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Kurdish group claims Turkey is using chemical weapons. Why is nobody investigating?

By:   []

Date: 2021-11

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has called on international organisations to investigate its claims that Turkey has used chemical weapons against Kurdish forces in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq more than 300 times. The party invited international delegations to visit the region and inspect the mountain tunnels where it alleges chemicals still linger and examine the bodies of PKK guerrillas whom it says were killed in the attacks.

The PKK has published videos of gases welling from tunnel entrances, as well as details of those who have allegedly been killed and accounts of survivors.

There are also reports of gases affecting local people who attempted to remain in their village homes. On 11 October, the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency reported receiving information that 548 people living in an area close to the site of the alleged Turkish attacks had been hospitalised due to complaints of ‘excessive tearing of the eyes, blurred vision, sudden headaches, nosebleeds, difficulty in breathing and rash’. The agency also reported that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which dominates the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, was working with Turkish officials to suppress news of what was happening.

An earlier report from a news outlet close to the KDP, which is critical of the PKK, described a local family affected by a ‘suspected chemical attack’ on 4 September, and the government’s unwillingness to investigate.

Answers needed

That these reports have not given rise to an independent investigation is shocking – though in the light of historical precedent, it is not surprising. In June, Malin Björk, an MEP from the Swedish Left Party, tried to raise concerns about the alleged attacks in a written question to Josep Borrell, the vice-president of the European Commission and high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy.

Borrell’s answer, dated 11 October, reiterated the EU’s hostility to the PKK, stating that the bloc considers the party to be “a group involved in terrorist acts under EU restrictive measures”. Though Borrell accepted that “Turkey is militarily active in northern Iraq where it carries out strikes against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party”, he dismissed the question about reported war crimes with the statement: “No reports of confirmed chemical attacks have, however, been presented.”

Without independent investigation of the attacks, international leaders can continue to look away – but it is only those leaders who are in a position to demand such an investigation.

Selective investigations

The use of chemical weapons has been banned since the Geneva Protocol of 1925. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997 and which Turkey has signed, also requires all parties to destroy their chemical weapons and allows any party state to request an inspection of another party state at any time.
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