We have to show them that faith is not just about miracles and seeing evil
everywhere."

merkezi ırak hükümeti'nin engelleme çabalarına rağmen k.ırak petrol ihracına devam ediyor (reuters)

Julia Payne / Jessica Donati
    LONDRA, 29 Ocak (Reuters) - Bağdat hükümetinin yasadışı
saydığı ihraç petrolünü alanları cezalandırma tehditlerine
rağmen, Avrupalı petrol şirketleri, Kuzey Irak'taki Bölgesel
Kürt Yönetimi'nin (KRG) kendi adına sattığı ham petrole giderek
artan miktarda alıcı oluyor.
    Merkezi Irak hükümeti, Ekim ayından beri kendi izni olmadan
Kuzey Irak'tan ihraç edilen hafif petrolün alıcılarına karşı
yasal yollara başvuracağını duyurmuştu.
    Normal ham petrolün Kuzey Irak'tan ihracatı ise bu yılın
başından beri yapılıyor. Irak yetkilileri, bölgeden kamyonlarla
ve Türkiye üzerinden ham petrol ihraç eden ilk şirket olan Genel
Energy'ye  karşı dava açacağını açıkladı.
    Artan uluslararası talep nedeniyle ihraç edilen petrolün
miktarı da giderek artıyor. Sektör işlemcileri, ihalelere
giderek daha çok ve değişik şirketlerin rağbet gösterdiklerini
söylediler.
    Şu ana kadar Kürt bölgesinde üretilen kondensatın
alcılarından sadece Trafigura adlı ticaret şirketi bir yaptırıma
muhatap oldu ve Irak'ta faaliyet göstermesi Aralık ayında
yasaklandı. [ID:nL5E8NBC44]
    Kuzey Irak'tan ihraç edilen petrolün miktarının bu ay
60,000 tona, yani yaklaşık günde 15,000 varile ulaşması
bekleniyor.
    Enerji Bakanı Taner Yıldız, bölgeden kondensat ve diğer
petrol türleri sevkiyatının zaman içinde günde 40,000 varile
yükselebileceğini söylemişti.
    Kürt bölgesindeki Khor Mor sahasının günlük 17,000 varillik
üretiminin  hemen hemen tümünü kondensat ürünü oluşturuyor.
Kapasite arttıkça, başka sahalardan da petrol ihracatına
başlanması için planlar yapılıyor.
    Nakliyat sektörü kaynakları, İsviçre'de kurulu Vitol ve
Trafigura gibi ticaret şirketlerinden önemli boyutta ilgi
geldiğini ve Amerikan kimyasal şirketi Dow  gibi yeni
şirketlerin de alıcılar arasına girdiğini söylediler. Ancak Dow
bu konuda bir açıklama yapmayı reddetti.
    Kürt bölgesinden çıkan en son kondensat yükü, 15 Ocak
tarihinde Ceyhan yakınındaki Toros terminalinden Lucky Lady adlı
gemiye yüklendi. Kaynaklar, bu sevkiyatın alıcısının  Crownhill
Investment Ltd. adlı küçük çaplı bir aracı şirket olduğunu
söylediler.
     Büyük ticaret şirketleri, olağandışı bir özelliği olan ya
da siyasi açıdan hassas olabilecek alımlar için bazen bağımsız
firmaları kullanıyorlar.
    Gemi izleme verilerine göre söz konusu kargo, 31 Ocak'ta
Hollanda'nın Terneuzen limanına varacak.
    Nakliyat kaynaklarının bildirdiğine göre bu ayın son
haftasında, Dow tarafından satın alınan yeni bir kondensat
kargosu, Iver Progress adlı gemiye yüklenecek.
    Merkezi Irak hükümeti, KRG'nin kendi adına yaptığı ihracatı
kaçakçılık olarak kabul ettiğini çok kez tekrarladı. Irak'ın
kamu kurumu SOMO, Irak  petrolünü ihraç etmeye yetkili tek
devlet organı.
     Bağdat hükümeti, KRG ile anlaşma yapan şirketleri Irak'ta
faaliyetten men edeceğini söylüyor.
    Irak Petrol Bakanı Abdülkeim Louaibi Pazar günü yaptığı
açıklamada, KRG ile anlaşma imzalayan ilk büyük şirket olan
Exxon'dan , Kuzey Irak ile güneydeki petrol sahaları
arasında seçim yapmasının istendiğini söylemişti.
   
   

bm'de filistin oylaması ile ilgili son durum ve analiz (reuters)

 Louis Charbonneau
    BİRLEŞMİŞ MİLLETLER, 29 Kasım (Reuters) - Birleşmiş
Milletler Genel Kurulu'nun, ABD ve İsrail'in  tehditlerine
rağmen, dolaylı yoldan da olsa egemen bir Filistin devletini
tanıma kararını bugün oylaması bekleniyor.
    Genel kanı, Genel Kurul'daki 193 ülkenin Filistin
Yönetimi'nin BM'deki gözlemci statüsünün, "tüzel" tanımına son
vererek "üye olmayan gözlemci devlet" tanımına getirecek
tasarıyı çoğunlukla destekleyeceği yolunda. Vatikan da BM'de bu
statüde temsil ediliyor.
    ABD ve İsrail bu girişimi durdurabilmek için Batı Şeria'daki
Filistin Yönetimi'ni maddi yardımı kesmekle tehdit ediyorlar.
    Bu ay Gazze'de İsrail ile Hamas arasında sekiz gün süren
çatışmalarına ardından, en az 12 Avrupalı devlet, Filistin
Devlet Başkanı Mahmud Abbas'ın tanınma çabalarını destekleme
sözü verdi.
    ABD dışişleri yetkililerinin düne kadar Abbas'ı bu
girişiminden vazgeçirme çabaları sonuçsuz kaldı. Filistin tarafı
 kararın çıkması için çabalamaktan vazgeçmiyor.
    ABD dışişleri bakanlığı sözcüsü Victoria Nuland, bunun
ABD'nin Filistinlilere verdiği ekonomik desteğin kısılmasına yol
açabileceğini tekrarladı. İsrail de Filistinliler adında
topladığı gümrük vergilerinin önemli bir bölümünü
vermeyebileceğini söyledi.
    Filistin Kurtuluş Örgütü'nün önde gelen üyelerinden Hanan
Aşravi ise dün Ramallah'ta düzenlediği basın toplantısında,
"Filistinlilere hep para konusunda şantaj yapılamaz... Arap
dünyasıyla destek için görüşüyoruz ve eğer İsrail mali önlemler
alırsa AB de bize desteğini kesmeyeceğini belirtti" dedi.
    ABD Dışişleri Bakanı Hillary Clinton da "İki devletli bir
çözümün yolu New York'tan değil, Kudüs ve Ramallah'tan geçer"
dedi.
    Üye olmayan gözlemci devlet statüsü, BM'de tam üyelikten bir
önceki aşama.  Bundan sonra Filistinliler  Uluslararası Ceza
Mahkemesi'ne başvurma hakkını elde edecekler ve isterlerse  bazı
uluslararası kurullara üye olabilecekler.
    Abbas, Avrupa ülkelerinden olabilecek en büyük desteği
sağlamak için çaba gösteriyor. Dün öğle saatleri itibariyle
Avusturya, Danimarka, Norveç, Finlandiya, Fransa, Yunanistan,
İzlanda, İrlanda, Lüksemburg, Malta, Portekiz, İspanya ve
İsviçre destek sözü veren ülkelerdi.
    Türkiye'nin de Filistin tasarısının lehinde oy kullanması
bekleniyor.
    İngiltere Filistinlilerin bazı koşulları kabul etmeleri
halinde destek verebileceğini söylerken, Almanya çekimser oy
kullanacağını bugün açıkladı.
    Genel Kurulu'nda oylama TSI 2200'de başlayacak.
   
   

 REUTERS

çin'deki yeni politbüro'da kim kimdir (the times)

Li Keqiang
Age: 57
Considered the most highly educated on the new Standing Committee and is now almost certain to become the next Premier after Wen Jiabao steps down in March next year. Like Hu Jintao, Mr Li rose from the Communist Youth League, and the organisation still represents his strongest power base. Served as party secretaries of Henan province and Liaoning during his rise.

Holds a Ph.D in economics and before 2007 was widely regarded as the prime candidate to succeed Hu as president. Mr Li was suddenly swapped into second position behind Xi at the 17th party congress: plenty of rumours about what was going on behind the scenes, but nobody is quite sure what brought the change about.
Zhang Dejiang
Age: 66
After graduating from Yanbian University in China’s northeastern province of Jilin, Mr Zhang headed over the border to take an economics degree at the Kim Il Sung University in North Korea.
Ascent through the party ranks took him back to Jilin, then on to Zhejiang and the industrial heartland of Guangdong. Has been in charge of telecoms, energy and transport industries - the areas of state-owned industry that may become the first targets of reform. After the downfall of Bo Xilai as party chief in Chongqing, Mr Zhang was drafted-in as a caretaker boss of the massive southwestern metropolis.
Liu Yunshan
Age: 65
A hardliner supposedly part of Jiang Zemin’s faction, but with close ties to Hu Jintao. Like Xi Jinping, he was among the “sent-down” youth dispatched to work in rural communes during the Cultural Revolution.
Mr Liu started his career as a schoolteacher in Inner Mongolia before embarking on a party career that took him through various sections of the party’s local - and later national - propaganda machine. Worked his way up through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Youth League, which was also Hu’s power base.
Yu Zhengsheng
Age: 67
Born in Zhejiang and a “princeling” Yu Zhengsheng graduated from Harbin’s Military Engineering Institute as an expert in ballistic missile control systems. Began his career working in radio factories before taking a job as a technician at the Research Institute for the Promotion and Application of Electronic Technology.
Later served as mayor of Yantai and Qingdao, both cities in Shandong. His great uncle was defence minister under Chiang Kai-shek, while his father was the ex-husband of Jiang Qing the woman who later became Mao Zedong’s wife. His brother defected to the US in the 1980s. Became minister of construction in 1998 and became party boss of Shanghai in 2007.
Wang Qishan
Age: 64
The son-in-law of Yao Yilin, a former vice-premier. Firmly in the princeling class, and famed for a straight talking style.
Worked as Governor of one of China’s “big four” state-owned banks in the 1990s, and was mayor of Beijing when the deadly SARS virus struck in 2003. Previously Mr Wang was considered the senior politician most likely to deal at a practical level with any banking, financial or currency reform. However, it emerged this week that he will be in charge of the party’s internal discipline watchdog.
Zhang Gaoli
Age: 66
A protégé of Jiang Zemin and an economist, Zhang Gaoli spent his early career in the oil industry. Worked his way up through the party via Guangdong province just as the industrial heartland in the south was starting to hum. During his time as party chief of Shenzen, he is considered responsible for turning what used to be a frontier town into a booming exemplar of Jiang Zemin’s model for economic development. Later became party secretary of Shandong province.

suriye kürtleri üzerine bir analiz (ft)

Syria’s Kurds prepare for life after Assad

A single patrol car sits outside the new police station in the town of Girkilige in Syria’s oilproducing heartland, the lettering on its side freshly painted in the Kurdish language.
From the dilapidated three-roomed building, once a government-owned pumping station,
Rayzan Turkmani, a clean-cut young man toting a Kalashnikov rifle, heads a ragtag force of 140
local volunteers. He explains plans to open a training academy for recruits within the month.
“It’s an emergency situation, so we have to move fast,” he says. “We are working for autonomy,
and to manage ourselves ... We must be ready when the regime falls.”
Syria’s approximately 1.7m Kurds, nearly 10 per cent of the population, are the only group with
a history of organised opposition to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime but while many towns have seen anti-government protests
during the 18-month uprising, they have refrained from joining the armed opposition.
As the uprising has evolved, however, the Kurds – largely concentrated in the country’s north-east, which
holds a significant portion of Syria’s limited but vital oil reserves – have been quietly preparing for a postAssad future, opening police stations, courts and local councils that they hope will form the foundations of
an autonomous region.
The proliferation of newly hung Kurdish flags and signs in the mother tongue in al-Hassaka province give
the impression of liberation after years of rule under the Ba’ath party, which expropriated land in Kurdish
areas, suppressed expressions of Kurdish identity and arrested thousands of Kurdish activists, especially
after riots shook the Kurdish areas in 2004 But the effort at self-governance is taking place while the regime troops maintain a presence in many of the region’s towns and cities,
appearing to turn a blind eye to what would have previously been an unthinkable threat to its power.
Mr Turkmani points to a building a few hundred metres away, where the two-starred Syrian state flag flutters overhead.
“Bashar’s police station,” he says. “They just play cards all day. They have nothing to do.”
The state’s inaction may be a strategic move to avoid opening up another front of conflict or, as many in the Syrian opposition say, could
be designed to invigorate the Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey in order to rattle Ankara as it funnels support to the rebel Free
Syrian Army.
Turkey, once a friend of the Assad regime but now one of its chief outside opponents, has expressed concerns that new institutions in the
region are dominated by the Democratic Union party (PYD), which is known for its close links to the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK).
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by the EU and US, and its militants have stepped up their campaign in eastern Turkey in
recent months.
Tensions have been rising along the Turkish-Syrian border in recent weeks. On Tuesday a government official from the Turkish
province of Mardin said that Turkish troops had shot and killed two “terrorists” and wounded a third while returning fire on militants
who were attempting to enter the country.
Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group, told the French news agency, AFP, that the three
men were PYD members.
Portraits of Abdullah Ocalan, the incarcerated PKK leader, gaze down from the walls of newly opened local council buildings in Girkilige,
where citizens queue to sign up for handouts sent from Iraq or to seek arbitration in local disputes.
“He is a hero for all Kurds,” says Daham Ali, a committee member at the freshly opened Mala Gel, or People’s House, in the town of
Derik, which lies in the foothills of the mountains on the Turkish border, reeling off the names of Syrians who have died in the insurgency
against Turkey.
Rival parties say the group lacks significant support and accuse the PYD of working in collaboration with the Assad regime – a claim the
party denies.
“We cannot kiss the hand that kills us,” PYD leader Saleh Muslim Mohammed, says, adding that hundreds of the party’s members still
languish in regime jails.
But as fledgling institutions take root, the PYD’s political dominance is causing friction on the ground.
“Ocalan’s school works only in oppression and propaganda for the youth to take guns and fight,” said Mohammed Ismail, leader of the
Kurdish Democratic party. A picture of him meeting the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, who is backing some of the
Kurdish rivals to the PYD, sits on a shelf behind him. “Barzani has never used terrorism, never bombed a restaurant,” he says.
As Mr Ismail talks he receives a phone call, after which he says a young activist from his party has been detained by the PYD at a
demonstration.
“This happens – they take people, they disappear for a few days,” he says. “Maybe they release them, maybe they don’t.”
Opposing parties now hold separate demonstrations against the regime, and some express concern that friction might spill over into
conflict.
But in the meantime the PYD is the one that appears to be consolidating control.
At a party youth rally in Derik, the speaker rouses the crowd with a message from Mr Ocalan to the Syrian Kurds, which he says was
given to a lawyer on a recent prison visit.
“You must not be with Assad, you must not be with the opposition, you must be the third power in Syria,” he quotes Mr Ocalan as
saying. “You must prepare 15,000 soldiers to protect the Kurdish areas. If you don’t take this strategy you will be crushed ... Every
young Kurd must prepare themselves to join up and protect their motherland.”