TURKISH ARMY IN RETREAT FROM ZAP

"Always the same clichéd words, we always say the same. Children go, bloody tears, funerals…I don’t share your opinion. Why do we take part in the game? Alright, the country can’t be separated, but…Should all mothers just give birth and bury their children, is that it?"
~ Bülent Ersoy.

HPG has posted the names of its hero şehîds from the Zap battles, as follows (code name first, followed by birth name):

AYHAN KIZILKAYA
ALİ IŞIK
1977 SİİRT PERVARİ

BARAN URFA
MEHMET MENAP
1978 URFA HİLVAN

TOFAN KOBANİ
ALİ ABBAS
1985 KOBANİ

ERDAL İSYAN
YILMAZ AYDIN
1980 DİYARBAKIR-ÇERMİK

CAHİT KOBANİ
IBRAHİM AHMET
KATILIM 1993

Photos will be posted later.

In a statement from HPG's headquarters command dated 27 February, HPG denies claims made in Turkish media that wounded guerrilla forces are being treated in hospitals in Zaxo and Duhok. HPG treats its own wounded, which is consistent with the fact that HPG has its own medical personnel and facilities.

In a statement from HPG's media communications center on 26 February, we learn that, between the hours of 1700 - 1800 hours, a mobile TSK unit was ambushed in the area of Şamke village near Doçka hill (Çemço area), with the result of three Turkish soldiers killed and two wounded. In another ambush operation at 2300 hours, also in the area of Şamke village, Şirin hill, 15 Turkish soldiers were killed.

As of the seventh day of the war, these operations bring the total number of Turkish soldiers killed to 108, and the number wounded to 18. One should bear in mind that these numbers are those counted by HPG guerrillas on the ground.

TSK is now in retrograde operations--retreat-- from the Zap region because it has been denied access to key terrain by HPG forces, according to a statement from HPG's headquarters command and carried in Yeni Özgür Politika today. Furthermore and contrary to reports in Turkish media, HPG's commanders are in charge of their units and executing operations against the TSK invader.

I don't know why Turkish media would report anything about HPG commanders anyway, since the week before the war began, it reported that all the HPG commanders were either poisoned or had their heads cut off . . . Due to "infighting," don't you know.

Gordon Taylor at Progressive Historians has been following the situation and has opines on it in his recent post. Pay attention to the following (emphasis Gordon's):

(4) Perhaps most telling of all, the website of the Euphrates News Agency (Firat News), which is closely linked to the PKK, has come under attack from hackers since they first broke the story of the Cobra helicopter's downing. They now require a manual username and password to access the site. This tends to happen whenever Kurdish websites deliver bad news. Firat News, it should be said, has a remarkable network of informants. Any plane that takes off from the Diyarbakir air base is almost immediately noted on their news service. They reported when a column of American military vehicles left Mosul on Saturday and headed for Dohuk, the Kurdish town on the Turkish border, where Turkish tanks are confronting the peshmerga forces. They've noted just recently that an avalanche in the gorge of the river Zab has stalled a military supply column heading for Cukurca, the border town which is a staging area for the ongoing invasion. They get reports seemingly from the back of beyond, noting every Turkish troop movement they can see, every road to which access is suddenly denied. Whether one believes all of their stories is not the point. The point is, the Turks are going into battle next to a populace that is more than ready to spy on their every move and report it to the PKK news service.

Exactly. The network is enormous and it's against the Turks.

Hevallo's running the gamut from disgust with international media to advice about direct political action to joy at the TSK's retreat, so check out the latest.

In the meantime, there's been a bit of an antiwar controversy on the live Turkish TV program Popstar Alaturka, and charges are now being processed against a famous transsexual singer for speaking out loud what many Turks are already thinking. From Bianet:

It took a judge from a national popstar competition, “Popstar Alaturka”, to say what many people may think secretly.

Bülent Ersoy, a colourful transsexual singer, banned from performing on stage after the military coup in the 1980s, and now mostly in the magazine headlines for her outfits, young husbands and cosmetic surgery, expressed her opposition to the current cross-border operations in Northern Iraq on live TV on Sunday night (24 February).

[ . . . ]

What was it she said on live TV?

“If I had given birth to a child and someone sitting at a desk had said ‘You will do this, he will do that’, and I would have buried my child, would I accept that?”

This was greeted with applause from the studio audience. Ersoy continued:

“I cannot know exactly what it means to have a child. I am not a mother and will never be able to be one. But I am a human being; and as a human being, to bury them…I may not know how these mother’s hearts are breaking, but mothers understand.”

She continued, “This is not a war under normal conditions. It is written down and people are forced to play along. There is intrigue, and that is hard to cope with.”

[ . . . ]

Another jury member, singer Ebru Gündes, answered in a well-worn phrase, “Let Allah grant everyone the happiness of being a soldier's mother. May I have a glorious son and send him to the military,” to which Ersoy replied, “...and then you get his dead body back.”

Gündes answered, “Martyrs don’t die, the country can’t be separated,” to which Ersoy said:

“Always the same clichéd words, we always say the same. Children go, bloody tears, funerals…I don’t share your opinion. Why do we take part in the game? Alright, the country can’t be separated, but…Should all mothers just give birth and bury their children, is that it?”

[ . . . ]

Ahmet Türk, parliamentary group leader of the DTP reacted to Ersoy’s words by saying, “A singer expresses this attitude, but no politician or intellectual has been as brave as Bülent Ersoy.”

A piece of Turkish trivia: Gray Wolf moron Ebru Gündes threw a fork at Ahmet Kaya when he announced his decision to record an all Kurdish language album.

Before I forget, here's a video snip of the exchange between Ersoy's wisdom and Gündes' stupidity (Gündes is the first one talking):

Sieg Heil, Ebru!

If they'd taken up KCK's offer of a democratic solution back in August 2006, we wouldn't be here today. Those who rejected it, they are responsible.