By Franz Schurmann

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Prediction #17 for Tuesday, June 15th,1999

A Possible Example How "Terrorists" Can Be Useful For Solving Some of the World's Greatest Challenges:

Abdullah "Apo" Ocalan will be alive on Thanksgiving and be playing a key role in resolving the "Kurdish problem" both in Turkey and Iraq.

• Prediction:
  On June 23 the Kurdish leader Abdullah "Apo" Ocalan, arguably the world's biggest "terrorist, will come to trial for his life before a Turkish court.

  I predict that on Thanksgiving Day this year Ocalan will be alive and playing a key role in resolving the "Kurdish problem" both in Turkey and Iraq.

• Outcome:
  I shall evaluate prediction #17 the following Tuesday, November 30, 1999.

There is something strange about the trial (adjourned to June 23) of Abdullah "Apo" Ocalan (pronounced etch-ahlan) on a small isolated prison island in Turkey's stunningly beautiful Sea of Marmara.
Ocalan's Island Prison

For weeks there have been rumors of jailers torturing Ocalan -- arguably the world's biggest "terrorist." Yet reporters at his trial have noted that he has gained weight. And instead of a broken man they see and hear an eloquent statesman presenting a plan to solve the Kurdish revolt in Turkey and, by implication, in the region as a whole.

Ocalan -- whose name in Turkish means "taker of revenge" -- in 1984 launched the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) into an insurgency that still continues. Daily the Turkish media accuse him of being responsible during the last 15 years for:

• killing 28,394 Turks
• 3,254 bombings
• 20,915 terrorist actions.

The prosecutors have demanded a death sentence. And many Turks must be waiting for the first pictures of the hanged Apo. In Turkey those hanged are draped in a flaring white skirt on which are written their crimes.

Amir Taheri, an emigrant Iranian journalist, writing in the Arabic-language London-based As-Sharq al-Ausat of June 7, noted the strange contrast of a dead man walking and talking with the health and confidence of a great leader. It appears Ocalan is in complete control of his faculties.

Taheri offered three explanations for the bizarre scene. One is that the PKK was so long able to wage a fierce war against the Turkish army because of support from many states which hated Turkey. But now all have abandoned it. So now Ocalan is just fighting for his life. He even said what he wants to do in whatever time left him is retire with his wife and children and tend his garden.

A second explanation is that Ocalan is using "Leninist dissimulation" in a deadly game of verbal combat. The PKK is a Marxist-Leninist organization. So, like Lenin, his main concern is not saving his life but protecting his movement. Taheri casts doubt on the first reason but sees more credibility in the second.

A third explanation Taheri offered is that Ocalan now sees an opportunity to move the PKK from violence to peace within the context of Turkish politics. Kurds would now accept their status as Turkish citizens of Kurdish descent. Clearly this explanation appeals most to Taheri. He concluded his piece with the rhetorical question: "even if this way he saves his skin what harm could it do?"

Ocalan has always insisted that the PKK is a party operating only in the Turkish context. But the Turkish Kurds are only one portion of the total number of Kurds in the Middle East. Kurds say there are 25 million of us. Those hostile to them put the figure much lower. But no one disputes the fact that the two biggest concentrations are in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq.

There are good reasons to believe that the PKK is the strongest political force in northern Iraq. Time after time the Turkish army has invaded northern Iraq to flush out PKK guerrillas. They never succeeded. The PKK guerrillas are fish swimming in a friendly Kurdish ocean. When under external attack they easily melt into the local population. (See the English-language "Turkish Daily News" of 12 June 1999).

That can't be said of the two other major Kurdish organizations in northern Iraq: the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUC). Both were supported by Washington in the wake of the Gulf War. But when the PUC tilted towards Iran, Washington showed its displeasure. And then when the KDP tilted towards Saddam Washington again growled. Yet neither of them has much if any grass-roots support.

Kurds who have been persecuted, betrayed and killed by so many larger powers are proud of Apo. And if in the end he should be executed his memory will fuel another hundred years of Kurdish struggle. After all many Kurds say we've already been fighting for 2,500 years against our oppressors. What does another century matter?

Now that NATO has occupied Kosovo the White House is moving towards its long planned Middle Eastern settlement (see Prediction #11). There can be no region-wide comprehensive settlement without resolving the Iraq problem. Saddam has a tight grip on most of Iraq but not on Iraqi Kurdistan. If the KDP and PUC come to terms with Saddam it will be largely an empty gesture. But if the PKK is brought into talks that could at last lead to a settlement in Iraq.

Ocalan not only has the power to lead Turkish Kurds into peace with the Turks but also the Iraqi Kurds into a settlement with the Iraqi Arabs. Taheri is not the only Middle Eastern observer who sees the great positive possibilities in the Ocalan trial. The Egyptian Fehmi Howeidi, a well known moderate Islamist and commentator on Middle Eastern issues, has written at length on the same possibilities. The generally free but politicized Turkish media has reported that many members of the Turkish military have long maintained secret contacts with the PKK (see the same issue of the Turkish Daily News cited above).

The PKK, in deeds if not in words, operates much like any Maoist party. One of Maoism's most important guerrilla strategies is "fight-fight and talk-talk." Another is stick with the poor and make them the ocean in which the hunted revolutionaries can swim.

The Turkish military holds the ultimate power in Turkey. They are secularists and nationalists. Their greatest domestic enemy has been a rapidly rising Islamic tide in the country. Last year they intervened to oust a duly constituted government led by a moderate Islamist, Necmettin Erbakan. Why shouldn't the military welcome a chance to work with a secularist and also nationalist PKK? Officially the PKK has never seen itself as a transnational entity.

When Ocalan was taken to Turkey a few months ago after his capture in Nairobi many in the Turkish military might have favored dealing with Ocalan. But since then Turkey had an election which brought a nasty surprise. As a result of big electoral gains the ultra-nationalistic "Gray Wolves" suddenly jumped with new clout onto the Turkish political arena.

Unlike the PKK the National Movement Party (MHP) is an avowed transnational party. Their popular name is Boz Kurt, "Gray Wolves." Their aim is some day to create a vast new Turkic empire extending from eastern Turkistan through Turkic-speaking Central Asia and Turkey and into the parts of the Balkans which have Turkish and Islamic populations. They believe in the mystique of a Turkic language common to all their widely separated peoples. And, in fact, Uighur Turkic as spoken in Chinese Xinjiang is quite close to the Turkish spoken in the Turkish Cyprus Republic where the Gray Wolves' late founder Alpaslan Turkesh was born.

The Gray Wolves loudly call for the execution of Ocalan.

Some military fear the Gray Wolves on the fascist right as much as they do the PKK on the revolutionary communist left. Some others prefer the left while still others prefer the right. The Turkish military has to be careful that its ship of state doesn't crash on the shoals of Apo's fate.

A key player determining Ocalan's fate could be the White House. Turkey is called the "southeastern anchor of NATO." It's also a key player in Balkan and Middle Eastern destinies. If Clinton feels Ocalan's execution will hinder his ambitious intentions in those regions it could sway the Turkish military.

My sense is that Ocalan now stands a better chance being kept alive than put to death. In Peru erstwhile Shining Path leader Abimael "Gonzalo" Guzman is alive and also imprisoned on an offshore island. The Shining Path still has not vanished from the Peruvian political scene.

A possible scenario for Apo is that he may end up having his wife, kids and garden on that islet prison in the Sea of Marmara.