Be aware KRG

By Kamal Chomani:

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) can play a vital role in helping solve the Kurdish question in Turkey, but the KRG leadership needs to be smart to fulfill this role. It should be cautious about Turkish demands for help against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The KRG’s condemnation of the killing of Turkish soldiers by PKK guerrillas was very strong when compared to its statements made after the murder of seven Kurdish civilians by a Turkish air strike in the Qandil Mountains.

Murad Karayilan, the PKK’s leader in the Qandil Mountains criticized the statement Nechirvan Barzani delivered in Turkey. “We wished that Nechirvan Barzani’s visit would be for resolution but his words were not fit to the situation,’ said Karaylan in an interview.

Turkey has started a wide military operation against the PKK so as to destroy the party, as Sri Lanka did against the Tamil Tigers. But the PKK is not the Tamil Tigers. This can never happen.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has a dream to achieve this, even though it is an impossibility. This time the President, Abdullah Gul, is even harsher than the PM, even though some Kurdish politicians in Turkey believed that he would cooperate with the other Abdullah, from Imrali, in solving the Kurdish issue.

In a statement Fathullah Gulen, the Turkish Islamic-Nationalist scholar,  is very concerned about why the PKK still exists when Turkey’s army is one of the strongest armies in the world. Now all in Turkey have crossed their fingers hoping to finish off the Kurdish freedom movement.

We should be united as well: not to fight, but to continue our struggle to defend our existence and secure natural, humanistic, cultural and political rights.

For Erdogan and his followers – including journalists – the current Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, is the best ever. When he was appointed, there was an agreement between the army and Erdogan, and this is why the army is silent about the arrests of many officers, including 56 generals and admirals.

Bulent Kenesh, a leading Turkish columnist wrote last week in todayszaman.com: “Finally we have a chief of General Staff and army commanders who do not run after hidden goals, but command the operations against terrorists on the spot.” Here he seems so happy at having such a Chief of General Staff  – as though the General has not participated in killing tens of thousands of innocent people. The Turkish liberal and Islamic writers and journalists usually blind their eyes when the army operates against the PKK and Kurds, no matter how the army behaves. I do not care about what the Kemalist journalists or writers say or write, but it is not ethical when you consider yourself a liberal or Islamist and support such an army.

Turkish people have agreed on one thing: ending the Kurdish freedom movement in Northern Kurdistan. They do not care about, or rather, they celebrate the killing of PKK guerrillas. From the top Islamist scholar to the most liberal writer, they all call for an operation inside the KRG’s territory to defeat the PKK.

Turks are united in their stand to eliminate the PKK. But they cannot do anything if the Kurdish leadership of the KRG does not help them. I am so concerned that the KRG leadership – and in particular the KDP – might help them. We have had a bad experience with them. Masoud Barzani and Nechirvan Barzani’s statements are not acceptable to any Kurds who ask for more rights. Their statements do not serve the Kurdish cause, either in Turkey or in Iraq.

Instead of rushing to Turkey to obey Turkish demands, Nechirvan could ask Turkey to solve the question through political-peaceful measures. Masoud Barzani could put pressure on the central government to stand up against the Turkish incursion.

When Erodgan visited Hawler, the capital city of KRG, he was welcomed as though he is the world’s emperor; but he wouldn’t even confirm that Masoud Barzani is the KRG’s president. He was just saying president; we didn’t know president of which planet!

They still pursue their concept of not acknowledging our existence as a nation and a de facto state in the region. The KRG must glorify its status quo and it should not accept less than mutual respect.

Some Kurdish politicians talk about the threat facing the KRG if it does not condemn the PKK’s attacks on Turkey: but they should know that this is an issue of sovereignty between Iraq and Turkey. If the Kurdish leadership in Baghdad is smart enough to promote a good policy for Kurdistan, they could stand against Turkey through the central government and American forces in Iraq.

At the end of the day, we need unity. Apart from that, we need more awareness about what is happening in the region. This is not a war against the PKK, it is a war against the whole Kurdish movement in Turkey. Erdogan is just conceptualizing this war in the name of ‘terror’, but anyone can easily see how Kurdish politicians, journalists, activists are treated in Turkey.

More than at any time, Kurds and Kurdistan need unity. As Martin Luther King once said: “United we stand. Divided we fall”.

kamalchomani@gmail.com 

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2 Responses to Be aware KRG
  1. Solin HACADOR
    October 28, 2011 | 21:39

    Many thanks dear Kamal. Your article is very challenging. I congratulate you. I agree with unification because I believe the strongest weapon is UNIFICATION.

  2. Safo Dirik
    October 29, 2011 | 05:48

    Greater Middle East Inıtiative (GMEI)map was behind Erdogan when he was spelling such words ” I am the co chair of GMEI. Chairman is America.In this project Diyarbakır is a bright center.”he continued.

    On this map a unique Kurdistan in is wiew covering the south and north together and they are neighbouring Armenia in the north. This map is exactly same as the one in the first world war.World had a promise made to Kurds once and World cheated.

    The islamists and nationalists beleive that Turkey can not survive if Kirkuk and Mosul are excluded. Are they in love with these provinces. No. They need the resources in a booming economy.

    Therefore KRG is under threat of Turkish invasion. Nowadays the style of invasion is cultural. The Sunni Nakshi culture will make a good floor for a regional colony. Then Turkey can name it as Kurdistan. Then they’ll show the world how democratic they are. In the Ottoman Age this region was the center of trade because there were no borders. They promise economic boom and showed it already by the Turkish investments which built the materialist structure of region. They are involved in all the economic activities hand in hand with the profiting Kurdish elite. But now they are threatening Barzani in economic means. For example they took precautions to the cigarette smuggling from Kurdistan claiming that the profit goes to PKK. All Turks know that there is a cigarette production in Southern Kurdistan and this smuggle in controlled by AKP staff.They earnings are shared by their partners in Kurdistan. Erdogan has a lot of tools for oppressing Barzani and Talabani.

    There won’t be any appropriate time for KRG to show courage and honesty. The cleansing of a political movement as BDP and PKK will be KDP’s and KRG’s last. Erdogan unites through corruption. He could never do it to BDP and PKK. Now trying to lead a massacre of democracy, freedom and autonomy of Kurds.

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