ACTION FOR GLOBAL PEACE STARTS IN YOUR OWN OCCUPIED TERRITORY

Counterpoint Commentary to Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and the OIC

Mr. Ihsanoglu, you say "the Islamic world has been facing an unjust campaign in recent years," but for certain Muslims, that unjust campaign has been going on since 1923. A certain group of Muslims in Turkey perpetrate acts inspired by "racist emotions" and fascist ideology against another majority Muslim people. Of course, you must know that I am going to say the dreaded "K" word. It is Muslim Turks who have commited innumerable atrocities and cultural genocide--well-documented by various organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the ECHR, and Turkish human rights organizations--against the Kurdish people, who are also a majority Muslim people.

So what am I to make of your statement, Take Action for Global Peace carried in Zaman? It is a statement that oozes hypocrisy and I would consider it hilarious if the remembrance of Turkish atrocities against the Kurdish people did not, instead, prove your statement to be a pathetic lie.

Who are you to make any comment on freedom of expression? After the Orhan Pamuk fiasco, the entire world knows Turkey's position on freedom of expression. Unfortunately, that fiasco was only the tiny tip of an immense iceburg.

You moan about European Muslims being provoked by a few cartoons and about "moves made against immigrants in some European circles," but you are totally silent about your country's own atrocious treatment of its Kurdish population. We might even say, that on the subject of the Turkish government's long-standing genocidal policies toward Kurds, that you are an agnostic.

But here you are, Mr. Ihsanoglu, crying for some alleged "hate campaign" against Muslims, while your government's own hate campaign against Kurdish Muslims is publicly denied by silence, and the silence of all the OIC members, on the matter. Even worse, the official policy of your government is to paint a picture of perpetual Turkish suffering at the hands of "separatists."

You cry about the portrayal of the Muslim prophet as a terrorist, while your government denies its own hand in terrorism. But you are not alone, are you, Mr. Ihsanoglu? You have your OIC members, who are also terrorists against the Kurdish people or supporters of such terrorism.

It was Saddam, another good Muslim like you, who slaughtered almost 200,000 Kurds during Anfal operations. What a good Muslim, Mr. Saddam was! Teaching the entire world what "Anfal" means! Where was your cry, or the cry of the members of the OIC against this protracted act of terrorism against Kurds? Where was your cry against the ethnic cleansing and attempted destruction of the Faily Kurds from Baghdad? Where was your cry against the Kurdish women sold to your Muslim brothers in Egypt, more "spoils" of the Anfal operations?

Let me also remind you of your Muslim brothers in Syria, who have kept a good portion of the Kurdish people there as prisoners without a country, without any legal form of citizenship and all the attendent suffering. Where was your cry for the murder of Şêx Khaznawi? Where is your concern for the daily repression of the Kurds in Syria?

Let us not forget your brother Muslims in Iran, and how, in true brotherly fashion, they join with you in severe oppression of Kurds under their dirty boot. Where were your cries last summer, over the murder of Şivane Qadiri, and the violence against the Kurds that followed when they justly rose up to oppose their oppressors? You are so worried about the conditions of Muslims in Europe but, I ask you, when was the last time any European government ordered a 14-year-old boy to be flogged with a metal cable for eating during Ramadan, resulting in the boy's death? But this act of murder was committed by your Iranian Muslim brothers against a Kurdish Muslim boy. The fact is that we know the boy's real crime, that of having been born Kurd.

Not a single member country of the OIC has ever acknowledged, much less condemned, Muslim atrocities against Muslim Kurds, nor have they ever done so for non-Muslim Kurds. Most of you are willing to point the finger at others, namely the West. It is true that the West lent support to the Saddam regime, does nothing about the Asad dynasty, and has continued to tolerate the evil mullah regime in Teheran. The West has also contributed plenty of hardware to Turkey's own military arsenal, Mr. Ihsanoglu, an arsenal that has been best put to use against unarmed Kurdish civilians.

But the fine line of demarcation is that the West did not hold a gun to your collective head and force you to slaughter Kurds or engage in continual repression against the Kurdish people. The West does not hold a gun to anyone's head and demand denial of the truth of this genocide. The Turkish, Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian governments did that of their own free will and the rest of the OIC members deny it of their own free will.

You must repent, brothers!

If I may ask a question, if there is no distinction between Muslims based on race, color, age, nationality, ethnicity, wealth or power and, if no group has any inherent right to rule over others, if state boundaries are no boundaries to Muslims, then why does your government not grant the Kurdish people of Turkey self-rule and autonomy? Why does your government not permit independence for Kurds?

You run to the UN to speak on behalf of the "oppression" endured by your Palestinian brothers, and your brother Fethullahci, Erdogan, condemns Israeli "terrorism" against Palestinians, while Kurdish citizens of the "Other Turkey," suffer terrorist abuse from what is supposed to be their own government. They suffer increasingly worse poverty as a result of Turkish government policies, so that the entire region is devastated after 80 years of Turkish misrule.

If you are willing to support your Palestinian brothers who enjoy the financial largesse of the West, why will you and your OIC members not campaign for justice and self-rule for Kurds?

But there is the rub! That is the point of hypocrisy which grates so harshly against the Kurdish heart.

Mr. Ihsanoglu, if you are going to continue to represent an organization and a country that publicly voices its deep concern for the condition of Muslims in the world, then you should do so with some manhood, by setting your own house in order first, instead of covering your crimes with the cloak of self-serving self-righteousness and blatant hypocrisy.