FREEING UP A LITTLE MENTAL SPACE

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. "
~ Oscar Wilde.

The Europeans are talking again, backing up the position of Joost Lagendijk and Cem Ozdemir. This time, 130 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) are demanding that HPG lay down its arms. Peace activists in Turkey are calling for the same as a first step in finding a peaceful solution to the "Kurdish problem" that Ankara has created.

But there is something seriously wrong here, something seriously lacking in sincerity. PKK called for a number of ceasefires throughout the years, notably in 1993, 1995 and 1998. A significant ceasefire was called in 1999, one which lasted until 2004. More recently, HPG called a one-month ceasefire last August after Erdogan's photo-op in Amed. What came of all these ceasefires? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Given this history, are we really expected to believe any call, demand, request, invitation, or whatever, for "PKK" to lay down its arms as a prerequisite for a peaceful solution? This is a joke! Neither the Turkish government nor the EU bothered to avail themselves of PKK's laying down of arms in the past, why should anyone believe them now?

Just as with the Lagendijk/Ozdemir statement, so this statement from PACE makes no mention of DTP. At least the peace activists in Turkey recognize the existence of DTP and they recognize that DTP is in no position "to urge PKK to 'lay down its arms.'" Of course, they appear disingenous too, when they reiterate the IRA and ETA examples, "stating that nowhere in the world had armed parties ever sat around a table before laying down arms." The Turkish state is also armed, more dangerously so than HPG, so why are there no demands for TSK to withdraw? Why are there no demands for all of the state security apparatus to cease and desist in their operations against the Kurdish people, operations which have continued to include attacks against lawyers, human rights workers, children, excessive use of force? In short, operations which clearly indicate the government's intention of reinforcing its dirty war from the 1990s.

Then there are others who attempt to pass themselves off as "democrats," while at the same time placing all the blame for the serhildan on DTP. These others clearly indicate that they are happy in turning back the calendar to the 1990's because their attacks against DTP, all made with the Voice of Reason, naturally, are signs that they are complicit with the government in preparing the way to close DTP, just as the government has done to all Kurdish parties in the past.

Not only are the Europeans, the Turks, and peace activists attempting to remove the legitimate right of the Kurdish people to self-defence, they are also atttempting to bury every avenue of political recourse. In this, they are siding with the AKP and the Pashas. If anyone has any doubts about this, if anyone still thinks that democracy in Turkey is anything more than a facade, consider Erdogan's response in Sabah over the question of general amnesty for HPG. This is a man who is running scared of the Pashas. At least there were indications that Turgut Ozal was considering a phased amnesty plan for PKK, as reported by Jonathan Randal in his book, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? Whether or not Ozal's plan would have come to anything is something that is now buried in history, but at least he considered the idea at one point.

Erdogan, on the other hand, is too scared to even meet with DTP. In fact, he's become a regular mouthpiece of the Pashas recently. Not only has he approved all Kurds as legitimate targets of security force aggression, he has also stated that there will be no end to the government's terrorist operations in Kurdistan:

"So, the operations should be stopped. Can the operations be stopped? What does this mean now? Security forces receiving intelligence on terrorism will conduct operations whether in the cities or in rural areas. This is their primary duty. We will do them, we have to do them. There is no stopping. The operations will definitely continue. Look at this man. He is a Mayor but he says lay down the arms. Just look at that remark! Before anything you do your job as Mayor. Security force members will carry their arms, what is that to you. "

That little tirade was Erdogan's attempt to berate Osman Baydemir for his request to end security operations in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. I guess Osman feels the same way I do about all this laying-down-of-arms business, recognizing that it is not only HPG who bears arms in "The Region."

My skepticism is growing about the Europeans' "efforts" on behalf of the Kurdish people. I mean, Europe can't even get a grip on the reality of their own situation inside Europe, as unrest in the last few years there proves. They can't contain the violence of their own immigrant "problems" practically speaking--remember all the burned property during the riots in France last November? Nor can the Europeans get a grip on this situation ideologically, so what makes them or anyone else think that they are going to be able to do anything for Kurds, even IF Turkey gains EU accession? If Europe is unable or unwilling to integrate immigrants living in Europe, how is EU membership going to ensure any kind of rights for Kurds in faraway places like Amed, Hekarî or Wan?

I came across one indication of what the Americans may be starting to think about, and it is yet another "rescue" of Europe:

By leaving Iraq, the Americans will free up time and mental space for considering the islamization of Europe and what it means for European foreign policy, for the advanced weaponry including nuclear weapons in France and England, and for the continued survival of Western civilization. Not exactly small questions, but questions have been ignored.

Hilarious! They need mental space to figure out how to rescue Europe from itself, since it isn't able to sort out its own problems! If America starts thinking this way, why should Kurds put their hopes in the EU, especially with all the insincerity surrounding calls for Kurds to disarm themselves?

I came across that article because it mentions an independent Kurdistan, in the second paragraph from the last. But everyone can bet that the independent Kurdistan written about there, which is supposed to become a model for everyone else in the region, is that little part of Kurdistan in the South, which the Americans,and everyone else, can swallow without choking, and has nothing to do with the question of independence, federalism, autonomy or even "political and cultural rights," for Kurds in Greater Kurdistan.

Everyone is going to have to work much harder in order to be convincing.


By the way, The New Anatolian has a report on the findings of the parliamentary Semdinli Commission. The only surprise here is that the commission hints that Masud Barzanî and the KDP may be responsible for the bombings of last November. Any port in a storm, I guess.

The draft "findings" include the following:

* The state is acquitted of involvement--big shock.

* The claim is that the bombings were "local," thus contradicting Erdogan's statement at the time.

* The notion that there are any "illegal formations" in the gendarmerie is rejected, along with all of DTP's other concerns.

* There is no evidence that PKK was involved with the Semdinli bookstore bombing, but the commission wouldn't be surprised if PKK was involved.

* There is no evidence that PKK was involved with a September bombing in Semdinli, but all other bombings in the region were carried out by PKK.

The proposed solution? Yet more anti-terror organizations to harass and murder Kurds.


Why am I not surprised that AKP is doing the usual song and dance?

THE MEDIA WAR

“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgerize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.” ~ William Bembach.

There is one aspect of the serhildan that I haven't commented on yet, mostly because I have been watching other aspects of it. The one aspect I have not mentioned yet, is that of Roj TV.

Those who follow Kurdish news may remember that, back in November of last year, the Turkish media went into a frenzy over Roj TV and Denmark, who issued a broadcasting license to Roj. And when I use the term "frenzy," I mean exactly that. If you had googled "Roj TV" back then, you would have gotten hundreds of returns referring to Roj TV, and the vast majority of them were from Turkish media. All of these articles had catastrophic, end-of-the-world sounding titles like, "Roj TV to be closed by Denmark in five minutes," or "US to use nukes on Denmark if Roj TV broadcasts continue."

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the titles did give the impression that the demise of Roj TV was imminent. Of course, all of this media frenzy was manufactured because the Turks had something to hide back in November. At that time, the Turkish government was stepping-up its black operations within Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. The Semdinli affair was the most notorious of these black operations, but there were several other suspicious bombings that took place as well, in the month of November. These bombings resulted in mass protests in Kurdish cities throughout "The Region," and these protests made the Turkish government look bad. Very bad. That simply wouldn't do, what with the EU watching and all, so they manufactured the Roj TV event, in which Erdogan walked out of a press conference with the Danish Prime Minister because a Roj TV reporter was in the audience.

The Turkish game did not work. Denmark stood firm on the right of free expression in general, and the right of free expression for Kurds in particular.

The Google search engine, or any other search engine for that matter, went dead on the subject of Roj TV. Until the end of March, 2006, that is.

If you google "Roj TV" now, you will find some 9 pages of returns. Again, the vast majority of these are from the Turkish media. Again, it appears that the Turkish government is in a frenzy to close Roj TV and, naturally, they are engaging in this manufacturing frenzy because it kills them that Kurds outside the "territorial integrity" of the Turkish state, enjoy free expression rights. . . just like other human beings. Again, we read similar apocalyptic titles, like "Roj TV can be a dangerous toy for Danish politicians," or "Turkey insists on closure of Roj Tv," or "US also wants Roj TV to be shut down." The funniest titles come from the Journal of Turkish Weekly and Zaman, and I encourage everyone to do a Google search for "Roj TV" just to check out the hilarious titles from those two rag sheets.

No less paranoiac, but far more dangerous for its subtelty, is a piece titled "Preventing Turkey's Popular Slide away from the West," by Soner Cagaptay. Here is the so-called Voice of Reason, which is a nice way of saying that this is the fascist fist in the velvet glove. Soner Cagaptay is a Washington DC reptile posing as a Republican. The Turkish version of Michael Rubin, if you will.

Cagaptay remarks how Turkey has been "a traditional bastion of Western policies in the Middle East," which is innocent-sounding enough on the surface. That is, unless you are familiar with Gladio and CIA/MIT psychological operations against Kurds since Turkey became a member of NATO. From this perspective, Cagaptay's remarks take on a much darker color.

In other words, Turkey has been an active player in maintaining the status quo of brutal Middle Eastern social structures. Worse, Turkey has been an active creator of such structures. Cagaptay is admitting that Turkey has been an enthusiastic supporter of Kurdish genocide, and that this genocide dovetails perfectly with the strategic aims of the West. If you read carefully enough, you will clearly see that Soner Cagaptay also admits that it is the desire of the Turkish people to maintain this genocidal status quo, and all this in the first paragraph alone.

Cagaptay then turns his attention to the EU. He says that while it will take a minimum of ten years for Turkey to be ready for full EU membership--and not even that is guaranteed--he sees this as problematic, especially since other countries have spent less time preparing for EU membership while Turkey has been passed over. And, like the good Pashas' boy that he is, blames it all on PKK. He never mentions the fact that Turkey has been an associate member of the EU since 1963, when it became an associate member of the old European Community. The bottom line is that Turkey has had 43 years to prepare itself to become a full member of the EU, and it continues to be put off because it is not a democracy. In fact, it hasn't a clue as to what "democracy" means.

Turkey is still being forced by the EU to become a civilized state and it still balks at doing so. Much of the reluctance of allowing Turkey to become a full member has to do with its horrifying human rights record, a record consisting of atrocity after atrocity, perpetrated mainly against its Kurdish population.

It is a typical tactic of the Kemalist or the Fethullahci, pointing the finger at everyone else, refusing to take responsibility for one's actions while bemoaning one's own perpetual victimhood. All with the Voice of Reason. This is Washington, after all, and they simply don't do histrionics inside the Beltway.

Cagaptay claims that neither DTP nor PKK represent the majority view of Kurds in "The Region." This is pure denial by our propagandist. No doubt Cagaptay will love it if DTP is branded "illegal" before 2007 so that it won't be eligible for running in the elections. That way he will be able to point to his article while appropriating for himself the mantle of prophet. Unfortunately, life in LaLa Land has the very bad habit of coming back to hit you in the teeth, Cagaptay. I hope you have dental insurance.

As for the US, Cagaptay begs the US to tell Turkey how "valued" it is. Cagaptay begs the US to take care of PKK. Cagaptay begs the US to handle Turkey's Cyprus problem. Cagaptay begs the US to go to bat for Turkey with the EU. Cagaptay begs the US to realize how Turkey and the US share the same democratic values. In this context, I take it that "democratic values" means a shared experience of covert operations with the goal of genocide. Yeah, I'd love to hear Cagaptay lay that fact of history on the American people. As Senator George McGovern once declared:

"We were involved in assassinations, assassination attempts. We were operating paramilitary operations with mercenary forces hired in other people's countries with no knowledge on the part of our own Congress, our press or the American people. All of these things are alien to a system of constitutional democracy." (p.2)

That brings us back to Roj TV. According to our Beltway reptile, Roj TV makes Turkey's situation with the EU worse, and the recent violence in "The Region" has been caused by Roj TV. However, Cagaptay fails to mention that Roj TV has been under investigation for one full year for the same old charges, and Danish authorities have found no credibility to previous Turkish claims that Roj has "incited hatred." The Turkish government loves to use that expression, "incitement to hatred." This is what is known as psychological projection on a national scale.

Cagaptay fails to mention that the Turkish government has done nothing to improve the situation of Kurds or that human rights violations against Kurds have been escalating since 2004. I suppose that Cagaptay would prefer that Turkish propaganda be spread among Kurds via RTUK laws, which guarantee "free expression" in Kurdish language, with no more than 45 minutes per day, of pre-recorded, Turkish-language subtitled television programs. But as long as Roj TV continues to broadcast freely, all of RTUK's efforts at propagandizing the Kurdish people will be ignored.

However I have a newsflash for Cagaptay and for everyone else in LaLa Land: RTUK's efforts at propagandizing the Kurdish people will be ignored, with or without Roj TV, because everyone in "The Region" knows that RTUK exists to protect the state from the spread of dangerous ideas--like democracy, free expression and human rights--and in this respect Roj TV is definitely the antithesis of any Turkish broadcasting law.

It would appear that the Danish government is not fooled by Turkish propaganda either.

In light of the renewed offensive against Roj TV, as well as the renewed offensive against the Kurdish people under Turkish occupation, I would like to point out something else that I noticed a while ago. The following organizations have not stood against the Turkish government's attempts to silence Roj TV:


REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS

ARTICLE 19

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF JOURNALISTS


These organizations make all kinds of noble and false statements about how they exist strictly for free expression rights, and how the right of free expression cannot exist under regimes of fear and repression, or how they are engaged in global battles for free expression. They regularly feature journalists and news organizations that are under the gun in just about every patch of real estate that anyone can imagine, but they have not made any statement in support of Roj TV against the Turkish government's propaganda campaign to silence the Kurdish voice. Their silence is a crime against the Kurdish people's basic right of free expression and, by this very silence, these organizations lend support to the Ankara regime.

Therefore, these organizations are enemies of the Kurdish people.

Just as the Turkish government manufactured it's anti-Roj TV media event in order to divert attention from its renewed black operations against Kurds under Turkish occupation, so it is now attempting to manufacture a new media event against Roj TV, to divert attention from its murder of Kurdish demonstrators, Kurdish children, the disappearance of Kurds, the detention of Kurds, the denial of detentions by the government, the harassment and acts of terror against Kurdish politicians, lawyers and human rights workers. It is attempting to divert attention from its use of chemical weapons against Kurdish gerîlas, and the inhumane refusal to allow proper burial to gerîlas. It is attempting to divert attention from the Turkish government's declaration of war against all Kurds.

Once again, I refer everyone to the 14 characteristics of fascism.

Serkeftin, Roj!

WHO LOVES YOU, BABY?

"Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody." ~ Willa Cather.

Bianet is running a number of articles on life in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan after serhildan, and I urge everyone to go over there and take a look. I am going to focus here on two in particular.

The first is a report on the fact that there has been no investigation yet of the deaths in Amed. It looks like everything is back to business as usual with the only ones attempting to make an investigation into the deaths being one of Osman Baydemir's successors at the Amed office of the IHD. In viewing videos of the attacks by Turkish security forces, including video from Roj TV that showed attacks in Istanbul, I noticed that security forces were beating people on their heads. The indications from Amed seem to bear out my observations, with these highlights from IHD as reported on Bianet:

* It has particularly attracted attention that bullets from firearms and blows delivered by objects hit fatal areas such as chests and heads.

* Security forces have used gas bombs, pressurised water and firearms while intervening in the protestors. They opened fire using short and long range firearms not into the air - but targeting the demonstrating crowds.

* While gas bombs used to disperse the crowd should have been fired into the air, firing it directly on the crowd has revealed a deliberate action to violate the right to life.

Here are a few descriptions gathered from autopsy reports:

Halit Sogut (78): "Halit Sogut, who was heavily injured due to a blow delivered to his head by security forces with a hard object at around 14.30 on 28 March 2006, lost his life on 2 April 2006 at the State Hospital where he was placed under treatment."

Tarik Ataykaya (22): "Furniture worker. On 29 March 2006 between 13:30 and 14:00 he was wounded when security forces opened fire near Hayat 2 apartment on Baglar Medine Boulevard (beside the Metin Furniture facility behind the Rice Factory) and died the same day at the State hospital. According to the autopsy report, he died as result of brain damage and haemorrhage related to injury by firearm bullet (gas cartridge).

Mehmet Isikci (19): "Furniture builder. He was taken to the State Hospital after receiving a concussion from a blow with a hard object used by security forces . . . According to the autopsy report, he died as result of head, chest and inner trauma, fracture of skull, brain hemorrhage, internal hemorrhage due to right lung and liver rupture and shock from hemorrhage."

Emrah Fidan (17): "High school 3rd grade student. As result of injury due to security forces opening fire in the provincial center on the afternoon of 29.03.2006, he was placed under treatment at the intensive care unit of the Dicle University Faculty of Medicine and lost his life at around 08:00 on 03.04.2006. According to the autopsy report, he died as result of firearm pellets and brain hemorrhage."

These people died as a result of blows or gunshot wounds to the head, which means that security forces were beating and shooting to kill the demonstrators. That, in turn, means that security forces were not using any kind of restraint at all, contrary to all the statements and protestations of the Turkish government. A further indication of this comes from the fact that some of the dead suffered wounds to their bodies from the blows of riot-control agent canisters. In other words, these canisters were fired at the crowds. The intent of this shows one thing: Turkish security forces meant to kill the demonstrators.

The descriptions of the causes of death of the children indicate that they died of gunshot wounds.

One father, in looking for his missing son, relates how he went to the Security Directorate and was told by police, "F--- off and ask Osman Baydemir about your son."

As Reyhan Yalcindag, current head of the Amed branch of the IHD, points out, no criminal complaint was necessary to initiate investigations into these crimes of the state. An investigation should have been automatic. What this means is that the Turkish government has no intention to get to the bottom of these incidents. Once again, dead Kurds are an acceptable reality for Ankara.

The second article of note is one discussing the fact that 57 children are still under arrest in Amed and the organization gathering this information is the Amed Bar Association Children's Rights Center.

* The children are being held in the adult, Amed E-Type Prison.

* Estimates are that 95% of the children are in danger of torture and mistreatment.

* The children have been charged with life-imprisonment charges, including "violating the integrity of the state" and "inciting and provoking the people to rebellion, resentment and hostility (charges which, in my opinion, should justly be leveled against the state).

The charge of "inciting and provoking the people to rebellion, resentment and hostility" is a charge which should justly be applied to the state and not to the Kurdish people, the children in particular.

Other, miscellaneous charges include the following:

* Aiding and abetting the terrorist PKK organization,

* Inciting and provoking the people to rebellion, resentment and hostility,

* Conducting attacks on security forces with arms, firebombs, knives, stones, sticks,

* Inciting the people to looting,

* Conducting stone, stick, firebomb attacks on public establishments and institutions, political party buildings, public housing, official patrol vehicles, police panzers, business places kept open,

* Setting fire to banks after occupying them by force,

* Violating Act 2911 on Meetings and Demonstration Marches.

How is it that a state which claims to be a democracy, which has aspirations of joining with that part of the world that is normally taken to be civilized, can make charges like these against children? How can they be placed in detention in an adult prison? These are the actions of a fascist state.

And where is the rest of the world on these gross violations of human rights and of children's rights? I guarantee everyone that if these children, or the dead, had been Palestinians and the perpetrators had been Israelis--because we know the "civilized world" doesn't give a damn if Arabs violate the rights of Arabs--the entire world media would be present and would be whipping up an anti-Israel media frenzy, sparing no words in their denunciations of "atrocities" or "violations of rights." What would Erdogan have to say, if it were Palestinian children in the place of these Kurdish children?

But Erdogan and the entire Turkish state is closer to Palestinians than they are to the Kurdish people they enslave under the pretext of the infinite sanctity of "territorial integrity."

There is one last piece of blackness to complete the joke. Reuters reports that Head Pasha Ozkok has made a rare appearance in "The Region" to tell Kurds that he loves them. Well, actually, that's the title of the report and it's a big lie, false advertising. We will search in vain for any hint of the word "Kurd" passing Ozkok's lips.

Can you imagine? Here's the guy in ultimate command of the security forces who murdered Kurds, and he's the same guy who's prepared to back up Erdogan's promise of security forces using Kurdish women and children for a live-fire target practice, and this Pasha comes to "The Region" with the pretense of desire to lay a big, fat wet one on every Kurd he can locate.

I am sick!

Actually, given that the Pashas are the ones with the only real power in Turkey, the order to live-fire on every Kurdish woman and child had to come from Ozkok, or had to meet with his approval. Erdogan just came out and said it for the pretence of "democracy."

Ozkok Pasha came to "The Region" on a propaganda mission to say that the demonstrators did not represent the real feelings of the people and that the omnipotent PKK was using children as human shields. Go back and read the Bianet article on the dead in Amed and tell me where anyone says that the children were being used as shields. Go back and read, and tell me where Ozkok's "lions" were using any kind of restraint.

Ozkok is confirming everything his "lions" have done, he has no regret for his murders, and he is telling Kurds that we are going back to the 90s.

Nothing has changed.

Take your army and your love, and go back to Türkiye, Ozkok. There is no love in Kurdistan to reciprocate.

THE AFTERMATH

So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.

~ Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (l. 207)

The Christian Science Monitor is talking about the feelings of Kurds after the protests in Amed and other cities in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan and the tone of the article confirms a couple of things. First, that the Kurdish people feel without hope for the future under continued Turkish misrule and, second, there is the feeling that the situation is moving back into what it was during the 1990s.

Last October, Hêzên Parastina Gel (HPG) announced a "sharp increase of recruits joining the ranks of HPG guerrillas," and predicted a doubling or tripling of the numbers of recruits in 2006 if the trend continued. That prediction may come to pass, especially given the attitude of one of the student protestors of the recent repression, as reported by the CSM:

"[T]he Turkish government's harsh response to the protests - which spread to several other cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast and even to Istanbul, resulting in the death of 16, including a 6-year-old, and the arrest of hundreds - has him thinking about going off to join the guerrillas of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

'There are a lot, a lot, of other young people in Diyarbakir who are thinking the same way,' he says."

The people, especially the youth, are angry as a result of frustration stemming from massive discrimination against Kurds, as well as political, social and economic problems that have not been addressed at all. The majority of these youth are poor and from displaced families, situations which serve to exacerbate the conditions they suffer. With no apparent change in the status quo, the mountains, and HPG, become places of hope. No amount of Turkish propaganda aimed at labeling HPG, or the wider organization known as Koma Komalên Kurdistan, as "terrorist" can change this fact.

Meanwhile, back in Istanbul, we have this spectacle of a Turkish nationalist, one of two, who had taken hostages, were absent-without-leave from the TSK, and were reportedly protesting the Kurdish protests (Photo: AP):



But according to a report by KurdishMedia, the Mehmetçiks involved with this event were, in fact, pissed off because they were not assigned to "The Southeast." They want to claim some heads and be proud to wear ears around their necks. Kurdish heads and Kurdish ears, naturally. What else can we expect when the Turkish Prime Minister gives security forces the green light for slaughter, by saying that all Kurdish "pawns" are fair game?

Of course, standing in "The Southeast" looking out, HPG gerîlas don't look a bit like "terrorists," as the CSM article continues:

But perceptions of the group are different here. The funerals of 14 PKK fighters recently killed in combat with Turkish troops touched off the protests, drawing thousands of mourners who then turned their anger against the Turkish police. Many here looked at the dead guerrillas as locals fighting in their names, not as terrorists.

Meyase Pehlivan, the mother of one of the PKK members buried in Diyarbakir, explained her son's reasons for joining the group. "He was working for several years on solving this problem in a political way, but when he lost all hope he went to the mountains. He wanted to take some kind of action, so he joined the PKK."

Her 25-year-old son, Muzafer, was the leader of the youth wing of the local branch of a pro-Kurdish political party and had been arrested several times before heading off to join PKK in 2003, Ms. Pehlivan says. "He joined because he wanted to fight for the rights of Kurds and the identity of Kurds," she says.

This one şehîd had already tried the political route. This is the route that is preached to Northern Kurds constantly, by all kinds of hypocrites . . . and even by a few sincere people. This is the route of so-called peace and non-violence, the route which has never worked, as our şehîd found out.

It is not enough for Ankara to say, in effect, "Lay down your weapons, and then MAYBE we'll talk." The only thing that ever worked was violence. Why was it that Ozal rescinded the law prohibiting the use of Kurdish language? He did that because of some 15,000 Kurdish gerîlas taking arms against the state in a legitimate armed struggle. From Dersim, in 1937, until Şemdinli, on 15 August, 1984, Kurds engaged in no violence, they were patient, and yet they were not permitted to speak their own language, nor did they even officially exist. So it was violence alone that earned this right. It was violence alone that forced Ankara to admit the existence of the Kurdish people.

It is very hard to deny that someone exists when that someone is making you bleed.

The serhildan in the North was not merely a chain of demonstrations or protests, but an actual spontaneous mass uprising, hence my use of the word, "serhildan." Even the editor of the Hewlêr Globe recognizes this, but I will disagree with him over what he refers to as a political dilemma. The very nature of spontaneous serhildan by the people is a message, not only to the Turkish government, but to Kurdish organizations as well. It is the voice of the people speaking their frustrations with a system that has unjustly enslaved them for too long.

They must be heard and, I believe, they will be heard. But not by Ankara.

The people are sick and tired of a lot of hot air and empty words from politicians. They are angered by the injustice and discrimination, and they are disillusioned with the cosmetics that pass for cultural and political rights. The time of waiting for vacuous promises to materialize is over.

Ankara is unwilling to provide justice. Let the Confederation step in and fill the vacuum. Let them continue to walk softly along the political route but let them not be afraid to wield the big stick.

And let no one who loves the Kurdish nation call it "terrorism."

PEACE AT ANY PRICE?

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you." ~ Eric Hoffer.

Well, well, well. . . the EU speaks out again. To be specific, the AKP's representative in the European Parliament, Joost Lagendijk, has spoken out against the right of the Kurdish people to back their own political parties. Shame, shame, Mr. Lagendijk, the right of the people to choose their own political parties and to support them is one of the bases of democracy.

Shame, shame on Mr. Cem Ozdemir, too. Note: Cem Ozdemir was the first German of Turkish ethnicity (or would that be "sub-identity?") to be elected to the Bundestag in German history. As a member of the Green Party, a party which has to make a 5% threshold to keep take seats in the Bundestag. Germany has a population of some 82 million. It has a 5% threshold for parties to be apportioned seats in its parliament. Turkey has a population of some 69 million. It has a 10% threshold for parties to be apportioned seats in its parliament. Interesting bit of trivia, isn't it?

Moving right along . . . Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the Kurds in the funeral procession were not enraged by the attack against them, instigated by the Turkish police. Let's say that the Kurdish people, who were already fed up with the government attack at Semdinli, with the endless empty governmental promises, with the endless discrimination, with the poverty that has become entrenched by the government as a way of life for a group of some 20 million people that it officially views as subhuman, or with the torture and mutilation of their own dead, let's say that these people were not already angry. Let's go with Mr. Lagendijk's analysis that PKK had some significant role in the violence.

So what?

Thousands of people turned out to accompany HPG gerîlas to their final rest. With which political organization does Mr. Lagendijk think the sympathies of these Kurds lie? If their preference is with PKK, then Mr. Lagendijk and Mr. Ozdemir, you have no place to deny them their political preference.

In their statement, both of these guys refer to the recent ETA ceasefire, saying that PKK must also renounce all forms of violence. But there is a huge distinction, at this point, between the ETA example and PKK. ETA had someone to negotiate with, and the EU should know that. PKK has no one to negotiate with, and never has. The EU should know that, too. PKK has had a number of unilateral ceasefires in the past, the most recent lasted five years.

Now, think about that term, "unilateral." What does that term call to mind? "Uni-" is a prefix which indicates that something has or consists of only one thing. "Lateral" from Latin, meaning "side." So "unilateral" is a fancy word for "one-sided." It means that PKK called a number of one-sided ceasefires in its history, the most recent lasting five years. There was no other side; only PKK held the ceasefire, meaning, for the more obtuse reader, that the Turkish government never did anything to take advantage of the one-sided PKK ceasefires.

While the ETA example is great theoretically, practically speaking, at this moment in time and for the foreseeable future, that dog won't hunt. You can run it up the flagpole, but it isn't going to fly. It stands an armadillo's chance on a four-lane blacktop. Get what I'm saying, Mr. Lagendijk and Mr. Ozdemir?

I can hear them now: "But PKK is a terrorist organization! It's on The List®!"

But that dog won't hunt either. ETA was on The List® and it had mediators and negotiators. In addition, who was hosting HAMAS in Ankara recently? And HAMAS also has the distinction of being on The List®.

Here comes the next line of the hypocrite's argument: "But HAMAS was democratically elected!" AHA! That brings us back to the opening lines of this post, doesn't it? The choice of legitimacy lies with the people, not with a pack of hypocritical List-makers in faraway places like Washington, Strasbourg, or Ankara. The hypocritical List-makers have no clue as to what the Kurdish people have suffered for more than 80 years from the Turkish government, and they have no idea of the righteous anger of the Kurdish people now.

I suppose I suffer the same confusion as the DTP co-chairs, Ahmet Turk and Aysel Tugluk, on this matter of The List®:

"We are having difficulty understanding which principles of justice and democracy the prime minister is applying to the conditions under which he will meet with us. We are surprised by the actions of an administration that invites Hamas, a group recognized by both the United States and the EU as a terrorist organization, to meetings in Ankara, but then rejects meeting with a legal political party from its own country."

Touché, Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Lagendijk, Mr. Ozdemir, Mr. Bush and everyone else who wants to get themselves listed in the hypocrite round-up. Extend the same reasoning to PKK, because The List® is a joke.

Not only are they confused about who is a terrorist, but the Europeans are also confused about exactly what PKK is, since they confuse bombings in Istanbul with HPG operations. The US is guilty of the same ignorance, but I wonder if this is really a result of ignorance, or if the EU and the US are simply parroting the official position of their good ally.

Some bombings in Turkey have been claimed by TAK, which is not connected to PKK, while other bombings go without claims. The problem that no one seems to acknowlege, is that Turkey has more problems than just PKK. Of course, it makes life so much simpler to demonize Kurds in these matters.

Any number of completely unrelated groups are quite capable of carrying out bombings and have, in fact, done so in the past. The refusal to acknowledge this fact of life in the TC is more proof that Europe does not have the interests of Kurds at heart--the first proof of this being the continual demands that Kurds lay down their weapons and renounce violence. As long as the TSK and other, more shadowy, organizations are operative in Kurdistan, Kurds have the legitimate right of defence and hence the name: Hezên Parastina Gel, The People's Defence Forces.

If you have proof, Mr. Lagendijk, that PKK is behind all the violence in Turkey, you're obliged to present your evidence or you become an accessory to the fact. . . or a government stooge.

The statement of Messrs. Lagendijk and Ozdemir turns to black comedy at the call for the Turkish government "to investigate the incidents and on the judiciary to prosecute the law enforcement officials responsible." Can they be serious?! This is Turkey, they're talking about! The same government and judiciary that has buried Semdinli! KurdishInfo has a list of a few of the recent murders of Kurds by the Turkish state, among them the treacherous HPG gerîlas, Ahmet Kaymaz and his twelve-year-old son, Ugur.

Turkish law exists to protect the state from the people and, by extension, the officers of the state (i.e. security forces) are also protected by law. It is a sick joke on the part of EU parliamentarians to suggest that the Turkish state is capable of rendering a just decision for any dead Kurd.

No statement would be complete without the de rigueur mention of the economic and cultural situation of Kurdistan, and in this regard Mr. Lagendijk and Mr. Ozdemir don't disappoint. In this case, however, economics and culture serve as another anti-PKK propaganda piece, with another irrelevant reference to the ETA example. In fact, this portion of the statement sounds more like a threat than any reasoned statement of concern for the Kurdish people:

"But any effort to develop the region economically and to grant cultural rights is lost if the PKK does not change its attitude. The leadership of the PKK apparently drew the wrong lessons from the unilateral ceasefire proclaimed recently by the Spanish terrorist organization ETA: It is not by intensifying the fight that one becomes a respectable partner for talks on a solution, but by renouncing to all forms of violence."

For one thing, why should PKK change its attitude? If the proven position of the government is that it will not negotiate with anyone on The List®, HAMAS excepted, of course, then why should PKK change its attitude, whatever that means? This paragraph tells me that the EU sees every Kurd as PKK. Which means that they see every Kurd as "terrorist." Isn't this Erdogan's position, which was clear from his statement that it wouldn't matter if women or children were present at protests, that security forces would also kill them? As "pawns" of "terrorists," women and children who are on the sidelines or caught in the line of fire or hit by "stray" bullets, deserve death simply because they are Kurds/"terrorists?"

Let me tell you who is drawing the wrong lessons here: the EU and Ankara. The threat to withhold from the Kurdish people the rights that are inherent to them as human beings, the right of gainful employment by which fathers can feed their families, the right to one's own essence as expressed collectively as culture, the right to decide one's own political future, the right to legitimate self-defence against a foreign, racist or colonial aggressor, will not bring the peace incessantly called for.

Peace at any price is not worth having.

Everyone should notice that the DTP is conspicuous, in this statement, by its absence. Was that an oversight, or has the EU already digested the propaganda that makes no distinction between PKK and DTP? Or maybe they are annoyed that neither DTP nor Osman Baydemir will condemn PKK. On the other hand, not even Masud Barzanî is condemning PKK, but is permitting them to move freely through Bahdinan. Freely enough, anyway, so that HPG can return captured Turkish police to the Turkish government.

I have a heval who is fond of saying that PKK is the greatest because no one ever talks about anything else. After this recent statement by the EU and the statements of the last week from the Turkish government, I think he may be right. . .

On the other hand, this may all boil down to a simple case of fear.

WE ARE ALL GERÎLAS

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." ~ Thomas Jefferson

What Erdogan says:

"While they try to capitalise on hatred and enmity, we will build more roads, more hospitals, more schools and more workplaces," Erdogan said. "We will not back down from justice and democracy. We will bring more freedoms, more democracy, more welfare, more rights and justice."

What Kurds hear:

"Blah, blah, blah."

Wasn't all this the same kind of thing Erdogan said in his photo-op in Amed last summer? What has happened since then? The situation has become worse while Erdogan does nothing but threaten. His keepers in the MGK have him on a short leash.

Kurds demonstrating in the US are again receiving threats from the Turkish diplomatic corps, just like in the old days.

Perhaps the events of the last week foreshadow the future, but they also recall the past, as the threats of Turkish diplomats show. In looking through A People Without A Country once again, I realized that we have not left the 90s yet, as can be seen by reading the following quotes from Kurds of the time:

"We are all guerrillas, the only difference is some of us are in the mountains and some of us are here." ~ Kurdish truck driver.


"For 150 years the Kurdish Movement was a fire, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but it was never put out completely. This fire is always in the people." ~ Faysal Yilmaz.


"The government is losing authority in this region and they are trying to solve the problem with violence. But they can never solve it with violence. The government must open peaceful and democratic channels . . . If it really wants to solve this problem. . . it must negotiate with the PKK. The PKK is the organization which is struggling for the Kurds." ~ Hatip Dicle.

I think it is because nothing has happened to resolve the dirty war, and that the wounds of that war are still fresh, at least for Kurds, that these last days make me think of the 90s.

I am one of those stubborn people that, if told, "No," my response is, "Watch me do it." This last week makes me believe that serhildan is the only answer. Serhildan is carried out on many levels, but the primary level from which it operates is the level of the will. Everything is an opportunity for serhildan.

And the government continues with threats against DTP, but DTP is holding the line, maintaining political serhildan. Government threats over reinstating "emergency rule" help to maintain the attitude of serhildan in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, while both these examples illustrate the need for serhildan.

In the meantime, we should all be eager to see if the new anti-terror law will be another opportunity for serhildan. Since the Turkish military has been crying for it, claiming that it's necessary for them to fight "terrorist problem" ( i.e. the usual euphemism for Turkey's "Kurdish problem"), I'm certain the new anti-terror law will be another opportunity for serhildan.

Every time that the government tries to silence Kurds, with every dead child, with every blow of the police baton to the head, with every body crushed under the wheels of armored vehicles, with every threat of state violence against the weaker in Kurdish society, with every act of torture, with every mutilated body, with every improper burial . . . the government makes us all gerîlas.

THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE PKK

"Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat." ~ Hermann Goering.

During the last few days, you might get the idea that the Serhildan has been caused by "terrorism," that it's the fault of the big, bad PKK, or it was the fault of Osman Baydemir because he has not been using all of his power to control everyone in "The Southeast." But if some of the news is read carefully, you can begin to get an idea of what has really been the cause of the Serhildan. Let me give you a hint:

He [Ahmet Turk, DTP co-chairman] said the riots were the reflection of entangled political, social and economic problems that have plagued the Southeast for decades.

"Those people do not have education, health services ... they are hungry and deprived. How can one control such masses?" he asked.

Türk called on the government to come up with a comprehensive program for the Southeast that would include the improvement of Kurdish cultural and political rights, economic and social development and a general amnesty for the PKK.

"How can you resolve the problem only with the stick, with repression and silencing? We want this mentality to change," he said. "The [Kurdish] people believe they are still regarded as a kind of quasi-citizen."

"[E]ntangled political, social and economic problems that have plagued the Southeast for decades," that is it. The problem is that no one has bothered to consider life in "The Southeast" from the viewpoint of the average Kurd who lives there, who puts up with sorry education, sorry health services, has been forced from a village to which he or she can't go back because it's not there anymore.

Is a Kurd under Turkish-occupation supposed to give his children, or his brothers and sisters, Erdogan's empty words to eat? Will language rights fill the bellies of his children? Or arguments about how all of this misery is the fault of the PKK? This unrest was already in the air last year. Its coming could be felt just as surely as one can feel a thunderstorm coming in the summertime. From AFP as carried on KurdishMedia last July:

"What do I care about TV when I’m hungry?" asked a Lice stockbreeder who identified himself only as Sabri, echoing general disppointment with the government’s failure to relieve the region’s chronic poverty after the violence abated.

[ . . . ]

In the shanty towns of Diyarbakir, the central city of the southeast, unemployment is estimated at about 70 percent, crime is skyrocketing and brothels -- unthinkable a decade ago in the rigidly conservative region -- are mushrooming.

Did anyone notice the phrase, "after the violence abated?" That was a reference to the PKK's unilateral ceasefire, Ankara's missed opportunity.


There is more about the economic situation here, and from here. From that second article, you can find gems of truth like this one, from Amed:

"We put a group of women together, and ask them to close their eyes for three minutes and think of things that have happened to them because they are women. By the end of three minutes, every woman is crying. Then come the stories: my village was burned, my husband was tortured, my son was killed. This war devastated our society. Even now, there is no work for people here. The girls become prostitutes. The boys are thieves. They're proud of it. They come to me and say, 'I'm happy because I was able to steal some money today and bring it to my family.' Our people are suffering. We have deep and painful wounds that will take a very long time to heal."

The situation is dire. We see before us the shredding of Kurdish culture as it has been known for centuries, if not millenia. It has taken 83 years of Turkish misrule to bring us to this point. The boys become criminals and the girls prostitutes and everyone outside of this reality cannot understand the violence. Everyone spends pointless hours shrieking their anti-PKK mantras. The fact is that this shame goes directly to the Turkish government and to no one else. The shame is not that Kurds must do what they have to in order to survive, rather the shame is that the Turkish government, by its fascist policies forces Kurds to do what they have to in order to survive.

Do not consider what little business wealth that exists in Amed as something positive because it isn't, and let's not engage in the lie that "violence" or "protestors" will drive away this business. The business that exists in Amed today, the economy that functions there for the time being, exists solely to service the huge military occupation force that is deployed there. It is, therefore, a phony economy because it is limited to serving the people with money, which they get from Ankara, in the form of military paychecks.

And where is the EU in all of this? They have been focusing all their attention on a pack of spoiled French juveniles, with full bellies, rioting for what seems like weeks, simply because they are upset that they might possibly be fired from their jobs . . . as if any of them had the ambition to become employed.

And where is Turkey's best ally, the US, in all of this? They are too busy outsourcing their military-industrial complex to Turkey itself, no doubt with the hope that Turkey can become self-sufficient in war production so that they can finally wipe out the Kurds once and for all. If it's done within one's own borders, genocide is perfectly acceptable.

In other words, business as usual. No one is paying attention and no one gives a damn.

From the LA Times:

Political analysts and diplomats say the violence, the worst in a decade, reflects local anger over high unemployment, poverty and the central government's refusal to grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region.

Many people in the region say they are disappointed that they have not seen more changes despite promises of economic improvements by the governing Justice and Development Party.

It doesn't look good for AKP in 2007, not in "The Southeast" anyway.

The most absurd item in the Turkish media today, goes to the fearmongers, conspiracy theorists and all-around fascists in the MHP:

Claiming that there are circles plotting traps to turn people against each other in the country, Vural said that the state should make sure that people aren't falling into this trap.

That's right, when the going gets tough, the toughs start talking "traps." Geez! Some things never change.

Since I am tired of the usual finishes to every article about Kurds and Turkey, here is my version:

The Kurds regard the Turkish government as a terrorist group responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since it began its armed campaign to crush the Kurdish people and their desire for an ethnic Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey. But many Kurds in the region sympathize with the separatist PKK.

A QUESTION OF FASCISM

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty." ~ Adolf Hitler.

One little item almost slipped through the cracks due to the news of protests coming from Turkish-occupied Kurdistan in the last few days. It can be found at NTV MSNBC, and another can be found on The New Anatolian.

Apparently, the Turkish state, specifically the Interior Ministry and the so-called Justice Ministry, are attempting to find a way to bury Kurdish gerîlas in the field, instead of returning them to their families for proper burial. Once we get over flashbacks of the mass graves that have been found in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan in the last few years, which have yielded bodies of gerîlas or of those disappeared during the dirty war, we will see that there is another reason for the state's seeking to refuse to return any future bodies: torture, mutilation, and extrajudicial murder.

There were indications that the bodies of the Dargeçit şehîds had been tortured or mutilated after death, or both. There were also indications of execution-style murders of at least one of these şehîds. The same appears to have happened with at least some of the bodies of the Muş şehîds.

It is reasonable to expect that if gerîlas are buried in the field by the enemy, torture, mutilation, extrajudicial murder and even the use of chemical weapons, will be actions committed with impunity by Turkish security forces. The EU will not see, the families will not see and no one will know about the serious human rights violations that the security forces will be able to engage in freely, without fear of censure or prosecution. How convenient for the Turkish state.


It is clear to me that this kind of maneuvering by the Turkish state is consistent with its founding ideology, which is truly fascist in nature. As proof of my assertion of the fascist nature of Turkish state ideology, the following are fourteen common and defining characteristics of fascist regimes, taken from an article at the Council for Secular Humanism:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.

6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.

9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.

These characteristics were determined after making a study of seven fascist regimes. I will leave it to you, dear Rastî reader, to determine how many of these characteristics fit the Turkish regime. I am not the first to make this comparison, and there is an excellent discussion of the subject by John Tirman, author of Spoils of War. Some of you may remember that the Turkish publisher of Spoils of War was charged last year by Turkish prosecutors under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code.

(Note: That MIT is not the same as the MIT.)

One last item provides more fuel for the fascist fire, and that is an article from TDN, discussing the question of Turkey's Special Warfare Department, a question that has always been taboo. Give it a read with Semdinli in mind.

Better yet, give it a read with the Wan prosecutor's accusations against Buyukanit Pasha in mind.

THE GREAT DIVIDE

“Democracy is a streetcar—you ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off." ~ Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Digging around on istanbulindymedia.org, I found a couple of video clips on the serhildan. In the first one, the music alone will kill you, but coupled with the photo montage. . . Ax! The second one is here, and is longer. Both take a a couple of minutes for initial download, even with DSL or cable, but I think they are worth it.

Every nation on earth--and I am not speaking here of nation-states or countries--every nation has its own defining characteristics, its own national character. I came across something today which, I realize, defines for me a characteristic of the Kurdish people. From the Washington Post:

"As a Kurdish person I cannot knock on any door and ask for bread in Turkey. Whereas if they come here they would see we could share whatever we have," Kaycan said. "I went to a lot of other cities. I ask what time it is, and I can't get a reply because I'm from Diyarbakir."

"We only have each other here, so we support each other," said Abdullah Sarigul, 20. "Since we don't have any expectation from the other side, we rely on one another."

If a visitor goes to Kurdistan, they will find that these statements are true. The people take care of each other and, as poor as they are, they generously share what they have with guests and the guest is lavished with care. This has nothing to do with wealth, rather it is something from the Kurdish heart.

For me, this is the single greatest distinguishing mark between "The East" and "The West." Forget about the investment in "The West" when thinking about this, because no matter how glittering Istanbul may be, it does not have the heart of Amed. This is what makes the wait for a departing flight out of the Amed airport a torture. To sit in the Amed airport, at the departing gate, is to sit in the most sorrowful place on earth. To wait alone there, after one has passed through security, to be separated from this great people who care about each other, is to tear one's own heart out.

In spite of the news and photos that have come from Amed in the last few days, or from Êlih or from any of the Kurdish cities that have seen protests, there is still a feeling of safety because of the Kurdish heart, and this feeling of safety does not exist in "The West" unless you find yourselves among Kurds. Otherwise, the overall atmosphere is cold, the antithesis of Kurdistan.

It is the cultural Great Divide.

But there is a political Great Divide, as well, expressed by the young Amedî in the WP report as there being "no expectation from the other side." This fact is illustrated in a report by the BBC:

Turkey's prime minister has warned that the security forces will act against women and children who he said were being used as the "pawns of terrorism".

[ . . . ]

"If you cry tomorrow, it will be in vain," Anatolia quoted him as saying.

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

If the lives of the weakest in society are not respected by the government, you can be sure of "no expectation" for anything else.

The report goes on to say that the government is praising security forces for their "restraint." Yes, I suppose it is restraint to fire negligently into the air in order to disperse demonstrators. The fact that security forces are totally ignorant of the laws of physics that require all those things that go up, to come down again. When the bullets come down, it is irrelevant to them that they hit children playing in parks or on the balconies of their homes. It is irrelevant to them because these bullets of the state kill Kurds, and Kurds do not have the rights in any of the countries of their occupation that an endangered fruit fly would have in the West.

I also find it highly ironic that the Ankara regime is concerned enough about Kurdish kids to generate so much propaganda about keeping them away from protests, but isn't concerned enough to urge restraint of security forces. The fact of the matter is that the children who were murdered by Turkish security forces were not involved in the demonstrations.

But security forces are not simply firing into the air. A 24-year-old Kurd was murdered by security forces in Kiziltepe, having been shot through the head. This clearly proves that security forces are shooting to kill, and not using any kind of restraint, contrary to the lies coming from Ankara.

The same guy who's riding a Streetcar Named Democracy to fool the EU--Erdogan--and has no qualms about deploying security forces against Kurdish women and children, had some interesting things to say about Osman Baydemir:

On Friday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said everything in the Southeast was under control and criticized Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir by saying, "Being a mayor does not give one the right to act irresponsibly."

Baydemir had said on Thursday: "Our losses were 14. As of now, they are 16. I fear the toll may have increased," in obvious reference to the 14 PKK members killed by the military in Bingöl.

Erdoğan said, "A mayor who works in a state that respects the rule of law should not and cannot make such statements".

WOW! Everything in "The Southeast" is controlled by Osman! Thanks, Erdogan, for admitting that you and all the rest of Ankara have no legitimacy there. You can get your troops out now.

But let me ask, were you acting as a responsible mayor when you made your remark about your use of democracy, Erdogan? If so, then why should anyone believe whatever lip service you pay to democracy now? Obviously it is all lip service, since you are willing to sacrifice women and children to enforce fascism. Maybe you could explain to me, Erdogan, how Turkey can be considered a state that respects the rule of law, when the constitution exists solely to protect the state? One of the marks of a fascist state is that law exists to preserve the state at the expense of the people, in contrast to real democracies, whose laws exist to protect the people from the excesses of the state.

Another ridiculous AKP character in this drama is the Interior Minister, who "called on all to protect the country's unity and the youth." I guess he didn't mean for this statement to apply to Erdogan's call for security forces to spare no women and children in their continued efforts at occupation. He also equates attempts to "harm democracy" with crimes against humanity. With this kind of thinking, it's no wonder that Turkey is noted for its human rights abuses.

These histrionics by Turkish politicians can be contrasted with the DTP press conference Friday, in which Osman made the following statement:

"If the sacrifice of Osman Baydemir is necessary to ensure social peace, democratization, so be it. I am not after official posts. My concerns are for the future of this country and the willingness of the two peoples to live side by side."

Osman further stated that he expected the Prime Minister to share the grief of the Kurdish people over the loss of life. I think Osman will have a long wait on that. Just reread what I said about the defining Kurdish national characteristic.

The good news in all this is that it looks like DTP is sticking together. DTP is also making public note of the fact that nothing came of Erdogan's excellent adventure in Amed last summer, and it is blaming Ankara for doing nothing to increase Kurdish freedoms.

By the way, take a look at these guys:





These are proof of the total fear of the Ankara regime. They are Ozel Tim, "Special Teams," and they were deployed to Amed. They have one function in life: "they bear significant responsibility for waging war on the PKK and its perceived civilian supporters." In other words, they are state-sponsored terrorists who have carte blanche to murder anyone they may perceive as being a supporter of PKK, including civilians. They are usually extreme, right-wing nationalists--Gray Wolves. More can be read about them here.

There is also an interesting article about covert operations in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, that mentions Ozel Tim training on page 4 of this .pdf document.

More about the history of Ozel Tim's right-wing tendencies can be read at Human Rights Watch:

A 1995 report prepared by the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), at the time the junior partner in the government of Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, criticized the increasing influence of extreme right-wing and fundamentalist groups among the security forces. Such groups are usually ideologically hostile to Kurdish and left-wing organizations, the groups police deal with most often in security cases. The report presented the following conclusions: of the seventy-seven provincial security directors, 48 percent were alleged to be either radical fundamentalists (köktendinci) or extreme nationalists (ulkucu); police academies and “special team” training centers only accept those with a “nationalist” reference because only “nationalists fight against terror;” only 18 percent of the provincial security directors could be considered “democrats;” the police had a mentality to consider all those not from their ranks as the enemy.96 One scholar commented that, “Young right-wing hoodlums, who once carried out raids against “leftist” tea houses, now became policemen and schoolteachers or were recruited into the special forces fighting the Kurdish guerrillas.”97

Other sources make the same charges. In August 1994, Sevket Kazan, the former justice minister from the Islamist Welfare (Refah) Party, charged that most members of the “special teams,” noted for their abusive behavior in southeastern Turkey, were members of the far right Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi-MHP).98 In the fall of 1996, the headquarters of the General Staff prepared a brochure for internal distribution to all security forces in the southeast titled, “Public Relations and Winning the People in Internal Security.”99 In a warning directed at “special team members,” the brochure called on security force members not to wear or make symbols of a “definite political nature that incites the populace;” implied was the “grey wolf” and three crescent symbols associated with MHP and ulkucu groups.100 During an investigation of the Sivas massacre of 1993, when fundamentalists burned down a hotel killing thirty-seven Alevi intellectuals, a Turkish parliamentary investigation committee discovered that Islamist bulletins faxed to local newspapers and believed to have provoked the public to violence were sent from the Sivas Security Directorate.101

One day, may each one receive the bullet bearing his name. Everybody say, "Inshallah!"


UPDATE: Found some video at HAWARDENGÛBAS. The first is from Amed. Watch at the end to see protestors lobbing rocks at an MHP office. The second is from Êlih.

SPINNING SERHILDAN

"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 of the Thirteen Colonies, July 4, 1776.

We have really got some spin going on the news coming from the Turkish media on the Turkish state oppression in Amed.

The worst example I have seen is from Zaman, via a friend. I will compare Zaman's statements with the same statements from a Reuters report. The quote of particular interest is one that was made by the EU Commission spokeswoman, Krisztina Nagy.

ZAMAN:

Southeastern Turkey needs economic and cultural development, Nagy added; and they are aware of the terrorism-sourced problems in the area, but the issue should be approached in terms of security.

REUTERS:

"We are aware of the serious terrorist problem in the region but it is a much wider problem than just a security issue," EU Commission spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy said.

"The region needs peace, economic development and real exercise of cultural rights for Kurds," Nagy added.

Did you catch that, or is it spinning too fast for you? Let me break it down. Zaman implies that the EU spokeswoman is stating that more "security," i.e. more force, is needed to address the problem. Sure, there are some economic and cultural development needed, but these are secondary to "security," or so the implication goes.

But what the EU spokeswoman's direct quote via Reuters is saying is the opposite. In the Reuters quote, the spokeswoman is saying that the "situation" in "the region" is a much bigger problem than mere security. She is quoted as clearly saying that peace, economic development and real cultural rights are needed, with the implication that these are far more pressing concerns than "security."

A TDN story mentions a Kurdish boy injured by gunfire, who later died, by the way, but doesn't directly mention who did the shooting. It states that demonstrators threw rocks at police and, in the next paragraph, mentions that the police were armed but merely "kept watch in the streets." So where did the bullets come from? Let's compare: demonstrators, rocks; police, automatic rifles.

Again, the article mentions that a boy watching events from a rooftop was killed by a "stray" bullet. Again, who had the bullets? Among those killed in Êlih, was a three-year-old, as reported by the Washington Post.

The article also mentions a guy killed in a "traffic accident:"

The dead included a demonstrator, a nine-year-old boy hit by a bullet while watching the trouble from a rooftop and a man killed in a traffic accident while running from the melee.

But what does our old Reuters report say?

A man and a child were shot dead on Wednesday and a second man was crushed under a police armoured car in Diyarbakir.

I see. The police killed the guy in the "traffic accident" too, by crushing him under their armored vehicle. Even al-Jazeera carried that news.

Now I wonder if the Lunatic Fringe is going to take up the cause of this guy with the same passion as they take up the cause of Rachel Corrie? I wonder if the Lunatic Fringe is going to have any concern for Kurdish children killed by security forces? I wonder if the Lunatic Fringe is going to get vocal over Turkish state brutality in Amed? I wonder if the Lunatic Fringe is going to concern themselves with the 70% unemployment, with the fracturing of Kurdish society under Turkish oppression? I wonder if the Lunatic Fringe is going to notice that Turkish state policy has shifted, and now it is focused on starving the Kurds to death instead of engaging in messy military operations. I guess they got that last idea from the Iranians.

But have we heard anything from the Lunatic Fringe on this? No. It's not even a blip on their radar.

I wonder if the Turkish government is going to censure its own in the same way that it loves to censure Israel, especially when Palestinian demonstrators are wielding rocks. I wonder why the same Turkish government that urges Israel to use restraint against stone-throwing Palestinians refuses to urge its own security forces to use the same level of restraint.

Of course, I'm still wondering why the Turkish state hosts HAMAS in Ankara, even though HAMAS is on The List, but it refuses to engage in any way, shape or form with the big, bad PKK, which is also on The List.

Moving right along, we come to the spin doctors next, the Turkish media's opinion writers. Yusuf Kanli at TDN tries to lay the blame at DTP's feet. He never once mentions the economic situation under Turkish occupation and probably with good reason. It will make Turkey look bad, and we all know that image is everything. Proof? Remember Article 301 of the TCK? So it's much better to blame DTP. Make them look bad because then your own rotten image looks that much better. Yusuf forgot that Osman Baydemir called for calm and was apparently attacked by security forces.

News about an investigation being opened on Osman Baydemir for his support of the protestors because of his knowledge of what they suffer, is a big, smelly red herring. It is getting to the point that whatever Osman Baydemir does is fuel for an investigation. Remember, he and all the other DTP mayors are supposedly under investigation for sending a letter of support to Roj TV. I'm surprised that they haven't opened an investigation on Mukaddes Kubilay, the DTP mayor of Dogubayazit, for her criticism of the Turkish government during the bird flu crisis.

Turkey is simply biding its time until it has a big enough collection of smelly red herrings to outlaw DTP, just as it has outlawed all other Kurdish parties before it.

But Yusuf is clearly out of it, otherwise he would never ask this question:

How does it happen that, two weeks after Nevroz, we have such a situation -- which could indeed be described as massive unrest or a rehearsal for an uprising -- under the pretext of demonstrating against military operations and the killing of 14 terrorists in action?

Let TSK stay the hell away from funerals, and that includes F16 overflights. Every time there is a funeral for a gerîla, security forces are out en masse, purposely to cause a provocation. Just stay the hell away.

This country has achieved great reforms and major openings over the past few years. Many things that we may criticize as being insufficient today were beyond limits of consideration only a few years ago. Why did these reforms become possible? The chieftain of the gang was captured; the gang had ceased its operations and thus the civilian authority of the country had the chance to take and implement some radical decisions.

There have been no great reforms, and the minutiae that pass for "great reforms" in the mind of Yusuf Kanli were all grudgingly granted in order to fool the EU. There was also a five-year unilateral ceasefire, during which time the Turkish state could have begun real reforms and real restitution for all the damage that the Turkish state inflicted on Kurds since 1925, but no one did anything at all during that time. This is why we are at the point we are at today. Drive outside of Amed today and you will see lots of factories and all of them are closed. No jobs, no hope, no future. Since that is the case, there is not much point in hanging around when you can find gainful employment in the mountains with the added attraction of killing Turks--the same Turks who are back in your old 'hood shooting your seven-year-old brother.

Rather than engaging in gruesome acts of terrorism, the PKK, if it is really concerned about the rights and well-being of the ethnic Kurdish population of this country, must consider laying down its arms permanently, like Spain's ETA. That would be a greater challenge to this country's conservatives than continued violence.

The problem that Yusuf has is that he cannot distinguish the current situation of ETA and the Kurdish situation. ETA has had mediators for the last four years. The Spanish state actually worked with the mediators. In other words, the Spanish state was agreeable to negotiation. There has been absolutely no indication that Ankara is willing to sit down with a negotiator, much less with Kurds. Ankara has sullenly given in to EU nagging over questions of human rights and Kurdish rights and that, in itself, is an indicator that Ankara is very far from any attitude of negotiation.

Mete Belovacikli at The New Anatolian provides a couple of different takes on the events in Amed in the last few days. First is this:

There are those who believe that the Diyarbakir incidents were triggered in an attempt to prevent a spring operation against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is set to start soon. They underline that the coming period will be one in which strong measures will be taken against the PKK and believe that the terrorist group will thus shift towards mass actions in major cities.

However, the same sources don't fail to repeat that very strong measures will be taken despite the efforts of the terrorist organization and its supporters.

Again, there is no looking at the roots of the problem, as the EU spokeswoman, Krisztina Nagy, mentioned in the Reuters report. Ankara appears to be able to think and solve problems in its usual way, the brute-force-and-ingorance method, to borrow a phrase from one of my old mathematics professors. Since 1984, the Turkish state regularly has a couple hundred thousand Mehmetcik's deployed in North Kurdistan in order to fight a few thousand gerîlas. Well, okay, they have to pacify the locals as well, and they number anywhere from 17 to 20 million, but my point is that in all this time Ankara has used the same method and it hasn't worked. The good news is that this proves another of Einstein's theories, which he stated thusly:

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

So maybe it really doesn't take a rocket scientist, but it seems that it does take a theoretical physicist.

The fact is that Ankara has never understood guerrilla warfare and as a result, Ankara has never understood how to engage in counterguerrilla operations. I doubt that Ankara will understand in the near future. If there had been any understanding, the battle would have been engaged on a completely different level. Therefore, the big, bad PKK will be around for some time to come and it doesn't matter if it seemingly goes "underground," because all the ground in Kurdistan is potentially fertile given the status quo.

The other example cited by Mete is as follows:

A rumor in Ankara circles says that a law on "population exchange" may be proposed. You may wonder how such a law could come about. Let me explain ...

The decision-makers in Ankara believe that the public tends to go to extremes about the Kurdish problem. They've decided that the Kurdish problem cannot be solved through being able to separate out terrorists from ordinary people.

The same decision-makers reluctantly say that the public has started to express ideas such as that the Kurdish problem can be solved through either total or partial division of the region from Turkey or through ethnic cleansing.

Worried that these beliefs may quickly bring Turkey to the brink of an internal conflict, the decision-makers cite those who claim that the problem can be solved through a population exchange law. Those who support this opinion say, "Let's draw up the borders, those Kurds living in the west should go east."

Mete is telling us that the Turkish public has suddenly become "separatist." I wonder how they're going to apply the Anti-Terror Law to the Turkish public?

I would add that those Turks living in "The East," need to go west. Fair is fair and it doesn't matter that the government shipped them to "The East" after Dersim. If there's going to be a population exchange law, it needs to be reciprocal. But let's get really fantastic and imagine for a moment that this were the reality; a population exchange law would still be an application of force, perhaps even a "security" measure, as Zaman spins Nagy's quote. As such, it is not a mutually agreed divorce, such as that which the Czech Republic and Slovakia agreed to when they split, and, if done in the spirit described by Mete, the Turks will treat Kurdistan as a "second Armenia," with similar political and historical baggage.

Even separatism must be negotiated in good faith and there can be no good faith until the TC gives up its terrorist actions against the Kurdish people and the US, the EU and the UN must stop enabling the TC in using terrorism against Kurds. Let's forget about the excuse of sovereignty as being a protection for those states that have the tendency to slaughter the populations within their borders. A new way of handling genocidal regimes must be defined, as quoted so well by Alan Johnson:

The political philosopher and Dissent editor, Michael Walzer, has argued that if the state protects the common life (i.e. does not slaughter its own civilians and seeks to meet their minimal life-needs) then sovereignty is to be respected. But if the state violates the common life in appalling ways then, whether or not anyone acts, that state has already lost its claim to 'sovereignty'

One last item concerns something, the rumors of which began to creep into the media at the end of February, with the deaths of the Şehîds of Dargecit--and for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, or at least with brains to think, they would have learned the mood of the people if they paid attention to the clashes in Amed a month ago. At the end of February, rumors began to go around about the use of chemical weapons against HPG by the state.

DTP is now bringing the suspicion to the attention of the media. I expect that this will be investigated as transparently as Semdinli.