"We struggle in Kurdistan not only for the rights of our people but also for the rights of ethnic Armenians, Assyrians, and Suryani-Chaldeans who also face a reign of terror. Yes, we have a problem of terrorism in our country, but it is Turkish state terrorism."
~ Abdullah Ocalan.
~ Abdullah Ocalan.
By now, most people should have heard that NATO's second largest army is going to end the use of conscripts to fight in Turkey's internal colony Kurdistan. The Paşas have decided to pollute Kurdistan with commandos instead of conscripts.
These commandos were established as part of the US program for psychological operations against the Kurdish people--a fact sold publicly as part of the Cold War's fight against Communist "aggression" in the region. But the reality was something else, as Desmond Fernandes has documented:
By 1969, moreover, Turkish "commandos, who had been trained by American specialists in counter-insurgency," were despatched into Kurdish regions "under the pretext of a general 'arms search'" to terrorise the population.39 These commando actions "rapidly became associated with arbitrary brutality and torture that had marked the suppression of Kurdistan four decades earlier."40
According to the journal Devrim, one commando report which focused upon its anti-Kurdish psychological warfare operations, ran along the following lines:
"Since the end of January, special military units have undertaken a land war in the (Kurdish) regions of Diyarbakir, Mardin, Siirt and Hakkari under the guise of hunting bandits. Every village is surrounded at a certain hour, its inhabitants rounded up. Troops assemble men and women separately, and demand the men to surrender their weapons. They beat those who deny possessing any or make other villagers jump on them. They strip men and women naked and violate the latter. Many have died in these operations, some have committed suicide. Naked men and women have cold water thrown over them, and they are whipped. Sometimes women are forced to tie a rope around the penis of their husband and then to lead him around the village. Women are likewise made to parade naked around the village. Troops demand villagers to provide women for their pleasure and the entire village is beaten if the request is met with refusal."41
As Fernandes goes on to show, this is the established pattern of the American Empire and the pattern is strictly adhered to by America's fascist client states, such as Turkey, and that similar atrocities were perpetrated by the Ankara regime even through the relatively "peaceful" 1970s. The murder after surrender of HPG şehîd Fatıh Ekmekçi is the most recent example of this same kind of atrocity, proving that the Ankara regime remains dedicated to the employment of terrorism against the Kurdish people.
According to an article in Zaman, the commandos will take over full duties for committing new atrocities against the Kurdish people in 2009 and this brings up a question: If commando operations will formally begin in 2009, how long will the current OHAL remain in place for the Sêrt, Culemêrg, and Şirnex regions? Will the OHAL continue until 2009 and beyond?
The author claims that "none can complain that the Eğirdir announcement did not constitute a positive step," but she's not counting the opinion of Kurds; in fact, if true to form and history, she's never bothered to ask Kurds what they think about the extended presence of more of these US-trained Turkish barbarians in "The Region". What she's really concerned about are Turks:
But the real question is how much longer Turkish people can live with the PKK terror problem and its impact on their daily existence instead of enjoying a more normal life.
No, the real question is how much longer the Kurdish people can live with the Ankara regime terror problem. Its brutality is something that has been well-documented by human rights organizations and the European Court of Human Rights. After all, nobody pays fines to the ECHR like the Ankara regime does. Yet there's an easy answer to end the trauma of the Turkish people which has been offered for many years and it's one that Ocalan proposed in 1994, as documented by Lord Avebury, the chairman of the UK Parliamentary Human Rights Group:
It should be noted that in March 1994, the PKK Leader Abdullah Ocalan said he would stop all armed activity if a basis was established for a political solution, based on dialogue within a democratic framework. He suggested a cease-fire under international supervision, and discussion of various alternatives, including federation. (He has given even more prominence to the concept of federation in subsequent pronouncements).
It should be noted, too, that Lord Avebury's paper documenting the atrocities and politics of the 1990s was presented in the US.
Ocalan's statement that all armed activity would stop if dialog toward a political solution within a democratic framework were established and a ceasefire were supervised by international observers. This is the very same offer that was made beginning last August with the proposal of a democratic solution by the PKK, a solution that was rejected not only by the Ankara regime, but by the corporatocracy which poses as a government in the US.
It's not enough that the author is concerned simply with Turks. What is worse is that the author is more concerned for any psychological problems that the commandos may suffer as a result of the atrocities they will commit against Kurdish civilians. What about the psychological effects on those Kurds who've lived through Ankara's Dirty War? Where are the battalions of psychiatrists to assist torture victims or those who've been forcibly displaced from their homes, or who've had loved ones "disappeared?"
On the other hand, it's appropriate indeed that the author's brought up the subject of Abu Ghraib:
A Western diplomat told me recently that Turkey has one of the best treatment centers -- the Ankara-based Gülhane Hospital -- for those injured in combat with the PKK. But he noted that what Turkey was really lacking was psychiatric care for those badly wounded in military operations.
He then recalled the Abu Ghraib Prison abuse scandal perpetrated by US soldiers, some of whom have been sentenced or are still awaiting trial for the brutal treatment -- including alleged torture, and even rape, in some cases -- of prisoners held there.
Those Abu Ghraib incidents took place despite the fact that US soldiers -- all professionals -- had received adequate training in the fight against insurgents and terrorists, as well as psychological training, the same diplomat stressed.
"Those professionals who are fighting against mainly irregular groups are, in other words, assassins. They kill people. This has a serious psychological impact on those soldiers. For example, when they get leave and see the world and are no longer killing people, they wonder what they were doing as assassins," said the diplomat.
Yeah, let's not worry about the "serious psychological impact" on the victims. Let's only worry about the guilty.
The author adds, in a brilliant stroke of deadpan:
I am sure, based on such experience, the TSK will consider a psychological training program for their professionals in the fight against terror.
Would there be any American soldiers in prison awaiting trial for their performance at Abu Ghraib if there had not been a huge scandal and outcry against it in the US and around the world? Does anyone honestly believe that there will be a similar scandal and outcry against the atrocities committed against the Kurdish people which the Ankara regime has enslaved for the last 84 years, either in Turkey or around the world?
Based on experience, I can guarantee you that there won't be, because there never has been any such outcry by anyone throughout the history of the Ankara regime's repression of the Kurdish people. There are no Mehmetçiks or other Turkish security forces sitting in prison awaiting trials for their crimes, and Amnesty International agrees with me. Not even the author of the Zaman piece bothered to mention the atrocities that the Kurdish people under Turkish occupation have suffered, much less did she raise a hue and cry about it.
The piece closes with references to the rule of law in Turkey and the need to "restore" it. What an absurdity! Which law should be "restored?" The law which permits anyone to murder Kurds without fear of punishment? The law which forbids the use of certain letters of the alphabet because they're "Kurdish" letters? The law which forbids Kurdish to be used for political purposes? The law which removed a Kurdish mayor and Kurdish municipality for supplying local services in other languages in addition to Turkish? The law which permitted state assassins to walk free after a show trial in a kangaroo court for murdering a Kurdish father and his son in cold blood? The law which cultivates impunity among state assassins? The law which allows prosecutors to be fired and disbarred for attempting to investigate the Chief of the Turkish General Staff for belonging to the armed gang that goes around throwing grenades into bookshops?
The rule of law does not need to be "restored" in Turkish occupied Kurdistan because it's already functioning there in the form of the new Turkish Penal Code, the new Anti-Terror Law, the Paşas' constitution, and the military law of the new OHAL.
And with all of this, who in the hell needs the rule of law?
In the meantime, check out a terrific article from The Nation on "The Other War" in Iraq. It's eleven pages long and definitely worth the read. In it, you will get an idea of the utter lawlessness of indiscriminate violence against civilians and even animals, and the desecration and mockery of the dead. Why?
Spc. Patrick Resta, 29, a National Guardsman from Philadelphia, served in Jalula, where there was a small prison camp at his base. He was with the 252nd Armor, First Infantry Division, for nine months beginning in March 2004. He recalled his supervisor telling his platoon point-blank, "The Geneva Conventions don't exist at all in Iraq, and that's in writing if you want to see it."
I guess what's good for Guantanamo is good for Iraq, too.
And to prepare yourself for the next false flag operation in the US, brought to you by the corporatocracy that's turning the world into a fascist planet, check these links:
"West Needs More Terror to Save Doomed Foreign Policy"--from America's good neighbor, Canada.
"Praying for a Terrorist Strike"--America's politicians laying down the propaganda just so they can say, "We told you so."
"Chertoff Has 'Gut Feeling' about More Terror"--I'm relieved to know it's his "gut feeling" and not his Magic 8-Ball.
No comments:
Post a Comment