Kurdish PKK militants focused on own survival

Turkish soldiers sit on an armoured vehicle during a routine road patrol at dawn in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak, bordering Iraq, October 19, 2007. Turkey's parliament has voted to give its military the green light to hunt members of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq, Kurdistan Workers' Party guerrillas have grabbed world attention as rarely before as Turkey mulls whether to launch a cross-border incursion against their bases.

But recent attacks on Turkish soldiers look above all like a sign of desperation as a depleted PKK show no sign of being able to force their aims onto the political agenda, analysts say.

Their goals, derived from a Marxist-Leninist ideology, have anyway become blurred since they took up arms in 1984 with the aim of establishing an independent Kurdish state in southeast Turkey. More than 30,000 people have died in the conflict.

"Their own survival is more important to them now than the issue of Kurdish rights or autonomy," said Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based expert on Turkish security issues.

"What they are fighting for is political legitimacy for themselves -- to get Turkey to negotiate with them so they can become a political player."

He said the PKK still saw Abdullah Ocalan, their leader captured in 1999, as a potential interlocutor with the state.

After his capture, Ocalan called for a peaceful resolution and the rebels announced a ceasefire. This was ignored by Turkey, which like the United States and the European Union condemns the PKK as a terrorist group.

Many of the group's statements have since shifted their focus more to demanding greater political and cultural rights for Turkey's 12-15 million Kurds.

While there is still wide sympathy for the PKK in the southeast, some of the steam may have gone out of Kurds' complaints that their interests and culture are suppressed.

In recent years, Turkey has begun to allow limited Kurdish television broadcasts, and Kurdish lessons in private classes.

And in last July's parliamentary election, the ruling AKP made strong gains in the region at the expense of the main Kurdish party.

STIRRING TENSIONS

At the same time, the PKK's attacks have continued and recently intensified, to try to draw attention to their cause.

"In order to do this they must create an atmosphere in which there are clashes. They want to stir up tensions between Turks and Kurds by provoking Turks. But I don't think this game will work," said Sadi Cayci, international law consultant at the Eurasian Strategic Studies Centre in Ankara.

Cayci said the militants' ultimate aim of creating a Kurdish state remained, and had been reinforced by the growing autonomy of the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.

The PKK's camps in northern Iraq are now at the heart of their activities, and their armaments are believed to come from poorly controlled Iraqi military stocks.

The PKK are still capable of raising money through fund-raising events and protection rackets within Turkey, and through the Kurdish diaspora in Europe, to fuel their insurgency, and this month have mounted two large-scale attacks in which 25 Turkish soldiers have been killed.

But their numbers are estimated to be down sharply from a decade ago, to about 3,000 in Iraq and 1,000-2,000 in Turkey.

This explains why more than half the PKK attacks in the last two years have been bomb attacks, the Turkish military says.

A military official in southeast Turkey said he did not see the PKK returning wholesale to more direct confrontations, which involve high rebel casualties.

"Strategically they are focused on attacks that incur the fewest losses. Hence, they are resorting to remote-controlled bombs and hit-and-run attacks," the official said.

Meanwhile, public opposition across Turkey in general to talks with the PKK or Kurdish autonomy is as strong as ever.

Ocalan, unable to control the rebels on a tactical level but still a powerful influence in terms of their strategy, has not commented on the latest violence.

His lawyers were last able to visit him a month ago, when they issued a statement in which Ocalan stuck to familiar themes of Marxism, democracy and plots against him.