As regards direct application to Afghanistan, there is really very little of value to be learned from the Turkish experience, aside from in a very broad and general manner - which doesn't provide much beyond what is considered "classic" COIN and a lot of this-is-what-you-should-not-do type lessons.Originally Posted by uwew
The situation of the Kurds as an ethnic minority in Turkey for a very long time was quite unique, because not only did they suffer from the common minority complaints of political underrepresentation and regional economic neglect, but their very identity as an ethnic minority was under attack. For decades, the Kurdish language was banned, Kurds were forbidden to given their children Kurdish names, Kurdish place names were changed to Turkish, and the centralized Turkish education system even taught that there was no such people as the Kurds. Unsurprisingly, this built up a lot of resentment.
However, even with all that, only a small minority of the Kurds supported the PKK - even at the height of the conflict. Although many may have agreed with their separatist views, the vast majority just could not accept their strident Marxist ideology. As mentioned earlier, the PKK's tactic of murdering schoolteachers, other state employees and anyone they perceived as "collaborators", as well as their habit of looting villages of supplies, also did not earn them many friends among ordinary village Kurds.
The village guard system forced ordinary Kurds to choose between support for the state and support for the PKK. If a given village did not choose to support the state, in many cases they were forcibly displaced by the military. Sometimes they fled due to attacks by neighboring village guards. If they did choose to support the state, they immediately became targets for the PKK. On the other hand, some villages chose to join the village guards simply because it gave them a state-sanctioned opportunity to settle old feuds with neighboring villages. These problems with the village guard system were experienced by the US to some degree with "local protection forces" in Iraq, but nowhere near the scale that they occurred in Turkey. Definitely not a program to be emulated.
Another significant difference from Afghanistan is that the PKK's leadership under Öcalan was highly centralized. When he was captured PKK operations virtually ceased. It was a true example of "beheading the snake", similar to what happened to Sendero Luminoso when Guzmán and then Ramírez were captured. The failure of HVI targeting to significantly disrupt threat operations in Afghanistan clearly demonstrates that, unlike the Maoist insurgencies, no single individual is running the show.
The slow reemergence of the PKK and violent Kurdish separatism in recent years is an indictment of Turkish state policies. The capture of Öcalan provided them with a golden opportunity to stabilize the SE and win over the Kurdish population through positive measures. This did happen to a degree, but only in fits and starts interspersed with old-fashioned Turkish refusal to accept Kurdish ethnic identity. The much-discussed "Kurdish opening" in Turkish politics has achieved some very positive gains, but it took a long time to reach that point. But the current violence is again not supported by the average Kurd in Turkey, and is still at a very low point (in comparison to the '90s), thus the state still has an opportunity to move forward and successfully interdict/disrupt the nascent insurgency before it grows into a serious military problem again.
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