TURKEY'S KURDISH POLICY

"Turkey must be aware that we will be faced with an independent state in the north of Iraq when conditions are suitable. I can say that this would be a security problem rather than a political problem."
~ Yaşar Büyükanıt, Chief of General Staff.

The nice people at Info-Turk.be have translated IHD's statement on the Beytüşşebap massacre:

A minibus, in the rural area of Beytüssebap district of Sırnak province, was raked. 12 people (children, women and men) in the minibus were killed. At the moment, perpetrators of the attack are unknown.

The region has been declared as security zone a few months ago. As a result; entrance and exit is being kept under the control by security forces of the State. Media and public opinion, currently, do not have proper, right information about the attack.

So, as Human Rights Association (IHD) we are commenting the attack within the framework of our principal attitude that is; We are defending dominance of peace in our country. Keystone of peace is composed of human rights and freedoms, democracy and rule of law.

As IHD we are against attack, which targets civilian, without considering peace period or war period. We condemn the violation of the Article 3, which is about prohibition of arbitrary murdering and common in Geneva Conventions that are the most important documents of Humanitarian Law. We are against extrajudicial executions, which are violation of right to life, by the State organs.

We are against executions by organizations that use arm as a tool in their activities, too. The attack in Şırnak is inhuman and cruel.

IHD considers the attack as the one, which should be condemned and be against without regarding its perpetrators or aim. We are sharing sorrow of families whose relatives killed in the attack.

We demand for revealing perpetrators and bringing them to justice.

The Turkish version is at IHD's website.

Hevallo has taken the time to deconstruct the Ankara regime's initial lie about a seven-year-old being killed in the massacre. He also reminds us of the games played at the Hudson Institute, where quite a few scenarios for Turkish-occupied Kurdistan were concocted. I have to agree with him that it's entirely possible that a scenario like the one played out over the weekend in Beytüşşebap might be one of the results of the game plan hashed out by the perverted minds involved with Hudson.

In the meantime, Yaşar Büyükanıt has set up DTP as a target for the regime's assassins:

We are faced with a mentality which cannot bring itself to call a terrorist organisation terrorist, which calls members of this terrorist organisation "brothers", and which calls the Turkish Armed Forces "separatist".

Remember that DTP's Ankara office came under gunfire earlier this week.

Yaşar Paşa goes on to blame the incompetence of the TSK, in its fight against the Kurdish freedom movement, on those pesky human rights types, which is what he did in June.

And, as if it weren't enough to treat the Kurdish problem in Turkey (which the Ankara regime created) as a strictly security matter, Büyükanıt says that an autonomous Kurdistan in the South will "be a security problem rather than a political problem". It is clear then that the Ankara regime considers South Kurdistan as a "problem" in and of itself and has nothing whatsoever to do with PKK.

Land forces commander, İlker Başbuğ, who will succeed Büyükanıt as chief of the Turkish general staff, parroted the same idea earlier:

Land Forces Commander Ilker Basbug signaled Monday that the main worry of the Turkish Armed Forces regarding northern Iraq is the danger of the region becoming a center of attraction for Turkey's Kurds.

The area which is run by the autonomous administration of the Kurdistan Regional Government seems to be regarded as a main threat to Turkish unity.

"It is a fact that the developments in north of Iraq has given political, legal, military and psychological strength to the Kurds living in the region as they have never had or experienced before in the past. We must be careful about the developments in north of Iraq as these may give some of our citizens a feeling of belonging to this region," the Land Forces chief said.

The idea of Kurdish autonomy as a threat to the Turkish state will be the guiding principle of Turkish policy toward the South for the foreseeable future. The Ankara regime's fears of Kurds in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan getting uppity as a result of Southern autonomy is the reason for the renewed Dirty War in the North. TSK's massacre in Beytüşşebap is the practical expression of this policy. Expect to see many more similar TSK atrocities.

There's more on Büyükanıt's remarks about the "threat" of South Kurdistan at TNA which concludes with his remarks on the division of Turkey:

Let us be sure of one thing. No force can divide Turkey. No one has the power to divide Turkey.

Unfortunately, Büyükanıt is merely the most recent in a long line of fascists who, all by themselves, divided Turkey a very long time ago.