ENOUGH OF THIS STUPID GAME

"Nonviolence is fine as long as it works."
~ Malcom X.

According to Radikal, there is bad news for DTP. The chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, Nuri Ok, has determined that Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan, Selim Sadak, must be removed from DTP membership and that they cannot run as parliamentary candidates.

The interesting thing about this is that Ok re-examined the former DEP parliamentarians' file during his last three days in office. Ok is ideologically allied with the Paşas, so it should come as no surprise that he's facilitating the current military coup by attempting to remove from candidacy some of the most valuable and important candidates--the former DEP parliamentarians--that DTP can field.

In addition to Leyla Zana and her prison comrades, Ok ordered the removal of 112 other DTP candidates. At this point, that makes a total of 116 DTP parliamentary candidates that the Ankara regime is attempting to ban from the upcoming elections. If DTP ignores Ok's scheme to keep 116 candidates from the elections, then the Court of Appeals will apply to the Constitutional Court to send a warning to DTP.

While in Erzurum last week, Erdogan and Gul went crying to AKP constituents that the Paşas were silencing the voice of the people by opposing Gul's candidacy. Yet in the case of DTP candidates, AKP and CHP continue their alliance in order to prevent the election of Kurdish parliamentarians from "The Southeast."

The Turkish president, Ahmet N. Sezer, has also approved another AKP-CHP initiative against DTP, one that will require all independent candidates to be listed by name on ballots. This move that targets illiterate voters (most of whom are in "The Southeast") in order to confuse them from voting for DTP candidates. Here we have a case of the Ankara regime not only targeting DTP candidates, but DTP's constituency as well.

At this point, it appears that DTP will refuse Ok's order. Orhan Dogan explains that the restrictions on his political rights, and those of his former DEP comrades, ended in 2001. Therefore, the attempt to restrict the former parliamentarians now is strictly a political move rather than a legitimate aspect of Turkish law. Dogan explains:

The first thing is that our trial is still ongoing. The conviction after retrial, which was 7 years, 6 months, has not passed through the Court of Appeals yet. Secondly, the conviction of 15 years was overturned by the Court of Appeals 9th punishment department. For that reason, there is no certain decision for us. In addition, even if there had been a certain decision for us, according to the TCK, the civil rights restrictions are equal to the duration of the conviction and punishment. In other words, 7 years and 6 months coincides with October, 2001. For that reason, we will apply for our candidacy.

In spite of the attempts of the Ankara regime to eliminate the candidacies of DTP politicians, at least in the case of Zana, Dicle, Dogan, and Sadak, they will proceed as planned.

Other democracy games are being played with disenfranchising Kurds in Turkish-dominated cities of Turkey. At least that's the case in Serik, a town in Antalya. Kurdish voters were removed from voting registration lists because the governor of the region, and--Surpise, Surprise!--the military, informed the Higher Election Board that the Kurds in question did not live in the town. However, the Kurds in question had voted in previous elections in the same town, and are still living there.

OOPS!

No, but seriously, they really meant to do it. Democracy games.

Meanwhile, back in the States, the case of Ibrahim Parlak takes another turn in his democracy game. Apparently, Ibrahim's brother, Huseyin, was deported without notice while he was making a required interview with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Detroit. The entire disgusting story can be read at Ibrahim's site.

The deportation of Huseyin Parlak is the most recent of a number of examples of Turkish-inspired Western attacks against peaceful Kurds. In February, there were widespread attacks against Northern Kurdish political and intellectual leaders in Europe. In spite of Western claims of the "sanctity" of free speech, Kurdish websites have been ordered closed by the fascist US Treasury, Office of Foreign Asset Control.

The game of democracy is null for Kurds, with the rules of the game changing constantly in order to enforce anti-Kurdish repression. Therefore, unless Kurds back up their participation in the "democratic" process with violence, continued repression of the Kurdish people will be the continued response of the so-called civilized democracies.

Let us not be deceived by idiotic notions of "democratic" processes or, even worse, pacifism. These are notions that only serve state repression. At least, that's the point argued by Peter Gelderloos in the current issue of Utne magazine. After reviewing Spain's cooperation in the Global War on Terror®, and the non-violent anti-war movement there, Gelderloos makes the following observation:

On March 11, 2004, just days before the voting booths opened, multiple bombs planted by an al-Qaida-linked cell exploded on Madrid trains, killing 191 people and injuring 1,755. Directly because of this, Aznar and his party lost in the polls, and the Socialists, the major party with an antiwar platform, were elected to power. The U.S.-led coalition shrunk with the loss of the Spanish troops. Whereas millions of peaceful activists voting in the streets like good sheep have not weakened the brutal occupation in any measurable way, a few dozen terrorists willing to slaughter noncombatants were able to cause the withdrawal of more than a thousand occupation troops.

So much for the victories of pacifism.

The Madrid bombings do not present an example for action, but rather, an important paradox: Do people who stick to nonviolent tactics that have not proved effective in ending the war against Iraq really care more for human life than the Madrid terrorists? From India to Birmingham, nonviolence has failed to sufficiently empower its practitioners, whereas the use of a diversity of tactics got results. Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system that is based on centralized coercion and violence.

Time and again, people struggling not for some token reform but for complete liberation -- the reclamation of control over our own lives and the power to negotiate our own relationships with the people and the world around us -- will find that nonviolence does not work, that we face a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative.

Obviously, the recent worldwide repression of the Kurdish people is the finest example of Kurds facing "a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative."

There is no longer any luxury, or hope of success, for Kurds to play this game.