PRECIOUS THINGS

"When the militants catch a Kurd they feel like they have got a precious thing."
~ Ata Osman, Başurî Kurd.

There is something new at IWPR about the kidnapping of Kurds along the "Highway of Death" or the Uzem Road, the main thoroughfare between Baghdad and Kerkuk.

According to Kurds who have survived kidnapping, thanks to families who were able to pay ransom, the kidnappers fall into three groups: ordinary criminals, former Ba'athists, and religious nutcase jihadis. All of these have one thing in common, and that is that they are all Arabs, a group of people who consider that being a Kurd is a crime in itself.

Even the Arab police are in full support of their brother Arabs, proving that there is a certain "honor" among all of these thieves and murderers. The "honor" extends to the entire Western media, every journalist of which has destroyed billions of trees to convince all the rest of us what victims the Arabs truly are. Nowadays the same "unbiased" journalists waste precious bandwidth spewing their victimization lies all across the internet.

Don't believe me? Compare the media's coverage of the so-called "humanitarian" crisis of the Palestinians, who are nothing more than garden-variety Arabs (absolutely no different than the Arabs prowling the Uzem Road to steal from and murder Kurds), with their coverage of TSK's killing of an HPG gerîla yesterday, or with their coverage of the Kurdish boys arrested by Iran the other day for their participation in the serhildan last August.

Still don't believe me? How much of the Amed serhildan was carried in the Western media? How much reporting was there of Kurdish children, dead from bird flu, because the Turkish government purposely refused to act swiftly to contain the spread of the disease in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan? That's right, those children were "Turkish," weren't they? How many reports appeared in the Western media about the serhildan in Iranian-occupied Kurdistan last year? Or of the serhildan in Syrian-occupied Kurdistan the year before? How many reports were ever carried about the fight for freedom under Barzanî Namirî?

Don't think that the Right is any better in this regard. They simply come at it from a different angle, the terrorist angle. They are masters at ignoring the atrocious treatment that their "secular and democratic" ally, Turkey, has dished out to Kurds since 1923.

Remember Erdogan, who never misses an opportunity to engage in his own brand of Turkish antisemitism to support every Palestinian Arab with a hangnail? Yet Erdogan is on record as stating that he would not support a homeland for Kurds even if it were located in Argentina, and he orders Turkish security forces to murder Kurdish women and children as if they were rats.

But the Palestinian Arabs, all two million of them, receive all of Western media's attention, are lavished with Western money, and are supported by every Lunatic Fringer from here to Timbuktu. The Western hypocrites will do anything to secure a homeland for their Arab darlings while, at the same time, either completely ignore the right of 40 million Kurds to have any piece of land to call home or label as terrorists any Kurd who fights against the repressive regimes established by the West.

Let an Arab in Gaza or the West Bank go cross-eyed or suffer a case of indigestion, and you will read about nothing else in Western headlines, you will hear of nothing else from Western academe, you will see nothing else on vastly overrated Western TV broadcasts.

This is not because the West loves Arabs. It's not because other Arabs love Arabs. It's not even because other Muslims love Arabs. Think about the Muslim world's total silence over the genocide of majority Muslim Kurds (For that matter, think about the Muslim world's total silence over Muslim-on-Muslim violence, even if you ignore the Kurdish factor in that equation). It's because they all hate Jews that much. If Jews were the enemy of Kurds, you would hear about nothing but the genocide of Kurds in the Western media and in the Muslim world. If that were the case, everybody would know every detail of Kurdish history and every detail of every atrocity perpetrated against Kurds by every Turk, every Persian, every Arab, by every Muslim, and by the West's callous permission of those atrocities.

As reality stands, Kurds don't have Jews as enemies. Kurds have had the misfortune to have all the darlings of the West as their enemies--Turks, Persians, and Arabs. For this reason, the West, the Turks, the Persians, the Arabs, the entire Muslim world, will say nothing about the kidnapping, murder and sexual abuse of Kurds along the Uzem Road. The Arab police, the US military, the US government, the Baghdad government will all continue to support the same.

"When the militants catch a Kurd they feel like they have got a precious thing," he said. “Whatever they want you have to give them, if you don’t have it you should get it somewhere, or they will kill you."

Indeed. When they catch a Kurd, they have caught a precious treasure.

What's a Kurd to do, then? Fight only for Kurdish interests, no matter where you are or how you fight. Educate yourself so that you can clearly see through the lies, including the lies of omission. Forget the bullshit that divides Kurds and don't let anyone generate more bullshit. Never think your allies are your friends; there are no friends in politics, only in personal life. Never confuse these two, because one day, the ally will become expendable.


Hey! Do you think if we bombed Jerusalem, anyone would pay attention?

DIPLOMATS, ARMS SALES, AND TERRORISTS

“Diplomacy - The art of letting other people achieve your ends” ~ Unknown.

The Washington Times has a little article on all the woes of the Turkish ambassador to the US, Nabi Sensoy, and the burden that seems to weigh on him the most is the big, bad PKK. As usual, though, it really isn't about the PKK; it's really about Kurds:

The PKK units, Mr. Sensoy said, have received arms, safe passage and other logistical help from the two leading Iraqi Kurdish parties -- both of which are strongly allied with Washington.

"The United States is on record saying it is an enemy of terrorism wherever it is in the world," Mr. Sensoy told editors and reporters at The Washington Times yesterday. "We take the United States at its word."

Right, he takes the US at it's word. No one takes Turkey at its word, so we know that this guy doesn't take the US at its word. Phony naivete just doesn't play well coming from a Turkish diplomat. Besides, if the US really meant what it said, it would have shut down the Ankara regime a long time ago.

I certainly cannot understand why Mr. Sensoy, and the regime he represents, is so concerned as to any assistance the PKK might receive from their southern brothers, because it seems to me that the Turkish regime has received quite a bit more assistance from the US. In fact, from 1950 to 1998, Turkey received some $11,662,920,000 worth of military hardware (see Table 1), $10.5 billion of that figure was delivered between 1984-1998. $8 billion of that $10.5 billion bill was paid for with the generosity and hard-earned money of the US taxpayer. In fact, the American public probably doesn't realize how very generous it has been.

Oh, well, there's one born every minute.

But Turkey is just protecting itself from all its aggressive neighbors. . . right? If you believe that, then you're a sucker too. There was only one war Turkey has waged since 1984, and that is its dirty war against the Kurdish people. The US officially recognized this as early as 1995 (unofficially, the US has known all the dirty details from Day 1) :

The first official acknowledgment of the role of U.S. weaponry in human rights violations in Turkey came in a June 1995 State Department report that was conducted as the result of legislation promoted by key members of Congress such as Rep. John Porter (R-IL). Although State Department investigators were denied access to key conflict areas in the southeast by the Turkish government, their summary of the evidence they were able to gather was conclusive: "U.S.-origin equipment, which accounts for most major items of the Turkish military inventory, has been used in operations against the PKK during which human rights abuses have occurred." The report also found "highly credible" evidence that U.S.-manufactured Sikorsky Black Hawk transport helicopters, Bell-Textron Super Cobra attack helicopters, and FMC Corp. M-113 armored personnel carriers had been used to attack Kurdish villages and violate the human rights of civilians. Citing evidence from 1992 through 1995, during the height of Turkey's campaign to depopulate Kurdish villages, the report notes that "it is highly likely that such equipment was used in the evacuation and/or destruction of villages."(30)

Human Rights Watch knew all about it too:

Human Rights Watch also found that U.S. made tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other weaponry were directly implicated in abuses perpetrated by Turkish security forces. One specific example underscores how these U.S. systems have been used by Turkish forces in their campaign of destruction against Kurdish villages:

"A former Turkish soldier told Human Rights Watch that on August 18-20, 1992, troops used U.S.-supplied M-48 and M-60 tanks, 105mm artillery, U.S.-supplied M-113 armored personnel carriers, U.S.-designed M-16 rifles, and LAW anti-tank rockets to assault the town of Sirnak following an alleged PKK provocation. Twenty-two civilians died in the assault, sixty were wounded, and many of the town's 25,000 residents fled in panic. Much of the town was destroyed."(32)

Human Rights Watch has also confirmed that Turkish forces often use U.S.-origin small arms to commit abuses: "Particularly troubling was the preference displayed by Turkey's special counterinsurgency forces, who are renowned for their abusive behavior, for U.S. designed-small arms such as the M-16 assault rifle," made by Colt Industries. The report goes on to note that U.S.-designed M-16 rifles and M-203 grenade launchers, capable of firing a wide range of 40 mm high explosives, are "prevalent in the Jandarma and special police forces, which have the worst human rights reputation in Turkey's southeast." In addition, officers in the Bolu and Kayseri Commando brigades of the Turkish army, who have been trained by the U.S. and "are considered far more abusive of the civilian population than the regular Army," carry U.S.-made M-16s.(33)

Tell me, who are the terrorists here? Who is carrying out terrorism? Who is providing material assistance? Funding? Training? The ones who engage in all these activities are the terrorists. Those who remain silent in this knowledge are the terrorists. Those who continue to support the Turkish state and its allies in this are the terrorists. Those who fight against it are not terrorists. Add to that the fact that, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who suggests that Kurds should have simply acquiesced in continued repression, that Kurds should have done nothing, well, those people are terrorists too.

"Good Kurd" and "Bad Kurd." Both fight back, but both get different labels, and anyone who applies these labels is also a terrorist, because the labels are the means by which Kurdish blood is spent to pay for someone else's interests.

According to The Washington Times, Mr. Sensoy acknowledges that the US has a bit of trouble in Iraq so, as much as his regime would like to see the US engage Kurds militarily, i.e. commit genocide for Turkey, he realizes that the US is unlikely to go for this idea. The US has a history of sitting around and letting everyone else commit genocide, such as against the Armenians, in Cambodia, in South Kurdistan, in the former Yugoslavia (Okay, former Yugoslavia was something the Europeans claimed they had perfect control over, but when everything went south, the Europeans did what they always do--Nothing, which is exactly what they are doing about the repression of Kurds today.), in Rwanda, in Darfur, but the US is not in the habit of actually engaging in genocide. . . unlike Turkey.

Instead of committing their genocide for them, the Ankara regime would like the US to lean on the KDP and PUK, at least to get PKK out of the way so that Turkey can easily invade to take over Kerkuk, all under the pretext of defending the sacred honor of the long-suffering Turkmen population there, no doubt. A new North Cyprus scenario, sans l'eau, but with plenty of oil. And now that more oil deposits have been discovered in South Kurdistan, Turkey is lusting after Kurdish land like a jihadi lusts for virgins, all of which is covered over with the same plaintive refrain we always hear:

"You have great influence over these people [KDP/PUK]," he said, adding that average Turks were increasingly frustrated by the apparent inability to contain the PKK threat from Iraq.

These people . . . Mr. Sensoy can't even bring himself to say the word, "Kurds." I can picture the Turkish ambassador now, batting his eyelashes rapidly as he turns misty over the feelings of the Turkish people. Unfortunately, what makes all of this emphasis on "feelings" so phony is the Turkish ambassador's complete inability to turn misty over the feelings of the Kurdish people, especially the Kurdish people his government has terrorized for over eighty years.

Speaking of Turkish terrorism, Mr. Sensoy continues with remarks on Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus and the problems Turkey is facing with the EU over maintaining its occupation. Hasn't this gone on long enough? I'm surprised Turkey hasn't extended the invasion to take over the entire island. That would reunify it, wouldn't it? Go on, Mr. Sensoy, you know you want to.

The end of the article was pretty frightening:

Turkey remains central to U.S. foreign policy on a variety of fronts, including Iran's nuclear program, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and relations with the Islamic world. Mr. Sensoy said Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation with a rigorously secular democratic government, was a key to avoiding a "clash of civilizations" in the post-September 11 world.

So, Turkey is central to US foreign policy over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Well, now we know why that's all screwed up. In that light, the idea of Turkey being central to negotiations over Iran and nukes should make everyone want to run for the mountains. Yikes!

Pretty ironic too, how everyone believes this nonsense about Turkey having a "rigorously secular democratic government" when it controls all religion and violates everyone's free expression rights. How can "insulting Turkishness" or "denigrating the army" be a crime anywhere but in a fascist state? How can Kurdish mayors be charged, tried and convicted for saying that Turkey contains multiple ethnicities, or for saying that there should be a general amnesty for PKK, if Turkey is not a fascist state? And how can the rest of the world go on playing its part in this disgusting charade, while at the same time making a pretence of sincerity in its calls for "peaceful solution?"

By the way, Mr. Sensoy, did your security goons get all the photos of the Washington demonstrators uploaded to their computers yet? I remember that. Do you?

A few small items:

First of all, Michael Totten is going to have an article about the Başurî Kurds in the August/September issue of Reason magazine. If you're in the US, you can find Reason at Barnes & Noble, probably at Borders, too. If you aren't in the US and can't get Reason, you can bookmark ReasonOnline and watch for the article later in the fall.

There is also a very interesting post about Erdogan giving lessons on freedom of speech to the European Parliament at Ovi Lehti.

I wouldn't want anyone to miss the moron at Informed Comment. Can anyone tell me exactly what the "Kurdistan Regional confederacy" is? I have never heard such a thing in my life, but it must exist because Professor Know-It-All says so. Hehehe. . . actually he's dissing Kurds here because it's not the first time he has refused to use the proper name of South Kurdistan's government (Shhh, I'm not going to say what it is because I find stupidity to be highly amusing).

Informed Comment is the internet version of the Sunni Triangle, ideologically speaking. Of course, if these smartasses are serious about Iraq's investment situation, I know I can link them up with a vacation, mortgage, or--what the hell--a textile factory in Baquba. I'm sure any number of Rastî readers would be happy to help out too. If you are, let me know. Together, we can help the smartasses of the world put their money where their mouths are. Besides, it would be interesting to see what a fine, Ba'athi batik looks like.

Finally, there's some information at KurdishInfo about TSK atrocities against the gerîlas, in particular a gerîla from Rojhelat. This information is similar to other news that has come out slowly in the last few months. If you are squeamish, don't scroll all the way down that page, just read the information. You have been warned.

Where did Turkey get all the weapons and training to do this, and who, exactly, are the real terrorists?

THE USUAL HISTRIONICS. . . AND KERKUK

"Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering." ~ Carl Gustav Jung.

It looks like everyone noticed that DTP held its congress over the weekend in Ankara and, along with that, they finally noticed that many people were not only carrying DTP flags, but also KKK flags and banners of Apo--all the same stuff that people did during Newroz. Back before Newroz, when all of the Turkish press was issuing dire predictions of violence of epic proportions, they had so brainwashed everyone with this nonsense that I think every citizen of Turkish descent spent the day at home with the blankets pulled over their heads. For that reason, they missed all the DTP and KKK flags and banners of Apo.

They didn't miss any violence because there was no violence to miss. . . in spite of all the DTP and KKK flags and banners of Apo.

Ilnur Cevik is very concerned about all this today. He thinks "DTP is making a fatal mistake", and he's worried about "the sensitivities of the Turkish public. . ." See, it really is all about two things. It's either all about feelings, as in this example, or it's all about image, but it's never about justice or substance.

I am amazed that Ilnur seems a bit surprised that DTP clearly states it cannot distance itself from PKK, but then Ilnur is a bit out of touch. On his own media's website, The New Anatolian, back in December, there was an interview with Ahmet Turk and Aysel Tugluk, in which they clearly explained why nothing of Kurdish politics in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan can be separated from PKK. If you missed it, I posted something about it here. Why no big outcry then?

Ilnur says something interesting:

The Kurdish cause in Turkey is to secure the conditions to be treated as first class citizens of the Turkish Republic.

First of all, thank you for defining the Kurdish cause, Mr. Turk. Secondly, thank you for admitting that Kurds are not first class citizens of the TC.

On that second point, we are in agreement. But it is that second point that begs the question: Why are Kurds not first class citizens of the TC? We know the answer to that, and it is because Kurds are not Turks. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the PKK, either, so don't bother to go there. This whole thing started back in 1923, with the racist policies of a republic that never existed before, in which there was no Turkish identity and, in order to create the Turkish identity out of nothingness, the Kurdish identity had to be suppressed by whatever means possible. Every means possible was used, and is still used, to attempt to crush The Other, the Kurds.

With all of this Kurdish blood poured out, courtesy of the Ankara regime, Ilnur seems to believe that some kind of "brotherhood" can be created between Turks and Kurds, but apparently this "brotherhood" can only be created if Kurds give up "discord and divisions," like insisting on being Kurds, like insisting on defining their own cause, like insisting on the reality that PKK has created on the ground and in the hearts and minds of Kurds. Kurds fell for the brotherhood lie once before, from a Turk who was perpetually three sheets to the wind.

Ilnur boldly states:

Now the Kurds have realized their mistake and want to make amends.

You're right, Ilnur, Kurds do realize their mistake in believing the lies about equal citizenship and brotherhood and all the other garbage. For this reason, you had better get used to seeing DTP and KKK flags and banners of Apo.

Meanwhile, Ahmet Turk gave everyone a reality check with his recommendations for a solution, which can be read at KurdishInfo. They include totally scrapping the current Turkish constitution, which was written by pashas in order to protect the state from the people; revoking the new anti-terror law draft; political amnesty; total prison reform; abolition of Korucular; return of the forcibly displaced and the reconstruction of the thousands of villages destroyed by the state; and changing all geographical names from their enforced Turkish names to their original Kurdish names.

These issues, and others listed at KurdishInfo, are the substance of the problem and it is these issues which are ignored for the fluff of Turkish "feelings" and "image." Since the Ankara regime refuses to discuss anything with the legitimately elected representatives of the Kurdish people, there is really only one answer: Separatism.

Before I forget, on the day the DTP congress began, Ahmet Turk was charged "for praising crime and a criminal for referring to outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan as “Sayýn,” which is similar to “Sir” in English," and Hurriyet reports that DTP is under investigation for the whole affair. Hurriyet appears to be scandalized by the fact that guards at the doors of the congress were "dressed in the traditional outfits of mountain-based PKK fighters." In other words, they were dressed like Kurds.

Hmm . . . someone needs to run a poll to find out if it's worse to wear a headscarf or to dress like a Kurd.

Everyone should remember Hurriyet as one of the two Turkish papers who instigated the assassination of Akin Birdal.

There was also an interesting article today from the Washington Post about the Deep State. Unfortunately, it is only merely interesting to see the subject come up in American media. It would have been a far better report if it had included the fiasco which has been the Ankara regime's handling of the Semdinli bombing investigation and trials, as well as the extremely suspicious arrest of Seferi Yilmaz last week.

Flash-bulletin.de is carrying an AFP report on everyone's favorite Kurdish bad boy, Osman Baydemir. He's now up on charges that he's a member of the omnipotent PKK, something reminiscent of the pashas' recent attempt to blacken Eren Keskin's reputation through a couple of advertisements in Hurriyet and Cumhuriyet. Not unusual, given that both Osman and Eren have spent many years in IHD leadership positions, but at this point, with Osman's well-earned and extreme popularity, the TC would like nothing better than to get rid of him, and they are willing to settle for a 10-year sentence . . . for the moment. The TC would prefer, of course, to get rid of this troublesome Kurd permanently, kind of like they wanted to get rid of Akin Birdal.

If something should happen to Osman, well, let's just say that the TC doesn't know what a serhildan is . . . yet.

By the way, if anyone has any doubts about Turkey's interest in Kerkuk, they should have a look at a business item at The New Anatolian. How's this for a tease:

According to a 1925 agreement between Turkey and Iraq, the Iraqi government is suppose to give 10 percent of Kirkuk oil revenues to Turkey. But Baghdad sent only nominal sums of this Turkish share until 1938. Now Ankara is trying to figure out how to raise the issue of this historical debt of Iraq to compensate its losses from the pipeline operation.

Why didn't the TC bring this up earlier, like with Saddam, for example? Because under Saddam, there was not much chance of Kurds gaining control of Kerkuk, was there? Puts a whole new perspective on those Mehmetciks at the border, doesn't it? On the other hand, if Turkey wasn't working so closely with certain Sunni Arab tribes and certain sections of the Turkmen population in order to sabotage pipelines out of Kerkuk, there wouldn't be such a drastic shortfall in the amount of oil leaving Kerkuk.

Might as well just invade, right?

Like I keep telling you, ain't none of it about the big, bad PKK.

AMERICA ENRICHED

"Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life." ~ John F. Kennedy

I am deliriously happy today because today, for me, has been a holiday, my own personal holiday, my own day of rejoicing.

I have learned that a friend from Amed has arrived in the US and he may now begin to work toward his dreams, dreams that were never possible in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan for a Kurd, dreams that now have an equal opportunity to become a reality. No one here will tell him he must forget that he is a Kurd in order to attain his dreams. No one will tell him he can't speak Kurdish or that he must speak Turkish, nor will the police detain and torture him for the crime of being a young, male Kurd.

I sat in the car outside the office for half an hour to finish the call with my friend before going in. All of my coworkers understood. Even my boss understood. But, then, half of them are immigrants too. Even the man in the office next door is an immigrant. They all understood why it was a holiday for me.

I remembered the last time I arrived in Amed, and how my friend was waiting for me, with an escort of more friends. I was deliriously happy then too, and so excited. It didn't matter that I had traveled for two days, or that only a few short hours before I had been fighting sleep in the domestic terminal of the Istanbul airport, waiting for the flight that would finally take me to the capital of Greater Kurdistan. I remember going together to a kebapci to eat. I remember laughing and talking and laughing some more. I remember feeling at home, feeling safe within the stout walls of ancient Amed. I remember that it seemed as though every other thing and every other place on earth had ceased to exist.

The day that one arrives in Amed is also a holiday, a day of rejoicing, and now it seems that Amed is a little closer.

We talked about dreams, we talked about going back to Amed for a visit. We talked about serhildan, we talked about Osman Baydemir, and we returned to dreams. We will talk about all these things, and more, in the future.

At the same time I feel a bittersweet undercurrent which comes from knowing what the real situation is in Kurdistan and of thinking of the battles that will surely come in the future. Nor can I help but feel indignation at a situation of repression that prevents young Kurds from being able to freely attain their dreams within Kurdistan. But I can't think about this now; I will think about it tomorrow.

Today, in my heart, I am rejoicing for my friend because I know that he is happy. I know that he is from a good Kurdish family. I know that he will become an asset to America, just as so many Kurds before him have become assets to America.

All across the nine time zones of the US and its possessions, life went on as usual today. Does America realize it has been enriched once again?

SENTENCING

"Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche.

From the Associated Press:


Rasheed Qambari: 3 years' probation; fined $6,600.

Ahmed Abdullah: 18 months' probation; fined $3,100.

Amir Rasheed: 1 year probation; fined $2,268.


Rasheed Qambari received the heaviest punishment because he challenged the Patriot Act, forcing it to trial. Challenge is something fascists do not like; just ask Saddam. Challenge is why the assistant US attorney in the case, William Gould, recommended imprisonment for Qambari, while recommending only probation for Abdullah and Rasheed, who decided to plead guilty. This sentencing is also a message to Fadhil Noroly, whose federal trial is scheduled to begin on 11 July, not to challenge the Patriot Act either.

The most humorous part of the AP report were Judge Glen Conrad's words to Qambari:

But Conrad told Qambari, who was a math and physics teacher in Iraq, "You should have known better. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand ... that this was a recipe for disaster."

Nor does it take a rocket scientist to realize that, as a math and physics teacher, Qambari is far closer to actually being a rocket scientist than anyone else in the courtroom--including the judge.

The one who makes the most sense in the report is the Kurdish imam of the community, Kakahama Askary:

While he was relieved that none of the men will be imprisoned, Askary said there are many people in the Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq who are suffering with little food or water and no medical care and need financial help from their relatives in this country.

"The Patriot Act should be changed," he said.

Better yet, the Patriot Act should be found unconstitutional.

In a report carried on a local television station's website, WHSV, Askary had more to say:

"They break the law we can say that technically, but they didn't break the spirit of the law, that's very important," says Kakahama Askary, a professor at JMU. Askary says the United States is partly to blame. "We don't have a bank system in Iraq and this is the responsibility of the United States authority to provide the legal system for the people to be able to send money for the needy people over there," says Askary.

The banking system in South Kurdistan is in its bare infancy. I could count the number of banks that I personally saw in South Kurdistan last year on one hand and those were only in cities or larger towns. Getting people to use the limited number of banks is something else, because most people there have no trust in banks. In the past, during so many years of war, banks had a bad habit of collapsing, and people lost money. The KRG has been trying to encourage people to use banks, and has begun by strongly encouraging those working for the KRG to use them, but it is going to take a long time of stability before ordinary people can build any trust in them, much less have regular access to them.

Until such time as the US government decides to own up to its responsibilities in South Kurdistan and Iraq, and sets up some kind of money transfer system that it considers "legitimate," US foot-dragging on this matter will continue to contribute to the extreme hardships that many people there suffer. Yet by reading the comments of the court, you'd get the idea that the inconvenience of the people the US wanted to "liberate" is nothing compared to the inconvenience the Kurds of Harrisonburg caused the US government, again from the AP report:

The government was justified in prosecuting the men, said Conrad, adding they had engaged in a "dangerous activity."

In many cases, the men did not know the people they transferred money for and it was impossible to trace where it went overseas, FBI agent Stephen Duenas testified.

"There was a lot of smoke that the government had to clear away," Conrad said.

Poor things! It was too hard for the FBI to trace the money overseas, and it caused a lot of "smoke" that the government had to clear away. Maybe I'll be able to squeeze out a tear for them . . . when they can squeeze blood from a turnip.

Once again, the best thing about this whole federally-sponsored fiasco was the community of Harrisonburg itself, which rose to the defence of it's neighbors, up to and including jamming the courtroom today, from the WHSV report:

There was a huge outpouring of support for the men Monday with protesters filling Court Square and lining the streets next to the federal court building. The judge asked for those in the court room, who were in support of the defendants, to stand. Nearly all of the citizens stood and when they did the judge simply said, "that's remarkable."

Hundreds of people stood on Court Square and in front of the federal court building to show their support to three Kurdish men. Some say they came to show the Kurdish community that they value them as their neighbors. Others came as friends of those in trouble with the law.

Altogether, some 200 residents took the time to appear at the courthouse. The community of Harrisonburg has actively displayed the noble character of the American people. Still, there are those who characterize the government as a "sympathetic" villain, as in a report by the Charlottesvelle Daily Progress.

I disagree with such a characterization. In my opinion, if a government will not respect the people, then it must learn to fear them. Governments should never forget their place.

When governments do forget their place, this is the kind of thing that happens, from the Hewlêr Globe:

200 Kurdish child survivors of Anfal were presented as gifts to the Iraqi Women’s Union

A recently discovered document has revealed that two hundred Kurdish children below four years of age from Kirkuk were given to the Iraqi Women’s Union following the Anfal Campaign.

Zakia Ismael Haqi, a Faili Kurd and a United Iraqi Alliance member of the Iraqi Parliament announced the presence of documents revealing the transfer of these children in an interview with Media Newspaper, June 13.

”Following my return from America in 2003, I became a consultant in the Iraqi Ministry of Justice. My office was near the office of Paul Bremer, American Administrator of Iraq at the time, in one of Saddam’s former palaces,” Haqi stated, adding that there were also a number of Iraqi journalists staying in the palace.

“One night, one of the journalists accidentally knocked a picture off a wall, revealing a gap behind. The young journalist shouted ‘I found a treasure! Ten percent is mine,’ but the opening contained only documents. One of the documents, sent from the Iraqi Intelligence, regarded the sending of a number of Kurdish children between the ages of two months and four years to Manal Younis, former president of the Iraqi Women’s Union. She was told to do whatever she liked with them.”

Haqi has attempted to uncover the fate of the children. “According to some information, they were taken to Al-Qaria Al-Iraqia, The Iraqi Village, constructed in 1980 on the Karkh side of Baghdad. They then became members of Saddam’s juvenile and volunteer army.”

Haqi added that the existence of another document stating that 18 Kurdish girls and young women, between the ages of 14 and 29 were also given to nightclubs in Egypt.

For more on the stolen Kurdish women and girls of Saddam's Anfal, see IWPR and KWAHK.


And people have the nerve to wonder why I am angry. . .

JASH OF THE NORTH

"Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay it's price." ~ Sun Tzu.

There is one aspect of Turkey's EU accession process that has been totally overlooked or, rather, ignored, by the wider media, and that is the status of the Koy Korucular--Village Guards--the jash of the North.

The tactic of divide-and-conquer has been used against Kurds by all of the enemies of Kurdistan, but nowhere are the lines of this tactic so clearly drawn as in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, by the role of the Korucular. Established by the TC in 1985, the Korucular system has pitted Kurd against Kurd, and has served the state's interest by maintaining instability and lawlessness in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. In fact, the Korucular system has been far more helpful in destroying Turkish-occupied Kurdistan than any other single policy devised toward that end. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch called upon Interior Minister Aksu to end the Village Guards:

For more than eighteen years Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been receiving reports of violations by village guards—murders, rapes, robberies, house destruction, and illegal property occupation, among others. We have received, from various sources, numerous complaints relating to village guards, not all of which we have confirmed first-hand.

HRW states that the prevalence of complaints and incidents against the Korucular include the following: murder, aggravated assault, occupation of land or homes of IDP's, criminal behavior ranging from rape to theft, and instigation of blood feuds and tribal conflict. The threatening presence of Korucular alone is enough to deter IDP's from returning to their homes and land, and the requirement for returnees to become Korucular themselves makes them vulnerable to attack by HPG. As stated as early as 1995 by the PKK, the Korucular, as a paramilitary organization of the state, are legitimate targets.

A recent Korucular attack on returning IDP's made it into Western news, and this type of state-sponsored terrorism is not unusual. From The Village Voice:

That night, the four men returned from the darkness with automatic rifles. They had come to deliver a violent message to their mortal enemies, the Tanguner and Tekin families.

In all, the families comprised over 30 people. They were unarmed and surrounded. Ugrak's muddy village square, where they stood, offered no place to hide. Except for one car, their convoy of rented vehicles—two pickup trucks and a minivan—had already left.

Eight years ago, a government-backed paramilitary campaign forced the Tanguners and Tekins to flee their homes here. Their houses and fields were taken over by the very people who advanced now from the shadows. This cold-blooded welcome was no shock. The men with guns were old adversaries, even older neighbors.

Ugrak is an isolated speck of a place. It clings to two sides of a hill rising out of a vast prairie in the southeastern reaches of the country, about four hours' drive from Iraq. Fields and pastures roll endlessly in all directions. For centuries, the Tanguners and Tekin clans lived on one side of the hill, the Guclu clan on the other.

The armed men were Guclus. As their victims remember it, they approached with Kalashnikovs raised, and screamed: "What business do you have coming back here?" There was an instant of tense silence. Then, thunderous gunfire erupted.

Those who were not immediately shot dove for cover, heads to the ground. The smell of gun smoke fused with the taste of soil. Lead seared through flesh. Bullets clanged as they tore into the Renault-12 Toros sedan. The car exploded like an emerging sun.

Only after local authorities arrived could the unscathed among the Tanguners and Tekins find the courage to treat their wounded. They also took stock of their dead. Agit Tekin, who was seven, was killed instantly by a gunshot to the eye. Nazin Tekin, a clan elder, and Ikram Tekin, 45, had also died. Four others were rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

Another article, on the same attack, can be found at Scotsman.com, and it provides an excellent background discussion on the Korucular, with a perspective on why certain Kurds chose to become Korucular:

"Before the war, the Guclus were poor," says Sait Tanguner, a relative of the Tekins who was present at the shooting. "War brought them wealth and power. They preferred to murder us rather than to give us back the houses and fields they stole when we were forced out."

[ . . . ]

A kilometre down the track leading to the main road, out of sight of the military escort that has shadowed us since our arrival, the taxi driver cuts his engine and turns to face us. The inhabitant of a neighbouring village until war forced him to leave, he has known the Guclus for years. "They’re bad people, very bad," he says. He pauses, looking for a word strong enough to express the full force of his contempt. "Korucular," he spits. Militia men.

This belief that the war brought "wealth and power" to a small segment of rural Kurdish society is confirmed by an IDP support group (Goc-Der):

As the Head of the Diyarbakır branch of Göç-Der stated: “the weak have a tendency to become village guards. I am not just talking about economic weakness, but also weakness in terms of social power. They might have thought it a way to react to the authority of the ‘strong.’ In that regard, village guardianship might have transformed social relations in favor of the ‘weak’ in places where small estate ownership is the predominant form.”58 The families without guns and jobs and with relatively small land-holdings might have found an economic and social benefit in the system.59

The same paper discusses reasons why most Kurds preferred to leave their homes rather than become Korucular. First, they view the state as weak, something that it certainly is in the rural areas, where most people don't even speak Turkish, where they have little to no day-to-day contact with the state, and from where most gerîlas come. The second reason is connected to the fact that most gerîlas do come from the rural areas, and it is that the Kurds in those areas are extremely reluctant to take up arms against their own "children"--gerîlas--or to deny them assistance, such as food, if the gerîlas should ask for it. These facts confirm another point made in the Scotsman article:

But Celal Baslangic, the expert on Kurdish issues for the liberal daily newspaper Radikal, draws different conclusions. He points to the existence of a secret plan for the south-east, drawn up in 2000 by the National Security Council, a committee of senior cabinet ministers and military top-brass meeting monthly to oversee government policy. "Judging by the official unwillingness to announce clearly which areas are still out of bounds, I suspect this plan aims to prevent the resettlement of little villages in remote areas where PKK support used to be strongest."

In places where PKK support used to be the strongest, the state is very weak. Hence the enforced removal of the populations to larger cities, where the state can better control them. Indeed, the whole purpose of state security forces in cities like Amed, is not to "protect and serve," but to control the population. Therefore, the state has no incentive to see to the return of those Kurds the state forced from their homes.

The Korucular are invisible, as far as accountability goes. They fall under the Gendermerie Command in practice--making up some 40 percent of the Gendermerie personnel-- yet they are not mentioned in any law which prescribes Gendermerie structure or duties (See the HRW letter for more on this). Of course, this is convenient because it allows the Turkish government a certain level of plausible deniability when the Korucular get into trouble, something that has happened quite often in the past and continues to happen. It also permits axas to negotiate the terms of Korucular duties and pay with the government, thus strengthening the position of such axas, maintaining the intolerable status quo, and extending impunity for crimes committed by the Korucular.

With respect to impunity, it is interesting to note that the Guclus, who attempted to murder the returning Tanguners and Tekins, are still undergoing trial in Amed, four years after the attack at Ugrak, while the Semdinli bombers have already been convicted for their crime, not even a year after the event.

This arrangement between the Ankara regime and the axas creates a relationship with the activities of the Deep State, something that was revealed during the Susurluk scandal. The sole survivor of the Susurluk accident, Sedat Bucak, was one of the axas who benefitted greatly from the Korucular system, and his example illuminates this dirty, covert world. As a feudal lord in command of tens of thousands of Korucular, he received arms from the state, the excess of which have entered the world of illegal arms-trafficking. Bucak also received the pay of the Korucular, pocketing a percentage for himself before dispersing the funds. The 20,000 to 30,000 Korucular under men like Bucak are also instrumental in facilitating the Turkish government's lucrative drug-trafficking industry. In their letter, HRW cites further examples of the Korucular connection to drug-trafficking:

Narcotics arrests of village guards are occasionally reported—for example, two village guards were found with five kilograms of heroin (with a wholesale value of U.S.$750,000 according to the U.S. Drugs Enforcement Agency) at Bölücek village in Þýrnak in 2002—but the national press tends not to report the subsequent trials. Nevertheless, Turkish government officials have admitted that village guards are very involved in the narcotics trade. According to an Interior Ministry statement, reported in Cumhuriyet (Republic) of January 26, 1999, 1,073 village guards were convicted of drugs smuggling between 1985 and 1999.

It is the powerful axas, the Korucular and the Ozel Timler, all connected to the Deep State, that are the only ones to benefit from keeping everything the way it has been. They have absolutely no interest in democratic change. They do, in fact, actively work against genuine democracy. In spite of this, there is no great outcry against these forces from the EU. Instead, Joost Lagendijk, Cem Ozdemir, and their ilk in the European Parliament, by their silence, cover up the abuses and atrocities of these covert networks. Neither has the US ever used its influence against its ally to speak out against this firmly entrenched obstacle to democratic change.

Is this because neither the Turkish government, nor the EU and US, think that Kurds are worthy of democracy?

HRW, several TMBB (Turkish parliament) commissions, the UN, PACE and the ECHR are among those organizations that have repeatedly called for an end to the Korucular system yet, as the HRW letter notes, 15 successive Turkish governments have done nothing to end the system. After renewed government repression following the Amed serhildan, this year's report to the UN representative on displaced persons, published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, in conjunction with the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, states that if the current situation in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan continues:

. . . a durable and sustainable solution to the internal displacement problem in Turkey cannot be achieved without a peaceful end to the Kurdish conflict and a process of reconciliation, which would require – among other things – addressing issues of justice, and the disarmament and social rehabilitation of PKK members and government-employed village guards alike.

In spite of the overwhelming evidence against the Korucular, it looks like they will be further rewarded for their part in helping to maintain repression and lawlessness, from The New Anatolian:

A consensus between the General Staff, Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry was reached to grant the right of retirement to village guards without them having to make premium payments into the government system, reports said yesterday.

The bill stipulates a raise in the wages of village guards, who currently get YTL 400 per month [approx. 235 USD--Mizgîn], to be determined by the government. Under the bill, village guards would be able to retire after working a certain number of years at the post.

The retirement system stipulated in the bill isn't extended to other civil servants or

workers.

The bill, which would affect some 60,000 village guards, will be brought to Parliament before it goes on recess.

This bill, along with the approval of the new anti-terror bill draft, clearly indicates that the fascists are consolidating their side in their renewed war against the Kurdish people. In the absence of any strong, practical international pressure against the Ankara regime to remove the cancer of the Korucular from Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, or to insist on genuine democratic practices on the part of the West's fascist ally, the only hope for freedom lies with the HPG and YJA.

On a final note, perennial Kurdish bad boy, Osman Baydemir, joins the ranks of DTP politicians like Abdullah Demirbas, who got himself in trouble with the Ankara regime for speaking about multiple cultures, from Reuters, with TDN censorship:

A mayor in Turkey's troubled Southeast could face up to 18 months in prison over comments he made about the country's ethnic minorities, according to an indictment seen by Reuters on Friday.

[ . . . ]

Under the new charges, Baydemir is accused of "humiliating" the public with remarks about racial and regional differences in Turkey, a taboo for Turkish nationalists who like to stress the common identity of all the country's citizens.

"Each ethnic group must be able to take part in public life with his or her own identity," Baydemir was quoted as saying in an interview published in Tempo magazine in January.

He is expected to attend the first court hearing on July 7.

You go, Osman! It is Kurds like you who are lions in the political battle.


UPDATE ON RASHEED QAMBARI, AHMED ABDULLAH AND AMIR RASHEED: The AP has a report out all over the place today, which you can see here, courtesy of CBS News, and there is another from the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Tomorrow, 26 June, is the scheduled sentencing of the three, and it will be something to watch for.

To the Kurds of Harrisonburg, particularly the families of Qambari, Abdullah and Rasheed, my thoughts and best wishes are with you. SERKEFTIN!

A REGULAR KURDISH ARMY

"I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery." ~ Author Unknown.

A quick item. . .

Yusuf Kanli over at TDN has his panties in a knot over the fact that Serok Barzanî has instructed Neçirvan Barzanî and Omer Fatah of the need to form a regular Kurdish army.

Kudos to Kak Masûd, if the news is true. At the moment I have doubts because Kak Masûd is referred to in this opinion as the leader of the PUK. I wonder if anyone's told Mam Celal yet?

Yusuf presents a tiny argument in support of a regular Kurdish army, saying that "such an army will not allow the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to operate in the area under its control."

Oh, think again, Yusuf, old boy. Like the vast majority of Turks, you are living in the 1990's, meanwhile the dynamics have changed on you, leaving you in the lurch with your wishful thinking. I guess you missed what Kak Masûd said about not being able to order anyone to fire on PKK, because Kurds won't fire on Kurds. You missed Kak Masûd telling everyone, with ears to hear, that the situation is different today.

In fact, with the belligerent TSK at the border and firing artillery into South Kurdistan on a regular basis, it looks instead like the tables have turned. Cuma has said that PKK will help defend Kerkuk, so why shouldn't Kak Masûd also look to able-bodied and armed Kurdish gerîlas to help a "regular Kurdish army" fight the Turkish predator? In fact, I would suggest that anyone who thinks such a thing is impossible, go read Mao's On Guerrilla Warfare to see just how effectively a combination of Chinese gerîlas and Chinese regular troops defeated the hated Japanese invaders. My copy of Mao even has an introduction and some analysis by a USMC brigadier general, who concurs with the utter effectiveness and lethality of the conventional/unconventional combination in modern warfare.

Yusuf remembers the USMC. They're the guys who are johnny-on-the-spot with those burlap bags that accessorize so well with Turkish-made civilian clothes favored by Ozel Timler when they're on assassination duty in South Kurdistan.

But none of this is the part that gets me, because it's all a hypothetical argument by Yusuf to set us up for the punchline, which is:

Naturally no one should expect us to indulge in a racial hatred rhetoric, but Barzani's remarks must be taken very seriously as an indication of trouble in the offing.

Excuse me?! Did I read that correctly, or do my eyes deceive me?! Au contraire, we expect nothing less of the glorious, racist, Kemalist state but racial hatred rhetoric, and nowhere in this glorified whine does Yusuf Kanli disappoint. Oh, yeah, baby! Turkey's worst nightmare, a regular Kurdish army, has become a shining glimmer in Kak Masûd's eyes.

Meanwhile, Yusuf Kanli whines on about the threat to regional stability that a Kurdish army will pose. Hello? Is anyone awake out there? Repeat after me: There is no regional stability in the Middle East.

Here we have the regional bully complaining about how dangerous it will be if the Kurds are "permitted" to have an army with which to defend themselves and their interests, and all of this comes down to the hard and painful fact of future Kurdish independence. This is what Turkey fears the most, an independence that should be the beginning of the international recognition of Kurds as a people, a group of human beings who have their own political aspirations and territory and, therefore, the right to self-determination.

FDR said, "In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved," and I cannot think of a moment in history when freedom was ever achieved easily or cheaply. In fact, history tends to prove that freedom is neither easy nor cheap. On the other hand, history also tells me that Kurds will remain forever restless without freedom.

There is definitely a need for a regular Kurdish army and the time appears to be ripe from all quarters.

Carpe Diem!

PLACATING THE PASHAS' ANGER

"A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous." ~ Alfred Adler

There's more info on the arrest of Seferi Yilmaz, from TDN:

He [Yilmaz] was questioned by the prosecutor on Tuesday after PKK member Abdurrahman Yeşilyurt, who was captured in Batman four days ago, said Yılmaz was a member of the terrorist group and was involved in the bombing of his own bookstore. After the interrogation, the prosecutor remanded Yılmaz to the court for arrest on charges of membership in the PKK. Yılmaz was incarcerated following a medical checkup.

Lawyer for the defendant, Murat Timur, [punctuation here added by Mizgîn] claimed Yılmaz's arrest was directly linked to a jail sentence of 39 years, five months and 10 days handed down to gendarmerie noncommissioned officers Özcan İldeniz and Ali Kaya by the Van Third Criminal Court for involvement in the bombing of Yılmaz's bookstore, which killed one person and injured five others. He said Yılmaz's arrest was based on claims made by three former PKK members who had turned informant, adding: The decision is illegal. Actually, our client was supposed to testify on Monday. The court deliberately delayed it so that the imprisonment of the officers and the interrogation of Yılmaz didn't take place on the same day. They tried to balance the decision. They tried to placate the military's anger over the imprisonment of the officers.

[ . . . ]

The officers had claimed during their trial that Yilmaz was closely connected to the PKK.

Uh, yeah, Yilmaz was involved in the bombing of his own bookstore. That's why Seferi Yilmaz himself was in his own bookstore, getting ready to eat lunch with two others, Metin Korkmaz and Mehmet Zahir Korkmaz. From Yilmaz' statement to IHD, as carried by KurdishInfo:

“We were three persons sitting in my bookstore, Umut Kitapevi on Nov.9, 2005. It was noon time and we generally prepare our lunch and ate it in the backroom of the bookstore. We were about to eat lunch at the same day. Metin Korkmaz, a shoe seller in the same shopping center and his son Mehmet Zahir Korkmaz were also with me. As I went out to call for other friends to lunch, I heard windows were broken. As I look at the noise I saw that the broken windows are windows of my bookstore."

There is much more at the KurdishInfo link, in case details have been forgotten, and there's another reminder from Newsweek.

Does TDN really expect us to believe this, as if Yilmaz put a contract out on himself? Does the Turkish legal system, such as it is, really expect us to believe this, and on the basis of so-called "former PKK members who had turned informant?" Let's think here. . . Veysel Ates was also a police informant and so-called "former PKK member," and he was one of the bombers, who was working with JITEM non-commissioned officers, Ali Kaya and Ozcan Ildeniz. How many other so-called "former PKK members"-turned-informant have been deeply involved with all the deep shit of the Deep State?

Speaking of those who wallow in deep shit, Veysel Ates' trial has been postponed until 3 August because he's "sick" and in the hospital. How much will anyone bet that he dies of whatever illness he has before 3 August rolls around. We all know what's going to happen in August. Funny. . . Ali Kaya's in the hospital too, at GATA. Coincidence? Some bad little bug going around? Na, they're probably fixing old Ali up with a diplomatic passport, or two, or three, so that he won't have any problems when he "escapes" while being transported back to Wan.

I have a piece of advice for Kaya if he does manage to "escape": Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse, man.

The case of the military officers was viewed as a test of Turkey's ability to hold its security personnel accountable for their actions.

Turkey failed again, and where is the EU on this? Joost Lagendijk was so giddy with happiness over the result of the trial yesterday that he virtually declared it a great triumph for truth, justice and democracy. Is there no commentary on this latest farce? No admittance that there is no democracy in Turkey, or that there has been no "reining in of the army," as Newsweek put it? Turkey refuses to take responsibility for for the fact that it is a militaristic, fascist state, but it is one the entire world is willing to accept, as if it were a normal democracy. The elephant is in the room, but everyone refuses to talk about it.

This next piece of news, is more evidence that Turkey is not a normal democracy. KurdishInfo is reporting that an HPG şehîd's body appears to have been brutalized, complete with a crushed head and disembowlment. This kind of atrocity is not generally committed by your ordinary Mehmetcik; this kind of atrocity is the specialty of the Ozel Timler. I would love to compare the autopsy report of this şehîd with those of the two American soldiers recently killed in Iraq. Although the US Army has made no public statement about the extent of the wounds or the exact cause of death, it looks like the two had been badly mauled, so much so that DNA testing was needed to confirm identity. This appears to be the case with the HPG şehîd.

Since Ozel Timler and JITEM have been operative in Iraq, is it possible they are doing a little training of the al-Qaeda terrorists there? Except for beheading, a signature of the totalitarian political Islamist, speculation in the US over the condition of the bodies of the two GI's is similar to that described at KurdishInfo. How close are Ozel Timler and JITEM to the terrorists in Iraq? Inquiring minds want to know.


From the Watch-What-You-Eat Department. . . Apparently, a python has made a stealthy escape from the Ankara zoo --Hey, Ali K! Are you taking notes? From one snake to another, so to speak--although the Agriculture Minister suspects foul play. The Environment Minister has suggested that the python may have already been turned into kebabs, which may be more indicative of the state of the town's restaurants than it is about zoo security. It's definitely something to think about the next time you visit an Ankara kebapci. A better idea would be to skip the Ankara kebapci for an Amedî one.

On the other hand, python kebab may not be so bad; It probably tastes like chicken.

Python: The Other White Meat®

ENLIGHTENMENT

“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.”
~ Nikos Kazantzakis.

I found something very enlightening from the Associated Press today, and carried on the Houston Chronicle. It's a piece of news that goes in tandem with the TDN article in yesterday's post about the helicopter tender that Turkey has been wrangling over with US contractors, and it's no wonder Turkey's wrangling. Take a look, from the Houston Chronicle:

"The collapse of one deal is not itself a major crisis, but if Turkey persists in seeking carte blanche from American suppliers to substitute its own technology for theirs and asks for impossible terms, U.S. arms suppliers will not, indeed cannot, bid for Turkey's business, and they will likely cease their lobbying efforts on Turkey's behalf with both the White House and Congress," said Ian M. Cuthbertson, an arms sales expert at World Policy Institute. "U.S. industry will lose business and Turkey would lose powerful allies in Washington."

U.S. arms companies have been lobbying for Turkey against Armenians--who are pressing for recognition of killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide--and Kurds--who complain about Turkey's alleged human rights violations.

Right, they're alleged human rights violations. Go check with the ECHR on that.

What appears to be happening is that Turkey has put out some very controlling conditions for the bid. Turkey wants full access to the helicopter's software codes and it wants a written guarantee from the bidder's government that there will be no political problems over the deal. In other words, they don't want to be harassed for purchasing the hardware, which they plan to use against Kurds:

Today, Turkey is keen on having a sovereign helicopter to freely use, mainly against Kurdish guerrillas in the rugged southeast, without taking on the risk of outside interference in the aircraft's mission computer or of political obstacles from Washington to its use.

"[T]o freely use," has such an ominous ring to it, kind of like Final Solution does.

Since the TSK has been conducted more cross-border operations into South Kurdistan (See DozaMe for that), it's not hard to predict that the new helicopters will be used not only against civilians in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, but also against civilians in South Kurdistan, because this is the obsession: If even one Kurd remains alive, that Kurd proves the lie of the ideological foundation of the TC, which does not permit the existence of Kurds.

The TDN article I posted yesterday made it sound as if Turkey were doing a big favor for Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation (owned by Boeing, hence the Boeing spokesman in the Chronicle article) by extending the deadline for bids. But, as it turns out from today's AP report, it looks more like Turkey is hoping to schmooze the Americans into accepting their strict terms, something they desperately want to happen in order to protect their powerful and influential Washington lobby, a lobby which has, for many years, managed to avoid the superficial legalese involved with the question of Turkey's atrocious human rights record. Boeing and many others have never had a problem cajoling congressmen into approving major weapons sales to Turkey.

The scramble to save its influence in Washington, and this alone, is the sole reason Turkey extended the bid deadline to 15 September. They're trying to do themselves a favor and no one else.

Meanwhile, back in Wan, two sacrificial lambs were slaughtered to protect the integrity of Deep State gangs. Ali Kaya (Buyukanit's boy) and Ozcan Ildeniz got 39 years for blowing up the bookstore in Şemzînan (Semdinli), back in November. The defendants' lawyer isn't happy because he just found out his clients were expendable. More info is available from TDN.

It was pretty slick of TDN to try to blame all of last year's bombings in "The Southeast" on the PKK, even though they all had marks of government work. But if that fact were admitted, then everyone would have to admit that the November 9th bombing leads much farther up the chain of command than some simple non-commissioned officers. We wouldn't want to go there, would we?

I am struck by the speed of this trial. Let's think back to February, 2001, when the sacrificial lambs for Susurluk were slaughtered. The Susurluk Scandal broke open in November, 1996, but no convictions came until 2001, between four and five years later. Why the rush with the Semdinli bombers? Could it be they had to be finished and out of the way by August, and we all know what's coming in August. . . that's when Buyukanit becomes the Grand Poo-Bah. It wouldn't look good to have all this distressing business, in which Buyukanit's name has been closely associated, dragging on all summer long. After all, it might threaten to put a damper on August's festivities.

The Guardian's report on the Susurluk convictions has some enlightening comments, still applicable today:

The end of the trial comes amid fears of a renewed effort to destabilise the south-east, which is now enjoying its most peaceful period for years.

Two leading members of the pro-Kurdish political party, Hadep, disappeared late last month in Silopi after being asked to visit the local gendarmerie headquarters.

Even though the Kurdish rebel movement, the PKK, has largely withdrawn from the south-east, many believe that powerful forces in Turkey still have an interest in maintaining a tight security blanket across the region.

The south-east is the hub of a massive smuggling business involving drugs and human migrants. The hugely profitable trade is run by powerful criminal gangs, with the backing of renegade elements within the state - exactly the same combination which sparked the Susurluk scandal in the first place.

From 1996 to 2006, ten years, there are still obstacles in the path that leads to the real state criminals behind the madness and, if you read the interview with Sezgin Tanrikulu, prosecuting lawyer in the case and chair of the Amed Bar Association, at Bianet you will see that there is still determination to go down the dark path. Tanrikulu is satisfied with the convictions of Kaya and Ildeniz, but he plans to appeal the results because the convictions are based on a mere criminal offense (Article 220, "froming an organization to commit acts that are described as offenses by law"), whereas he was seeking a conviction under Article 302, which has to do with separatism. A conviction on any separatism charge is going to carry a much heavier sentence.

Tanrikulu echoes those who, during the Susurluk trial, insisted that the path of guilt led to the Deep State. Compare Tanrikulu's words in the Bianet interview with those of one of the investigating deputies of Susurluk, Sema Piskinsut (DSP), in the Guardian article:

Tanrikulu: "We believe the criminal organization is not limited to these three defendants. The organisation should be uncovered with the whole of its structure, abolished and its acts revealed and punished."

Piskinsut: "This verdict only says there was a gang. But what did it do, who did it work for? Parliament should find out who was politically responsible."

It also looks like Tanrikulu intends to pursue the matter, all the way up to, and including, Buyukanit.

There's more enlightening news at Bianet today, in connection with this case. It appears that the Umut Bookstore owner, Seferi Yilmaz, the prime witness in the case has been arrested and taken to a local prison. Seferi Yilmaz spent 15 years in prison for PKK activity. In fact, he was one of the gerîlas involved with the first PKK attack ever, against Turkish security forces at Şemzînan, back on 15 August, 1984. Coincidence? IHD doesn't think so:

It [The IHD statement] added "we would like to express that we find it suspicious that Sefer Yilmaz, the victim and witness of the incident, was arrested due to a statement made by a repentant [so-called former PKKer--Mizgîn] immediately after the verdict of the 'Semdinli Case' which was previously accepted as positive by democratic public opinion". The statement added that with the arrest taking place immediately after the court case, suspicions had escalated and vouched that the IHD would monitor developments closely.

Is anyone naive enough to believe in coincidences anymore?

REFUGEES, TURKISH SECURITY FORCES, AND SCHADENFREUDE

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."
~ Will Rogers.

I see that World Refugee Day has rolled around again, and as Cengiz Aktar, at TDN, explains it, "It is a day when we remember people in poor conditions. They have no home or country, poorer than the poorest. Today is the day of the cursed, who are only news when they drown at sea or die together in the back of a truck."

Ah, yes, World Refugee Day, a day when the elites can remember "people in poor conditions," people they've never actually met or had anything whatsoever to do with, unless it is to pass more laws and employ more armies against refugees simply to increase refugee suffering. It's a day for these elites to make themselves feel good about the whole dirty situation, a situation which they would never actually do anything to relieve.

If you take a look at Cengiz' opinion piece, and you're Kurd, you might be stunned to notice that the internally displaced Kurds in Turkey--you know, Turkey's own refugees--are nowhere mentioned. On the other hand, if you're a Kurd, this revelation may not be so stunning. But let's take a stroll down memory lane, to last year, and see what Human Rights Watch had to say about Kurdish refugees in Turkey:

(Ankara, March 7, 2005) — On a key benchmark for European Union membership, the Turkish government has failed to honor pledges to help 378,000 displaced people, mainly Kurds, return home more than a decade after the army forced them from their villages in southeastern Turkey, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

[ . . . ]

The 37-page report, “Still Critical: Prospects in 2005 for Internally Displaced Kurds in Turkey,” details how the Turkish government has failed to implement measures for IDPs the United Nations recommended nearly three years ago. Since the European Union confirmed Turkey’s membership candidacy in December, the Turkish government appears to have shelved plans to enact those measures.

The report also details how Turkey has overstated its progress on internal displacement in reports to the European Commission. Before the European Union announced its decision to open membership talks, the Turkish government sent the European Commission statistics suggesting that the problem was well on its way to a solution—a requirement Turkey must fulfill for full membership. Turkey claimed that a third of the displaced had already returned, but Human Rights Watch revealed that permanent returns in some places were less than a fifth of the government’s estimate.

“When we checked Turkey’s figures on helping the displaced return home, the numbers proved unreliable,” said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “Also, the bare figures don’t convey how, thanks to government inaction, villagers are returning to places that are practically uninhabitable.”

In southeastern Turkey, the government has failed to provide infrastructure such as electricity, telephone lines and schools to returning communities, and has not provided proper assistance with house reconstruction.

“What’s worse, the government’s paramilitary village guards are attacking and killing returnees in some parts of southeastern Turkey,” added Denber.

That bit about overstating progress on internal displacement reports means Turkey lied about it, and has no intention whatsoever of making just restitution to the Kurdish refugees that the Ankara regime created. In fact, the government's Village Guards are actually murdering those refugees who try to return. Does anyone seriously believe the situation has improved since then, especially since the Amed serhildan?

So here's a big Happy-Freaking-World-Refugee-Day greeting to all the Kurdish refugees, inside and outside of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan and to all the hypocrites and liars who are trying to make themselves feel holy by remembering every other refugee on the planet, but the Bakurî Kurds.

Geez, just when you thought hypocrisy and BS couldn't get any worse. . . This hypocritical, and thoroughly deceptive, garbage from Cengiz reminded me of something else I had seen on TDN a few days ago, something that was a real eye-roller. Turkey thinks it needs to have a national asylum system. Isn't that a scream? Can you imagine? Yeah, I know I'd seek asylum in Turkey in a heartbeat, just like a Jew would seek asylum in Nazi Germany. Hey, ask any Kurd from South Kurdistan how wonderful it was to be a refugee in Turkey in 1991.

And a great time was had by all. . . in a pig's eye.

The TC only wants to do this for two reasons. First, it will make them look like all the other democracies, and appearance is everything. Secondly, it will be very helpful for them to take in any ethnic Turks who may urgently need it because every non-Turk is out to get all of them, and it will be convenient for the comrades from Chechnya in case they decide to blow a few more schools or fire up a few more theaters.

The fascists are also planning to beef up their Gendermerie Command, as reported by The New Anatolian, and they will add all kinds of bells and whistles in order to make their repression of Kurds that much more efficient. All of this should compliment the surveillance cameras that were due to be installed as a punishment against the people of Şemzînan (Semdinli), because make no mistake, this Gendermerie Command does not exist to "protect and serve." It exists solely to control the Kurdish population.

In the same vein, the tender for the purchase of 32 military and 20 "civilian" helicopters has had another extension of deadline, until September 15, thus allowing the US Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation to remain in the running. This means that sometime in the near future, Turkish land forces will have 20 more very high tech toys with which to murder Kurds. Way to go, Sikorsky!

Have you ever read an interview and imagined how you might answer a question if you were the one being interviewed? In reading the interview of Neçirvan Barzanî by Ilnur Cevik (Ilnur Cevik of TNA fame, is tight with the KDP), I saw just such a question that I would like to answer. Here is the question and my reply:

CEVIK: The terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has become a problem for everyone, including the Iraqi Kurds. How can this problem be solved to the satisfaction of all sides?

MIZGÎN: Well, Ilnur, there is a very simple solution to this problem, a just and equitable solution which would satisfy all sides, and that solution is to get rid of the Turkish Republic as we know it.

See? Very simple. I think I should have Neçirvan's job.

From the Schadenfreude Department. . . . we have the resident Ankara-regime propagandist from The Washington Times whining about the Turkish-American relationship again. This time, however, I had a deja-vu experience in reading the last part of the opinion piece. Check this out:

What really sharpened anti-Americanism in Turkey was the capture of 11 Turkish Special Forces soldiers who were arrested and held with bags over their heads. That sealed the perception that America -- Turkey's NATO ally -- chose the Kurds over the Turkish Republic, which further insulted the troops.

This should be deja-vu for Rastî readers too, because I said it here, first, when the Onder and Emre show at TNA was trying to sell rising Turkish nationalism as a result of the PKK. It is not; But it is intimately related to rising anti-Americanism. Think Kurtlar Vadisi-Irak and you'll be on the right track. Here's what I said:

The defining moment in this sudden rise in Turkish fascism took place on July 3, 2003, in the city of Silêmanî, when US Marines bagged, literally, one of the great and glorious Turkish Special Teams as it was on its way to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kerkuk. This little incident was the huge embarrassment of the mighty TC, something akin to parading around with your fly down in public, but on a national level. Imagine, a Special Team given the special treatment normally reserved for "war detainees" and by lesser mortals who commonly refer to each other as "Jarhead."

Oh, yeah! That great and glorious day really put a big dent into the whole "Her Turk asker dogar" (Every Turk is born a soldier) routine, didn't it? Every Turk is born a soldier as long as they are lording it over unarmed Kurds in some tiny village in the middle of nowhere, eventually turning those same Kurds either into corpses or refugees--Remember, it's World Refugee Day!--but when the great sons of Ataturk come up against the USMC, all the rest of us have to be concerned because they got their feelings hurt--and because they think the US likes Kurds better than Turks, no less. Please, give me a break! See a shrink! Get over it!

Seriously, Turkey is a country that spends billions on its security forces, but only fought a few years in the Korean War and, later, invaded Cyprus. Where else have they been playing soldier all these years? Does this level of military expenditure give us a clue as to the size of Turkey's "They're all out to get us" mentality?

What were these "Special Teams" doing down in "Iraq" anyway? I could have sworn that the TMMB voted not to get involved with Operation Iraqi Freedom, so what in the hell were they doing there? Off to assassinate a few Kurdish governors, were we, instead of going after that which Turkish verbal flatulence is usually hyped about--going after the big, bad PKK?

OOPS!

As soon as I get done crying a river, I'll run off and play the theme song to Kurtlar Vadisi-Irak on my violin.


ARTICLE OF NOTE: Anonymous came by and dropped off another article on the Harrisonburg Kurds, an article from a local (Virginia) publication. It's from the June edition of Eightyone. A teaser:

The men admit to ignorance of the federal law requiring a license to transfer money. But they deny anything to do with terrorist activity, and the authorities seem to agree, despite the government’s vigilance in prosecuting the men. When told that some say the investigation has attached a terrorist stigma to the men, John L Brownlee, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, says, “That’s unfortunate. These cases are what they are, and nothing more. But they’re important cases.”

Yeah, it's unfortunate, but that's the way it is; Let's just fuck these guys over anyway, ain't that right Mr. Brownlee? Yeah, these cases are very important, aren't they? Very important for your pissy little career, ain't that right, Mr. Brownlee? Are you sure you never worked as a Turkish prosecutor?

I would write something here for all the primates at the FBI, but baboon doesn't transliterate well into the English alphabet. Come on now, don't drag your knuckles on the ground around here, okay? I just mopped the floor.

THIS LITTLE MATTER OF BORDERS

"Borders are scratched across the hearts of men, by strangers with a calm, judicial pen, and when the borders bleed we watch with dread the lines of ink along the map turn red."
~ Marya Mannes.

Some of you who watch the Kurdish issue around the world, may remember an American named Ralph Peters. He's a retired US Army officer (military intelligence) who has written well for Kurds, most recently for Başurî Kurds, but he has also not shied away from the fact that the Bakurî are also horribly oppressed by the Ankara regime.

There's a little something from Ralph Peters in the Armed Forces Journal, a little essay of his aptly titled "Blood Borders." As he correctly points out, borders change all the time and he cites the borders drawn by Europeans as part of the core problem with Middle East restlessness that is not self-contained. In other words, the borders of the Middle East help to export the problems of the Middle East worldwide:

While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region's comprehensive failure isn't Islam but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.

Take that, State Department.

Of course he mentions the Kurds, since it is impossible to conceive of a peaceful Middle East without a just solution to this arbitrary division of Kurdistan by means of "blood borders." But the thing that I notice this time, is that Ralph seems to be turning a corner, and more fully embracing the idea of justice for the Kurds of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan:

The most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state. There are between 27 million and 36 million Kurds living in contiguous regions in the Middle East (the figures are imprecise because no state has ever allowed an honest census). Greater than the population of present-day Iraq, even the lower figure makes the Kurds the world's largest ethnic group without a state of its own. Worse, Kurds have been oppressed by every government controlling the hills and mountains where they've lived since Xenophon's day.

The U.S. and its coalition partners missed a glorious chance to begin to correct this injustice after Baghdad's fall. A Frankenstein's monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts, Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately. We failed from cowardice and lack of vision, bullying Iraq's Kurds into supporting the new Iraqi government — which they do wistfully as a quid pro quo for our good will. But were a free plebiscite to be held, make no mistake: Nearly 100 percent of Iraq's Kurds would vote for independence.

As would the long-suffering Kurds of Turkey, who have endured decades of violent military oppression and a decades-long demotion to "mountain Turks" in an effort to eradicate their identity. While the Kurdish plight at Ankara's hands has eased somewhat over the past decade, the repression recently intensified again and the eastern fifth of Turkey should be viewed as occupied territory. As for the Kurds of Syria and Iran, they, too, would rush to join an independent Kurdistan if they could. The refusal by the world's legitimate democracies to champion Kurdish independence is a human-rights sin of omission far worse than the clumsy, minor sins of commission that routinely excite our media. And by the way: A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.

Hell, yes, every Kurd would rush to join an independent Kurdistan, if they could. Independent Greater Kurdistan is the Holy Grail of Kurdish life, meaning self-rule, right to life, mother-language education, and not having to carry around an AK-47 any more. It means having the opportunity to solve your own problems without the constant, violent meddling of the neighbors.

Notice what Ralph says about the world's democracies and media ignoring the Kurdish issue, something he characterizes as "a human-rights sin of omission." It is this fact that makes me question the whole idea of what these democracies stand for and what good they really are. Do these democracies really believe in democracy, or do they only believe in democracy for themselves? Do they believe in democracies for others but discount the possibility for the Middle East in general and Kurds in particular?

This reminds me of something Kanan Makiya said in an interview back in 2003, in which he pointed out that the State Department does not believe in democracy for the Middle East. The interviewer remarked that Kanan's comments sounded like he was describing racism as a factor in the State Department's policies and methods of operating. Kanan agreed with this observation, stating:

It's certainly how I felt with many officials that I had to deal with in the U.S. government. By the way, it's even worse in Europe. It's condescension, and they treat you in the most condescending possible ways. Actually, when you see them work inside Iraq later on, you see this condescension change. You know, all of a sudden they like inculcating little NGO's. ...

In close connection with this is the lack of support for women's rights in the Islamic/Arab world by Western feminists, cows who are too busy making excuses for totalitarian political Islam to bother with women of the Middle East--the one group that suffers double repression. But once again, on this subject, Ralph Peters links the growth of democracy in the Middle East to women's rights:

The true symbols of the War on Terror are the Islamic veil and the two-piece woman's business suit.

The math is basic. No civilization that excludes half its population from full participation in society and the economy can compete with the United States and its key allies. Yet Middle Eastern societies, especially, have dug in their heels to resist change. Some, such as Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, have tumbled backward.

Islamist terrorists have formed the last, great boy's club, meeting in caves and warning girls to stay out — or, in the case of the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, demanding that women be kept from his grave to avoid polluting it. Their vision offers women fewer rights by far than those enjoyed by the wives of the prophet Mohammed. They are women-hating sadists for whom faith is an excuse. Their fears are primal.

Ralph would feel right at home at Qandîl.

From the "great boys' club" of totalitarian political Islam, to the great feminists clubs in Western academe, to the State Department and other Western foreign ministries, plus all their little tin horns in the media--it's all condescension. That's our nice way of putting it. It doesn't help either that all of these groups benefit by their relationships with states like Saudi Arabia or Turkey. They're probably benefitting under the table from Iran as well, just as certain ones were benefitting from Saddam.

Borders on the ground and borders in society, all framed and maintained by the status quo; It's long past time that both must go.