GOING TO TRIAL

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right..."
~ H.L. Mencken.

Brilliant news, from Reuters:

Turkey's top court agreed on Monday to hear a case to shut down the ruling AK Party and bar the prime minister from office, sharply escalating a long and destabilizing dispute over the role of Islam in secular Turkey.

The Constitutional Court's decision heralds months of uncertainty for the EU candidate country, which is embroiled in a feud between the Islamist-rooted AK Party and a powerful secular elite, including army generals, that accuses AK of plotting to turn Turkey into an Iran-style theocracy.

The AK Party, which has presided over strong economic growth and democratic political reforms since sweeping to power in 2002, denies the charges it has an Islamist agenda and says the lawsuit is an attack on Turkish democracy.

The petition, drawn up by the chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, calls for 71 AK Party officials including Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul to be banned from politics for five years.

After a lengthy meeting, the Constitutional Court's 11 judges decided in a rare unanimous ruling to take up the case for closing the AK Party and for barring Erdogan and dozens of other lawmakers from politics for engaging in Islamist activities aimed at weakening the secular state.

And the EU is encouraging the AKP to re-rig the consitution to save the AKP--and the EU didn't encourage this for DTP' sake:

European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said he would brief the full European Commission on the case on Wednesday, saying it exposed a "systemic error" in Turkey's constitution that may require an amendment.

"The prohibition or dissolution of political parties is a far-reaching measure which should be used with the utmost restraint," Rehn said in a statement. "I do not see any such justification for this case."

Rehn knows damned well that rigging the constitution for its own benefit is a hallmark of the AKP, which always manages to benefit from "systematic errors":

The AKP scored a remarkable landslide victory in the November 2002 parliamentary elections, garnering 34% of the national vote and capturing a commanding 363-seat majority.

[ . . . ]

Because Erdogan had been banned from political office in 1998, his deputy, Abdullah Gul, initially assumed the premiership. But it was clear from the beginning that Erdogan was calling the shots. In December 2002, US President George W. Bush stunned the Turkish political establishment in Ankara by inviting Erdogan to the White House. "You believe in the Almighty, and I believe in the Almighty. That's why we'll be great partners," the American president is said to have told his counterpart.[6] Proceeding on to Europe, Erdogan received assurances that the EU would commence accession negotiations with Ankara in December 2004 if Turkey undertook sufficient political and economic reforms.

In part because of American and European de facto recognition of Erdogan's authority, the Turkish military accepted the new administration's amendment of the constitution to lift the ban on Erdogan's political activity and holding of a by-election to allow for his entry into parliament (a requirement to be prime minister). In March 2004, Erdogan formally assumed the premiership.

Nor is it anything new that Katil Erdoğan is, in fact, pursuing an Islamist agenda:

In contrast to Erbakan, he [Erdoğan] developed a keen understanding of when not to push his agenda. He banned alcohol from municipal establishments, but wisely took no steps to ban drinking in restaurants (as a number of other Welfare mayors attempted to do). After initially endorsing a project to build a large Mosque complex in the heart of the city, he quickly abandoned the idea when his constituents organized protests.

[ . . . ]

Erdogan nevertheless got into trouble in 1997 by publicly reading a passage from a well-known poem written by Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924), sociologist, writer, and theoretician of Turkish nationalism: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers."[4] Charged with crimes against laiklik, Erdogan was jailed for 10 months and banned from politics for the rest of his life - an experience which led him to appreciate the futility of confronting Kemalist political traditions head on.

It appears that his initial experience didn't create enough appreciation.

What confrontation with Kemalist political traditions has Katil Erdoğan been focusing on for months now? Head scarves. But AKP's deputy prime minister, Cemil Çiçek now claims that AKP is going to focus on more important issues . . . for real and for true, from CNN:

Cicek, however, downplayed the importance of the legal challenge, saying: "We are focusing on economic issues and reforms to progress the country's membership bid to join the European Union."

The only reason Çiçek is talking like this is because Katil Erdoğan "swiftly ordered his party’s members not to comment to the press on the case, initial reports said on Monday," according to Islamist Zaman. That's just like banning any media reporting of the Ergenekon case, which Erdoğan also ordered. Zaman listed another priority of Çiçek:

Speaking shortly after Ergün, government spokesperson and Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek said after a Cabinet meeting yesterday evening that the court process would not affect the government’s functioning. He said the government would continue to concentrate on its priorities such as the economy and the European Union accession process.

[ . . . ]

He said the process ahead concerning the closure of the AK Party was the business of the court. “Our priority right now is İzmir’s EXPO 2015. Our priorities are economic balances and seeing success in our negotiations with the EU.”

CHP's Deniz Baykal is going to help Çiçek out:


Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal in his initial remarks on the decision said he would not be commenting, “'The only issue I have on my agenda is İzmir,' he said, referring to the vote of an international body on İzmir’s bid to host the EXPO world fair in 2015."


Oh, little Flower! Oh, little Sea! You are both SO screwed:

Izmir was shocked by the final results of the voting held on the location of EXPO 2015 after having spent 15 million Euros on publicity. Turkey received only 65 votes out of 152 countries, losing out to Milan on the opportunity to host Expo 2015.

Time to focus on something else, guys, like maybe how your goons are murdering Kurds in The Southeast?

Of course, we should be absolutely clear as to the exact reason that the EU--good old economic club that it is--is concerned about the upcoming trial against the AKP, from Market Watch:

Turkey's stocks and currency fell sharply on Monday, battered by a much weaker-than-expected report on GDP growth in the fourth quarter as well as heightened political concerns.

[ . . . ]

The index has tumbled 30% year-to-date, making it one of the worst performers among major emerging markets indexes. The underperformance of Turkish stocks this year is in stark contrast to their outperformance in 2007.

The Turkish currency, the lira, was also battered on Monday. The lira tumbled 2.6% against the euro and 2% against the U.S. dollar.

"This morning, the sell-off in the Turkish markets continues on the back of the weak GDP numbers, increased political tensions in Turkey and renewed jitters in the global credit markets," said Lars Christensen, chief analyst at Denmark's Danske Bank, in a research note.

"The lira looks very fragile in the global environment," he said.

And:

Monday's decline in the Turkish lira reflects a broad weakness in the currency this year. The lira has tumbled about 12% against the U.S. dollar year-to-date.

Well, we all know that the value of the dollar has been dropping like a rock, but it sounds like an even bigger rock dropping in Ankara. Compare that with something a friend sent in email last week, from Britain's Telegraph:

Turkey is first in line for any stress test, said Neil Schering, an East Europe expert at Capital Economics.

"I wouldn't want to keep any money in the Turkish lira: the puzzle is how it has stayed so high for so long. There are huge imbalances in the economy. The current account deficit is nearly 8pc of GDP, and the chief prosecutor is trying to shut down the government," he said, referring to last week's court move to ban the ruling Islamic AKP party, as well as the president and prime minister, for alleged breach of the country's secular laws.

Turkey has a foreign debt of $276bn. The Istanbul bank YapiKredi says Turkish companies may have great difficulty raising some $48bn of fresh loans needed this year to stay afloat.

Neil must be having kittens over the Turkish economy today, but someone needs to fill him in on Turkey's use of black and green money to keep its economy going. An example, from Dissident Voice:

According to London’s Letter written by a Member of Parliament, “The war against drugs and drug trafficking in Britain is huge. Turkish heroin in particular is a top priority for the MI6 and the Foreign Ministry. During his visit to the British Embassy in Ankara, the head of the Foreign Office’s Turkey Department was clear about this. He reassured an English journalist that the heroin trade was more important than billions of pounds worth of trade capacity and weapons selling. When the journalist in question told me about this, I was reminded of my teacher’s words at university in Ankara ten years ago. He was also working for the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The topic of a lecture discussion was about Turkey’s Economy and I still remember his words today,

“50 billion dollars worth of foreign debt is nothing, it is two lorry loads of heroin...”

Kendal Nezan has also written about one source for the Ankara regime's black money--its drug trafficking. Green money includes such businesses as Ülker, İhlas Holding, and Gülen's empire, from TDN:

One inevitable part of the picture is Muslim spiritual leader Fethullah Gulen, who now resides in the United States. Today the Gulen community controls a nationwide media empire that includes a television station (Samanyolu), a radio station (Burc FM), a daily newspaper (Zaman) and a weekly magazine (Aksiyon) and several other periodicals. It also owns an Islamic (interest-free) bank (Asya Finans) and is linked to a number of business groups and prosperous entrepreneurs who help fund many of his endeavors especially in the field of education, a network of 150 schools in Turkey and possibly more abroad.

As the BBC reports, "The AKP argues the case against it is an attack on democracy," and this is certainly what they'd like everyone to believe so that they can go on playing the victim of the big, bad secularists. But in the wake of the Ergenekon busts, there are rumors that AKP is working to establish its own Deep State.

Any argument that claims the AKP closure case is merely a matter of "democracy" is an argument from hypocrisy. As correctly noted by Ilter Turan of Istanbul's Bilgi University, in the CNN article:

"The ruling party had no reaction when the chief prosecutor sought to disband a pro-Kurdish party," Turan said, referring to a case against the Democratic Society Party on charges of ties to Kurdish rebels.

Even Yusuf Kanlı, of TDN, asked: "Who had opposed and criticized the closure case filed against the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP)?" Certainly Katil Erdoğan didn't oppose or criticize that closure case. Neither did Olli Rehn and the EU.

To paraphrase Katil Erdoğan during the Amed Serhildan: Whoever cries for AKP now, let's hope they will cry in vain.

PKK: WE ARE PREPARED

"We are prepared and we are stronger than ever."
~ Bozan Tekin, PKK spokesman.

First, there's a new Kurdish blog that I've added to the blog list in the right margin, and it's called Kurdish Review so you may want to check that one and bookmark it. It's a group blog with a number of authors, so a variety of opinions should be available.

Second, Gordon Taylor has more information on Cüneyt Ertuş, the 15-year-old who had his arm broken by Turkish security forces:


Cuneyt's father related his own story to DIHA, the Dicle Haber Ajansi (Tigris News Agency), a pro-Kurdish outlet which publishes in Turkish from Europe. Zubeyir Ertuş told DIHA that his son went on a shopping trip to the center of Hakkari (formerly Julamerk, or Colemerg), the capital city of Hakkari province, on March 22. After the events of that day he didn't hear from his son, and he thought that Cuneyt had been detained. "At last," he said, after two days of searching, "I found him on Roj-TV." If only he hadn't. Zubeyir: "The police were breaking my son's arm right in front of the representatives of the press. I looked away in horror. I didn't want to believe my eyes."

[ . . . ]

In the meantime, we have Zubeyir Ertuş and his son Cuneyt, who because of a satellite channel and the sharing of photos on the Internet, are suddenly not alone. In a past posting about the Turks' recent invasion of northern Iraq, I talked about another pro-PKK news outlet, Firat News, and the dozens of reports that they constantly get in detailing the movements of Turkish government forces. Here we see the same thing, as the Kurds have constructed their own "virtual Kurdistan" from the reports, videos, and digital photos of their own people.

Read the rest.

Also check out Hevallo's point of irony on the situation of Cüneyt.

Now on to some PKK news from Özgür Gündem . . .

There have been reports in Western media in the last couple of days, claiming that TSK had killed 15 guerrillas, but HPG denies the story:

HPG refutes Turkish media

HPG refuted news in Turkish media which claimed 15 HPG guerrillas were killed in the Turkish army's bombardment.

According to a statement by HPG's media center, HPG refuted the claim that 15 guerrillas were killed in attacks carried out against the Medya Defense Zones on 28 March 2008, in the Zagros region of the Medya Defense Zones.

HPG mentioned in its statement that general staff officials manufactured this kind of war scenario. "This and similar claims are ones manufactured by the special warfare desk; they are a part of psychological warfare and they are lies," HPG explained in the statement.

In Turkish-occupied Kurdistan over the weekend, HPG inflicted some casualties on the TSK. In the Amed (Diyarbakır) region, HPG guerrillas killed 4 Turkish soldiers and wounded 3 on 29 March 2008 around 0500 hours. While the Turkish army conducted operations on Mt. Cudî, HPG infiltrated TSK's area of operations around 0130 hours. During this infiltration, 2 Turkish troops were killed and one day after this infiltration, the TSK was forced to retreat.

In Şemzinan, also on 29 March, according to a regional source, 10 military support vehicles deployed to Rûbarok to reinforce TSK forces operating there

PKK spokesman Bozan Tekin recently spoke on upcoming spring operations, saying that TSK's operations will intensify. "We are prepared and we are stronger than ever," Tekin said. To emphasize the fact, Tekin stated that PKK has 8 to 10 thousand fighters today.

In his statement to AFP, Bozan Tekin said, "The Turkish state must hear the message of freedom of the Kurdish people, and immediately it must end its violence against civilians." He warned, "Uncontrollable reactions may occur. The Turkish state and the ruling party will be responsible for such incidents."

"Despite ongoing progress, if the Turkish state does not stop its attacks against civilians," Tekin continued, "PKK will retaliate."

Even though TSK has 9 military bases in South Kurdistan, Tekin said that if Turkish troops had been able, they wanted to reach further inside South Kurdistan during the February land operations. Since they were not able to achieve this desire, it underlines their lack of success. He also stressed that American intelligence efforts on Turkey's behalf were not very effective.

Tekin criticized the embargo on Qendil, saying, "However, PKK has a huge reaction capacity. In fact, it was not affected and adopted itself to the situation." He also called on the KRG to see their real interests and wanted KRG to possess a better political approach.

Ahmet Turk made a good observation that AKP parliamentarians from Wan (Van), Gever (Yüksekova), and Culemêrg (Hakkâri) have not spoken up at all about the violent incidents perpetrated against the citizens of those cities by Turkish security forces. "People who cannot show the courage to speak up for their people's problems, to show the democratic reflex for a solution to the Kurdish question, cannot be the representatives of the Kurds."

So there you go, Kurdistan; your AKP parliamentarians aren't doing a damned thing for you, are they? Consider, too, that it would have been very easy for AKP parliamentarians to get permission from the AKP-appointed governors to celebrate Newroz. But did they do that? Of course not! They did nothing while DTP attempted to avert disaster with the worthless AKP governors and security chiefs.

No, your AKP parliamentarians sat back and did nothing for the sake of their own son-of-a-bitch Erdoğan. What's their political platform? Vote for AKP parliamentarians and get tortured for Newroz.

Well, then, we might as well include the fake Kurd AKP parliamentarians on the list of those responsible for Turkish state violence against the Kurdish people on Newroz.

THE AKP'S KURDISH POLICY

"Security forces will intervene with every possible means indiscriminately, including against women and children."
~ R. Tayyip Erdoğan, during the Amed Serhildan.

Watch Turkish police break a 15-year-old Kurd's arm during the recent Newroz violence in Culemêrg (Hakkâri), Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, from Özgür Gündem:

Here are some photos of the same, to remember the faces of the security forces for identification purposes:







Gordon Taylor's description of the scene, at Progressive Historians:

But of course, you're not looking at the mountain, you're looking at a plainclothesman from the Turkish secret police giving us a demonstration of how to break a 15-year-old boy's arm. Let's not dwell on it. Every once in a while historians must confront everyday reality, and this is it. I am not one to use red-flag words idly; in fact, I despise the debasement of language that results when pejorative labels are endlessly purveyed in contexts that do not warrant them. This, however, is a case where the "F" word is fully justified. This is fascist thuggery, pure and simple.

It's always "fascist thuggery" with them.

Now, if that kid were a Palestinian Arab or a Tibetan instead of a Kurd in Turkey, or if those security forces were Israelis or Chinese instead of Turks, I can guarantee you that these photos and videos would be all over the international media, including the bullshit American media.

But because there's absolutely nothing here to excite the antisemite or the Hollywood Buddhist, and because these atrocities are taking place inside America's Model of Democracy for the Middle East, you haven't seen a damned thing of any of this anywhere on CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, CBS, or in America's newspaper of record (the NYTimes), on Democracy Now!--so misnamed--or NPR.

Where's that AKP-Fethullacı bastard, Mustafa Akyol, to speak for his Muslim "brothers" in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan? Where is he to explain AKP's policy of crushing the arms of Kurdish 15-year-olds?

These photos and videos are the best explanation yet of AKP's Kurdish policy. And let's not forget, either, that it was the US who put AKP into power way back in 2002. AKP is America's gang.

But America is not the only one to support AKP:

A few weeks ago Iraqi president Jalal Talabani via the Turkish media had stated that AKP was a democratically elected party and it should be respected by Kurds. Similarly, Nechirvan Barzani, the Prime Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government, stated in an interview that Turkey was Kurds’ elder brother.

Also last week a Kurdish journalist from Turkey, Mehmet Metiner in his interview with the southern Kurdistan based Kurdish Globe stated that “the AKP government, at least in discourse, differs from the militarist/bureaucratic elite in Turkey”.

Really, Mehmet??! Maybe you could explain exactly how the AKP fascists differ from the military fascists, especially after the May 2007 Dolmabahçe Palace Deal between Erdoğan and Büyükanıt. On the other hand, maybe Mehmet can't explain, since he's writing propaganda for the Southern Kurdish leadership.

According to the Özgür Gündem article at the beginning of the post, so far 900 people have been detained in the wake of Newroz, and at least 126 people have been arrested. Many of those detained and arrested are children. So this is exactly what happened during the Amed Serhildan exactly two years ago, at the end of March 2006. At the time, Erdoğan outlined AKP's Kurdish policy:

"Security forces will intervene with every possible means indiscriminately, including against women and children."

And:

"The security forces will intervene against the pawns of terrorism, no matter if they are children or women. Everybody should realise that."

His government has praised the security forces for their handling of the situation, saying they have acted with restraint.

During and immediately after the Amed Serhildan, children were detained and tortured. There was no investigation of deaths caused by security forces and, to my knowledge, there has not been any investigation to this day.

All of this is the AKP's Kurdish policy.

Let me point out, too, that all of those responsible for "security" in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan--all the governors, the security chiefs, and the kaymakams--are all appointed by the AKP. They are AKP "men"; they are all responsible for the current brutality. They carry out the AKP's Kurdish policy at the frontline. These are the AKP officials who refused to allow DTP to conduct Newroz celebrations.

But, as Ahmet Türk said earlier this week, DTP has more video footage of the AKP government's atrocities in Wan, Gever, and Culemêrg (Van, Yüksekova, Hakkâri).

Remember the AKP's Kurdish policy, clearly inaugurated two years ago during the Amed Serhildan:

SUPPORT DTP MAYORS

Support the 56 Kurdish Mayors fight for the Freedom of Expression and Right to Democracy:

56 Turkish-Kurdish Mayors have exercised their Right to Freedom of Expression, by writing a letter to the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

In the letter they urge the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, not to revoke the broadcast licence of the Kurdish language satellit tv-station, ROJ TV.

The Turkish State considers ROJ TV s broadcasts to be in support of the Kurdish Liberation Movement, PKK. For this reason, the Turkish State regards the letter to the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as an expression of support to the PKK.

The Danish Radio and TV Broadcasting Commission, Det Danske Radio og TV N vn , has investigated ROJ TV s broadcasts and exonerated the TV station, finding no legal infringements of the regulations. The Commission found the broadcasts to be of commonplace news and cultural content.

Up until now the City Mayors have appeared before the Court many times, the Prosecution is now insisting on a jail term of up to 2 years. They also run the risk of being barred from holding public office, including a mayoral position. This seems particularly unreasonable, and a threat to a Publicly Elected Official's ability to do their duty.

One of the accused, Chief Burgomaster (Chief Mayor) of the Kurdish major city of Diyarbakir, Osman Baydemir is one of many Kurdish politicians charged in not one, but in a series of cases. All in all, he is at risk of being sentenced to 280 years in prison. All the charges against him revolve around his use of the Kurdish language, and the Right to Freedom of Expression.

March 12th, 2008, Osman Baydemir is quoted in the Danish national newspaper Politiken as saying, "For New Years I sent a greetings card to Government and the Prosecution, where I wrote, 'Happy New Year' in Turkish, English and Kurdish. All the cards were returned to Sender except the one that I sent to the Prosecution. I was pleased, and thought that maybe they were softening up a little. But as it turned out, they used the card as evidence to charge me once again, not so much because I wrote the card in Kurdish, but because I used the letter 'w' that is used in the Kurdish language but not in the Turkish. "

The next trial date is set for April 15th, 2008, where a decision is expected.

By signing this petition, you are supporting the 56 Turkish-Kurdish Mayors fight for Freedom of Expression, as well as to protest the fact that Publicly Elected Officials using this Right, can risk such a serious sentence.

You can get further information on the case at: kurdiskforum.dk

Sign the petition.



More background:

The Deadliest Enemy of Tyranny

Democratization and DTP.

The Model of Democracy.

YJA-STAR: REVENGE IS OUR HONOR

"Well behaved women rarely make history."
~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

YJA-STAR issued a statement in which its guerrillas promise revenge for the martyrs of 12 March, whose team leader was a member of YJA-STAR and for Newroz attacks in Qamishlo, Wan (Van), Gever (Yüksekova). YJA-STAR noted the combined resistance of Kurdish guerrilla forces in the Zap region and the Kurdish people's resistance during Newroz, remarking that this is an historic period in which guerrilla and the people's resistance had integrated and become stronger.

YJA-STAR commented on the outpouring of support for the leadership during Newroz, throughout Kurdistan as well as in Istanbul, and that this outpouring of support showed the Kurdish people's solidarity with the leadership.

In its statement, YJA-STAR greeted the Kurdish youths' resistance, "We greet the Kurdish youths' resistance; We celebrate them because of their determined struggle. For rising and maintaining the struggle in terms of integration with the guerrillas, we are calling all our youth in general, and young girls in particular, to our active struggle areas, which are our mountains."

"In this respect, we give our deep condolences to the people that have been murdered in Qamishlo, Van, and Gever; we hope the wounded get well as soon as possible and we declare that we share our people's grief." In addition to this, YJA-STAR said, "Indeed, everyone must know that the Kurdish people are not alone. YJA-STAR forces promised revenge against all the miscalculated attacks. We are declaring this promise to the whole world."

To Turkish and Syrian security forces: The women of the PKK are coming and they're going to show you just how weak your shit really is.

Serkeftin!

SPEAKING OF INJUSTICE

"Injustice boils in men's hearts as does steel in its cauldron, ready to pour forth, white hot, in the fullness of time."
~ Mother Jones.

Ahmet Türk had a few things to say today about the Ergenekon gang and the AKP closure case, from Zaman:

At a parliamentary group meeting yesterday, Türk pointed out that there have been many gangs in the history of Turkey. “We know that since the establishment of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa [an Ottoman intelligence agency] in 1915-1917, state assassins have been used in certain killings,” Türk said.

He added that the activities of gangs intensify when the Kurdish question is on the agenda.

“Ergenekon and similar gangs are holding the society like an octopus. We want these gangs to be uncovered completely, but the investigation is not going in this direction. We are seeing a power struggle, not a struggle for a transparent and democratic state,” he said.

This follows additional Ergenekon arrests over the last weekend, which included: Doğu Perinçek, chairman of Turkey's Worker's Party (İşçi Partisi--a hardline nationalist party); İlhan Selcuk, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper; and Kemal Alemdaroğlu, former rector of Istanbul University. The main battle here appears to be between AKP and the secularists, particularly CHP, with CHP chairman Deniz Baykal accusing AKP of "trying to build its own 'deep state'" and Erdoğan responding with "If there is a deep state in this country, you (Baykal) would be one to know it best. You are the architecture of the deep state."

Thus the poo-flinging rages fast and furious in this power struggle. Of course, all of this leads people to suspect that the Ergenekon investigation has now become a tool for AKP to use against its enemies, who brought a closure case against it.

That brings us to Ahmet Türk's comments on AKP's closure:

"The government did not show any reaction when the court case opened against us, but today they are seeking formulas to save themselves. Bring the new constitution to Parliament and, if you don’t have a majority, submit it to the public. But you are only out to save yourself."

Certainly AKP is only out to save itself; it's not the "democratic" party that ignoramuses in the West would have us believe. On that, check the points of failure enumerated by Cengiz Çandar at TDN:

If you stop halfway and push the decision with some other calculations in mind to dig out anti-democratic structures within the state structure and seek reconciliation, then the "Ergenekon boomerang" will come back and hit you through the closure indictment.

If you do not adopt a decent and determined approach to the closure of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) and needlessly impose in parliamentary sessions and say "I will not speak with you until you name the PKK terrorists," then you suddenly share the same fate with it.

Instead of undertaking the responsibility to do your best as the executive party in the Dink murder investigation, but rather adopt a different attitude and say "the issue has been transferred to the judiciary," making excuses about Article 301 and any anti-democratic provisions in the legal system yet say "Let's see the implementations," you would be "transferred to the judiciary" all of a sudden.

How can the AKP have a right to object to the closure case, if there is inconsistency in its own acts?

The AKP's wrongdoings are innumerable. You name it; from putting the draft constitution on hold and focusing on the headscarf issue, which unnecessarily turned the political agenda upside down, to not touching the Political Parties Law as one of the by-products of the 1983 Constitution in its fifth year in the government.

The case against the AKP finds legal ground with the current Political Parties Law.

The Political Parties Law, forumlated by the MGK (National Security Council) in 1983, "which was intended to regulate the formation of political parties in advance of the November 1983 National Assembly elections, stipulates that political organizations cannot be based on class, religion, race, or language distinctions . . . Political parties are prohibited from criticizing the military intervention of September 1980 or the actions or decisions of the NSC. The Political Parties Law empowers the NSC and its successor, the Presidential Council, to investigate all party members and candidates for office and to declare any unsuitable."

Ahmet Türk had some words about state-sponsored Newroz violence:

Türk said that before Nevruz they had met with Interior Minister Beşir Atalay and asked him to give the DTP permission to hold celebrations at its own discretion. He said Atalay told them the decision had to be made by the individual governorates.

“We warned them. If we had been allowed to celebrate as a party according to our own schedule, we would have been able to establish discipline. But we witnessed terrible events that we wish we hadn’t had to see,” Türk said.

Apparently, DTP has additional video of the violence which it will submit to Erdoğan and Gül. If no results come from that--and the real shocker would be if results did, in fact, come from the AKP--then DTP plans on releasing the video to the international public to "pass judgement on the videos."

But there's an easy explanation for the failure which is AKP, and that explanation is widely known and is not limited to the Ergenekon case:

But the “Justice and Development Party” is not concerned with justice, but with control, no matter which means, which compromises, which approval were needed for this control…The AKP’s control is guaranteed by the “mutual agreement in Dolmabahce Palace” which Prime Minister Erdogan and Chief of General Staff Büyükanit made, and it is thus naïve to think that justice will be handed out to anyone at a higher level than retired general Veli Kücük. The fact that the AKP has formed a single-party government has made it easy to remain committed to this agreement. On the other hand, this agreement gives the AKP a free hand to deal with the “extra-parliamentarian” pursuits which do not clash with the protected zones of the General Staff.

Ain't that the truth?

UNBELIEVABLE

"I’ve been a friend of America, and I’ve been its enemy. America betrays its friends. It sets them up and betrays them. I’d rather be America’s enemy."
~ Ahmed Chalabi.

You're not going to believe this one, from the WaPo:

During his nearly four years as a translator for U.S. forces in Iraq, Saman Kareem Ahmad was known for his bravery and hard work. "Sam put his life on the line with, and for, Coalition Forces on a daily basis," wrote Marine Capt. Trent A. Gibson.

Gibson's letter was part of a thick file of support -- including commendations from the secretary of the Navy and from then-Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus -- that helped Ahmad migrate to the United States in 2006, among an initial group of 50 Iraqi and Afghan translators admitted under a special visa program.

Last month, however, the U.S. government turned down Ahmad's application for permanent residence, known as a green card. His offense: Ahmad had once been part of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which U.S. immigration officials deemed an "undesignated terrorist organization" for having sought to overthrow former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Ahmad, a Kurd, once served in the KDP's military force, which is part of the new Iraqi army. A U.S. ally, the KDP is now part of the elected government of the Kurdish region and holds seats in the Iraqi parliament. After consulting public Web sites, however, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services determined that KDP forces "conducted full-scale armed attacks and helped incite rebellions against Hussein's regime, most notably during the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Ahmad's association with a group that had attempted to overthrow a government -- even as an ally in U.S.-led wars against Hussein -- rendered him "inadmissible," the agency concluded in a three-page letter dated Feb. 26.

[ . . . ]

Many of the thousands of Iraqis who have served as linguists for U.S. forces have been threatened in Iraq. Ahmad left the country after he was branded a "collaborator" from mosque pulpits in Anbar province and posters calling for his death began appearing there.

Under congressional pressure to allow such translators into the United States, the Bush administration in 2006 authorized 50 visas for them annually. That number was increased to 500 in fiscal 2008, and the quota will revert to 50 a year in fiscal 2009. In announcing the program, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) emphasized that it allows translators "to gain admission to the United States, apply for permanent residency and eventually acquire U.S. citizenship."

[ . . . ]

The second youngest of five children, Ahmad was away at college when Saddam Hussein, striking at rebellious Kurds, launched a chemical gas attack against Ahmad's home town, Halabja, in 1988. The infamous assault, in which more than 5,000 died, was often cited by the Bush administration as part of its justification for invading Iraq. It left Ahmad without a single living relative, as he has recounted to Americans many times over the past six years.

[ . . . ]

According to Human Rights First, a nonprofit that handles similar immigration cases, groups such as the KDP do not appear on U.S. government lists of designated terrorists. Instead, determinations of "undesignated terrorist organizations" are made, case by case, by the USCIS, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Using definitions in the Immigration and Nationality Act, the USA Patriot Act and other legislation adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it is up to USCIS officials to research an applicant's background and make a decision. According to Ahmad's denial letter, the information in his case was obtained from the Web site of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a DHS-funded nonprofit group.

The legislation contains waiver provisions -- by the secretary of state for foreign petitioners, and the secretary of homeland security for those who, like Ahmad, are already in this country. But there is no path for a denied individual to apply for a waiver.

Of course, I guess things could be worse; he could have gotten citizenship the hard way:

A young, ambitious immigrant from Guatemala who dreamed of becoming an architect. A Nigerian medic. A soldier from China who boasted he would one day become an American general. An Indian native whose headstone displays the first Khanda, emblem of the Sikh faith, to appear in Arlington National Cemetery.


These were among more than 100 foreign-born members of the U.S. military who earned American citizenship by dying in Iraq.

How's that for irony? . . . Talk about a nation of ingrates.

SCATHING 3

"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths."
~ Karl Marx.

Fuck the Street. Please, Ben Bernanke, just fuck them. Raise interest rates to fucking 10% for the month if you must, just to master cleanse all those fuckers of their liquidity addictions. And seriously, that $30 billion in cash you promised JP Morgan? Fuck that. Just text Jamie Dimon tomorrow afternoon and say you can't make it, maybe he can find some sovereign growth sugar daddies in one of the Emirates or maybe China? I mean, China's got all the jobs now anyway, they might as well control a few more multinational companies in the lead-up to the Olympics, right? They'll probably even overpay for them, what with all this Tibet noise. But really, how hard can it be to scrounge up $30 billion if Goldman managed to cough up $21 billion on Christmas bonuses? Anyway, like I said, not your concern; fuck them. I wouldn't say this if I hadn't thought about it at least as hard as the average overleveraged hedge fund short-seller when he pushed down on the panic button that got us into this mess, Ben Bernanke.

And by "us," I mean Bear Stearns, because I personally have weighed the odds and I'm pretty sure I personally have nothing at stake here, no matter what you do, Ben Bernanke. My balance sheet, while admittedly lacking much in the way of assets, is also blissfully insensitive to short-term market and/or interest rate fluctuations.

Thanks to my industry, indeed, my own financial situation has been governed by a recessionary state of constant layoffs and downsizing for years and years -- and I'm lucky enough to have one of those jobs they haven't figured out how to do better in Hyberabad. And I'll let you in on something, Ben Bernanke; my finances have zero correlation with those of the stock market. I'm not alone in this; most Americans are actually earning less than they were in real terms than they were in 1999. They can handle a few quarters of recession because they've been handling it.

Some of my morning commenters would have me believe bailing out JP Morgan is the only way to minimize "collateral damage on Wall Street and thus the economy," but really, whose economy are we talking about here? The buying power of the minimum wage employee is at a 51-year-low.

So fuck the Street, Ben Bernanke; just this once, just for, like, a quarter or something. You don't have to play rough; I'm not asking you to nationalize any industries or institute land reform or anything, just give them a little scare. They chose this path, you know. They chose to worship Ayn Rand and wear those Paul Smith shirts and pay zero money down on their Hamptons summer homes and obnoxiously, whenever confronted by someone like myself at a bar, claim that the Market Solves Everything. Let the market solve this one for them. People are eating dirt for dinner in Haiti, Ben Bernanke; you can let Bear Stearns go to bankruptcy court.

[ . . . ]

What if there were some sort of cascading ripple effect? everyone wants to know. What of all that IRRATIONAL FEAR? But you just tell them, Ben Bernanke, that they should maybe sit quietly in their illiquid asses and reflect on what the fuck made them think it was rational to buy into all this fancy housing market bullshit in the first place. Just ask them, Ben Bernanke, what they thought was rational about people in Southern California taking out mortgages with monthly payments equivalent to five months' rent?

Because the housing market never made much sense to me, Ben Bernanke. I mean, there we were a couple years ago, with a war on, a slowing economy, oil roaring up toward $100 a gallon or whatever, skyrocketing energy prices sending other commodity prices through the roof... just where were the buyers who were supposed to keep bidding up those houses so everyone could continue pumping the economy with home equity loans? I'll tell you where a lot of them are now: sitting at home, watching network TV and avoiding opening their mail. Sort of like Bear Stearns with that portfolio of mortgages, mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities no one wants to put a value on just yet.

But you know? Eventually they'll open the envelopes, see what they've got, realize it's probably not the end of the world and start moving money around again. Assets are only "illiquid" till someone -- the market? -- figures out how to make them liquid again!

And if it is the end of the world, there's always the hope of an early death a la Ken Lay. Right?

Jezebel.

NEWROZ IN WAN AND QAMIŞLO

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."
~ Oscar Wilde.

Newroz in Wan (Van). Check out the cops beating the women with their batons. This all came about because Newroz celebrations were forbidden in Wan, Culemêrg (Hâkkari), Riha (Urfa), and Sêrt (Siirt).

It looks like someone lifted most, if not all, of Hürriyet's video and put it up on Youtube:

Some photos:






















If you check the photos from Culemêrg (Hâkkari), note that the fascist police with ski masks are Özel Hareket Timler, and they are richly deserving of the same fate as the military Özel Timler ("special teams").

Özgür Gündem also has a Newroz photo gallery.

Here's another video from Wan:

And another:

Özgür Gündem reports that the Diyarbakir chief prosecutor wants Turkish translations of the speeches made on Newroz in Amed by Ahmet Türk, Osman Baydemir, Leyla Zana and Necdet Atalay, as well as a translation of the Newroz message Öcalan sent. The chief prosecutor also wants video of the celebrations in order to determine the identities of those who carried Öcalan flags, KCK flags, and PKK flags.

The biggest coup of the holiday came from Roj TV, which broadcast live for 5 hours from Amed. A while ago, Roj had begun broadcasting through two satellites in order the jamming of their transmissions by the Turkish state.

On Newroz, Roj TV began 24 hour broadcasting. "Good news for Roj TV's viewers: Roj TV is broadcasting 24 hours now".

Despite oppression and blocking, Roj TV has started broadcasting 24 hours on Newroz and onward.

[. . . ]

Thus viewers will be able to follow the news from Kurdistan and the whole world at any time during the day. In its statement, Roj TV said, "Roj TV's decision will accelerate the enhancement of Kurdish language and culture, and will preserve it."

In related news, Denmark is trying to get Roj TV listed with the UN as a terrorist organization, according to Danish ambassador to Ankara, Jesper Vahr. Vahr recently stated that Turkey's evidence against Roj TV is insufficient to support Turkey's claims. For this reason, Denmark is asking Turkey for more evidence against the channel.

"Besides Turkey and Denmark have cooperation against terrorism and if we look at the bigger picture this must not be reduced to an incident of Roj TV. Right now there is an ongoing investigation against Roj TV and we need all the evidence that Turkey will provide."

Three Rojavayî Kurds were murdered by the Syrian Arab regime during Newroz celebrations in Qamişlo, Syrian-occupied Kurdistan. The Jerusalem Post claims that 10,000 Syrian troops have been deployed to Syrian-occupied Kurdistan; however, the claim is not substantiated anywhere else, including Firat News. Given that Cihan News and DebkaFile reports about a Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan early last June were spectacular lies, there is no reason, at this point, to give any credence to the current claim.

Firat News has photos of those murdered by the Syrian regime:









The Syrian regime has so far refused to return the bodies of the victims to their families.

Şehîdên azadiyê nemirin!

Finally, check Gordon Taylor's recent musing on Newroz, Kurds, and the Dicle.

YET ANOTHER REASON TO DESPISE RELIGION

"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses."
~ Arthur C. Clarke.

Reason number 5,278 to hate religion and the people who practice it. Or, how a pack of sociopaths are actively seeking to push the world to nuclear war (Runtime: 1 hour, 41 mins).

NEWROZA WE PÎROZ BE!

NEWROZ PÎROZ BE!

NEWROZ KUTLU OLSUN!

TURKISH ARMY WAR CRIMES

"In the context of war, a war crime is a punishable offense under international law, for violations of the laws of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. War crimes can be committed during international armed conflict or internal armed conflict."
~ War crime.

Some photos of Turkish atrocities against HPG guerrillas have surfaced on the web. KurdishMedia picked them up, but incorrectly gives the impression that these atrocities were committed during the "recent Turkish aggression on southern Kurdistan". That is clearly not what is said on the webpage where these photos are found. Instead, it is clearly stated that these are photos of HPG guerrillas captured alive in 2007 by the barbaric Turkish army.

A small sampling of the photos:








The photos can be found on the original site here, or on a .pdf at the KurdishMedia link. WARNING: photos are extremely graphic and disturbing. Don't come crying to me if you have nightmares because you didn't pay attention to the warning.

Here's a translation of the Turkish text that accompanies the photos:

You cannot avoid the responsibility of this genocide

As "reverence for the dead" the Turkish army continues to commit crimes against humanity by tearing apart the bodies of Kurds they have murdered!

They have a place for this violence in the AKP government's belief . . . . You monsters, is this your belief?

Here is the Turkish state's crimes against humanity! Can a state become as low as this?

Can the Turkish army refute this crime against humanity?

How are you going to render an account before history for these crimes against humanity?

HPG guerrillas that have been caught alive and murdered in 2007.

We are curious if, in Vietnam, which left a big scar in history, such violence occured . . .

NATO and the West, who gave you the most modern weapons and training to let you commit more crimes against humanity, are also as guilty as you!

Now, compare those photos with the photos of Turkish soldiers captured alive, held prisoner, and released by HPG. Do you see so much as a scratch on HPG's Turkish POWs?

We know exactly who the terrorist barbarians are, don't we? The terrorist barbarians know exactly who they are. And like it says at halkarinsesi.com, NATO and the West are just as guilty.

Remember that fact if any European tourists get blown up this summer and don't expect any sympathy here.

ON THE INCREASE: HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN TURKEY'S NEW OHAL ZONES

"In November 2002, Turkey’s National Security Council – which groups Turkey’s top generals and government leaders – has agreed to lift the State of Emergency Rules (OHAL Act number 2935) in the last two remaining provinces of Diyarbakir and Sirnak – both provinces in the south-east of the country – after nearly 15 years of emergency rule and martial law. The lifting of the State of emergency rule was among the steps the EU asked the Turkish government to take as a condition for accession talks."
~ International Federation for Human Rights, 2003.

Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP) has found that human rights violations have been on the rise in the last two years in those regions of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan that have been designated as new OHAL zones.

That's no surprise. The new OHAL was announced at the same time that a bogus invasion was announced. Later, Erdoğan the Liar tried to tell us there was no new OHAL. But some of us knew that everything would intensify black operations in the new OHAL regions. Then there was the assassination attempt against Beytüşşebap's mayor, aerial bombing in Şirnex, and a resurrection of the contra-guerrillas. The new OHAL enabled the state to interfere with free elections and to murder a Kurdish infant.

The new OHAL was extended once, the number of new OHAL regions was increased, and the new OHAL was extended a second time.

Now, here's what KHRP says:

A KHRP Fact-Finding Mission sent to investigate the impact of the declaration of ‘High Security Zones’ in the Kurdish regions of Turkey returned yesterday. Mission members Sara Capogna and Nazmi Gür visited Tunceli, Bingöl, Diyarbakir, Cizre and Şirnak, meeting with human rights lawyers, government and political party officials, and trade union and NGO representatives.

The mission observed that the most commonly violated rights were related to the freedoms of expression, thought and association. Worryingly, the mission also noted that there was a general consensus that the situation in these regions had deteriorated over the last two years, although it has not reached the same levels of oppression and human rights violations of the 1990s.

‘After several reports of unlawful detention; disproportionate use of force by authorities at peaceful demonstrations against military activity in the region; and complaints from rural dwellers about access to their lands and livestock, the KHRP sent a mission to determine the human rights impact on the day-to-day life of the average person living in the Kurdish regions. Unfortunately, the delegation has returned reporting a series of violations that are entirely incompatible with international human rights norms.'

A full report of the mission's findings and recommendations will be available in the coming weeks.

I, for one, can't wait to read the full report.

MORE ON TURKEY'S FIASCO

"One important question that needs to be resolved concerns the status of an alleged secret directive of the Turkish Army permitting the use of chemical and biological measures in counter-terrorist activities."
~ Country Study No. 3: Turkey, The Sunshine Project.

Over the weekend, the WaPo had a follow-up to their recent report (with photos and video) on the PKK.

Those you would expect to complain, have complained:

Burak Akcapar, deputy chief of mission at the Turkish Embassy, said the story "was sympathetic and glorified an infamous and deadly terrorist organization. The PKK was portrayed as humane fighters in an epic struggle despite the fact they have been engaging in brutal terrorism." [ . . . ] Akcapar and others criticized a picture of a guerrilla feeding an orphaned bear cub with a baby bottle. "I don't understand why a terrorist is carrying a baby milk bottle."

Yeah, that baby bottle and the feeding of an animal certainly go a long way to show the humanity of the freedom fighters of Kurdistan and of course Akçapar is incapable of understanding it.

As should be expected, the propagandist Akçapar failed to mention the confessions of certain Turkish military officers, such as Erdal Sarızeybek and Altay Tokat. He failed to mention Turkish military massacres, such as the one at Guçlukonak, Hantepe, or Beytüşşebap. Nor does he mention the Turkish military's massacres and destruction of cities, such as happened at Lice, or in the Şirnex (Şirnak) region.

As a reminder, Turkey's drug income or it's continuing pivotal role in the world's drug industry, and all the side industries that go along with it.

On the other hand, others, like Henri Barkey and Omer Taspinar liked the piece. From Barkey:

"Wow. Good for you guys for doing it. The reporter was describing what he sees. I took it as such." Barkey, who has lived in Turkey and visits every year, also said that the story didn't explain the origins of the PKK or its place among the Kurds. "There was no context. But not every piece is going to go through a litany of charges. For someone like me who is well versed, we don't get to see much about how these guys operate, how they bury their dead, why they're so difficult to defeat. . . . Purely for information that I hadn't seen for a long, long time, it was a very useful piece."

Note for Barkey: They're not only guys. And from Taspinar:

"I don't think the piece is biased. It obviously has some sympathy for the guerrillas but also gives background enough to balance."

Of course, this admission from the WaPo is a bit disappointing:

The story was shortened considerably; top editors wanted to hold the package to one inside page. A few more background paragraphs wouldn't have made a difference to the Turkish government, but Post readers would have had a fuller picture of the PKK.

Although I thought the WaPo article was one of the best pieces on the PKK in Western media in a long time, it would have been better to have a fuller picture of the PKK by giving more background as to why PKK arose in the first place.

In other news, there was an interesting analysis of the recent TSK fiasco against the PKK from some Turkish Marxists. Funny . . . they're calling the February operation a fiasco, too:

The incursion of the Turkish army into northern Iraq has ended in a terrible debacle for both US imperialism and Turkey. The two allies are now at loggerheads once again, after the thaw in their relations achieved at the White House talks between Bush and Turkish prime minister Erdogan on 5 November 2007. The Turkish government and the army are the object of unprecedented criticism by the bourgeois media but also by ordinary people.

"Unprecedented criticism" is right. I don't know of any time that there was so much criticism of both the government and the TSK in the history of Turkey. I mean, when both CHP and MHP are going after the Paşas, then you know it's bad. Of course, it's highly likely that they know all about the deal between Erdoğan and Büyükanıt.

The whole episode of the Turkish incursion was played out as a miserable mismanagement of a crisis situation by the two allies, the US and Turkey. Although the latter had been bombing the PKK bases in the north of Iraq since 16 December last year, an incursion into the region of Turkish combat troops on 21 February came as a surprise to the whole world, especially in the midst of winter, given the circumstances of the extremely rugged and mountainous terrain. The operation was greeted with unreserved support by the US, no lesser a figure than Condoleezza Rice in person immediately voicing “absolute solidarity” with the Turkish war effort. The US had already extended lavish support to the several rounds of Turkish bombing efforts by providing real time intelligence and clearance to enter Iraqi airspace, as well as clear diplomatic approval, but nothing that was said had been as strong as Rice's words. And yet only five days later, the support turned out to be relative!

Well, the invasion wasn't such a surprise to everyone, nor was the December bombing. It was only a surprise to those who don't pay attention.

The aims of the Turkish military incursion were never stated clearly. This led to exaggerated expectations on the part of Turkish public opinion that the PKK was going to be dealt a serious, if not final, blow. Jingoistic media discourse of the kind “Objective Kandil” further reinforced these unrealistic expectations. This explains the bitter disppointment felt by the Turkish public at large, poisoned as it has been by chauvinistic propaganda for years now. It would not be realistic to think that the Turkish army had really set its eyes on dealing the PKK a definitive blow. The top brass, after all, has repeatedly made clear over time that military incursion into Iraq will not finish off the PKK, which by most estimates has a total of around five thousand guerrillas inside Turkey and over the border in Iraq.

Whatever the targets originally set, the Turkish army cannot be said to have achieved any serious military results in this week-long incursion. Official army figures for PKK casualties stands at around 230, while admitted army casualties amount to a mere 27. The PKK, for its part, claims that Turkish casualties rise to 125 and its own loss is only nine. No matter where the truth lies regarding this aspect of the matter, the fact that the Turkish military totally failed in achieveing its own targets is clearly proved by the case of the Zab base of the PKK.

Actually, people may have gotten the idea that TSK was going to fight until PKK was annihilated because of Büyükanıt's own words last October:

On Saturday Buyukanit, in a speech to mark Monday's Republic Day, said the army would fight until it had destroyed the PKK.

"We feel the pain of our martyred heroes deeply. But that pain increases our determination to fight," the text of his speech read. "Those who make us suffer cannot even imagine the suffering we will inflict on them; on this we are determined."

The Marxists have a prediction:

2007 was marked by the serious tension in Turkey due to the prospect of the election of a major leader of the pro-Islamic government party as president, a process interrupted by a military pronunciamiento but finally consummated after the electoral victory of the government party. 2008 promises to be an explosive year, next to which the tensions of 2007 will look pale.

It's really a very interesting analysis, so make sure to take a look at the whole thing.


Meanwhile, for all those who stupidly claim that Kurds are equal and that Kurdish language is no longer illegal, Osman Baydemir is going to trial for having published a storybook in Kurdish and Turkish.

Others don't seem to be fooled by Katil Erdoğan's BS Kurdish reform package. From AFP via The Kurdish Globe:

For political analyst Dogu Ergil, the planned measures show Erdogan's unwillingness or inability to address the basic demand of Kurds to be accepted for their ethnic roots and be allowed to participate in Turkey's affairs as Kurds.

"Turkey has a system which is based on a Turkish ethnic identity and sees Kurds as a dependent component that has to suffice with what it is given and told to do," he said. "Unless Turkey addresses this issue, nothing can resolve the tensions between the state and society."

The measures are "an indication that the government does not want to or is unable to take a serious and bold step on the Kurdish issue" for fear of a nationalist backlash, Ergil said.

[ . . . ]

"Turkey is fighting a monster of its own creation, a Frankenstein, right now," Ergil said. "The government believes that it will be very difficult to deal with the nationalist masses and such an effort will not have any significant return for them."

And from DTP:

Turkey's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which enjoys considerable support among the Kurds, was also unimpressed by Erdogan's plans.

"The essence of the Kurdish problem is creating a nation based on a single language, a single religion and a single ethnicity," the party's deputy parliamentary group chairman Selahattin Demirtas said.

"One cannot solve the Kurdish problem with factories and Kurdish broadcasts," he added.

Finally, there have been numerous reports in the past of TSK's use of chemical weapons against PKK. Now it appears that there is some suspicion of the use of chemical weapons against South Kurdistani civilians during the recent operations. From VOI, again via The Kurdish Globe:

Safia Al-Sehail told Voices of Iraq VOI, "There is a necessity for the Red Cross, FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization - UN), and other organizations that care about nature to have a presence at the Iraqi side of the border with Turkey."

"Animals at the protected Merga-Sor reserve went extinct, because of the Turkish operation," Al-Sehail said.

As the head of a parliamentary committee that has been sent to the area to investigate the facts on the ground, Al-Sehail said that the committee's report, which will be submitted to the Iraqi parliament, government and Presidency Council, "will include recommendations for the government, international agencies, United Nations, and European Union (EU) to aid those areas that have been bombarded."

She added "We saw destroyed bridges, gardens, and farmers that have been attacked on their lands, and we met hundreds of displaced people due to the Turkish invasion to some villages at Erbil and Duhok provinces in Kurdistan region, the northern and northeastern parts of Iraq."

"We met people who now cannot breathe easily, with tearing up red-eyes, severe flu cases for children and the elderly, in addition to abortion cases, all because of the Turkish military operations," Al-Sehail asserted.

"Samples from the area have been gathered and sent to Iraqi laboratories for checking," Al-Sehail noted, asserting "a report in this respect will be issued within the coming days."

Reference this report, from The Sunshine Project:

On 23 July 1989, the Turkish newspaper Ikibine Dogru published an article on chemical weapons in which it reproduced parts of an alleged secret security directive (reproduced on the following page) of the Turkish Armed Forces permitting the use of chemical and biological weapons in the war against Kurdish fighters. The same parts of the directive were also reproduced in a book on chemical and biological weapons published in 1992 by the Kurdish author Celadet Celiker.

According to excerpts reproduced in Ikibine Dogru, the directive was issued on 25 February 1986 and was signed by Necdet Öztorun, at that time commander of the Turkish Army. In paragraph 5) it describes permitted methods to destroy tunnels, including:

(d) Can be filled with poison gas.

(e) Can be rendered unusable by breeding specially bred poisonous insects.”

In another section, the same document reads

c. Gas bombs and …

d. NBC Weapons: fog, fire making substances, tear and emetic gases are being used when necessary by friendly forces."

It is an open question whether or not the directive that was reproduced in Ikibine Dogru is indeed issued by the Turkish Armed Forces or whether it is a forgery. We located the alleged author of the directive, Necdet Öztorun, who is now working at Isik University. Öztorun did not respond to requests for further information. Considering that the Turkish government never explicitly denied the existence of this directive, it appears to be likely that the directive was indeed issued by the Turkish Armed Forces. Whether or not it is still in force remains unclear.

And from the introduction of the report:

One important question that needs to be resolved concerns the status of an alleged secret directive of the Turkish Army permitting the use of chemical and biological measures in counter-terrorist activities. Absent a clarification from the Turkish government it remains an open question if this document is a forgery or authentic and, if so, if remains in force. If this directive is genuine, the current Turkish government should initiate an independent investigation of this matter and must ensure that no offensive biological weapons activities are conducted, prepared or permitted in Turkey.

The Turkish Armed Forces used and likely still use so called ‘non-lethal’ chemical weapons such as tear gas in military combat. In at least one incident tear gas grenades were used in a military operation against armed Kurds that left twenty dead. This violates the Chemical Weapons Convention which prohibits explicitly “to use riot control agents as a method of warfare”.

Why am I not shocked?

More on Turkey's use of chemical weapons against Kurdish guerrillas at WMD Insights.

TWENTY YEARS

"I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them!"
~ Ali Hassan al-Majid.

A memory, from Kendal Nezan:

The town of Halabja, with 60,000 inhabitants, lies on the southern fringe of Iraqi Kurdistan, a few miles from the border with Iran. On 15 March 1988 it fell to the Peshmerga resistance fighters of Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, supported by Iranian revolutionary guards.

The next morning Iraqi bombers appeared out of a clear blue sky. The people of Halabja were used to the successive attacks and counter-attacks of the Iraq-Iran war that had ravaged the region since September 1980. They thought they were in for the usual reprisal raid. Those who had time huddled in makeshift shelters. The rest were taken by surprise. Wave after wave of Iraqi Migs and Mirages dropped chemical bombs on the unsuspecting inhabitants. The town was engulfed in a sickly stench like rotten apples. The bombing stopped at nightfall and it began to rain hard. Iraqi troops had already destroyed the local power station, so the survivors began to search the mud with torches for the dead bodies of their loved ones.

The scene that greeted them in the morning defied description. The streets were strewn with corpses. People had been killed instantaneously by chemicals in the midst of the ordinary acts of everyday life. Babies still sucked their mothers’ breasts. Children held their parents’ hands, frozen to the spot like a still from a motion picture. In the space of a few hours 5,000 people had died. The 3,200 who no longer had families were buried in a mass grave.

[ . . . ]

In point of fact, Iraq had already used chemical weapons against the Kurds on 15 April 1987. It happened two weeks after Hassan Ali Al Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, was appointed head of the Northern Bureau set up to deal with Kurdistan. On 29 March of that year the Revolutionary Command Council had issued Decree No. 160, granting him full powers to proceed with the final solution of the Kurdish problem. A problem which the Iraqi regime had failed to solve despite intensive Arabisation, transfers of population, the execution of “ringleaders”, and a war waged on and off since 1961.

[ . . . ]

Despite the enormous public outrage at the gas attack on Halabja, France, which is a depositary of the Geneva Convention of 1925, confined itself to an enigmatic communiqué condemning the use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world. The UN dispatched Colonel Dominguez, a Spanish military expert, to the scene. In a report published on 26 April 1988, he confined himself to recording that chemical weapons had been used once again both in Iran and in Iraq and that the number of civilian victims was increasing. On the same day the UN Secretary-General stated that, with respect to both the weapons themselves and those who were using them, it was difficult to determine the nationalities involved.

Clearly, Iraq’s powerful allies did not want Baghdad condemned. In August 1988 the United Nations Sub-Committee on Human Rights voted by 11 votes to 8 not to condemn Iraq for human rights violations. Only the Scandinavian countries, Australia and Canada, together with bodies like the European Parliament and the Socialist International, saved their honour by clearly condemning Iraq.

Halabja: The politics of memory:

Iraqi propaganda, backed by its ally the United States, either denied what happened, played down the significance of these events, or distorted them beyond recognition.

Within a week of the attack, the United States department of state, basing itself on information provided by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), claimed that Iran had also used poison gas in Halabja. This information created enough confusion that the United Nations Security Council delayed a resolution for two months and then condemned both sides for using chemical weapons. The DIA's account was augmented two years later by a former CIA analyst, Stephen Pelletiere, who suggested, using the same DIA data, that the majority of Halabja casualties had been victims of Iran's use of gas. Pelletiere has repeated his claim on numerous occasions, but has never presented any evidence in addition to the vague speculations made by the DIA at the time

All of this made Colin Powell's 2003 visit to Helebce an exceptional act of hypocrisy.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE MEDIA

"An important operational characteristic of the system, which facilitates general adherence to the party line without overt coercion, is the assurance and speed with which the line is established as a consensus truth, so that deviations and dissent quickly take on the appearance of foolishness or pathology, as well as suspiciously unpatriotic behavior. "
~ Edward Herman.

I found an old interview with Edward Herman, who co-authored Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media with Noam Chomsky. What follows is a description of the five media filters that, working all together, creates the extreme bias in the media. These filters serve to bring you the information that The System's elites want you to have, in the way they want you to hear it. It is through these filters that you are taught which victims are "worthy" and which are "unworthy".

The whole purpose of the media is to manufacture public support for the special interests that dominate government.

Here's your media lesson for the day:

The propaganda model argues that the way the media works is based on the underlying structural conditions under which the media operates.

It consists of five elements that can be looked at as filters of the news. Whether a news item is going to be used by the media or not is going to depend on whether it passes through these filters.

The first filter is ownership. Very wealthy people and corporations, like General Electric, own and control the dominant media. This is obviously going to give an elite bias to the media. You must assume that the people who control the media are going to dominate it. They're going to select people that they want, and they are not going to let subordinates get out of bounds.

[ . . . ]

The second filter is advertising. The media depend on advertising as their funding source. Newspapers probably get 70 percent of their revenue, on average, from advertising. Television gets over 95 percent from advertisers. The TV stations and networks all have people who go around and try to sell advertisers on their programs. They have to convince them of the merit of the programs in which they want to advertise.

What do the advertisers want? They not only want a large audience, they want an elite audience-the more money the audience has the better. They don't want to upset the audience. They want what is called "a favorable selling environment" for their products. So the advertisers have to be competed for, and they're the underlying funding source. There's no question that they influence what the media will do. They don't interfere all the time. They don't call the media up and discipline them; that's not the main way they work. The main influence they have is that they have to be competed for by the media, and the media has to convince them that their programming meets advertisers needs.

Some advertisers actually have explicit conditions on programming. For example, Proctor and Gamble, one of the biggest advertisers, has an advertising rule that's written down. It will not support programs that insult the military, or that suggests that the business community is not a good and spiritual community.

[ . . . ]

The third filter in our propaganda model is what we call sourcing. The media needs sources of news. The big media want sources that will supply them with news on a daily basis that's credible, reliable and doesn't cost too much. Where do you get that kind of news? You get it at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, or you get it at the local city mayor's office, the police department, or the General Motors Corporation. These are the prime decision makers who make news.

There's a strong tendency for the media, especially the big media, to get close to sources that are powerful, who can give them news that's believable and news that doesn't cost a lot to get. So a lot of the news outlets have people stationed permanently at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and so on. When they do this, they develop a certain relationship with these institutions. They become friendly with the people who provide them with the news, who are nice to them, and in doing that, they may occasionally get inside information, and so a symbiotic relationship develops between these big sources and the media.

[ . . . ]

The fourth filter is what we call flack, which means negative feedback. We can all produce flack. We can all call the paper or write a letter to the paper and complain, but the complaints that really affect the media are the ones that can really threaten them seriously, like the government, big advertisers, the Pentagon and other organized groups. So flack has its effect mainly from powerful groups, and some of these groups are already the ones that provide the news. This tends to further consolidate the power of these dominant sources.

The fifth filter is what we call ideology. In the American ideology, the one element in which Noam Chomsky and I think is important in the propaganda model is anti-communism. The anti-communist ideology was very important until the Soviet Union fell, but even now it still has some residual importance. The other ideological filter is the idea that the market can do everything, that it is the proper way of solving all our problems. These ideologies are really imbedded in the System, and they affect journalists, media editors, and how the media views the world.

Nowadays the primary ideology is the Global War on Terror, Inc., especially since all the lies about the primacy of the "free market" are pushing the American economy right over the edge--and dragging all the rest of the world with it.

What to do to learn the truth:

Actually, if you read the mainstream media, and if you have some advance knowledge of what to look for, there's a lot in there that you can find, but you have to know what to look for. In other words, you have to have frames of reference and an analysis that allows you to look at the media critically. This is where a guy like Noam Chomsky is so incredibly valuable-he's very smart-but he's also a very good producer of frames of reference. When you read his books you realize you're looking at a different world. You're learning to look at these things in a totally different light. So even when you're looking at the mainstream media, it becomes a little more illuminating because you can see what they've put at the bottom of the article that should be at the top.

[ . . . ]

Another important thing people can do if they have access to the web is to just surf around. If you go to Znet and fiddle around with sites on the different media groups, very soon you'll be in networks that'll give you a lot of alternative information. Getting into email and getting friendly with websites is enlightening. It's a wonderful alternative to reading the mainstream media.

I also mentioned the foreign press. On something like the Afghanistan war, even Britain-which is a close ally of the United States-even in Britain, you can read the Guardian, The Independent, The Mirror, or even the Daily Herald, which are all better than the New York Times. The U.S. media system has become so closed to alternative materials on issues where the government has strong positions and where lobbies are important, like in the Middle East, that even mainstream media in our allied countries provide a real option.

See the whole article, read an excerpt and then buy the book.

To see the application of the propaganda model to the Kurdish situation, see ZNet.

THE DARK SIDE

"Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now..."
~ Henry Miller.

For your Friday evening contemplation, from the dark side:

Enjoy . . . or not.

DISINGENUOUS OR JUST PLAIN STUPID?

"Everyone must become aware of the reality of the Turkish regime and understand it well; the war that is waged against us is multi-dimensional and complex – it is not restricted to weapons and includes psychological, economic, media and cultural wars."
~ Heval Ahmed Deniz, foreign relations spokesman, PKK.

Hey, does anyone remember the Crescent Security contractors who were kidnapped in Iraq in November 2006? Their fingers turned up in Baghdad today:

U.S. authorities in Baghdad have received five severed fingers belonging to four Americans and an Austrian who were taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The FBI is investigating the grisly development, and the families of the five kidnapped contractors have been notified, American officials said on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the case publicly.

Naturally this news didn't break in the US media, but in the Austrian media. I wonder which body parts will turn up next.

Pro-terrorist website, The Jamestown Foundation, isn't fooled by Erdoğan's bogus "investment" package for Turkish-occupied Kurdistan either. Here's some of what they have to say about Sabrina Tavernise's propaganda piece in yesterday's NYTimes:

It is unclear whether, in his interview with the New York Times, Erdogan was being disingenuous in presenting the promised $12 billion as a new initiative or whether the reporters were unaware of the project’s background and thus assumed it was a new initiative. In fact, the dams, water canals, and roads form part of what is known as the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP), which was first formulated in the 1970s and began to be implemented in the early 1980s.

[ . . . ]

One only has to fly over the region to see the effect of GAP on agriculture in the Tigris and Euphrates basins, transforming large tracts of what was previously semi-arid land into cultivated fields. In areas such as the Harran plain, annual yields of cotton, wheat, barley, and lentils have tripled. However, GAP has had a greater impact on agricultural productivity than on employment. Even though it has undoubtedly created jobs in local service industries, GAP’s overall impact on employment in southeast Turkey has been minor.

As well as being the poorest region in Turkey, the southeast also has the highest rate of population increase. Even in some of the richest areas in the GAP region, the pace of job creation has lagged behind the growth in available workforce. In most of the cities of southeast Turkey the unemployment rate is double or triple the 9.9% average in the country as a whole. Among young people in the cities of southeastern Turkey, unemployment often reaches 50-60%. There is no reason to suppose that, even if they can be completed, the Ilisu and Silvan dams and their associated irrigation systems will have a major impact on employment in the region.

[ . . . ]

It is also difficult to see how the completion of a project that was originally formulated in the 1970s will be interpreted as demonstrating the AKP’s commitment to the region. Perhaps more significant, although it is impossible to be sure of the precise impact of the two-thirds of GAP that has been completed to date on recruitment to the PKK, what is certain is that it has not prevented it. Whatever else the PKK and other militant organizations in southeast Turkey – which is also the main recruiting ground for violent Islamist groups – may be short of, it is not recruits.

Bingo! GAP has done nothing for The Southeast and there is no shortage of recruits.

A better reason for the Ankara regime's insistence on persuing the GAP follies is because it knows that, one day, water will be worth much more to the Middle East than oil is right now, and the regime is setting itself up to control all of the water. That's also the reason greedy Western investors are backing the project.

Make sure to stop by Hevallo's place to check out a recent article on the PKK by Asharq Al-Awsat. A teaser:

[Heval Ahmed] Deniz stressed that the political, military and media circles in Turkey are currently witnessing controversial debates over the benefits and results of the recent battles and over the reasons and motives that necessitated all these enormous human and material losses. He added that when one of the Turkish army commanders told the media that 240 of the 370 Kurdish guerillas in al Zab were killed, he was severely mocked by a reporter who asked, 'Well, why didn't you bring back the bodies with you? And why didn't you advance to Qandil and settle there if you had indeed obliterated all the fighters in al Zab?"'

Go read.

KURDISH REFORM IN FOUR PIECES

"These dams, highly profitable projects for US and European multi-nationals, are deeply connected to the US-led war on the Middle East. With Turkey’s recent bombing and now land invasion (both backed by the US) of the villages in Northern Iraq, and the power struggles over who will control Kurdistan, the Turkish, US and international dam-building hand is strengthened."
~ Maggie Ronayne.

I hope no one's getting excited about the NYTimes article in which Katil Erdoğan is shown as the savior of the Kurds, the bearer of reform. It's already been translated for Turkish media. Several Western media sources are helping to spread it. Headlines would lead the ignorant to believe that the Ankara regime, particularly the AKP government, is actually going to invest in The Southeast in order to help Kurds. It's offering "reforms" for the Kurdish minority. It's going to create better "relations" with Kurds.

And it's all bullshit.

First piece of bullshit:

As part of the push, the government will dedicate a state television channel to Kurdish language broadcasting . . .

This must be a rewrite of a 2002 article from the same NYTimes, in which it was announced that Turkey would allow Kurdish-language broadcasting. As we all know, this little farce churned out pre-recorded programs, censored by the state, in a dialect that has not been comprehensible to the Kurdish population of Turkey. Live Kurdish language TV is absolutely forbidden, as are children's and educational programs. Thus TIME summed up the need for real reform:

Ankara now has two choices: guns — which have never managed to eliminate Kurdish rebellion — or else a bold new policy designed to address Kurdish grievances, encourage economic growth in the region and move forward. Not just a token law allowing one hour of Kurdish language TV and radio broadcast a day (as was passed three years ago). Real, comprehensive reform.

Even now, a director of one of those Kurdish-language stations had to appear in court:

Until now, only heavily regulated local stations have been permitted to broadcast in Kurdish, but for no more than 45 minutes a day and only with Turkish subtitles. Gün TV is one of those stations. Its commissioning editor, Diren Keser, 29, recently appeared in court because the word "Kurdistan" was used in one of the station's programs. The misstep could cost him €50,000 ($75,000).

Kurdish is forbidden in any political or official discourse. The letters W, X, and Q are still forbidden to Kurds (but not to Westerners in Turkey). Private Kurdish language schools that were finally permitted by the regime had to close down because it was difficult for many people to pay tuition in that part of Turkey which has an unemployment rate averaging between 60 and 70%--and higher in some areas.

Second piece of bullshit:

The state will invest between $11 billion and $12 billion over five years to build two large dams and a system of water canals . . .

This is nothing more than GAP, a boondoggle that's been promoted since the 1970s. And since it's been around that long, you would think that some of the alleged benefits would have accrued to the Kurds of Turkey by now . . . but what we have instead is that 60 to 70% unemployment rate. Not only is Turkey, and the AKP in particular, using GAP to reduce the water supplies of Syria and Iraq, but it's also using GAP to continue the state policy of cultural genocide of the Kurdish people:

. . . [O]pponents believe it will devastate the area's environment and cultural heritage, as well as displacing more than 50,000 people.

Among hundreds of sites to be flooded would be the ancient town of Hasankeyf, considered an archaeological treasure and home to at least 3,800 people.

[ . . . ]

. . . [P]rotesters' biggest concern is what they see as inadequate plans for resettling and compensating an estimated 55,000 to 78,000 people displaced by the waters.

Some 199 settlements would be affected by the dam, Ms Ayhan said, but the consultants who drew up the resettlement plans had had access to only limited information.

Many of those displaced would be likely to head for nearby Batman and Diyarbakir, both of which have seen clashes between security forces and Kurdish protesters in recent months.

What about that alleviation of poverty song-and-dance?

The dam builders and assessors finally now mention women in the reports – but only as victims whose poverty is used an excuse for the dam to go ahead. If you believed these documents, the dam would do wonders for women especially.

Of course the promises are not backed up by any concrete plans or funding, there are few local benefits of the dam. As women from Suçeken (Kurdish name Şikefta) village say: ‘our question is: will it be harmful to us?’ But they have not received a truthful answer or even any substantial information about these reports.

There is no evaluation in the report we reviewed of women’s contribution to society through their caring work, I found no evidence that carers would benefit, and in all likelihood they would have to undertake an even greater burden of work in conditions of increased poverty if the dam went ahead. Proposals for ‘training’ and ‘income generation’ projects for women displaced by the dams are not properly budgeted for and the way the report speaks about involving the private sector and NGOs, it seems likely that any money for these programmes would go to professionals for ‘helping the poor’ rather than to women themselves.

The effects of the conflict are hardly mentioned even though, as village women from Suçeken recently informed us: ‘the main problem is war. This is the main reason for our poverty. The first thing we want is an end to war.’

More on that, again from Maggie Ronayne.

Of course, an end to the war is very easy to achieve, if only AKP and its partners, the Paşas, had the will for it.


Third piece of bullshit:

. . . complete paved roads . . .

They're doing that for the military, and only for the military.


Fourth piece of bullshit:

. . . and remove land mines from the fields along the Syrian border . . .

But Turkey has to do that anyway, according to the requirements of the Ottawa Treaty:

Under Article 5 of the Mine Ban Treaty, Turkey must destroy all antipersonnel mines in mined areas under its jurisdiction or control as soon as possible, but no later than 1 March 2014. In September 2006 Turkey confirmed its commitment to the Mine Ban Treaty and informed States Parties that its mine action plan will allow it to meet the 2014 treaty deadline.[59]

This is what's called making a virtue of necessity.

According to Landmine Monitor's 2007 report on Turkey, the most casualties come from the following areas: Bingöl, Şırnak, Hakkari, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Tunceli, Ağrı, Siirt, Van, Sivas, and İzmir. That means that Turkey has a bigger problem than just landmines along the Syrian border, especially because the regime does not mark mines or close off minefields in Kurdish areas.

Since Sabrina Tavernise, the author of the NYTimes piece, has reported extensively from Turkey, she should know the situation better and should have pointed out the chasm that exists between Katil Erdoğan's fantasies and the Kurdish reality.

Atma, Recep, din kardeşiyiz! Küçük at da civcivler de yesin!

SINGING FOR THE PAŞAS

"He [Şemdin Sakık] was not a big leader, but a peasants’s gang chief. For ten years he has behaved this way. We did not bring him forward. Since 1993 it has been the Turks’ plan to propel him centre stage. Even the French secret services warned us that important sums of money ended up in his pockets."
~ Abdullah Öcalan.

Hevallo has a post from last Friday on the Council of Europe's call for an end to the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan. He's included a link to the CoE's report.

He's also posted this familiar photo, the one photo that we've seen of Öcalan's cell. Then there's more description of Öcalan's prison conditions, from the translator's introduction to Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilization:

Ocalan inhabits a cell of 13 square metres equipped with a single frosted-glass window, which can only be be opened a finger's breadth. Fresh air is provided by air-conditioning. The cell is located in a two-storey building with special safeguards. There is a toilet and washing facility in the room. The cell is subject to 24-hour surveillance by camera and peephole by a team of carefully selected Turkish military officers, who are regularly rotated.

The cell is illuminated 24 hours a day, causing the prisoner severe sleep problems. In general, Ocalan is permitted to see his lawyers for one hour once a week in a room adjacent to his cell. These visits are often arbitrarily postponed or cancelled, resulting in complete week-long isolation.

Ocalan's closest relatives are permitted to see him once a month for one hour. They may only see him through a glass partition and speak to him by means of a telephone. Twice a day he is allowed to leave his cell for a one-hour walk in the yard. This yard is about 40 square metres in size; it is surfaced with gravel and surrounded by high walls surmounted with barbed wire.

Contact with the outside world, including access to information, has been reduced to an absolute minimum. Ocalan has no television, and the books and papers supplied by his lawyers are often handed over to him only in part and sometimes not at all. His mail is censored, and he is not allowed to answer any letters. He is allowed no more than three books at a time. His single source of up-to-date information is a radio, which only receives the state-run Turkish channel TRT.

This is the official picture of Öcalan's prison conditions, of Turkey's so-called premier "terrorist."

On the other hand, we have the example of Şemdin Sakık's imprisonment. Sakık was the PKK commander who disobeyed Öcalan's orders and killed 33 off-duty Turkish troops in 1993 ending a PKK ceasefire. Sakık ran from PKK in 1998 and sought refuge with the KDP, who turned him over to the Ankara regime, along with his brother.

After his imprisonment, Sakık began to sing the TSK's tune like a canary. Those who attempted to assasinate Akın Birdal claimed to be inspired to do so by Sakık's false accusations against Birdal, which were vigorously promoted by the irresponsible Turkish media. Sakık also claimed that PKK carried out the assassination of Swedish politician Olof Palme. Turkish journalists Cengiz Çandar and Mehmet Ali Birand were fired from Sabah on the basis of Sakık's "confessions"; they were allegedly taking bribes from the PKK in exchange for promoting the freedom movement.

Sakık was considered Turkey's number 2 terrorist.

Sakık began to write books for the Paşas.

Nowadays, Sakık has his own laptop and website, where you can see a flash player photo gallery of his spacious digs. You can register at his site. You can leave comments. You can read his books online at semdinsakikweb(dot)com.

See how nicely the Paşas treat you when you sing their tune?

When you get done at Sakık's place, check Progressive Historians, where Gordon Taylor has a great post on recent events in Turkey.


NEWSFLASH: Clinton drops Mehmet Çelebi like a hot potato, from ABC News:

"We were unaware of Mr. Celebi's involvement in this film and we obviously do not agree with it," said Clinton campaign senior adviser Ann Lewis on Friday to JTA. "He is no longer raising money for this campaign."

Some Clinton critics note that Clinton campaign has known about this issue since at least about a month ago when the New York Post called to ask about the Celebi connection and asked how Lewis could have only learned about it Friday from JTA.

Asked this morning for clarification, the Clinton campaign told me that they were unaware of Celebri's involvement with the film until around the time of the New York Post item, when Celebri's involvement with the campaign ceased.

It will be interesting to see if Sen. Obama's campaign suggests that Clinton return the $100,000 or so that Celebi bundled for her.

So I guess those Kurdish sources were pretty damned accurate.


And let's not forget Çelebi's connections to Sibel Edmonds' story and the Deep State.

TALABANÎ VISITS ATATÜRK

"The Turkish army could not capture any of our territory, could not get one of our bases, our weapons or even a scrap of nylon. The Turkish army didn't have any chance to rest. When they attacked, we hit them. When they made camp, we hit them. Even when they pulled back, we hit them."
~ HPG Headquarters Commander Bahoz Erdal.

Talabanî's message to Atatürk.

Iraq President Celal Talabanî wrote the following in Anıtkabir's memorial guestbook:

As the chief of the Iraqi delegates, it is a great honor to be in front of Turkey's great leader Mustafa Kemal Paşa Atatürk.

He is the founder of the Turkish Republic and a new life in Turkey.

We greatly respect him in Iraq. We respect the role that he played at the time when Turkey was under foreign interventions, and the role that he played in the recognition of a new Iraq, which used to be a part of the Ottoman Empire.

We pray to Allah for Atatürk to be in paradise.


Celal Talabanî
Iraqi President

Translation from Arabic to Turkish made by Şirvan al Vaili, Iraqi National Security Minister.

Photos of the event:













DTP was not present at any of the festivities. Selahattin Demirtaş summed it up well:

The DTP’s Group Leader Selahattin Demirtas said that Talabani’s visit to Ankara after the ground incursion was dishonorable.

Demirtas said “This visit is all about the discussion of interests and winnings as a result of turning a blind eye to the ground incursion. And these benefits are Talabani’s benefits, not the Kurdish people’s. therefore, we believe that for Talabani to visit Turkey in such a period is dishonorable for the Kurds.

Former DEP parliamentarian and political prisoner, Leyla Zana, had earlier disapproved of a visit at this time.

In the meantime, the Ankara regime continues to press to lift the immunity of a number of parliamentarians, most of whom are members of DTP:

45 reports requesting the lifting of the immunity of 27 MPs have been sent to the Office of the Speaker of Parliament by the Prime Ministerial Office. Most of the MPs concerned are from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).

[ . . . ]

. . . [S]even are about DTP MP Sirri Sakik from Mus in eastern Turkey, and four about DTP MP Nezir Karabas from Bitlis, also in eastern Turkey. Another report concerns Sakik and Karabas together.

[ . . . ]

. . . there were reports prepared on many DTP MPs.

They are from Istanbul, as well as cities in the east and southeast of Turkey: Istanbul MP Sebahat Tuncel, Ahmet Türk and Emine Ayna from Mardin, Serafettin Halis from Tunceli, Fatma Kurtalan and Özdal Ücer from Van, Osman Özcelik from Siirt, Selahattin Demirtas, Gültan Kisanak and Aysel Tugluk from Diyarbakir, Nuri Yaman from Mus, Ibrahim Binici from Sanliurfa, and Sevahir Bayindir from Sirnak.

Including Sakik and Karabas, this adds up to 15 MPs.

This manuever would effectively destroy the DTP parliamentary group, which has been the goal of the Islamist-Paşa alliance since 22 July 2007.

In Van, a Kurdish protester died today of wounds he received from Turkish police on Wednesday:

A Kurdish demonstrator wounded in clashes with police in eastern Turkey has died of his injuries, local officials said Friday.

Mehmet Deniz, a farmer, died in a hospital in the town of Ercis on Thursday.

He was injured on Wednesday, when a festival to celebrate International Women's Day turned into a demonstration in support of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

During the confrontation, police fired shots in the air and Kurdish protesters threw stones, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The cause of the protester's injuries was disputed. Protesters said he was beaten by police. According to other accounts, he was struck in the head by a rock thrown during the melee.

It was the second death of a demonstrator in recent clashes with pro-Kurdish protesters. On Feb. 16, a youth died of injuries after hundreds of Kurdish protesters battled police in southeastern Turkey during annual demonstrations to demand the release of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was captured and imprisoned nine years ago

Hürriyet noted DTP's protest of the death:


DTP protested the death of Deniz, claiming he was killed by police under custody. "Our citizen Mehmet Deniz, 58, was beaten to death by a group of police officers with batons and planks after the March 8 festival held in Van's Ercis town on Wednesday", DTP said in a statement. "We are facing a government which has a tradition of aggressively surpassing every legitimate demand for more rights", it added.


I have no doubt that this case will be referred to IHD for an investigation.

HPG has released photos of the nine şehîds guerrillas from the Zap battles of the recent Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan. From Özgür Gündem:





Hevallo has video showing the burial of the Zap şehîds, as well as a post on Southern Kurds who intend to join PKK in the event of more Turkish aggression.

The WaPo had a couple of people in the mountains during the recent Turkish invasion. Here's something of what they have to report:

The thrust of the ground battle targeted the Zap Valley, a crucial region in the western portion of the guerrillas' territory, home to their headquarters, training camps, underground storage rooms, burial plots and fighters manning their Russian-made antiaircraft Dushka machine-gun positions on the snowy peaks. Erdal, the high-strung, fast-talking guerrilla commander, abandoned his medical school studies in Damascus, Syria, two decades ago to join the PKK. Since then, he has fixated on fighting Turkey.

"It's not random that they are attacking this area," he said. "The army that they brought is enough to capture an area like Zap. But when you use a very big army, it's difficult to organize, and your movements will be slow."

In the end, Erdal said, his guerrillas drove Turkey back down from the mountains after killing more than 120 of its soldiers; Turkey claimed to have lost 24. The disparity was larger on the guerrilla side: Erdal and several others insisted that just 10 of their own were killed, while Turkey put the number at more than 230.

One of the corpses lashed to the branches on the day of the funeral belonged to Ayhan Eruh. During preparations for the funeral, the names of the dead were written on scraps of white paper tied to their chests. This was a scene Roshat Sarhat, a 30-year-old guerrilla who once was a journalist in Istanbul, had no interest in seeing. He stayed in an abandoned stone hut on a hillside far from the service. The bare single room was silent but for the crackle of his radio and the buzz of a surveillance drone high overhead.

"He was my best friend," Sarhat said. Eruh had died on the first day of the battle.

Read the rest and make sure to check out the photo gallery.

SHARKS AT A FEEDING FRENZY

"[T]he 'real key issue here is figuring out a way to have the Turks come to grips with this -- the KGK, and to not just try to eliminate them militarily.'"
~ Admiral William Fallon.

Turkish opposition parties are in a feeding frenzy, like sharks after chum, and, in this case, the chum is Büyükanıt and Erdoğan. The controversy has been raging in the Turkish press since Turkey's retreat from the Medya Defense Zones, and a number of articles have been published in English-language versions of some Turkish dailies. The first is a news analysis from Zaman, a pro-AKP Gülen daily:

MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli said he does not find the explanations of the chief of general staff “convincing,” and CHP leader Deniz Baykal said he believes the army left the work partially undone and “left pieces within the body after the operation.” Does this row mean that the opposition parties no longer trust the military bureaucracy? Or can this dogfight be a reflection of similar strife within the armed forces? Maybe the two opposition parties are trying to put distance between themselves and the TSK as they may have already realized that their perceived collaboration before the July 22 elections worked in favor of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). In any case, what was said cannot be undone, and the members of the TSK have a longer memory than the public; the CHP and MHP leaders will not find sympathy within army ranks for some time to come.

Actually , the only "perceived collaboration before the July 22 elections" would be the deal between Erdoğan and Büyükanıt. Mîr at Rastbêj referred to this deal in a meeting at Dolmabahçe Palace:

The answer lies in the private meeting between Erdogan and the chairman of the Turkish General Staff ,Yasar Buyukanit, in Dolmabahce Palace, a short time before the July 2007 elections. Apparently Erdogan and Buyukanit came to a deal about Gul's presidency, in which the AKP would touch none of Turkish generals' privileges and would support their policies to the end.

This meeting took place on 5 May 2007. What was the first thing Gül did as president? He visited the TSK in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, in September 2007:





It was immediately after Gül's visit that TSK operations intensified in The Region and that was the confirmation that the deal between AKP and the Paşas had been sealed.

Here's another example of the feeding frenzy:

Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal, at his party's group meeting in Parliament yesterday, continued his criticism against the government and the military by saying the operation's end was a surprise "for the world."

[ . . . ]

"We found out from [Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar] Zebari and [PKK broadcast channel] Roj TV about the withdrawal," Baykal said, referring to a statement made by Zebari that came before the Turkish military's announcement that Turkish troops had withdrawn.

Oh, priceless--Deniz Baykal has to get his news from RojTV! And Baykal's not the only one having kittens; so is MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli:

Bahçeli also accused the General Staff of having earned the PKK a good reputation. He said that in its statements about the ground operation the General Staff frequently referred to PKK camps using words of legitimate international warfare such as, “command control units,” “correspondence and logistical installations” and “manned anti-aircraft weapons locations” and therefore legitimized the terrorist group as a guerilla organization.

“We believe that these terms traditionally used to refer to the units and actions of an orderly combatant power, when used in relation with the PKK, attach to the terrorist group a significance it neither possesses nor deserves,” Bahçeli said.

He also said the ground operation, which started on Feb. 21, was begun with pride and great expectations in Turkey but in the end was greeted with disappointment.

Baykal also accused AKP of being space cadets during the fiasco, referring to the change in Erdoğan's speech to the country, which had been distributed to the media several hours before the speech was supposed to be aired. It goes without saying that AKP and the TSK are in deep denial:

However Erdoğan as well as President Abdullah Gül have denied any problem in coordination, and Büyükanıt said in remarks published on Saturday that the prime minister had been informed, though not “minute by minute.”

Büyükanıt repeated assurances on Monday that there had been sufficient coordination among all state institutions and explained that the prime minister had recorded his speech on Feb. 27, before the decision to withdraw had been made.

The thing to watch for now is whether or not AKP changes Turkish law to allow Büyükanıt to stay on as chief of general staff. He's due to retire next year, but if the Islamists need him to maintain the deal, they'll change the law . . . just as they changed the law to allow separatist convict R. Tayyip Erdoğan to become prime minister.

Since there have been so many leaks against the military by the Islamists in the last year, it would be interesting to know whether or not, in making the deal, they threatened to rat out Büyükanıt for all the shit they know he's done in his life, particularly while he was the commander in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. After all, Büyükanıt was the commander in Amed (Diyarbakır) for a portion of the 1990s and that's where the mass grave was found--in the military compound.

Then there was this amazing statement in the opinion section of Hürriyet:

Turkey's military has been thrown on the defensive since last Friday's surprise decision to pull all troops out of Iraq after eight days of often fierce combat with the outlawed PKK separatists in the snow-bound mountains of northern Iraq.

Another opinion-maker at Hürriyet blames CHP and MHP for whipping Turkish public reaction to the fiasco:

Before they [Turkish troops] have even had a chance to get a taste of warm beds back at their barracks, the chorus of voices rises, or more pointedly the long finger of politics points: "Why did you return so early?...."

I say: You go spend a night over there.

Parroting Büyükanıt, I guess this guy forgot what happened to eight other Turkish troops who were returned to Turkey, unharmed, by PKK. Before they get "a chance to get a taste of warm beds back at their barracks," they have to face long prison sentences--a lifetime prison sentence for the ethnic Kurd among them. It must not have been enough to return a bunch of flash-frozen Turkish troops to the homeland.

In other news, it appears that rumors are flying about an attempted resignation by Münir Paşa. Everyone should remember him as the star in a Youtube video which leaked a voice recording of Münir Paşa's confirmation of only 5 killed in Turkey's December bombings of PKK. This news finally made it into Bugün. Büyükanıt vigorously denies any attempt to resign by Münir Paşa.

In the American military, there's an interesting turn of events which has gathered the attention of Turkish media. Admiral William Fallon, the man who put the skids on a Persian Gulf build-up against Iran last year, has stated that Turkey needs to negotiate with PKK. This makes the second time in 24 hours that high-ranking US military officers have suggested the idea, with Lieutenant General Ray Odierno having made a similar, but weaker, statement on the matter yesterday.

Here are some of Fallon's remarks:

"They certainly have instigated lots of trouble, and they've had a lot of casualties in Turkey but the real solution here, to me, is that there's some kind of accommodation reached with this group and with the Turks inside of Turkey, to knock this off," Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of the US Central Command, told a House of Representatives committee hearing on Wednesday. "We certainly recognize the pain the Turks have felt from the outlawed and terrorist activities of this group, but we know that the long-term solution is some kind of an accommodation."

Fallon's remarks came a day after a former senior US commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said negotiations could be conducted with the PKK after a certain period of pressure on the group. "I believe that the long-term solution in northern Iraq is not a military one. And so -- but obviously there's pressure that has to be put on them, so we can start to talk and have negotiations with these terrorist elements," Odierno, who was second in command in Iraq for 15 months until he returned home in mid-February, said.

[ . . . ]

. . . [T]he "real key issue here is figuring out a way to have the Turks come to grips with this -- the KGK, and to not just try to eliminate them militarily." KGK stands for Kongra-Gel, another name for the PKK. "We certainly recognize the pain the Turks have felt from the outlawed and terrorist activities of this group, but we know that the long-term solution is some kind of an accommodation, to scratch some of the itches of the KGK. And so we'll give them the help that we can, but we're really strongly encouraging them to figure out a political solution here," he added.

I guess these guys aren't close enough to retirement to have made some kind of comfortable arrangement with Lockheed Martin yet, but let's remember that former US General Joseph Ralston rejected a political solution back in 2006, soon after his appointment as Turkey's "PKK coordinator."

We might also consider that after Turkey's recent fiasco, and with full American knowledge that no one can remove PKK from the Medya Defense Zones, and that PKK's support among the people does not diminish, the Americans supported a Turkish invasion knowing that it would fail. Now that it has failed, a political solution is obvious to everyone, not only PKK and DTP.

Call me skeptical but I won't hold my breath for any move on this; the US has never been an ally of Kurdistan and cannot be trusted. However, it's a subject that bears watching. If someone has Fallon's email address, send him this link and a link to this. I mean, his nose might as well be rubbed in it.

In the meantime, let's remember why PKK fights. Here's a video of Turkey's finest in Mersin, repeatedly smashing the head of a Kurdish boy into the sidewalk:

It's why they fight. More at Özgür Gündem.

ONE IS LEGAL AND ONE IS NOT

"Why is it that tourists who visit Topkapi Palace in Istanbul can get an audio listening guide in English, French, Spanish, German or Italian, but when I publish a small tourist brochure in Armenian, as a welcoming gesture to Armenian tourists who want to visit their ancestral home, I am accused of committing a crime?"
~ Abdullah Demirbaş.

Yenişehir's Women's Day message:




The same message in Kurdish and Turkish:





They probably won't get in trouble for the first message but they probably will get in trouble for the second. Can you guess why?

Hint: Abdullah Demirbaş and Sur Municipality.

UPDATE: There's more on the Chinese posters at Bianet and another at CafeBabel.com.

TURKISH AGENTS AND MAINSTREAMING PROPAGANDA

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
~ Edward Bernays.

Here's why no one should ever get worked up about what Michael Rubin says or writes:

As a neocon (neoconservative) and member of its think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, Rubin is a paid consultant of Turkey, paid in part to make Turkey’s propaganda case against the KRG. Although there is nothing illegal about this, it should be recognized for what it is. Therefore, Rubin’s article should be approached with extreme caution for it is certainly not an objective scholarly analysis as it claims to be.

[ . . . ]

Furthermore, it should be noted that neocons like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith are the very ones who made most of the mistakes the US blundered into when it overthrow Saddam Hussein. The Richard Perle faction of the neocons to which Rubin belongs has had lucrative consulting deals with Turkey. Rubin also served in the office of neocon Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans that played a role in generating the 935 misstatements on the basis of which the US went to war in 2003. Indeed, US General Tommy Franks (who led the US invasion forces in 2003) famously called Rubin’s neocon colleague Douglas Feith “the dumbest bastard, dumbest [expletive deleted] on the face of the earth."

Actually, Tommy Franks called Doug Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

But the pointing out of Rubin's work as a paid agent of Turkey is just one of the arguments in Professor Michael Gunter's rebuttal to Rubin's January article for the AEI titled, "Is Iraqi Kurdistan a Good Ally?" Many thanks to the friend who pointed out Gunter's reply, and make sure to read the whole thing as the professor makes a lot of other good points.

Whoever checks AEI for Rubin's recent propaganda will notice that it has been translated into Turkish as well as Kurdish--but not in the Kurdish Latin alphabet. It makes one wonder which little cehş is working for the Turks. Kamal Said Qadir is the one who immediately comes to mind, especially since he wrote for the Middle East Forum (MEF) as recently as last summer and the editor of the MEF is Michael Rubin. Scroll down this alphabetical list of the "experts" at the MEF, paid for by interests hostile to Kurdistan.

Coincidentally, Rubin has defended Qadir in two separate posts this week on the National Review Online blog, once on 2 March and once on 4 March.

We can take all of this to be paid-for Turkish propaganda. Whenever you see Michael Rubin's work, think "on the payroll as a Turkish agent".

Speaking of good points, those who follow the Sibel Edmonds case will remember that Philip Giraldi has named lots of Rubin's colleagues from the AEI as either registered foreign agents for Turkey or as otherwise on the take from Turkey:

In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing. Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit.

Remember, too, that Wolfowitz beat a hasty retreat to the AEI after he was caught icing his cupcake at the World Bank.

Don't expect the status of the Deep State in the US to change after the American elections because it was under the Democrats and Clinton that the Turkish Deep State gained a foothold in the American government. It will be the same no matter which Democrat goes to the White House in January.

LOOKING FOR THE BLUE PILL

"He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious."
~ Sun Tzu.

Pro-terrorist think-tank, The Jamestown Foundation, admits PKK is triumphant:

The PKK claimed victory from the withdrawal. Speaking from his still very much intact base in the Qandil Mountains, PKK leader Murat Karayilan announced that Turkey “attacked our forces on three fronts in the Zap region, but failed to achieve their goals even though the Turkish army has advanced technology and jet fighters that flew over the combat zone and bombed us non-stop” (AFP, March 1). While the Turkish army claims to have killed some 250 PKK militants and lost 24 soldiers, the PKK admits to only a handful of losses and claims 130 Turkish soldiers killed and one helicopter downed (which Turkey admits to as well). Karayilan also tried hard to portray the Turkish incursion as an attack on all Kurds, rather than just the PKK. Other Kurdish sources claim that in addition to the PKK’s stiff resistance, the heavy snows of this remote part of Iraqi Kurdistan forced Turkey to abandon the operation (Kurdistan Observer, February 29).

[ . . . ]

Although Turkey undoubtedly caused the PKK some damage with this latest incursion, guerrilla forces typically disperse quickly in the face of large scale attacks, leaving few casualties. Lost supply depots and recruits can then be replaced in short order, particularly if the fighting raises the profile and legitimacy of the guerrillas. In fact, Iraqi Kurdish leaders told Jamestown that they suspect that the latest round of fighting made a weak and isolated PKK more politically relevant than before (Interview with Qubad Talabany, KRG Representative to the U.S., March 1).

The tally of casualties for the PKK and Turkey in this latest round of fighting may remain difficult to determine conclusively. In the larger scheme of things, it may not matter much either: if the PKK manages to portray itself as having given the Turkish army a bloody nose this time around, the group will have burnished its Kurdish nationalist credentials, legitimacy, and stature – which are the main objectives in this kind of guerrilla war.

The fact is that PKK did give Turkey a bloody nose, as it has always done in the mountains. Turkey received another bloody nose at Oremar (Dağlıca) in October of last year when at least twelve Turkish soldiers were killed and eight taken prisoner. The Turkish military has managed to put a total media blackout on the real story behind that battle. Don't expect to see much more on the February invasion and don't expect to see any protests over the recent deaths of 125 Turkish soldiers.

Check more at the link to get an idea of the fiasco the Turkish military retreat precipitated with the AKP government and in the Turkish media.

Of course, none of this fighting is necessary:

It is now many years since the PKK expressed its willingness for talks and negotiation at any level. This party is prepared to change its ideology, methodology and policies; it is prepared to seek solutions within the framework of the Turkish state; it is prepared to abandon the armed struggle and to choose political methods to achieve its aims. It has declared a unilateral ceasefire many times. It has changed its ideological and political language to such a degree that it has lost the support of many Kurds who think that it is a setback for the Kurdish national movement.

In response to all this, Turkey has not taken even the smallest positive step. Its racist policies are still in action. Only in the last few days, the head of a Kurdish municipality was taken to court because he used the Kurdish language in his office.

And now, the Turkish state has received the PKK's decision to declare a unilateral ceasefire with the same old mentality.

Bahoz Erdal believes it would behoove the Ankara regime to ditch "the same old mentality":

"However, if the Turkish state persists in its policy of denying [the rights of the Kurdish people], and continues its military attacks on us, the millions of Kurds living in Turkish cities will be provoked into responding harshly - as was the case in the aftermath of the recent aerial attacks [of December 15, 2007], when Kurdish youths torched government vehicles in Turkish cities.

"Incidents of this kind may proliferate, and eventually, this may lead to the outbreak of a popular uprising in all the Turkish and Kurdish cities that nobody will be able to suppress or control..."

In response to another question about the PKK's reaction to the attacks on it, Dr. Erdal added: "...We have been compelled to use our special forces and the fedayeen battalions in battle. So far, we have been using only about 20% of our forces. We might reassess our defense policy, and this will tip the scales, intensify the clashes, and broaden the scope of the fighting, causing Turkey to become an exact replica of Iraq. But we do not want to reach that point..."

[ . . . ]

About past attempts at negotiations with the Turks, Dr. Erdal stated: "...Ever since the ceasefire expired, on June 1, 2004, we have tried to keep clashes [with the Turkish military] to a minimum. We have been careful not to intensify the clashes, in order to give the political negotiations a chance and in order to create a climate in which a peaceful resolution could be reached.

"Over the last four years, we twice initiated a unilateral ceasefire. We did not do so out of weakness, or because we were unable to face [the enemy], or because we had deteriorated as a military organization, as the Turks and others tried to claim. Not at all. Our [policy] was based on our historical responsibility not to drain [the strength of] our people.

"But the Turkish government did not heed our initiatives, and took advantage of the ceasefires to intensify its attacks and its military operations aimed at destroying us...

"We do not see our struggle as a strictly military struggle. Our cause is primarily a political one, and we believe that the real solution will [likewise] be political, and will be attained through peaceful negotiations..."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Nor could I have said this better myself:

"According to Aliza Marcus, the PKK has the support of the majority of the Kurds in Turkey, because the Turkish government was not and still is not treating them like true citizens."

Take the blue pill. Wake up in your own bed. Believe whatever you want to believe. Reality is difficult for so many to handle.

PKK WAR BALANCE

To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.
~ Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3.

HPG's war balance from the February invasion:

125 dead from the TSK, with hundreds wounded.
1 Cobra helicopter destroyed.
6 individual hybrid weapons.
2 MP5 9mm machine guns
Numerous night and day vision devices.
3 telephones.
Much military ammunition and materials.

HPG also lists nine guerrilla şehîds:

Baran Urfa
Mahmut Manap
78/Hilvan-Urfa
Bedriye
Halil
2002

Cahit Kobani
İbrahim Ahmet
1972 Kobani
Leyla
Muhammed
1993

Gorse Ayhan
Ali Işık
1978/Pervari-Siirt
Tenzire
Ferman
1993

Tofan Botan
Ali Abbas
1985 Kobani
Zeliha
Mahmut
2002

Erdal Amed
Yılmaz Aydın
1980/Çermik-Amed

Agit Caf
Sirvan Ali
1983/Süleymaniye
Fatma
Ali
2006

Zindan Şiyar
Secat Miroyimilan
1985/Maku
Pervane
Ali
2005

Artêş
Faik Aslan
1974/Urfa-Bozova
İmhar
Mustafa
1999

Özkan Garisa
Aydın Işık
1975/Pervari-Siirt
Perihan
Cafer
1995

Şehîd Namirin!

Cries of "Murderer Erdoğan," "Hypocrite Erdoğan," "Long live Serok Apo," "PKK is the people; the people is here" filled the air throughout Turkish-occupied Kurdistan as tens of thousands of Kurds rallied and protested recent TSK operations-turned-fiasco. Protests were held in Nusaybin, Derik, Siirt, Amed, Bingöl, Çukurca, Şemdinli, Tatvan, and Adana. Many clashes occured between protestors and police, including in Istanbul. Roj TV's Sunday evening news reported victory celebrations of the Bakûrî Kurds in Mexmur refugee camp.

Büyükanıt told an interviewer to let those who question TSK's retreat go and spend 24 hours in the mountains of Kurdistan. Apparently, the TSK could only take a week's worth of fighting Kurdish guerrillas.

Of course, since the Turkish general staff insists that it fulfilled all of its objectives (one of which included the annihilation of every last guerrilla), there is no further reason for the Ankara regime to engage in any more military operations in either South Kurdistan or North Kurdistan, and time will never be more ripe for taking Kerkuk.

In this last week it has become clear to the entire world exactly who it is that defends Kurdistan. Nêçîrvan Barzanî talks out of one side of his mouth, saying that civilians were not at all affected by the Turkish invasion. Later, from the other side of his mouth, he says, "The actions of the Turkish military in attacking bridges in the border areas, which are important to people there, makes us anxious."

With the exception of two groups of former peşmêrge, who went on their own to join HPG guerrillas in the fighting, the KRG sent not a single peşmêrge to defend the people of the South. Oil deals must be far too lucrative for the KRG to think about facing death, but the ones facing death in the future will be the children of South Kurdistan, as Hawlati reports several thousand land mines left behind by the TSK.

That's it--the kids will become the peşmêrge!

Kurdish imams in Amed (Diyarbakır) are arrested for speaking out against the attacks on PKK, and the Kurdistan Islamic Council sends greetings of congratulations to PKK, so that support for PKK spreads into the more conservative parts of Kurdish society. We may expect, at this point, to see an even greater increase in support for PKK throughout all of Kurdistan--and an increase in support will mean an increase in recruits.

The Ankara regime's stupidity in conducting operations against the PKK has backfired. US support for Turkish aggression has backfired. Israeli support for Turkish aggression has earned it another enemy in the Middle East . . . an enemy that has not yet been defeated by NATO's second largest army.

The worm is turning.