THE END OF REASON

"The extreme severity of the Turkish measures of repression may temporarily break the spirit of rebellion, but will probably produce a good deal of future hostility to Turkish rule on the part of the remaining Turkish Kurds, and this may eventually complicate the situation on the Irak frontier."
~ Sir Ronald Lindsay, British Ambassador to Turkey, 1925 - 1926.

Here's some commentary on the current situation in Turkey from Ahmet Altan:

Be Reasonable!

These people are the sons of a race that has suffered, been tortured, been forcibly displaced, has been killed on the streets, had their homes burned.

Grievance and anger accumulated in their souls.

You take them, line them up in a single row and walk them, like scenes reminiscent of Dersim, forcible emigration, and Nazi camps. What kind of injustice, understanding, and torture is this?

Those people are the politicians who received their peoples' votes.

If you are suspicious that they are criminal, you can call them and get their statements. All of us give statements, so will they.

Where did the handcuffing come from?

With Homer's saying, this is "adding insult to injury."

Why do you want to insult? What are you trying to prove? What happened to the "democratic initiative"? Are you doing this to make them say, "Let such an initiative not exist."

On the day a new Kurdish party established a group in parliament, you raided and assembled the Southeast's mayors and politicians from their homes toward the morning.

You put handcuffs on their arms. You lined them up in a row and took their pictures. Who will believe your sincerity about the "initiative" from now on? Who will forget these scenes?

You make up an Emine Ayna out of the most peaceful person. What kind of "initiative shit" is this, that you create Nazi camps in the middle of the initiative?

If the government is sincere about this "initiative" it must act sincerely. There cannot be any initiative by breaking peoples' hearts, raising their anger and creating hopelessness in them.

There can't be an "initiative" by handcuffing people.

There can't be an "initiative" by insulting people.

AKP became sluggish after it said "initiative" and created big hopes. Now when they [the Kurdish people] encounter these scenes, how will they dream about peace and how will they believe in peace?

Are you doing all these things to let them say, "I don't have any other ways to protect my honor except by weapons"?

If AKP does not come to its senses, and it does not behave the way the "initiative" requires, it will break all the hopes, one by one. If it kills all the hopes, it will put itself and the whole country in trouble.

Whoever is going to do an "initiative" needs to do it like they mean it.

There can't be any initiative by fearing MHP or abstaining from CHP. Now AKP must be clear. It must say what it will do. Not only the Kurds but also the Turks need this "democratic" initiative.

There isn't any single man who hasn't been crushed by the state in this country.

It is time to take steps that inspire confidence, reign in the state, stop the state from committing crimes, create conditions for all people from every ethnicity and every language to live freely, to strengthen the rule of law.

If you are the one in power, act like it.

After saying, "I will be a historical person, I will change the fate of this country," if you say "but I should not pay any cost" with cunning maneuvers, at the end you will pay the biggest price that you feared without even having done anything.

You will lose control.

The men under your orders will tear down your "initiative" in pieces by causing "'cuffing scenes".

The things that must be done are not secret. Turks and Kurds will be equal; whatever rights the Turks have, Kurds will have; if Turks teach their mother language to their children, so will the Kurds; you will rescue both Turkish and Kurdish municipalities under Ankara's despotic rule and will recognize autonomous regions for them; you will change the law that convicts "stone-throwing children" for eight years; you will change the current constitution that shows the Turk as the master of the country; you will prevent the closure of both Turkish and Kurdish parties; you will open up ways to let the armed people in the mountains to begin a new life within the community; you will enable the people who want to lay down their arms and have their voices heard instead through political means.

An "initiative" starts like this.

With an "initiative" program like this you will guarantee not only the rights of the Kurds but also those of religious people, Alevis, Leftists, laborers. You will free not only the Kurds but also the headscarf and the cemevi, too.

Which one of these did you do; which ones will you do?

The ruling party must decide if it is going to do an "initiative" it should take the required steps. It must not commit injustices reminiscent of Dersim and Seyit Rıza.

Those handcuffs are not put on only the Kurdish politicians but they are put on the whole country, the whole people, the whole future.

If you are the ruler, honest and sincere, take off the handcuffs.

And do not allow oppression in this country any more.

Unfortunately, I think we have reached the end of reasonableness. There is no initiative. There is no political avenue. There is only one language they understand.

Sureya Bedirxan's words from 1928 apply today: "The war between Turk and Kurd is going on--and will go on--until the objective of the Kurd has been attained."

TURKEY IN DEFEAT

"Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong."
~ Henry Ward Beecher.

Many thanks to the comrade who sent this along for your reading enjoyment--a translation of a recent opinion piece by Ahmet Altan at Taraf:

How Was the State Defeated?


This didn't happen with weapons.

Just the "existence" of the PKK was enough for the state to get defeated.

Actually, it wasn't possible for the PKK to defeat the state with weapons.

If the state could stand as a real state, such a defeat would not be the case.

But all the awkwardness of the state was revealed by the Kurdish war that PKK started.

This defeat has arrived as a result of the state seeing itself as "agha" and its people as "servants".

Our "agha" state, which takes every demand from a "servant" as "arrogant disrespectfulness", when faced with Kurds' demand, went into a state of complete "frustration".

These very rightful and just demands could be solved without getting guns involved.

But the disaster called 12 September [the 1980 coup] could not even tolerate Kurds' demands that were as weak as murmuring.

It attacked those people [the Kurds] like a death machine.

As if Diyarbakır prison was used intentionally to make Kurds go crazy because of "anger and pain".

In that prison it [the state] made people live such horrific pains, applied such horrific torture, and belittled people so badly that it did not leave any other way for for Kurds than "going to the mountains".

The state completely lost its mind when Kurds took up arms.

The state never thought about the reason for this uprising, neither did she look for a solution. It shut its ears to the people's complaints and turned down their demands.

It [the state] even denied that they were "Kurds".

It only chose one goal for itself: to supress the uprising at whatever cost.

It didn't even wonder "if there was another solution".

The PKK had a very strong support base among the people and it found external support too.

When the state couldn't annihilate the PKK with weapons, and could not suppress the uprising, it made the mistake that opened the way for its big defeat; the state, with all its institutions, was hurled outside the law.

Today, from almost every corner of The Southeast, bones of murdered people are surfacing.

The state's officers commited these horrific massacres.

The state turned its commissioned officers into "murderers" in those places.

It made the members of its legal system "co-conspirators"; it made its politicians into "inciters of murder"; and used its police as "torturers".

When the state, that should stand by and guard the law, stepped out of the law, then that huge organization [the state] turned into a gang.

Think about the Susurluk gangs, and Ergenekon.

Think about the cooperation with the mafia, murders, drug trafficking, and racketeering clashes.

The state, which was founded defectively anyway, lost its functionality as a "state".

"Criminal freedom" got larger and larger in the state's body, like a cancerous cell, and fed on all its establishment.

Then the state's flesh started falling off.

It turned into what it is today.

We are in a country in which the Constituional Court can violate the constitution.

Forensics medicine can do things bizarrely enough to get the attention of the president.

There is a murder organization named JITEM inside the state and its existence is constantly denied.

With its current structure, our state is not a state anymore.

And this is the big defeat that it experienced against PKK anyway; Not being a state anymore.

The state, in the name of destroying the PKK, destroyed itself, its legitimacy, and its very reason for existence.

PKK still stands.

But our state is vanished.

Now this state must be re-established.

We will re-establish a state which is respectful of people's demands, which serves its people, in which the Constitutional Court is respectful of the constitution, in which the soldiers will do what soldiers must do, and the police maintain law and order.

The state's "agha-hood" is finished. This people is not a "servant" anymore either.

The state's defeat, in fact, opened the road for transformation we should have lived long ago.

The state's and the peoples' roles are being redefined.

Of course there are still some who want to continue the old habits and act like a "agha" but their power is not enough anymore to make people accept this monstrosity as a "state".

To establish a new state, first, peace will be made with Kurds.

Then, the state will stop labeling the people, who are the true owners of this country, as "with--without head scarf", "left wing--right wing", and "Alevi--Sunni".

The sins of the past will be revealed one by one, the perpetrators will be put on trial, and the state and society will make a serious self-criticism.

Then we will have a new state and a new society.

We will establish a state which will not make any of its citizens to have to "take up arms" and which will not torture.

Defeat of a defective state will give birth to a healthy society.

I don't think anything else needs to be added given the context in which Altan writes. I really do like the part about making "a serious self-criticism". That's so very Apocu.

PKK IS NOT A "TERRORIST ORGANIZATION"

"International law calls this organization's actions "terror" if it conducts an armed struggle when it has an alternative way of struggle through the open door of politics and law."
~ Ahmet Altan, Taraf.

Ahmet Altan explains why PKK is not a "terrorist organization", from Taraf:

You Cannot Solve It by Saying It's Terror


I don't know how our generals came to the point that they believe they know the best of everything.

I guess they are getting educated like that in military schools.

They have ideas for every subject and they want their ideas to be implemented.

If the thing they wanted does not come about, they show their weapons.

For instance, they say, "A president whose wife wears a scarf cannot sit in Çankaya."

For this they write memoranda.

Then, in elections when people say, "Sure it can, why shouldn't it," they get surprised.

In addition to having ideas about the scarf issue, they have uncriticizable ideas about the Kurdish question, too.

While talking about the Kurdish question, the general staff talks about, "hitting the 'terrorist' organization."

Is this a solution?

The army is hitting against PKK for twenty-five years.

What is the result?

Thousands of dead, hundreds of millions of dollars spent.

And the Kurdish question remains unsolved in front of society.

PKK continues its existence in the mountains.

I guess before everything, we have to decide what PKK is.

Is PKK a terrorist organization?

The thing that you say as a terrorist organization has ten members, fifty members, one hundred members at the most.

However, PKK is an organization that has thousands of militants, fighting with an army for twenty-five years, can establish an electric power plant, builds a dam, has an organization that is spread throughout the world, has a large financial source, and has the support of an important number of people.

This cannot be called a "terrorist organization."

International law calls this organization's actions "terror" if it conducts an armed struggle when it has an alternative way of struggle through the open door of politics and law.

However this doesn't make PKK a "terrorist organization" but makes it an organization that conducts "terror".

If you think the reverse, I think it will be better understood.

There have been seventeen thousand extra-judicial murders in The Southeast.

Slowly it is revealed that most of these murders have been committed by JİTEM, which is under the authority of the army.

The informers tell everything; at the addresses where the secret witnesses point, bodies come out.

Collecting seventeen thousand people from the street and killing them is certainly terrorism.

Does this conduct make the army a "terrorist organization"?

No.

It makes it an organization that implements terror in The Southeast.

If we cannot understand what PKK is, we cannot comprehend the reason for its existence, and how it survived despite twenty-five years of war, and thousands of its casualties.

PKK is an organization that has its roots in people.

The Turkish view of PKK and the Kurdish view of PKK is very different.

PKK, for some Kurds, is a "holy" organization.

Among Kurds, it has several opponents, people who are angry with it, people who criticize it, but in general all the Kurds think the "Kurdish question" was brought to the country's attention by PKK.

Without understanding these, planning a strategy of "war" or "peace" is convicting yourself to failure.

I know that seeing the realities in this country discomforts some people, but it is impossible to solve the problems without seeing the truth.

Both Turkish and Kurdish politicians, the army, and PKK, too, must get out from the "cyber-world" which was created by a war that lasted for twenty-five years and confront the realities.

If the state's goal is the annihilation of PKK, this is a wrong goal.

Firstly, it is impossible to annihilate PKK with arms.

Secondly, even if you annihilate PKK, you will not be able to solve the problem. A new organization will show up in its place.

The problem is the usurpation of the rights of fifteen million people.

As long as the Turks hold the power of "granting rights" to the Kurds, this problem will continue.

We have to form a state in which no one has a right to "grant a right" to another and we have to form a state in which the rights of all people are guaranteed through a social contract.

The chief of the general staff says, "Cultural rights can be given, but on an individual basis."

He says Kurds cannot do politics.

He cannot say this.

In a normal country society will tell such a general, "It's none of your business."

These are the decisions that civilian politicians will decide.

Whether cultural or political rights will be given, who is going to talk with whom, are not the jobs of the military.

If the soldiers are going to do politics, who is going to do the military's job?

We have to take the military out of these issues.

Then we have to sit and evaluate the situation realistically.

The Kurdish question is not a question that can be solved by reducing it to a "terrorist" question by calling PKK a "terrorist organization", and passing the issue of "who will give rights to whom" to the military.

The Kurds and the Turks are going to sit and talk.

They will seek ways where everybody can feel themselves as "first-class" citizens, secured, comfortable, and happy.

Furthermore this is not an option anymore for the two sides. This is a "must"; because life commands it with its fearsome power.

For more on PKK's position on this subject, see:

Notes from Kandil, 1

Notes from Kandil 2: This Isn't Your Dad's PKK

Notes from Kandil 3: Where There's a Will . . .

Notes from Kandil 4: Possibilities

Karayılan in The Times

THE MAKING OF A KURDISH GUERRILLA

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
~ The Declaration of Independence.

First let me ask if you've seen it? The latest video from Hakkari? Here it is:

Okay. That was a Special Operations police beating a fourteen-year-old Kurdish boy last week.

Do you remember last year, during Newroz, what the police did to another fourteen-year-old from Hakkari? Here's a refresher:

Both were violent actions of Turkish police, which has enjoyed impunity for such actions--and worse--in North Kurdistan for decades.

Now, here's Ahmet Altan channeling what most of us have been saying for decades:

It's Easy to Say "PKK Is a Terrorist Organization"


Have you watched it?

In a wide, rural area fifty or sixty kids were "demonstrating", so they say they were throwing stones at Special Operation police with heavy weapons.

What will happen if the police never go there?

The kids will shout for a while, then disperse.

These are kids, aged thirteen or fourteen, the place where they "demonstrate" is a huge rural area.

Oh, no! Kurdish kids cannot demonstrate; they cannot shout in rural areas.

The police, with weapons in hand, are attacking the kids with pressurized water.

One of the police is capturing a skinny fourteen-year-old boy and knocking him on the ground. . .

And is starting to hit the boy's head with the butt of his weapon.

He is hitting to kill.

There is no reason to hit the boy, however.

Since the police cannot control his own anger, he is hitting the boy violently with the butt of his weapon.

Then another police is congratulating the police who beat the boy.

This is not the violence of one or two police.

In the Southeast the entire state is like this.

How can a state rule there while having such hatred and abhorrence toward a people?

Besides, why should it rule there?

Why should Turkey resist ruling a people that it hates so much?

If you see them and their small children as "enemies" that much, to knock them on the ground and crack their skulls with the butt of your weapon, then you cannot stay there.

Whoever watched those scenes remembered the Israeli troop who smashed and broke a Palestinian's arm with a rock.

They remembered the English who coldly raked demonstrators with machine guns in India.

This state does not see the Kurds as its own.

For that reason, it behaves like an "occupying force" there.

It is killing and throwing them into wells, burning the villages, and filling jails with [Kurdish] children.

In the "calm" times when we are closest to peace, it is knocking them down on the ground and trying to smash their heads with the butt of a gun.

We saw these scenes because there were cameras there. They are behaving like this in front of the cameras.

You can imagine what they are doing in the mountain villages, towns, streets in the middle of nowhere, where they don't have cameras.

If they act like this to you, they hit your children's heads with the butts of their weapons, what would you do?

Who is going to protect those people?

Do you understand why this war continues for twenty-five years?

Do you understand why those Kurdish children go to the mountains knowing consciously that they will die?

They do go.

What can they do?

If you do not give them the opportunity to protect their lives, their honor, and their children, what are they going to do? Who are they going to trust? Where are they going to shelter?

They go to the mountains.

The newspapers write, "PKK is a terrorist organization" and politicians say so.

Many people, including me, say "PKK should finish the war".

It is easy to say "PKK is a terrorist organization".

Then what is JİTEM that shoots people in the back of the head?

Then what is Special Operations [police] that smash children's heads with the butt of a weapon?

Isn't what they're doing "terrorism"?

If you terrorize a people, without discriminating children or anyone, what is that people going to do?

How will these people defend themselves?

You tell me . . .

Tell me how this people will protect their children.

If you label a people as an enemy, you burn their villages, you insult their women, you imprison their men, you hit the children's head with the butt of a gun, that people will go to the mountains.

In fact, they did go . . .

Then you will fight for years and be the cause of the death of more people.

After watching those scenes on TV, that horrible violence, the satisfaction those police derived from that violence, I thought that the state cannot rule there and also I thought that it does not have a right to rule there either.

You are going there, saying "I am your state"; is this the way to be their state?

Is making armed soldiers walk in the provinces that are 90% Kurdish, stressing "Turkishness" and giving the message that "We will smash you with weapons," the way to be their state?

What does this state want?

War? Peace?

By torturing an entire people, you cannot win a war. Throughout history, no one won.

It is possible to win wars against armies, but it is impossible to win against people.

Do you want peace?

There cannot be any "peace" by hitting children's heads with the butt of a weapon.

Savages can win neither war nor peace.

I saw how they hit that boy's head with the butt of their weapon . . .

What difference is it if that land belongs to you or not?

That land might be yours but that people is not.

The people, that you hit their child with the butt of your gun, neither will be yours nor will be with you.

That land will belong to the one who can provide them an environment where their children can run without being shot, without being beaten, without being hit with the butt of a gun, and where they can laugh and can play.

Then you will not be afraid of saying that land's name, which is known for centuries; you will say Kurdistan with great comfort. You will sit with those children and sing a song, and read a poem from Ahmet Arif.

The breaking of an arm, the smashing of a skull, the "voiding" of votes, the mass arrest of DTP politicians and political workers . . . these are the actions that send new recruits to the mountains in streams.

And let me remind you that the state bears the greater responsibility because it has failed miserably to live up to its responsibilities as a state. Here is the principle:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Furthermore, from UN Resolution 3103 of 1973, the UN:

Solemnly proclaims the following basic principles of the legal status of the combatants struggling against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes without prejudice to their elaboration in future within the framework of the development of the international law applying to the protection of the human rights in armed conflicts:

1. The struggle of peoples under colonial and alien domination and racist régimes for the implementation of their right to self-determination and independence is legitimate and in full accordance with the principles of international law.

2. Any attempt to suppress the struggle against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes is incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples21 and constitutes a threat to international peace and security.

3. The armed conflicts involving the struggle of peoples against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes are to be regarded as international armed conflicts in the sense of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and the legal status envisaged to apply to the combatants in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and other international instruments is to apply to the persons engaged in armed struggle against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes.

4. The combatants struggling against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes captured as prisoners are to be accorded the status of prisoners of war and their treatment should be in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, of 12 August 1949.

5. The use of mercenaries by colonial and racist régimes against national liberation movements struggling for their freedom and independence from the yoke of colonialism and alien domination is considered to be a criminal act and the mercenaries should accordingly be punished as criminals.

6. The violation of the legal status of the combatants struggling against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes in the course of armed conflicts entails full responsibility in accordance with the norms of international law.

So when Ahmet Altan says, "I thought that the state cannot rule there and also I thought that it does not have a right to rule there either," he is right. And when HPG fights a defensive war from the mountains, it is not only right, it is obligated.