Syria's agreement with Turkey to withdraw resources from the Kurdish paramilitary organisation, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), relieves the dangerous tension and serves once again to highlight the Kurdish question in the region. The Turkish Government and military have fought a very costly campaign against the separatist PKK, which threatened to spill over into a regional conflict. It is to be hoped that this agreement can herald a wider attempt to tackle the issues which have given rise to it. Turkey on this occasion effectively employed a classical diplomatic technique by threatening to use force against Syria if it did not comply. A build-up of rhetoric in the Turkish media, ahead of elections, seemed to anticipate a military confrontation. Timely and skilful mediation by Egypt and Iran helped to calm this down, but the basic decision was obviously made by President Assad that it was better to meet the main Turkish demands than risk a war.
Under this agreement, Syria will withdraw all facilities from the PKK, including its camps in the north of the country - which were used to launch raids within Turkey - and its bases in Damascus. The PKK training camps in Lebanon are to be closed and the Lebanese Government is to be brought into a continuing process. A hot line has been set up between Ankara and Damascus. Verification procedures are to be put in place to check out the agreement. In what the Turkish Government regards as an important symbolic gesture, the Syrians have described the PKK as a terrorist organisation. Its leader, Abdullah Ocalam, is reported to be in Moscow. Syria has, of course, its own interests in preventing any moves by Kurdish organisations to set up a state in the region - a concern it shares with Iraq, Iran and Turkey. There have been fears in Turkey since the Gulf War that the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq would provoke such an attempt.
This has been a bloody and costly war for Turkey and its Kurdish population in the south-east of the country. Over 30,000 people have died in ferocious encounters between the PKK and the military, many of them civilians. The PKK has attracted minority support among the estimated 10 million Turkish Kurds, most of whom do not support its methods or separatist objectives. Millions of Kurds have migrated to the prosperous west of the country, especially to the vast Istanbul conurbation where they have readily assimilated and found employment. But this war has exposed grave shortcomings in the Turkish political system and its human rights regime. The determination to retain territorial sovereignty has maintained an official taboo on discussions of cultural or regional autonomy for the Kurds - which is assumed to be a prelude to secession. The war has been used as a means of creating a culture of impunity on human rights abuses. It is to be hoped that this agreement can lay the basis for a political resolution of the question and a decisive strengthening of Turkey's human rights regime.