A Turkish verdict against an Assyrian monk shows the Kurdish movement’s strategy in a nutshell.
The Assyrian Orthodox monk Aho has recently been sentenced by a Turkish court to 25 months in prison. According to the verdict, he has helped terrorists from the PKK by giving them food when they arrived at the monastery for which he is responsible.
While many instinctively point with their whole hand at the Turkish government, the real perpetrator escapes responsibility. The Kurdish movement has for decades used a sophisticated strategy to empty the area of Assyrians while earning political points on the expense of Assyrians.
The Kurdish strategy is to constantly make sure to bring its conflicts with the government to Assyrian areas in various ways, well aware that the government will crack down on anyone suspected of having ties to the Kurdish separatists. The government’s crackdown on Assyrians suspected of aiding separatism is then used by the Kurdish movement to portray the Turkish government as the evil party and itself as the good in the eyes of the outside world.
The two PKK terrorists who approached the monastery for food had tens of thousands of Kurdish households within walking distance to choose from. The majority of the Kurdish settlements in the area are known PKK sympathizers. They still chose to go to one of the few remaining Assyrian places to ask for food. As usual, various media affiliated with the PKK have reported intensively on the case where the state’s action against the monk is portrayed as an attack on ”the Christians” in the area.
The same method is used by the PKK on the other side of the border in Iraq, where the terrorists deliberately hide near the remaining Assyrian villages, which in turn are bombarded by the Turkish air force. Several Assyrian villages have been abandoned in recent years as a result of this Kurdish strategy.
The approach has historically been very successful for the Kurdish movement. In the 1980s and 1990s, it led to the majority of the Assyrian population in Turabdin leaving the area.