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By Steve Tataii:
The world media, such as Sky News, Wall Street Journal and Fox News reported on Oct 30, 2011:
‘Turkey Quake Survivors Search to End: Rescue teams in eastern Turkey who had worked around the clock for the past week were to wind up the search for quake survivors by nightfall on Saturday, Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said.
‘As the death toll rose yet again, a solemn Atalay said operations in Ercis, the worst-hit city in the earthquake stricken Van province, would be called off because hope of finding anyone else alive had run out.’
However in just one recorded incident, a 2010 Haitian earthquake survivor was rescued alive after 27 days – so Mr. Besir Atalay, you’re making a fatal mistake at the cost of Kurdish lives, and you must ALLOW THE RESCUE OPERATION IN VAN FOR 20 MORE DAYS.
Your decision to end the rescue operation in Van is callous, totally wrong, and must be immediately reversed or you’ll go down in history as another of the Ataturk and post-Ataturk regimes – all of them anti-Kurd butchers since the infamous 1923 British-France partitioning of Kurdistan among Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran,keeping over 50 million Kurds stateless to this day.
You sir, DPM Besir Atalay, and you too PM Teyyib Erdogan, shall then be known as such for all times, and that would be nothing to be proud of unless you gentlemen reverse your decision of ending the rescue operation for more survivors painfully waiting down there under the debris of collapsed buildings to be pulled out alive, and extend the operation for at least another 2-3 weeks.
All you and your predecessors since ‘Ataturk’ have done is to prevent them to be who they are by your forceful assimilation techniques, and – since it did not work – choosing the easiest of all ‘genocides’ in attempts at wiping them off the map, and move on with the biggest gifted land robbery – handed to you by those callous thieves the ‘colonial powers’ – in the history of mankind.
If you try to claim that the present cold climate of Van will not be like the warm weather in Haiti, I have to remind you that, under the rubble, surviving victims are mostly sheltered by the warmth of the rubble around them, hopefully in pockets of space to remain safe and relatively comfortable; whereas, in Haiti with its hot weather dehydration is worse than in Van – and now with trickles of the first melting snow during the day, this may even provide victims with some drinking water.
You will probably also deny knowing about the murder of 35 innocent Kurdish civilians in Gever just a few days ago, when 34 of them were killed by chemical weapons banned by the 1925 Geneva convention. This was signed by you in 1995, and yet you have used these weapons recently, and regularly before and after 1995, against the Kurdish freedom fighters known as rebels but erroneously labelled as terrorists by your fascist regime, forcing some of its allies to accept that label.
Was this a part of your rescue mission as well, or just terrorizing Kurdish people further, while pulling out over 600 dead bodies of their own from the rubble of the Van earthquake?
Is there ever an end to these state terror atrocities?
Was this in retaliation for the 24 policemen killed by PKK, when you repeatedly refuse to negotiate with them, or accept their calls for ceasefires since 1993 and again repeatedly thereafter until just this past week?
Certainly killing 35 young Kurdish citizens will not stop the Kurds from striving to be free, and naturally ‘self-ruled’, will it?
Certainly by now you can tell for sure; that war is not the solution, but negotiations are, only you are too impotent to act on it in any near future and let the Kurds repair their broken lives all across North Kurdistan since 1923.
Is this your preliminary show of interest before you promulgate the new constitution we’ve all been looking forward to reading, and put an end to Turkey’s outdated ‘Anti-Kurd’, diabolical, and sac-human constitution?
Well, peace ain’t gonna happen DPM Atalay – PM Erdogan, and especially when you’re trying to replace your downed attack helicopters with two more advanced attack helicopters courtesy of the US administration, so that you can kill more Kurds – and cause them to kill more Turks!! This is why the vicious cycle of war cannot end without negotiations and without the full recognition of Kurdish identity and Homeland territory.
The more you attack Kurdish citizens, the more you drive them away from your Turkish society, to the point that again foreigners have to come in, and change the regime by force, since not all spring-scented revolutions are of the recent ‘Arab Spring’ variety. The Syrian regime is still drunk from the past Hafez Assad’s ruthless iron fist reign, but this is not Hafez Assad’s era anymore, and his son – drunk from that bloody era – may never snap out of it and see the new reality, not until he falls flat on his face soon, leading to the falling of more dominoes upward into Turkey unless Turkey embraces this fact: that it must allow the formation of a near independent or fully independent Kurdish state to finally take shape, and help all four divided parts of Kurdistan to emerge as one.
That’s when the Turkish domino may still keep standing – only after Kurdistan is formed peacefully.
On the other hand, nothing and no one can resist the awesome power of peoples, particularly of a strong, ancient people like the Kurds, or the invader will go down in disgrace – no matter how long it takes to stage more wars.
So, for now, let’s see if you and your government are humble enough to help save Kurdish lives in just a simple humanitarian operation. Not from your helicopter attacks, but only from a natural disaster, which only God knows, and rest assured he probably did so in Van, perhaps as the only way to bring you all to your senses, and help you end the war against Kurds of the past 92 years.
So here I am again, as one individual, a former winner of a US Congress seat, disallowed from serving solely because I was a Kurd by origin, and the US Congress’ appropriate committee was too corrupt to uphold my winning rights against other more corrupt elements it identified itself with more (which is why American people are fed up with most of the Congress members, want them out, and demand for new, honorable, and genuine leaders in clean elections).
So here I am again, reminding you and Mr. Erdogan; that you’re not even capable of doing the right thing, and allowing the rescue mission to continue further, when this opportunity with international support falls right into your laps!
Ending the war, but not ending the rescue operation. Your actions just don’t add up. You really need to end something as destructive as war but instead you end the other thing, which could for once identify you as a normal member of the human species, showing your stuff – you’re ending the wrong operation this time!
I think you need to learn how to end something bad, and start something good, which was never taught to you and your colleagues from the written ‘Ataturk’ anti-human constitution let alone ‘it’ being an anti-Kurd blueprint into an endless colonial, learned diabolic agendas in that diabolic culture of “Kill Kurds so that I’ll keep you in power and I’ll finance the killings” created and condoned by the 1915-1923 Colonial bastards, committing any despicable act for money and power, and never admitting it even to this day.
So I ask you NOT to end the rescue search operation to impress your masters, assuring them that you’re still ruthless, and haven’t forgotten their diabolic demands, but rather do the right thing, and let the rescue operation continue, and with international help, you don’t even have to bear most of the cost, and can even benefit from their visits.
Now, the rest of the rescue operation must be conducted with extra care, and utmost delicate attention in watching where they step and being super extra conservative while using heavy equipment machines; using them only when it is needed to remove the bulk of any clearly visible, formerly inhabited rubble unlikely to have empty pockets of space to hold possible survivors, and after examining any movements or sign of life diligently by modern external testing machines.
Even if just one victim was found and rescued after the next 2-3 weeks; the extension is still worth while.
I further ask you to allow the authorities of Van and of nearby towns and villages and other Kurd districts’ officials a free hand to run the coordination and decision making in all aspects of this operation during the next 20 days. This will be absolutely essential to maintain security, peace, and calm while working on this most sensitive life saving operation.
It is also incumbent upon you to facilitate all their communications and transportation within Van and surrounding areas, so that there are no unnecessary delays in receiving aid and supplies especially to assemble the vital ‘pre-manufactured homes’ to as quickly as possible in the devastating cold, which will get worse into the winter very soon.
Suppose your own Grand Mothers, Grand Fathers, Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, and Children are among the victims down there to be rescued alive, and any delay may lessen the chance of their survival: so let’s move as quickly, yet as carefully as possible to continue the rescue operation for 20 more days, and good luck to all.
Steve Tataii is a Kurdish scholar, former candidate for the United States Senate, and US House in ’02 (won the election, but denied of his victory through a plot by corrupt inner circle political elements). US House Candidate ’08 (lost due to Incumbent’s refusal to debate), author of three recent books on the Iraq War related to Kurds and Kurdistan, long-time contributing writer for local and other media, linguist of more than six languages, and an Independent Conflict Resolution Consultant. His Website (soon to be updated) is: www.tataiiforcongress.com
