Why have you assassinated peace?

By Mufid Abdulla:The three victims

The Turkish state has long been reluctant to talk and make peace with the Kurdish nationalist movement in the north of Kurdistan. This approach has endured since Ottoman times and the chauvinist ideas of Kamal Attaturk, the founder of the modern state, live on everywhere in Turkey today. In the 1990s, when the PUK leader Jalal Talabani tried to mediate between the Turkish state and the PKK leadership, negotiations progressed to a stage where the Turkish president felt positive about the prospects for a resolution to the conflict. Not long afterwards, President Turgut Ozal died. It was recently revealed that he was poisoned by the Turkish secret state.

Wednesday’s terrible events in Paris – the murders of three Kurdish women politicians – have shocked the world. How can three peace-loving individuals be assassinated in such a horrible way, bringing all of us Kurds together to ask: why is this happening again?

The KCK has condemned the killings and accused elements of the Turkish state of carrying them out with the help of international intelligence agencies. The Turkish state has also condemned the murders. But observers will not easily accept that the Turkish state will be proved innocent of this crime.

The timing coincides with the opening of new talks between the PKK leader and the Turkish state. It is possible that the MIT (the Turkish intelligence agency) has exploited that situation and taken advantage of the current negotiations to strike brutally at the PKK in Europe.

It would not be the first time the Turkish state has acted illegally abroad. In 1999, they abducted the PKK leader, Abdulla Ocalan, from Kenya – with the help of the Israeli and US agencies, Mossad and the CIA – and took him back to Ankara and they have incarcerated him ever since.

Turkey has recently positioned itself as a dominant power in the Middle East. The warm ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), intervention in Syria, to back the opposition, and abandonment of Israel, for the sake of developing ties with other Middle Eastern states and encouraging their tourists to come to Turkey, are all proof of this.

The PKK will now ask itself: why we should lay down our arms when our unarmed activists have been murdered? Divisions will harden between the Kurdish nationalist movement and the Turkish state in the wake of this tragedy.

The PKK and their political leaders in Paris should proceed in a constructive way to address this tragedy, holding the French government responsible for finding the killers of the three victims, who were three staunch supporters of peace. Surely the Paris police, with all their forensic science and technology, can find out who are the killers? Surely a powerful nation like France can find out who are the people that carried out this atrocity?

The people who fear being marginalised by the latest talks are most likely the people who carried out this assassination: these are the Turkish generals and the ultra-nationalist movement. The BDP in Turkey should supervise all the talks, since Ahmed Turk has recently attended the negotiations, and tell the people of the north of Kurdistan whether the Turkish state is being serious and genuine about peace and solving its decades-long conflict with the Kurds.

We need our security and our identity. It is time now, more than ever, to face the reality of the vulnerability of the stateless Kurds. Who is going to defend us and protect us, other than ourselves? We need our state, our nation state, to protect us from everyday massacre and incursion.

In 1989, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was assassinated in Vienna by agents of the Iranian state. Today his murderers still walk free on the streets of Tehran.  The Austrian authorities know very well who killed him on their soil. But no one from the Iranian embassy in Vienna was arrested. Ghassemlou’s family know the facts. We must ensure there is no repetition in Paris of this scenario of rank injustice.

Copyright © 2012 Kurdistantribune.com

3 Responses to Why have you assassinated peace?
  1. Raph Jamal
    January 11, 2013 | 14:14

    It’s terrible that even in this modern day and age man still resorts to violence.Silencing words of freedom and crippling honest.These women did not deserve this! And now we are taken aback to further dwell in the travesty of democracy.The French must do soomething about this!

  2. kuvan
    January 11, 2013 | 17:14

    I strongly believe in this saying”what goes around comes around” so those who killed these innocent women will one day pay the price for it one way or the other .

  3. kurd
    January 11, 2013 | 20:57

    I have always thought that Turkish‘s state is not a democratic and Turkish people has not an culture…, therefore, it seems to be this horrible assassination is effected recently peace negotiations between Turkish state and PKK’s leader and may be termination it, However, I have been believed these dialogues are better for Turkish state than Kurdish people, because, if PKK lay down arms(if it happens I prefer PKK split), in that case Kurdish men are further obligation to Turkish state and by all means are being controlled… I do believe Kurdish people are need to independent state in turkey rather than their soldiers lay down arms and continue live with wild Turkish people…

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