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By Safiye Dirik:
“When Allah was creating these mountains, the mountains cried, they cried a lot.They said, ‘Who’s going to take care of us? You are making us so snowy and so void’ The mountains said ‘Nobody will come’. Then Allah showed the Kurds to them. He said, ‘These are desperate, they’ve got no cure. They’ll stay and take care of you’. The mountains waited and the mountains cried. And thus we’ve landed on these mountains”.
This is from Muhtar’s speech in the movie ‘A Season in Hakkari’ ( Hakkari’de bir Mevsim). The junta banned this movie for generations. Even though Muhtar was not expressing himself as a Kurd and there was nothing about ‘terrorism’ in the movie, the language Ferid Edgu and Erden Kıral achieved was so powerful in reflecting the solitariness of the region that the junta couldn’t bear it.
The 12 September junta made a constitution for hiding the Kurdish identity, hiding the Alevis, hiding all minorities and it declared a Kemalist Islamist identity of its own kind. This Evren Pasha model of Turkishness prevailed all through the preceding fake democratic governments who enjoyed the sovereignty offered to them by the junta – and they are still enjoying it.
Erdogan does his best in order to keep the line. He is provoking the Kurdish movement to extremes, playing games with a ‘democratic approach’.
Everthing is done in order to hide the core of the problem – as they call it, ‘the Kurdish problem’ – where you can only seek the solution by selecting good and bad Kurds and by oppressive judicial and military means.
By calling it the Kurdish problem, they show that they are ready to grant some individual rights on education, municipalities and freedom of language. This is a trap.
The problem is a Turkish problem and it can only be solved by political means.
They have to recognize the Kurdish community as a community. They have to recognize the Alevis as a community. They have to recognize minorities and provide their security.
Instead they are pushing the Kurdish movement to a racist trend of their kind and provoking conflicts. If ever the constitution achieves the construction of a real democratic basis, fake springs can find a model in the Kurdish mountain volcano movement. The Kurdish movement in Turkey can open a leading gate, not only for its ethnic acceptance, but for all residents of Kurdistan.
Don’t you think the world has a problem with mountains?
Sure, a normal human being has a subconscious fear of volcanic explosions and they rarely choose to reside on mountains although mountains are the most secure places to land on.
Afghans live on mountains. Kurds live on mountains. Mountains are safe havens for fugitives of capitalism and imperialism. Safe havens for the ones who don’t want to live in an illusion of the capitalist consumer mode and a post-modern definition of civilization.
They don’t want to lose the kind of collectivism they depend on. But the soldiers of ‘Big Brother’ won’t give up the fugitive hunt.
Hey there drone, searching for me with robotic eyes. Can you see my heart?
I am the ‘crowd’ as you usually name me. I’m the one you speculate on.
Throw away your x-rays and watch my heart. You can never erase the mountain in me, no matter how long you bomb me with chemicals or bury me alive in F-type Turkish prisons.
The world has a real problem with the mountains, don’t you think?
Safiye well done for the brillient article ,i hope you continuusly update us about of your thoughts and ideas.