Orkhan Sattarov, the head of the European Bureau of Vestnik Kavkaza
The war against Islamic State, which was declared by the West, could damage the uneasy relations between Germany and Turkey. The head of the ruling CDU party in the Bundestag, Folker Kauder, said a phrase to Spiegel that could turn into a diplomatic scandal between Ankara and Berlin. Kauder didn’t exclude that the West, including Geromay, could supply the PKK, which is considered to be a terrorist organization in Turkey and the EU, with arms.
“I know that Turkey has serious problems with the PKK, but it is not a settlement of the problem to watch how Islamic State is capturing one neighboring town after another and is turning into a threat to world security. I don’t exclude support for other groups, including the PKK,” the top politician made the sensational statement and added that such a step wouldn’t be directed against Turkey.
Then Kauder warned that Germany wasn’t responsible for the further fate of the arms supplied by the state: “Of course it is quite risky. There is no guarantee that the arms would stay in the place where they have been supplied. But if we don’t stop IS, the risks will grow much higher.” When Spiegel’s journalist reminded him that the PKK was officially considered a terrorist organization in the EU, Kauder didn’t reply to it: “All parties, including Turkey, should continue the peacemaking process. It will be beneficial for everyone. However, the main threat is the cruel terrorists of IS.”
Thus, one of Germany's key politicians, who divided terrorists into “safe” and “dangerous” (or friend-or-foe), actually stood for supplying the PKK with arms in its struggle against IS. The chairman of the CDU prefers not to think about the consequences, when Kurdish militants would use German arms against Germany’s ally in NATO – Turkey.
Interestingly, Turkish president Erdogan, when he was the Premier of Turkey in 2011, accused German charity foundations of sponsoring the PKK. So the Kurdish issue is not new in Turkish-German relations, and Kauder’s statements mean that Ankara could have serious grounds for such accusations.
