REFUGEES, TURKISH SECURITY FORCES, AND SCHADENFREUDE

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."
~ Will Rogers.

I see that World Refugee Day has rolled around again, and as Cengiz Aktar, at TDN, explains it, "It is a day when we remember people in poor conditions. They have no home or country, poorer than the poorest. Today is the day of the cursed, who are only news when they drown at sea or die together in the back of a truck."

Ah, yes, World Refugee Day, a day when the elites can remember "people in poor conditions," people they've never actually met or had anything whatsoever to do with, unless it is to pass more laws and employ more armies against refugees simply to increase refugee suffering. It's a day for these elites to make themselves feel good about the whole dirty situation, a situation which they would never actually do anything to relieve.

If you take a look at Cengiz' opinion piece, and you're Kurd, you might be stunned to notice that the internally displaced Kurds in Turkey--you know, Turkey's own refugees--are nowhere mentioned. On the other hand, if you're a Kurd, this revelation may not be so stunning. But let's take a stroll down memory lane, to last year, and see what Human Rights Watch had to say about Kurdish refugees in Turkey:

(Ankara, March 7, 2005) — On a key benchmark for European Union membership, the Turkish government has failed to honor pledges to help 378,000 displaced people, mainly Kurds, return home more than a decade after the army forced them from their villages in southeastern Turkey, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

[ . . . ]

The 37-page report, “Still Critical: Prospects in 2005 for Internally Displaced Kurds in Turkey,” details how the Turkish government has failed to implement measures for IDPs the United Nations recommended nearly three years ago. Since the European Union confirmed Turkey’s membership candidacy in December, the Turkish government appears to have shelved plans to enact those measures.

The report also details how Turkey has overstated its progress on internal displacement in reports to the European Commission. Before the European Union announced its decision to open membership talks, the Turkish government sent the European Commission statistics suggesting that the problem was well on its way to a solution—a requirement Turkey must fulfill for full membership. Turkey claimed that a third of the displaced had already returned, but Human Rights Watch revealed that permanent returns in some places were less than a fifth of the government’s estimate.

“When we checked Turkey’s figures on helping the displaced return home, the numbers proved unreliable,” said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “Also, the bare figures don’t convey how, thanks to government inaction, villagers are returning to places that are practically uninhabitable.”

In southeastern Turkey, the government has failed to provide infrastructure such as electricity, telephone lines and schools to returning communities, and has not provided proper assistance with house reconstruction.

“What’s worse, the government’s paramilitary village guards are attacking and killing returnees in some parts of southeastern Turkey,” added Denber.

That bit about overstating progress on internal displacement reports means Turkey lied about it, and has no intention whatsoever of making just restitution to the Kurdish refugees that the Ankara regime created. In fact, the government's Village Guards are actually murdering those refugees who try to return. Does anyone seriously believe the situation has improved since then, especially since the Amed serhildan?

So here's a big Happy-Freaking-World-Refugee-Day greeting to all the Kurdish refugees, inside and outside of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan and to all the hypocrites and liars who are trying to make themselves feel holy by remembering every other refugee on the planet, but the Bakurî Kurds.

Geez, just when you thought hypocrisy and BS couldn't get any worse. . . This hypocritical, and thoroughly deceptive, garbage from Cengiz reminded me of something else I had seen on TDN a few days ago, something that was a real eye-roller. Turkey thinks it needs to have a national asylum system. Isn't that a scream? Can you imagine? Yeah, I know I'd seek asylum in Turkey in a heartbeat, just like a Jew would seek asylum in Nazi Germany. Hey, ask any Kurd from South Kurdistan how wonderful it was to be a refugee in Turkey in 1991.

And a great time was had by all. . . in a pig's eye.

The TC only wants to do this for two reasons. First, it will make them look like all the other democracies, and appearance is everything. Secondly, it will be very helpful for them to take in any ethnic Turks who may urgently need it because every non-Turk is out to get all of them, and it will be convenient for the comrades from Chechnya in case they decide to blow a few more schools or fire up a few more theaters.

The fascists are also planning to beef up their Gendermerie Command, as reported by The New Anatolian, and they will add all kinds of bells and whistles in order to make their repression of Kurds that much more efficient. All of this should compliment the surveillance cameras that were due to be installed as a punishment against the people of Şemzînan (Semdinli), because make no mistake, this Gendermerie Command does not exist to "protect and serve." It exists solely to control the Kurdish population.

In the same vein, the tender for the purchase of 32 military and 20 "civilian" helicopters has had another extension of deadline, until September 15, thus allowing the US Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation to remain in the running. This means that sometime in the near future, Turkish land forces will have 20 more very high tech toys with which to murder Kurds. Way to go, Sikorsky!

Have you ever read an interview and imagined how you might answer a question if you were the one being interviewed? In reading the interview of Neçirvan Barzanî by Ilnur Cevik (Ilnur Cevik of TNA fame, is tight with the KDP), I saw just such a question that I would like to answer. Here is the question and my reply:

CEVIK: The terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has become a problem for everyone, including the Iraqi Kurds. How can this problem be solved to the satisfaction of all sides?

MIZGÎN: Well, Ilnur, there is a very simple solution to this problem, a just and equitable solution which would satisfy all sides, and that solution is to get rid of the Turkish Republic as we know it.

See? Very simple. I think I should have Neçirvan's job.

From the Schadenfreude Department. . . . we have the resident Ankara-regime propagandist from The Washington Times whining about the Turkish-American relationship again. This time, however, I had a deja-vu experience in reading the last part of the opinion piece. Check this out:

What really sharpened anti-Americanism in Turkey was the capture of 11 Turkish Special Forces soldiers who were arrested and held with bags over their heads. That sealed the perception that America -- Turkey's NATO ally -- chose the Kurds over the Turkish Republic, which further insulted the troops.

This should be deja-vu for Rastî readers too, because I said it here, first, when the Onder and Emre show at TNA was trying to sell rising Turkish nationalism as a result of the PKK. It is not; But it is intimately related to rising anti-Americanism. Think Kurtlar Vadisi-Irak and you'll be on the right track. Here's what I said:

The defining moment in this sudden rise in Turkish fascism took place on July 3, 2003, in the city of Silêmanî, when US Marines bagged, literally, one of the great and glorious Turkish Special Teams as it was on its way to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kerkuk. This little incident was the huge embarrassment of the mighty TC, something akin to parading around with your fly down in public, but on a national level. Imagine, a Special Team given the special treatment normally reserved for "war detainees" and by lesser mortals who commonly refer to each other as "Jarhead."

Oh, yeah! That great and glorious day really put a big dent into the whole "Her Turk asker dogar" (Every Turk is born a soldier) routine, didn't it? Every Turk is born a soldier as long as they are lording it over unarmed Kurds in some tiny village in the middle of nowhere, eventually turning those same Kurds either into corpses or refugees--Remember, it's World Refugee Day!--but when the great sons of Ataturk come up against the USMC, all the rest of us have to be concerned because they got their feelings hurt--and because they think the US likes Kurds better than Turks, no less. Please, give me a break! See a shrink! Get over it!

Seriously, Turkey is a country that spends billions on its security forces, but only fought a few years in the Korean War and, later, invaded Cyprus. Where else have they been playing soldier all these years? Does this level of military expenditure give us a clue as to the size of Turkey's "They're all out to get us" mentality?

What were these "Special Teams" doing down in "Iraq" anyway? I could have sworn that the TMMB voted not to get involved with Operation Iraqi Freedom, so what in the hell were they doing there? Off to assassinate a few Kurdish governors, were we, instead of going after that which Turkish verbal flatulence is usually hyped about--going after the big, bad PKK?

OOPS!

As soon as I get done crying a river, I'll run off and play the theme song to Kurtlar Vadisi-Irak on my violin.


ARTICLE OF NOTE: Anonymous came by and dropped off another article on the Harrisonburg Kurds, an article from a local (Virginia) publication. It's from the June edition of Eightyone. A teaser:

The men admit to ignorance of the federal law requiring a license to transfer money. But they deny anything to do with terrorist activity, and the authorities seem to agree, despite the government’s vigilance in prosecuting the men. When told that some say the investigation has attached a terrorist stigma to the men, John L Brownlee, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, says, “That’s unfortunate. These cases are what they are, and nothing more. But they’re important cases.”

Yeah, it's unfortunate, but that's the way it is; Let's just fuck these guys over anyway, ain't that right Mr. Brownlee? Yeah, these cases are very important, aren't they? Very important for your pissy little career, ain't that right, Mr. Brownlee? Are you sure you never worked as a Turkish prosecutor?

I would write something here for all the primates at the FBI, but baboon doesn't transliterate well into the English alphabet. Come on now, don't drag your knuckles on the ground around here, okay? I just mopped the floor.