KURDS AND THE IVORY TOWER

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."
~ Alan Simpson.

From comments on Sunday's post:


Anonymous said:

I wonder if you have any take on what Juan Cole wrote today:

"PKK Leader Warns Turkey on Incursions

Michael Howard of the Guardian interviewed a Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla commander in northern Iraq. Money graf:

'The Turkish army faces "a political and military disaster" if its generals give orders for a cross-border offensive, Cemil Bayik, one of the two most powerful figures in the Kurdistan Workers party, or PKK, told the Guardian at a hideout in the Qandil mountains on the border with Iran. Mr Bayik said his units did not seek a fight, but "would defend ourselves if attacked". It could become "a quagmire for them [the Turkish army] and create space for Iran to interfere in Iraq also," he said. '

Bayik's mindset is revealed when he talks about Turkish plans of 'annihilating Kurdishness.' Actually, things have changed in the past 30 years, though the good Lord knows that much remains to be done in ensuring that Turkish Kurds are first class citizens (not a goal that will be reached by thuggish, murderous PKK tactics). First of all, Turkish Kurds have spread all over Turkey as guest workers. There are millions living in cities such as Istanbul and other industrial centers. Political scientists studying their voting patterns have found that they vote like other Turkish citizens living in the same place. That is, Kurds in Istanbul vote like the Turks in surrounding neighborhoods. There is no pan-Kurdish political identity in Turkey. Only a tiny proportion of Turkish Kurds supports the PKK, which has a very nasty history as a far-left terrorist group that killed thousands."

Have things changed in the last 30 years? Or is Cole yet another victim of Deep State propoganda?


Mizgîn said:

I always have the same take on everything that the nutty professor writes, Anonymous.

Juan Cole doesn't know shit about the founding ideology of the TC. If he did, he would know that the goal of the regime has been to annihilate the Kurdish people.

If the Turkish regime was only concerned about putting down rebellions, why did it slaughter a quarter of a million Kurds following the Şêx Seîd rebellion, which was relatively small and inefficient? Why the Resettlement Law of the 1930s? Why Law No. 1850, which made it legal to murder Kurds from the period June 20, 1930 to December 10, 1930?

Or how about something from another recent piece of anti-Kurd propaganda by the same nutty professor:

Barzani neglected to mention the 35,000 dead in PKK's dirty war, or that he is actively harboring 5,000 PKK guerrillas.

If we're to believe Juan Cole, there is something we must accept. Either PKK just popped out of nowhere and decided to fight for the hell of it, or Juan Cole has never heard of September 12 coup. I find it extremely difficult to believe that Cole has never heard of September 12 since, after all, it was HIS government that backed the coup. Prior to that coup, PKK was a political organization. It was America's coup in Turkey that fueled the Dirty War in more ways than one, but Cole NEVER mentions anything about that, does he? According to him, "Shit just happens."

Also:

I can't imagine the Turkish public standing for a massacre of Turkmen, and hundreds of thousands of people in the street could force Buyukanit to act decisively.

No, but Cole better be able to imagine the Turkish public standing for the massacre of a million Kurds in the last 80+ years, because that's exactly what's happened. And if Cole were familiar with the definition of genocide according to international law, he'd know that Turkey is guilty of genocide of Kurds . . . just as it is guilty of genocide of Armenians.

Oh, yeah, PKK has also apologized for the Kurdish role in the Armenian Genocide, something that Turkey has never done. Even the US doesn't recognize there ever was an Armenian Genocide. Nor does Israel.

So Cole is totally wrong to criticize Cuma for mentioning the annihilation of Kurdishness. That's been the single goal of the TC from Day 1. If a Kurd exists anywhere on earth, it means the foundation of the TC was a lie.

If Juan Cole is the know-it-all that everyone on the American left believes, then why does he say that there are 5,000 gerîlas in "Northern Iraq" when not even Erdoğan says that? Whoever knows the geography of Kurdistan knows that it's impossible for gerîlas at Qendil to race up to Dersim on foot, pull off an operation, and then race back to Qendil (so much for the "hot pursuit" bullshit). And it's very simple to figure out the distance if you know how to read and use a map--a skill which Juan Cole obviously lacks. But, if you know the geography, you know that the gerîlas cannot be in Dersim or Bingöl conducting operations and then back at Qendil for dinner.

Unless, of course, you believe in bilocation.

"Political scientists studying voting patterns, blah, blah, blah . . . " Which political scientists? Who are they? Where's the study? Do you know about census taking in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan? Kurds lie on the census. Think about that long and hard to see if you can figure out why that is.

And let's say, for the sake of argument, that all Kurds do vote like Turks and that there is no "pan-Kurdish identity" . . . maybe that's because there is no alternative.

What's been happening to DTP since the end of March, 2006? Did Juan Cole read the court transcripts of speeches Osman Baydemir gave during the Amed Serhildan and the crowd's reactions? So on what does Cole base his claim that "only a tiny proportion of Turkish Kurds supports the PKK?" Or is that more talking through his ass?

It appears that Cole just loves to talk about how violent PKK allegedly is. But he never says anything about any of the violence of the Ankara regime, does he? I mean, he's never said anything about the regime's violence. NEVER. Now I may not be some fancy effing professor who's grown roots in the sacred ivory tower of academe, but I know what reality is and I know who's done what to whom. And I can even dig up human rights reports to back it up.

Cole can't and that's why he never has. Check his record--he's NEVER breathed so much as a word about the thuggish, murderous regime tactics, tactics that will never reach the goal of peace.

Cole also fails to mention the ceasefire, not the current one and not any other. He doesn't mention the fact that the Ankara regime had 6 years in which to prove it's good intentions by repairing the severe damage that it inflicted on The Region and its people during the regime-sponsored Dirty War. In fact, as I said at the end of the Amed Serhildan, we are going back to the Dirty War, to the 1990s, and guess what? We have.

A former Clinton NATO commander is selling tactical fighter aircraft to Turkey at the rate of $13 billion under the cover of "special envoy to coordinate the PKK for Turkey," because, as everyone with half a brain cell knows, Turkey can't "coordinate the PKK" worth a damn. They couldn't capture Öcalan could they? They had to have the US and Israel, with the support of the international community, do that for them.

It was Clinton's former NATO commander who rejected the current ceasefire before it even went into effect. I guess peace is just not the way to sell military hardware.

(Notice that Cole doesn't mention anything at all about all those illegal weapons sales to Turkey over the years, especially during the Clinton administration.)

Nor does Cole mention PKK's Declaration for the Democratic Resolution of the Kurdish Question, the points of which are entirely consistent with the Copenhagen Criteria.

Imagine for a moment if it were Arabs or Persians being treated like Kurds by the Ankara regime. What would be Cole's reaction?

What Cole is doing is using Kurds as his own little pawns with which to bash the Bush administration, instead of bashing EVERY AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION for complicity in genociding Kurds of North Kurdistan. This is typical of the American left, or Democrats, or whatever the hell they all pretend to be. But make no mistake, there is no difference whatsoever among the Americans when it comes to Kurds. Using Kurds as pawns is what they ALL do, with the miniscule exception of the few individuals who have consistently spoken up for the cause of Kurdish justice.

The owner of DozaMe has already made an on-target assessment of people like Cole, in comments here:

The most disgusting fact is that people like him will only bash Turkey if it's related to Bush, and forgive Turkey for all its crimes against the Kurds when the Democrats come to power. And when the Democrats do come to power, they will join the anti-Kurdish crowd [Iran, Turkey and the whole Arab world] who are chanting "collaborators, collaborators!" Kurds seem to be the new "Israelis" of the block, ready to be blamed for everything evil in this world.

Has anything changed in the last 30 years? No.

Is Cole yet another victim of the Deep State? No. He's not a victim of the Deep State. He's a facilitator of the Deep State.

BIJÎ SEROK APO Û SERKEFTIN!


As a post script, I would add, compare Professor Cole's take on the situation of Kurds under Turkish occupation with activist Professor Chomsky's, and a good start point is Professor Chomsky's speech to in 2002. Professor Chomsky never fails to mention the situation of Kurds under Turkish occupation if such a mention is pertinent to the subject he addresses. I have heard Professor Chomsky mention Kurds in a number of speeches and when I least expected it.

Professor Chomsky has gone to Turkey to stand in the courtroom with those charged under any of the many stupid anti-free expression laws that the regime is so fond of creating and implementing. Those so charged have been charged for translating Professor Chomsky's own works.

In other words, Professor Chomsky not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. Compare those credentials with Professor Cole's and let's see who has integrity and who doesn't.

Hevallo has his own take on Cole's version of fantasyland, and it's worth a read. He's also got the news on Turkey's shutting-down of Amnesty International today, which is, ironically, World Refugee Day.