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By Rebwar Rashed:
Just prior to the first Turkish national election on June 7th 2015, Erdogan started a reactionary war on Kurdish people. The aim was to scare Kurdish voters, minimizing public gatherings and meetings. Tens of bombs exploded in Kurdish areas against Kurdish people, killing hundreds and wounding many more.
Even the bomb that exploded in Ankara on 10th October 2015 was mainly against Kurdish people, targeting a “Labor, Peace and Democracy” rally supporting a peaceful solution of the Kurdish question. Turkey blamed ISIS, but due many reasons, Kurds rather see AKP and nationalistic circles behind it.
The real Turkish war though began on July 23rd 2015 when NATO almost forcibly dragged Ankara into fighting ISIS, at least on paper, to save NATO’s International face, even though the whole world was witnessing how Turkey supported ISIS by all means. The Turkish decision to fight ISIS surprised NATO and the Western world and, the next day, hundreds of Turkish jet fighters started to attack the Qendil headquarters and other areas of Kurdistan, in both Turkey and Iraq, rather than attacking ISIS.
Since July 24th 2015 Turkey has been waging a literally fascistic war against the Kurdish people. This war is not just against Kurdish guerrilla forces, but also against civilians inside internationally well-known Kurdish cities, as the ancient Sur of Diyarbakir, Cizre and Botan.
There has been a military blockade on the whole Kurdistan area which Turkey calls “Curfew”. Turkey commits atrocities and crimes against humanity in front of the International community. The Turks have even gone so far as to undress dead Kurdish females in order to belittle and harass Kurdish people in a psychological warfare and for provocation.
Erdogan has failed to rebuild his imaginary Ottoman Empire and make himself to a “Sultan” with absolute authoritarianism although he has already built a castle, the “White Palace”, with its 1,100 rooms. He blames the Kurdish National Liberation Movement for the crushed dreams.
He was planning to build mosques in Latin America, “liberate” Jerusalem and lead a Friday Muslim-Prayer in Al Aqsa, topple the Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad and take over Syria through his proxy war and “Lego-Jihadists”, and at the same time crush the Kurdish struggle for freedom and liberty on the other side of the fence and, last but not least, start to lead the Islamic (Read: Sunni) world into hegemonic victory. He has recently engineered the so-called Islamic Coalition “against terrorism!”, a 34-state Sunni military alliance, a malign contribution to the already deteriorated Middle East.
Thanks to tremendous support from NATO, the US and Western Europe, Turkey has been the best winner for years in the fields of economy, political dominance and diplomacy, especially when it comes to suppressing the Kurdish people. Turkey has been enjoying every blessing it needs for exterminating Kurdish people and destroying Kurdistan.
When it comes to the Syrian war, Turkey has been a smuggler-state. Turkey reminds us of “The Kid” of the great Chaplin; though an exactly opposite way to Chaplin´s humanism. Turkey is sending thousands of bad boys, armed with sophisticated American and Western arms, to kill and scare the Syrians in order to force them run and fly. Turkey is investing in having an empty Syria, easy to conquer and at the same time gaining millions of dollars to smuggle the chased population outside of Syria. This smuggling affair is well organized with Turkish military-police-MIT co-operation. The crown of this enormous enterprise is the blackmailing and pressing the EU for billions of dollars. As a matter of fact, there are no more than 250,000 Syrian refugees inside tents in Turkey, the rest of the two imaginary millions is said to be spreading all over Turkey. The accuracy of these numbers should be the EU´s headache, but one thing is very sure, that the enslaving of Syrian women, forcible marriages of little girls to rich Sheiks from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the trafficking of Syrian women and the enslavement of Syrian men into an almost unpaid labor force is the bitter reality. In addition, there is the ISIS oil too.
Erdogan has also cheated the Obama administration by breeding and raising Ankara-loyal Jihadists, instead of “moderate” Islamists, against the Syrian regime. This is now a real headache for the White House.
Back to Kurdistan, Erdogan was holding a speech with a mocking smile on 7th October 2014 saying that “Kobané will fall!” He has developed hidden skills and abilities to hurt the Kurdish people.
Turkey had the gall to want to see the fall of Kobané, and to witness a few hundred thousand, mostly civilian, Syrian deaths, to see a devastated Syria, to bomb its own Kurdish citizens, to burn Kurdish civilians inside their homes, while trying to whip the US, NATO and the EU into line against the terribly suppressed Kurdish people following to the latest bomb targeting the Turkish military in Ankara in which, according to Erdogan himself, “20 of the 28 killed were ranking military officers”.
Turkey has been sending Jihadists, trained and equipped with American taxpayers’ money, into already-stable Kurdish areas controlled by the YPG and shooting and dropping artillery on many different Kurdish positions fighting ISIS for at least the last two weeks. Erdogan has stated clearly that he will not tolerate any Kurdish gains.
Turkey’s war against the indigenous Kurdish people has been and is against the Kurdish liberation movement, no matter if the name/ names are PYD, YPG, YPJ, PKK, TAK, HDP etc. Turkey has done and is now doing everything in its power to eliminate Kurdish people.
Thus, the people of Kurdistan have every right to defend themselves against this campaign of barbarism which clearly believes only in violence and in military solutions.
A right turn is to direct Turkey to stop its aggression on the Kurdish people and to go back to the negotiation table with the PKK; to release Mr. Ocalan so that he can play a constructive role for a peaceful sustainable solution to the Kurdish question; to stop its unfriendly intervention in Syria and to forget its Neo-Ottoman expansionistic dreams.
The International Community, the UN, US, EU and the international democratic opinion has a moral and a democratic obligation to support the people of Kurdistan as it struggles for basic national and democratic rights.
Rebwar Rashed is Co-Chairman of the Kurdistan National Congress – KNK
