Rogue Forces

“The last PKK activity in the area was only twenty-four days ago, Captain,” Ozek said irritably. The PKK, or Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was an outlawed Marxist military organization that sought the formation of a separate state of Kurdistan, formed from parts of southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, northeast Syria, and northwest Iran, all of which had Kurdish ethnic majorities. The PKK used terrorism and violence, even against large military bases and well-defended places such as civilian airports, to try to keep itself in the public eye and pressure the individual states to work out a solution. “We must remain vigilant at all times.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot acknowledged in a hushed voice.

“You are not performing a maximum-performance approach, Captain?”

“Uh…no, sir,” the pilot responded. “The security condition is green, the ceiling and visibility are low, and the tower advised that we are cleared for a normal-category approach.” He swallowed, then added, “And I did not want to upset you or the other passengers with a max-performance descent.”

Ozek would have berated this young idiot pilot, but they had already commenced the instrument approach, and things would get very busy here shortly. Maximum-performance takeoffs and approaches were designed to minimize time in the lethal envelope of shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapons. The PKK used Russian-made SA-7 and SA-14 missiles against Turkish government aircraft on occasion.

However, the probability of such an attack today was small. The ceiling and visibility were fairly low, which restricted the time available for a gunner to attack. Also, most attacks occurred against large helicopters or larger fixed-wing aircraft during takeoff phase of flight because the heat signature that the missiles locked onto was much brighter—during approach, the engines were running at lower power settings and were relatively cooler, which meant the missiles had a harder time locking on and could be jammed or decoyed easier.

The pilot was playing the odds, which Ozek disliked—especially because he was doing so just to try to impress a senior officer—but they were in the soup now, and breaking the approach off at such a moment, close to mountains in bad weather, was not an ideal choice. Ozek sat back and crossed his arms on his chest, making his anger apparent. “Continue, Captain,” he said simply.

“Yes, sir,” the pilot responded, relieved. “Copilot, before glideslope intercept checklist, please.” To the pilot’s credit, Ozek thought, he was a good aircraft commander; he would be a good addition to some airline’s crew complement, because he wasn’t going to be in the Turkish Air Force for very long.

This lackadaisical attitude was unfortunately more and more prevalent in the military these days as the conflict between the Turkish government and the Kurds continued to morph. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, had changed its name to PAG, or the Congress for Freedom and Democracy, and avoided using the term Kurdistan in its literature and speeches in an effort to appeal to a wider audience. These days, they held rallies and published papers advocating more human rights laws to ease the suffering of all oppressed persons in the world rather than advocating armed struggle solely for a separate Kurdish state.

But that was a ruse. The PKK was stronger, wealthier, and more aggressive than ever. Because of the U.S. invasion and destruction of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq, as well as the civil war in Iran, the Kurdish insurgents were fearlessly staging cross-border raids into Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria from numerous safe camps, hoping to capitalize on the chaos and confusion and establish a strong base in each nation. Every time Turkish forces responded, they would be accused of genocide, and the politicians in Ankara would order the military to stop pursuit.

This only emboldened the PKK. The latest travesty: the emergence of a female terrorist leader. No one knew her real name; she was known as Baz, or “The Hawk” in Arabic, because of her ability to strike quickly and unexpectedly but seemingly fly away and escape her pursuers so easily. Her emergence as a major rallying force for Kurdish independence, and the Turkish and Iraqi governments’ lackadaisical response to her call for bloody war, was disturbing to the Jandarma general.

“Coming up on glideslope intercept,” the copilot said.

“Gear down,” the pilot said.

“Here it comes,” the copilot responded, and he reached over to just above the pilot’s right knee and moved the round landing gear actuator switch to the “down” position. “Gear in transit…three green, no yellow, press-to-test pump light checks, gear is down and locked.”

The pilot took his eyes off the horizontal situation indicator just long enough to check the gear lights and push to press-to-test “gear hyd” light. “Checks, gear is down and locked.”