Amber Huff: listing of PKK is duplicitous, political decision

Dr Amber Huff, Senior researcher at Sussex and Oxford university and social anthropologist was interviewed by ANHA regarding the calls made to delist Kurdistan Workers' Party from the EU black list. Amber Huff says:

''It is clear to anyone who has been paying attention over the past several years that creating a pathway to peace and democracy in the Middle East requires, fundamentally, that the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) be removed from EU and UK official lists of terrorist organizations. The listing of the PKK in the first place is duplicitous, a political decision at the Turkish state’s behest, but its consequences are out of control. Placing the PKK on official terror lists has given the Turkish state carte blanche to pursue its long policy of violent nationalism, and has empowered far-right and neo-fascist nationalists within Turkey and Europe to lash out. Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan uses the international listing of the PKK to justify waves of state terror against civil society and particularly the Kurdish civilian population living within Turkey’s borders.

Since 2015 alone, ‘anti-terror operations’ have excused the use of violence to silence any political opposition, including crackdowns on journalists and activists, removal of democratically elected mayors and MPs removal from office, imprisonment and torture. The claim of ‘anti-terror operations’ are used to excuse the Turkish military’s collective terrorisation of Kurds and their neighbours, including bombing Kurdish towns, killing civilians, and internally displacing hundreds of thousands of people within Turkey, not to mention continuing and appalling war crimes (ironically, aided by jihadist mercenaries) across Turkish borders in areas of Kurdistan that fall within Syria and now Iraq since the invasion of Afrin in 2018. In short, the listing of the PKK has allowed Europe’s leadership to turn a blind eye on the atrocities carried out by the Turkish state over the last several years in the name of ‘security’ whilst the Turkish state pursues nothing short of a genocidal campaign. At the same time, it has been extremely heartening the hear the recent debate in the UK Parliament and see the report from the UK APPG on Kurdistan in Syria and Turkey, and recommendations that the PKK be removed from terror lists. This, on the heels of last year’s Belgian Supreme Court ruling that EU anti-terrorism legislation does not apply to the PKK, indicates that the scope of debate is widening and people with the power to change the situation are being more and more exposed to the legitimate case for delisting. I am excited to hear as well about the upcoming campaign to amplify the case for delisting the PKK around the world.

I know that people all around the world will continue to learn about the situation and see the injustice. I hope that European, UK and other international leaders will hear these messages come to better understand what is at stake and their moral obligation to act and make the transformative decision that is in their hands.''

L..A

ANHA