Should we suport Kurds?

[Taguhi]

What do you think?

Some Armenians think that Armenia should suport Kurds in their fight with Turkey.

They say that enemies of Turkey are our friend. Did Kurds can be our politic partners?

[MJ]

Dear Taguhi,

 

I think the question is built off of a false premise. As far as I understand, there is no "Kurdish fight inside Turkey," as far as the "liberation of Kurdistan" is concerned.

 

But in any case, even if there was one, I don't see what business do we have to get into the middle of it.

[ThornyRose]

MJ, that's true. There is no such "Turk vs. Kurd" issue here. Walk on the streets of any city and you see this. Look at our parliament and you see this.

 

Guys, I got a better idea. How about supporting Turks? Regardless of ethnic origin?

[MJ]

We could, but it requires that Turks assess their past, and move away from it ...

[Guest]

Ok, here is a little history:

Since 1987 the Kurds in Turkey by themselves constituting a majority of all Kurds have waged a war of national liberation against Ankara's 70 years of heavyhanded suppression of any vestige of the Kurdish identity and its rich and ancient culture. The massive uprising had by 1995 propelled Turkey into a state of civil war. The burgeoning and youthful Kurdish population in Turkey, is now demanding absolute equality with the Turkish component in that state, and failing that, full independence.

 

The Kurds - the largest nation in the world without their own state

 

According to the Kurds there are 30 million Kurds. This is close to Western estimates. Their country is carved up by four occupying powers, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Kurdistan is rich in mineral wealth and is of great geo-strategic importance. That is why none of the four occupying states has any interest in a free and independent Kurdistan. Turkey denies the existence of the Kurds and has forbidden the use of their language. Iraq even uses poison gas. On 16 March 1988 an Iraqi squadron dropped Cyanide bombs on the Kurdish town of Halabja. Thousands of people died a horrifying death. Innumerable people are still suffering from serious health problems as a result.

Many Kurds come from peasant villages. They are simple people. Decades of oppression have lit a flame of hate in their hearts. The PKK has taught them how to fight. The aim of this people is to live in a free Kurdistan.

 

Here is a treaty of Sevres map of the region: http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/...ifs/armenia.gif

[Guest]

The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and

the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925

By Robert Olson, University of Texas Press, Austin

Conclusion

The Sheikh Said rebellion was the first large-scale nationalist rebellion by the Kurds. The role of the Azadi was fundamental in its unfolding. Kurdish intellectuals and military officers lay at the heart of the nationalist movement, in terms of organization and recruitment. The paramount influence of the more secular or noncleric Kurdish nationalist organizations must be seperated from the rebellion itself and its sheikhly leadership. The Sheikh Said rebellion was led largely by sheikhs, a deliberate determination by the leadership of Azadi from 1921 onward. These decisions were defined and given force in the Azadi congresses of 1924. The fact that the rebellion had a religious character was the result of Azadi's assessment of the strategy and tactics necessary for carrying out a successful revolution. While the Sheikh Said rebellion was a nationalist rebellion, the mobilization, propaganda, and symbols were those of a religious rebellion. It must be remembered that it was and continued to be characterized by most Turkish scholars (such as Behcet Cemal and Metin Toker) as a religious rebellion, instigated by reactionaries, who happened to be Kurds, against the secularizing reforms of the Kemalist government from 1922 onward (especially the abolition of the caliphate on 3 March 1924 and the National Law Court Organization Regulation among others).

 

It should be noted, however, that recently some Turkish scholars have also characterized the rebellion as "a nationalist rebellion in religious garb". The basis of this is the fact that Sheikh Said was an ardent nationalist, as demonstrated by his earlier career. The consensus of scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s (much of it emanating from Western social scientists and orientalists) that nationalism and genuine religious commitment and spirituality, especially Islamic, are incompatible is not valid in the case of Sheikh Said's rebellion. The Iranian revolution of the 1970s and 1980s has demonstrated forcefully the fallacy of this sort of reasoning. Martin van Bruinessen, the only scholar who has studied the rebellion in any detail, has stated emphatically that "the primary aim of both [sheikh Said and the Azadi leaders] was the establishment of an independent Kurdistan." Sheikh Said is an example of a man who was simultaneously an ardent nationalist and a committed believer. Many of the leaders of the Azadi and of the rebellion may have been genuinely upset by the abolition of the caliphate. For the averae Kurd who participated inthe rebellion, the religious and nationalist motivations were doubtless mixed. Most of the Kurds thought that the sheikhs who led the rebellion were religious and, more importantly, Kurds.

 

Many other crucial events, factors, and developments played a role in the rebellion. Many of the leaders wanted to protect their land, their domination of the markets for their livestock , and their control of the legal system, all or some of which seemed to be threatened by the secularizing and centralizing reforms of the central government in Ankara. The Sheikh Said rebellion was a turning point in the history of the Kurds in that nationalism was the prime factor in its organization and development. This is indicated by the fact that the subsequent large rebellions by the Kurds were nationalist and religious, employing nationalist symbols and propaganda. The Sheikh Said rebellion clearly demonstrated the direction that Kurdish nationalism was to take. In the Zeylan (1930) and Agri (1926-1932) rebellions, nationalist Kurdish slogans were used extensively.

 

This does not mean that traditional motivations of banditry and tribal feuds, as well as personal vendettas, were not prominent casual factors in the rebellion. In this and in other senses, the rebellion could be described as "primitive," as Amal Vinogradov describes the Iraqi revolt of 1920. But the Sheikh Said rebellion , like the Iraqi rebellion, was a genuine national response to fundamental dislocations in the political and socioeconomic spheres. Like their Kurdish counterparts who had gained so much experience by their participation in the Hamidiye Regiments and in World War I, the Iraqi tribesmen (some of whom were Kurdish) who fought in the Ottoman army benefited from the military experience they gained in World War I. One of the interesting developments concerning the Sheikh Said rebellion of 1925 and the Jangali rebellion of Kuchak Khan in northern Iran from 1914 to 1921 is the supposed efficancy of arms and technology in supporting revolution and rebellion by dissident and nationalist minority groups. The participation of Kurdish, Arab, and Iranian tribesmen in the Ottoman, Qajar, and British armies and their familarity with the substantial technological and military changes that had been occurring since the 1880s may have contributed to their conviction that these weapons and organizational methods could be used effectively in their own national movements. Their assessmens may have been sound. It was misfortune of all three rebellions, however, that they were challenged and defeated by more powerful forces and stronger nationalisms. In the case of the Kurds, it was the stronger state and more developed nationalism of the Turks. For Kuchak Khan in Gilan, the same was true. But, in additions, the Jangalis were deprived at crucial junctures of aid from the Soviet Union and the Communist movement. The Jangalis' opponent, the Iranian government, backed and supported by the British, was able to defeat the rebels. Unlike the Sheikh Said rebellion, British forces played a major role in the suppression and defeat of both the Jangali movement and the Iraqi revolt. It is possible that exposure to modern weapons, but not to modern diplomacy, may have caused the leaders of all three rebellions and/or revolts to act prematurely.

 

The Sheikh Said rebellion was tribal. The proportionate number of nomadic tribesmen who took part in the rebellion was much higher than in the Iraqi and Jangali rebellions. Few tribal or peasant cultivators participated in the rebellion as combatants. Indeed, as indicated above, the leaders of the rebellion did not even try to recruit the tribal and peasant cultivators, either because they thought that the peasants were simply too much under the thumb of the landlords through fear, coercion, or indifference. The role of the tribal and peasant cultivators was much greater in the Iraqi and Jangali rebellions. It is difficult to know how much land was owned by derebeys or agas within the area of rebellion, although there were a number of large landowners in the extended area (e.g. Diyarbakir) of the rebellion. If tribal chiefs are classified as derebeys or agas , then it seems that most of them were engaged in animal husbandry. But the landlords of the Diyarbakir plains opposed the rebellion. They played a principal role in assuring that Diyarbakir remained loyal to the Turkish government when it was attacked and besieged by Sheikh Said. The cooperation of these agas with the government is another indication of the strong ties that the Kemalists had already established with many Kurdish agas and chiefs. It was a premonition of a future when they were to become one of the mainstays of the Ataturk coalition.

 

The rebellion did not demonstrate much tribal coordination with urban dweller. Diyarbakir, heavily Kurdish did not rise in support of the rebels. The populace of Elazig initially surrendered without fighting, only to turn against the rebels because of their excessive looting and pillage. Again urban participation in the Iraqi and Jangali rebellions was greater than in the Sheikh Said rebellion. The coordination with urban groups was inhibited ny the territorial isolation of the core area of the rebellion. Communication, except on horse or donkey, was impossible, especially after the telegraph lines were cut. Also, telegraph lines had not yet been extended to many towns. The establishment of Azadi in Erzurum after 1921, in addition to the split in Kurdish nationalist movement, resulted in less contact with the Kurdish nationalists in Istanbul, although, as we have seen above, contacts between Azadi and Istanbul were maintained. The ulama and sheikhs played a large influential role in the Jangali and Iraqi rebellions, as they did in the rebellion of Sheikh Said. Their input in the rebellion of Sheikh Said was significantly greater than in the other two.

 

The Sheikh Said rebellion, then, was a prototype of a post-World War I nationalist rebellion. Its weaknesses were the usual ones: inter-tribal rivalry and Sunni-Shi'i differences, especially represented by the Hormek-Cibran tribal conflict, contributed to the lack of success of rising. These cleavages were exacerbated by the Naksibandi/non-Naksibandi differences as well. These, rather than the differences between Zaza and non-Zaza speakers, played an important role in the evolution of the rebellion and in the growth of Kurdish nationalism. Urban-rural cleavages, tribal-peasant and landowner-tribal hostilities, and antithetical secular-religious orientations among its leaders all contributed to its lack of success. The Sheikh Said rebellion represented an incipient nationalism that was also challenged by a strong nationalism that had mobilized in the course of the past thirty years, gathered strength during World War I, and further energized by the war of liberation with the power of an organized state behind it. Turkish nationalists claimed the territory on which the Kurdish nationalists wanted to create an independent Kurdistan. The Turks also proclaimed a nationalism that was inclusive of the Kurds, however prejudicial, while Kurdish nationalism, imperatively so, was exclusive of the Turks and their nationalism. This made Turkish nationalism initially stronger ideologically than Kurdish nationalism.

 

The Sheikh Said rebellion demonstrated, territorially, and politically, the increased vulnerability of the Kurds as a result of the displacement, deportation, and massacre of Armenians during World War I. The removal of the Armenians also removed the buffers of protection that their presence and nationalism offered the Kurds. The situation of the Kurds and the suppression of their nationalism was even more ironic in light of their eager participation in the deportation and massacre of the Armenians in 1915 and subsequently. The truly tragic meaning that the elimination of the Armenians held for the Kurds and Kurdish nationalism was recognized, as menitioned earlier, by some of the Kurdidh nationalist leaders such as Halid Beg Cibran.

 

In assessing the effect of the rebellion of Turkey's history and politics, my position differs from that of Erik Jan Zurcher and that of Metin Toker. Zurcher in his recent study assigns the Sheikh Said rebellion and its aftermath only two paragraphs, while he devotes an entire chapter to the purges of 1926. Metin Toker, on the other hand, wrote an entire book on the subject of the Sheikh Said rebellion, in an attempt to demonstrate that it represented a turning point in the history of the modern Turkish republic. To be sure, Toker states that one has to make a distinction between the event of the rebellion itself and its consequences. As an event , says Toker, the rebellion was not much. As soon as the Turkish armed forces were able to mobilize, it was crushed. The tenor of my argument here is that the Sheikh Said rebellion, as an event, was much more important than Toker suggests and profoundly more so than Zurcher indicates.

 

Metin Toker is correct, however, in asserting that the consequences of the rebellion for Turkey, especially the Kemalists, were far more important than the rebellion itself. The main reason for this is that Toker is convinced, rightly in my judgment, that military action by the Kurds -even if they had displayed much more unity, cooperation, and coordination than they did- would never have withstood a focused attack by the experienced Turkish forces. However, the rebellion as an event was more important than Toker asserts because he refuses to acknowledge that it represented a challenging nationalism in competition with Turkish nationalism and, hence, threatening to the Turkish state.

 

In terms of domestic Turkish politics, the rebellion was, in my opinion, nearly as important as Toker suggests. According to Toker, the rebellion gave Kemalists, or "radicals" as he calls them, an opportunity to silence the criticism of the Istanbul press, which was aligned with oppositional groups and, shortly thereafter, regional newspapers as well. It also established the legal means via the Restoration of Order Law and the creation of independence tribunals to arrest the leading members of the oppostion forces when the time was ripe, in June 1926 after the discovery of a plot in Izmir to assasinate Mustafa Kemal. Soon after the discovery of the alleged plot, twentyone members of the Progressive Republican party and eleven of the most important members of the Committee of Union and Progress were arrested. Some escaped arrest only because they were abroad or went into hiding. Less than one month after the discovery of the plot, fifteen members of groups opposed to the Kemalists were condemned to death. Even the heroes of the revolution and of the war of liberation, such as Refet Bele, Rauf Orbay, and Kazim Karabekir, who managed to escape death, were never again to play significant roles in the politics of Turkey. The only exception was Fuad Cebesoy.

 

The suppression of the opposition to the Kemalists in the wake of the discovery of the assassination plot in Izmir in June 1926 has been dealt with adequately elsewhere. The point that I wish to make here is that the machinery to facilitate the crushing of the opposition both politically and legally was put into place in the effort to suppress the Sheikh Said rebellion. Ironically, many of those sentenced to death in the Izmir plot had voted for the very independence tribunals to which they fell victim. While the Kemalists had to wait until the purges of June-July 1926, nearly a year after the suppression of the Sheikh Said rebellion, to rid themselves of remaining opposition, the formal and organized opposition as represented by the Progressive Republican party was eliminated when the party was banned on June 3 1925.

 

Metin Toker writes that it was only after the Sheikh Said rebellion that three "revolutions" were able to occur: the Code of Civil Law (Medeni Kanunu Devrimi) of 4 October 1926; the Dress and Headgear Law (Kiyafet Kanunu Devrimi) of 25 November 1925; and the Alphabet Law (Harf Kanunu) of 1 November 1928. These kinds of reform would only have been possible in a Turkey under the Restoration of Order Law. Indeed, Toker sees similarities between the period of 1925 and that of 1957-60. In both instances, Ismet Inonu was able to assert his authority to restore order to the Kemalist program. Unfortunately, argues Toker, Celal Bayar and Adnan Menderes did not have in 1957-60 the same power and legitimacy that Ismet Inonu and Mustafa Kemal possessed in 1925.

 

In short, for Toker, the Sheikh Said rebellion remains a symbol of the impediments -conservativism, religious fanaticism, Muslim brotherhoods, and formal democratic opposition- that the "radical" Kemalists had to suppress or contain in order to proceed with their Western-oriented, capitalist directed, heavy industry-biased modernization program. The Sheikh Said rebellion emphasized to the Kemalists that this program might be delayed through continuing political infighting or might not be carried out at all. The decisions to pursue the Kemalist road to modernization were probably determined a few years earlier, but certainly there was a solid core that wished to pursue this course expeditiously by 1924. It was the Sheikh Said rebellion that created the atmosphere and the mechanisms to carry out the purges of 1926. In this sense, Toker's analysis is correct. Zurcher does not sufficiently emphasize the atmosphere and context of the purges of 1926. The reason why the Sheikh Said rebellion is so important for the Turkish history is that the laws and instutions created for its suppression were agreed to by those who opposed Kemalism. They agreed, no matter how reluctantly, because no patriotic Turkish official could tolerate a contending nationalism. Here we have a good example of laws and instutions created to suppress an "external" enemy that are later used by the group in power to quash "internal" opposition. The Kemalist opponents and Fethi Bey realized this and therefore tried to depict the rebellion as a regional uprising, certainly one that was counterrevolutionary. But the fact that the rebellion was Kurdish and nationalist severely limited any objections that they could make. More strenuous opposition would have produced the charge that they were traitors. As it was, the members of the Progressive Republican party were charged with complicity in the rebellion, altough such complicity was never proven.

 

The Sheikh Said rebellion gave the Kemalist government a certain justification for categorizing serious opposition as being in league with the Kurds, having sympathy for Kurdish nationalism, or favoring ideologies that would strengthen Kurdish nationalism, or Kurdish ethnic power. If the red flag of the leftists was hoisted beside the green flag of Sheikh Said (representing Kurdish nationalism as well as Islam), the menace of the rebellion's legacy would be even more of a threat to Kemalism and, possibly, in the future to the Kurdish statet itself. The rebellion proved an opportunity to reduce the opposition to Kemalist modernization through the closing on 30 November 1925 of all tarikats (lodges), zaviyes (cells), and turbes (religious tombs). Religious titles were abolished and wearing of clerical garb was prohibited. The Dress Law was passed on 25 November 1926, aimed against religious centers of opposition for the purpose of enhancing its legitimacy against the Kemalists. What is important to note here is that these laws were passed in an atmosphere of political consciousness on the part of Turkish public that their implementation and acceptance would reduce the threat of Kurdish nationalism.

 

The Sheikh Said rebellion created and provided a means whereby most serious subsequent opposition to government policies or comprehensive disagreement with its progress laid open the possibility that the disaffected groups would be labeled as traitors. In the aftermath of the rebellion, it was relatively easy to color opposition forces with a hostile ethnic tinge. The vehicles created and the laws passed for the suppression of the rebellion and the symbols of opposition to the Kemalist program that it generated meant that the consolidation of the Turkish state and of Turkish nationalism were greatly expedited by the suppression and perceived threat of Kurdish nationalism. The nationalist aspirations of ten percent of population had to be denied if the nationalist goals of the other ninety percent were to be achieved. It is in this sense that the Sheikh Said rebellion, its suppression, and its aftermath were more important than the purges of 1926, which simply eliminated the remaining opposition to the Kemalists' programs. Most of those who were purged or sentenced to death agreed or would have agreed with the position subsequently adopted by the Turkish government vis-a-vis the Kurds and their nationalism. After all, when opportunities arose after 1950 for different policies to be followed or implemented, they were not.

 

The suppression of the Sheikh Said rebellion contributed to the consolidation of the new Turkish republic, the evolution and domination of the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Firkasi) and the one-party state it represented up to 1950, and the greater articulation of Turkish nationalism on which the party and the state were based. The creation of a one-party state conditioned the lack of serious discussion of policy alternatives, which in turn meant that there was a monodimensionality to the possible ideological solutions to the problems and challenges that the young republic would confront. It is this unidimensional approach that led to the great surprise of the Republican People's party at the strength of appeal of the Democrat party in 1946. The inability of the Republican People's party to learn from the lesson of 1946 led inexorably to its defeat in 1950. In this sense, one of the reasons for the defeat of the People's Party in 1950 was the legacy of the monodimensionality that the Sheikh Said rebellion and its consequences introduced into the Turkish polity. In fact, the entire post-World War II period, when the military was in power in 1960-61, 1973, and from 1980 onward, follows a pattern shaped by the political and ideological consequences of the rebellion. Many factors contributed to the emergence of the modern Turkish polity-the Kurds and Kurdish nationalism may not be the single most important factor. But their influence on the development of modern Turkey has been most underestimated by scholars and students of Turkey.

 

It was stated in Chapter 5 that seventeen of the eighteen military engagements in which Turkish military fought from 1924 to 1938 occured in Kurdistan. Information about post-1938 Turkish military engagements is not available, but if it were, a similar situation would probably be noted. Turkey's armed forces intervened in Hatay in 1938, in Korea in 1950-1953, and in Cyprus in 1974. The military engagements against the Kurds far exceeded the number of external interventions and engagements. By the 1980s, Turkey's military actions against the Kurds had assumed external as well as internal proportions. In 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, Turkish forces entered Iraq in order to suppress and contain Kurdish nationalist and guerilla groups. The struggle against Kurdish nationalism, in which certain patterns of policies were implemented and against which certain nationalist, ideological, and psychological premises and attitudes were initially adopted in 1925, continued to play an important role in Turkey's policy decisions more than fifty years after the Sheikh Said rebellion. These factors will quite likely continue to influence Turkish policy well into the twenty-first century. Kurdish nationalism, articulated and symbolized by the Sheikh Said rebellion, will also continue far into the next century.

 

The objectives and policies of the third major party involved in the Sheikh Said rebellion, Great Britain, have been discussed in Chapter 5. There is, however, another aspect to the international consequences of the rebellion that should be mentioned. Great Britain had consolidated its power in northern Iraq through its forward policy, adopted after the Air Ministry assumed control of military operations from the War Office in August, 1922. From 1922 to 1925, the RAF, under the command of Sir John Salmond, who replaced Sir Hugh Trenchard as chief of the Air Staff in 1929, pursued a vigorous bombing policy against the Kurds and Arabs in northern Iraq. The bombing forced Turkish forces led by Colonel Ozdemir to retreat from Rawanduz in June 1923. In many ways, the formal treaty between Turkey and Iraq on 5 June 1926 was shaped by the success of the British bombing policies. As we have seen above, the new Turkish republic was quick to learn from the British. By the end of 1926, Turkey had acquired 106 aircraft. In the following years, air power was used extensively in military operations against the Kurds. Air power was an effective means by which the new Turkish republic consolidated its state power, especially against the Kurds, just as British air power was instrumental in consolidating Britain's imperial power in the post-World War I Middle East. The lessons learned regarding the use of air power in northern Iraq, especiallyduring the period 1922-1925, were used to good advantage by the British in Sudan, the Northwest frontier, Palestine, and other places. These examples are illustrative of the relationship between established empires and new states when two are not in direct military conflict but both wish to subdue third parties following policies antagonistic to the empire or to the new state. It became easier for Britain and Turkey to bomb Kurds "tan to make political concessions to Kurdish nationalism."

 

In the period prior to Sheikh Said rebellion, the Kurds (and Turks, too) had to face the new technology of massive bombing, including incendiary bombing at night. In the post-Sheikh Said period, the Kurds had to face the might of an experienced British air force, as well as the burgeoning and increasingly effective Turkish air force. It would be more than thirty-five years before the Kurds had adequate antiaircraft guns. In the intervening years, the Turks and the British (Iraqi) forces were able to extend their control over areas of Turkey and Iraq that were predominantly Kurdish. By 1926, the same bombing policies against the Kurds were followed by Reza Khan in Iran. The effective use air power andits implied threat played an important in the origins and consequences of the Sheikh Said rebellion. The psychological terror it induced in the peasant and nomadic peoples of Iraq and Turkey and Iran, especially through incendiary night bombing, proved to be especially effective. Iraq was, according to L. S. Amery, the British colonial secretary in 1925,"a splendid training ground for the Air Force".

 

One of the results of this effective British use of air power between World War I and World War II largely against the peoples of British colonies was that it contributed to the unpreparedness of British air defenses against the Germans at the outbreak of world War II, what A.J.P. Taylor has called RAF's "doctrine that overwhelming superiority was the only defence." Right up to the outbreak of the second World War and even during it, " the policy Lord Hugh Trenchard, who was chief air marshal from 1919 to 1929, had established was followed: "Bombing," he held, "could win a war by itself; it was also the only means of not being bombed by others. Trenchard and his successors persistently neglected air defense." Trenchard had first witnessed the great effectiveness of straregic air bombing, sometimes in coordination with infantry, in northern Iraq during the early 1920s. Taylor was of the opinion that the successful use of British air power in northern Iraq contributed to the deterioration of the British army, the lack of mechanized vehicles, and the failure to create a sufficient defense system in the 1920s and 1930s. British success against the Turks and then against the Kurds and Arabs in nothern Iraq in the early 1920s may have contributed subsequently to the RAF's lack of preparedness against the Germans on the eve of and during the early years of World War II. Recent studies have confirmed Taylor's judgments.

[Guest]

MJ, any other questions??

[MJ]

No there are no questions, but just dismissals of nonsense.

 

 

As far as the facts are concerned, there has never been any “massive” Kurdish uprising, at least in the recent history, in Turkey. To the contrary, the absolute majority of the Kurdish population, especially their tribal elite has sided with the government of Turkey, and has rejected the leftist wing of Kurdish rebels/revolutionaries. Neither the lefts nor the rights of the Kurdish rebels have not opted for separation from Turkey. It is even more so today.

 

I would recommend you to read the material at http://armenians.com/cgi-bin/forum/ultimat...c&f=19&t=000017.

 

 

As far as the map of Severs is concerned, I can also draw one or two maps a day. Are you willing to buy them?

 

P.S. By the way, I would recommend that you carefully read your own material above.

 

[ June 01, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Guest]

Mad Dreams Of Independence

The Kurds Of Turkey and the PKK

by Chris Kutschera*

Will the Kurdish civil society that has taken shape little by little be doomed to disappear in yet another phase of "total war"?

Politics has always been a difficult and risky business for Kurdish nationalists in Turkey. The hegemony today of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), with its history of dogmatic Marxism- Leninism and its attachment to armed struggle, is very much a reflection of the refusal of successive Turkish nationalist regimes to accommodate Kurdish aspirations for cultural and political autonomy.

 

The stirrings of progressive Kurdish nationalist politics in Turkey date to late 1950s and early 1960s, when Kurdish intellectuals in Istanbul and Ankara formed cultural clubs and organizations. The summer of 1967 saw mass student demonstrations in 19 Kurdish cities and towns, including 10,000 marchers in Silvan and 25,000 in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

 

Organized activism took two forms, very much as it did in neighboring Iraq. One was the July 1965 formation of an explicitly Kurdish organization, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (KDPT), in Diyarbakir. The KDPT program included an explicit demarcation of "Kurdistan" with Kurdish as the official language and an exclusively Kurdish government bureaucracy, proportional Kurdish representation in Turkey's parliament, and economic investment. By 1968, many KDPT leaders were imprisoned, assassinated or in exile.

 

The other path of Kurdish political engagement was through the leftist Worker's Party of Turkey (T|rkiye Îsgi Partisi, TÎP). Although the TÎP officially took a negative stand on the Kurdish question, by 1969 the secretary-general and president of the party were both Kurds. At the end of 1969, TÎP president Mehmet Ali Aslan challenged a 1967 decree outlawing "distribution in Turkey of any material of foreign origin in the Kurdish language," and started a bilingual Turkish-Kurdish journal, Yeni Akis (New Current), which raised explicitly the question of Kurdish national rights until it was suspended after four issues. This period also saw the publication of a Kurdish-Turkish dictionary and socioeconomic studies of Kurdistan. Like the communist in Iraq, the TÎP, in its fourth congress in 1970, acknowledged the Kurdish question -the first time a legal Turkish party had taken even this smallest of steps.

 

The formation in early 1969 of Revolutionary Cultural Centers of the East (DDKO in Turkish) marks the beginning of the separation of the Kurdish nationalist left from its Turkish Marxist counterpart. DDKO came together initially in the two university cities of Ankara and Istanbul before spreading to Diyarbakir and other cities. It represented a new generation, some of whose members, like Mahmut Kilinc and Mehdi Zana, are key figures in the non-PKK political leadership today.

 

The Kurdish attention to culture was a response to a policy of forced, systematic assimilation emanating from the Turkish center. Starting in the early 1960s, for instance, Kurdish peasant children were sent to boarding schools in large villages in which Kurdish was forbidden "My father was a nationalist, " one school teacher said in 1980, "but we were ten children and he wanted to finish with this misery. To have a teacher's diploma was a dream, it guaranteed economic independence. For this my father forced us to speak Turkish at home. There was a small box in which we had to put 25 kurus every time we used a Kurdish word!" Many Kurdish militants today tell a similar story.

 

The Kurdish government's alarm at the revival of Kurdish nationalism increased following the March 1970 autonomy agreement in Iraq between Baghdad and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Mustafa Barzani. Under pressure from army, Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel launched authorized commando operations against a number of Kurdish towns and villages that set a pattern for abusive collective punishment that continues today. This repression increased following the March 1971 army coup.

 

The military government proceeded to outlaw leftist Turkish as well as Kurdish organizations, including the TÎP and the DDKO, and imprisoned many of their cadres. The prisons functioned as schools however, and this period spawned explicitly Kurdish leftist groupings including the Socialist Party of Kurdistan in Turkey, better known as Rnya Azadn (Kurdish for Road to Freedom, the name of their journal) and Rizgarn (Liberation, which also published a journal of that name). The 1970s and early 1980s was a period of ferment, in which Kurdish left nationalist formations experienced serious factionalization.

 

 

Military Option

Paradoxically, the PKK was born not in Kurdistan but in Ankara, where Abdullah Ocalan and other Kurdish students were active in the Turkish extreme left but questioned the attitudes of those groups towards the Kurdish question. More surprisingly, some of the founders and later leaders of the PKK were Turks. They disseminated propaganda, recruited members, and established regional committees that would only come together on certain occasions such as the end of Ramadan so as to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities. They adopted the PKK name in late 1978 -early 1979. What distinguishes the PKK from other Kurdish parties is less the "democratic centralist" organization or the Marxist-Leninist language than an emphasis on armed struggle distinguished by its ferocity. The other distinguishing feature is PKK emphasis on the need to mobilize the peasantry: southeastern Turkey has virtually no industrial working class, as almost all industry is in the west and center, and the rural economic structure is marked by very large land holdings with serf-like conditions for workers.

The formative years of the PKK as an organization coincided with the years of martial law that followed the September 1980 military coup. The repression of the 1980s, both in numbers of persons seized and imprisoned and in the extent of systematic torture, was far worse than before. The few journalists who managed to attend trials in Diyarbakir wrote that prisoners were sometimes brought to court in metal cages loaded on trucks, hardly able to walk or stand. Prison conditions were so harsh that prisoners staged prolonged hunger strikes that lasted more a than a month at a time, or, in more than few cases, committed suicide. On March 21, 1982, Mazlum Dopan lit three matches to celebrate Newroz and hanged himself in his cell rather than make a televised confession. A few weeks later, on May 18, four prisoners wrapped themselves in benzine-soaked newspapers and set themselves on fire. When their comrades attempted to put out the flames they refused, insisting that it was "freedom fire."

 

In Kurdistan, the extent and ferocity of the repression decimated the Kurdish parties, some of which decided to disband. The regime thus cleared the way for the PKK. Abdullah Ocalan left for Syria and Lebanon just prior to the September coup and set about regrouping the PKK there. The first PKK armed assaults on Turkish forces, in 1984, were on gendarme forts. The Turkish regime, much like the French in Algeria, recruited "village guards" --16,000 by the end of 1989 and nearly twice that number by 1993. But this did nothing to hinder the growth of the PKK, which systematically attack them as "collaborators." PKK guerrillas --they do not use the name peshmerga because of its association with Barzani's "feudal" movement in Iraq-- were not fussy about who might end up in their line of fire. Between 1987 and 1989 they destroyed some 137 schools as "instruments of Ankara's policy of assimilation." It was not until the end of the decade that Ocalan indulged in an "auto critique," saying that the PKK armed actions needed to be "more selective."

 

PKK tactics gave the Turkish authorities a great deal of leeway in portraying them as bloody terrorists, a task made all easier by the rigid censorship of events in Kurdistan and the obliging attitude of most of the Turkish press. It was only after some Turkish journalists noticed that many victims of the so-called "Red Kurds" had been killed by army weapons that the dimensions and consequences of Turkish martial law began to breach the wall of silence surrounding "the Southeast."

 

The Turkish government has maintained a martial law regime over the country's 11 Kurdish provinces to this day. The option of choice has persistently been the military option: from launching "hot pursuit" raids into Iraqi Kurdistan to destroying villages and killing and displacing tens of thousands of people. For a brief period in the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, president Turgut Ozal spoke in measured terms of a more liberal policy towards the Kurds, and laws prohibiting the use of Kurdish language were repealed. But following Ozal's death in April 1993, it has become clearer than ever that when it comes to the Kurdish question, it is not the civilian elected government which determines policy but the army-dominated National Security Council.

 

Many have lost a great deal in this war, but the least of them is the PKK. "If Jezireh is ours today, " says Ocalan, speaking of a town near the Iraqi-Syrian border, "it is half thanks to our efforts. But the other half, Turkey presented to us on a silver platter." The PKK have an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 full-time fighters. Ocalan declared last September that he would have twice as many at the end of 1994.

 

 

Tactical Relations

The recent course of events in Turkish Kurdistan cannot be understood without appreciating the relationships of the PKK with the Kurdish parties of Iraq. Despite sharp differences of ideology, strategy and method, the PKK signed an agreement in 1981 with the KDP, which, after all, controlled the Iraqi part of Kurdistan along the border with Turkey. The agreement gave the PKK transit rights and rear bases in KDP territory. Turkish military pressures after September 1983 heightened the differences between the two groups that were not overcome even by "summit" meeting between Ocalan and Masoud Barzani (son of KDP founder Mustafa Barzani) in Damascus in 1984 and 1985. It was then the turn of Jalal Talabani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which signed a memorandum of agreement with the PKK in May 1988. The agreement was never implemented but at least the parties maintained "bridges."

The establishment of a Kurdish government in the northern Iraq in June 1992 brought the contradictions between the two a head. One factor was the Iraqi Kurdish leadership's effort to establish good ties with Ankara as a way of maintaining relief supply roots and the allied military protective cover over Iraqi Kurdistan. In November 1991, Talabani appealed to Ocalan to declare a cease-fire or at least to cease operations from camps in Iraq. Instead PKK attacks increased, and Ocalan denounced Talabani as an "agent of imperialism." As the dispute escalated, the PKK enforced a blockade on the only road from Turkey into Iraqi Kurdistan in July 1992, exacerbating the negative effects of the UN sanctions and the Iraqi blockade on the Kurdish region of Iraq.

 

The PKK and the Iraqi Kurdish parties each consider themselves to be the leading force in the struggle for the Kurdish liberation. For the PKK, "the government of Erbil does not represent much...Each tribe is a power." The PKK could tolerate "tactical relations" between the Kurds of Iraq and Ankara, but not the alliance that they see the Kurdistan Regional Government having established with the Turkish army and intelligence forces. The Kurds of Iraq, for their part, are not prepared to sacrifice "a free Kurdistan with freely elected political institutions ... for the death of the two Turkish gendarmes that does not bring much, " said Jowhar Nameq, chair of the Kurdish parliament in Erbil, at a Paris press conference in December 1992. "The PKK claims there are no borders between the parts of Kurdistan," said Adnan Mufti, formerly a leader of the small Kurdistan Socialist Party. "So we ask them then, why don't you fight Saddam Hussein?"

 

On October 4, 1992, the Kurdish government in Erbil issued an ultimatum to the PKK: Either withdraw from the border bases or be expelled. Iraqi Kurdish attacks began the next day, and Turkish government forces intervened the following week. On October 27, after heavy fighting, including extensive Turkish air attacks PKK leader Osman Ocalan (Abdullah's brother) discussed cease fire terms with Talabani and Barzani. Turkish forces renewed their attacks two days later. Estimates of PKK losses ranged from 150 (Osman Ocalan) to 4,500 "eliminated " (Turkish chief-of-staff Gen. Dogan Gures). By any reasonable measure the PKK suffered a serious defeat.

 

For years Jalal Talabani had been striving to convince Abdullah Ocalan to proclaim a unilateral six-month cease-fire to test the will and strength of Turkish civilian leaders. In the spring of 1993, on March 17, at a base in Lebanon with Talabani present, Ocalan announced a cease-fire from March 20 to April 15 and declared that the PKK did not intend "to separate immediately from Turkey." Two days later, on March 19, a PKK agreement with the Kurdistan Socialist Party brought and end to the long-standing PKK vendetta against the other Kurdish parties. More significantly, the March 19 agreement proposed that the Kurdish question could be solved in the context of "a democratic and federal regime" and set out 9 conditions for a political solution.

 

Ankara chose to see only PKK weakness in the cease-fire. All that was left to Ocalan, said Interior Minister Ismet Sezgin, was "to surrender without conditions." Nevertheless, on April 16, Ocalan announced an unlimited extension of the cease-fire and repeated the conditions for negotiations outlined earlier; To this Demirel replied " if [ Ocalan ] gives up killing, we won't reward him [ with] a region of Turkey." Ozal, who had the most forthcoming Turkish leader regarding the Kurds, died suddenly the next day. Within a month, Turkish Kurdistan was again engulfed in violence.

 

The Kurds of Turkey are in a paradoxical position. Cultural repression in Turkey is fiercer than in Iraq or Iran, yet Turkey is also where at least the formal attributes of democracy are most respected. Scores of Kurds have served in the Turkish parliament over the years, but in the past these have been landed notables with long-standing ties to Ankara and no wish to advertise their Kurdishness. Since 1983, though, the several legislative elections have provided in arena in which militant younger Kurdish politicians have been able to seize very limited maneuvering room. The elections of October 1991 were the first to witness the emergence of a genuine and explicitly Kurdish bloc, when 18 deputies elected on the Social Democratic (SHP) ticket broke off to join the small People's Labor Party (Halkin Emek Partisi, HEP). It was a mixed group --some saw themselves as close to the PKK, while others were more traditional social democrats and nationalists. The Turkish authorities, though, had little tolerance for anyone aspiring to the " equality of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples...within the framework of the legitimate principles of law, " as former HEP chairman Feridun Yazar put it during his trial. On July 3, 1992, the State Security Court indicated the founders of the HEP for "separatist propaganda." On July 15, 1993, the Constitutional Court outlawed the HEP, a few days after the deputies has resigned to form the Party of Democracy (DEP). In December 1993, Hatip Dicle, considered close to the PKK, was elected chairperson. On March 3, 1994, the parliament voted to lift the parliamentary immunity of seven DEP deputies. They were arrested at the door of the parliament and charged with the under Article 125 of the penal code ("crimes against the state"), which carries the death penalty.

 

The DEP will likely meet the same fate as the HEP before it (The trial ended and the State Security Court declared its final decision on 8 October 1994. The 6 deputies --and one former member of DEP, independent deputy-- received a verdict of imprisonment ranging from 3 to 15 years, also DEP was outlawed. A new party, HADEP, -People's Democracy Party-- was founded with the same mission. [R.N]), but the recomposition of the Kurdish movement in Turkey seems irreversible. The access to power of a "Kurdish government" in Iraqi Kurdistan, the acceleration of the war in Turkish Kurdistan, and the March 1993 agreement between the PKK and other Kurdish parties in Turkey can hardly be interpreted otherwise. The question now is what course will prevail among Turkish political authorities --the brief opening initiated by President Ozal before his death, or the military-dictated hard-line of President Suleyman Demirel and Prime Minister and Prime Tansu Ciller. Will the Kurdish civil society that has taken shape little by little be doomed to disappear in yet another phase of "total war"?

[MJ]

And the moral/conclusion is...?

[Guest]

In simple language format:

Turkey sucks! I doubt with their present government and power structure she will ever be a friend of Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, and Kurds. Did I leave out any minorities she has not attempted to murder?? Take care my friend!

[MJ]

Therefore, we have to interject ourselves into the middle of the Kurdish-Turkish controversy?

 

Thank you for the good wishes.

[Guest]

quote:

---

Originally posted by edwardk:
In simple language format:
Turkey sucks! I doubt with their present government and power structure she will ever be a friend of Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, and Kurds. Did I leave out any minorities she has not attempted to murder?? Take care my friend!

---

Edwark

Don't you realize that you have been sold a dream & you are perpetuating it by your posture ?

[Guest]

Turkey Covert web of killers

ISTANBUL, TURKEY. Human rights activists and opposition groups have argued for decades that an uninterrupted trail of mysterious killings and extrajudicial executions leads to the highest levels of the Turkish state. An extraordinary accident in November 1996 provided missing links in that chain of evidence. It also gave further proof of the continued existence of a Turkish incarnation of Gladio the US-orchestrated Stay Behind operation that placed covert groups around Europe at the end of World War II.

The toll of death and terror from Turkey's bitter internal strife is horrific. In the last three decades, at least 28,000 people have died. The 5,000 casualties in the 1970s served as a major pretext for the 1980 military takeover when the Turkish armed forces overthrew Suleyman Demirel's conservative minority government. Since the 1984 start of the war between the Kurdish guerrilla PKK (Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan-Kurdistan Workers Party) and the Turkish army, the country's human losses including those of the government security forces, Kurdish guerrillas, and civilians have totaled around 23,000, officials say. This toll is not solely the result of combat in the mountains and forests of southeast Turkey, where the PKK guerrillas are fighting for greater autonomy. Many of the deaths and much of the terror resulted from a broad covert program aimed at assassination, forced exile, or imprisonment of Kurdish nationalists "businessmen," intellectuals, journalists, local politicians, and public opinion leaders who were suspected of providing political or material support to the PKK. A lurid glimpse of this underbelly of the Turkish state opened suddenly on November 3, 1996, when a Mercedes-Benz overturned in a traffic accident. The driver was Huseyin Kocadag, former Istanbul deputy police chief who was known for his part in organizing the first special counterinsurgency police teams in southeast Turkey. Their goal was to bring the war to the Kurdish guerrillas. Also killed was Gonca Us, a former beauty queen with links to organized crime. Sedat Bucak, a pro-government Kurdish village guard chieftain and right-wing DYP (True Path Party) parliamentarian, was seriously injured. Bucak is reportedly in charge of 2,000 Kurdish mercenaries, armed and paid by the government to fight Kurdish guerrillas.

But what raised eyebrows was the seemingly incongruous presence of another passenger one Abdullah Catli riding with the top police and government officials. Police had supposedly been hunting Catli, a convicted international drug smuggler since 1978, for his part in the killing of scores of left-wing activists. At that time, Catli had been head of the "Gray Wolves," the youth arm of the neo-fascist MHP (National Action Party). The presence of the bizarre group in the same car was the most graphic evidence so far of collusion between the security forces and semi-criminal assassins and of their unity of purpose in targeting both leftists and Turkish Kurds.

Further proof of the unseemly collaboration was provided by Interior Minister Mehmet Agar, head of the government's 120,000-person-strong police forces. In the wake of the scandal that followed the car accident, Agar was forced to resign his post. But in the course of his defense, he admitted that as security chief and interior minister, he had overseen "at least 1,000 secret operations."

In the face of growing public resentment, Deputy Prime Minister Tansu Ciller had to accept Agar's resignation, but she continued defending the "gang" as the entire network of "licensed killers" is known in Turkey. Apparently referring to Catli, Ciller declared during a meeting with her True Path Party deputies that "those who have fired bullets as well as those who have been shot in the name of the state are honest."

TRUE "FALSE" LICENSES AND"GREEN PASSPORTS"

 

 

The crash on the northwest Susurluk highway was striking not only for the extraordinary grouping of the victims, but also for their baggage. The crumpled car held a large arsenal of automatic weapons that was missing from police inventories, along with silencers and a small amount of cocaine.

The "Susurluk affair" named after the accident site gained further import when local gendarmes discovered two documents among Catli's belongings: a license to carry arms signed by Ciller's security aide, Mehmet Agar, and a "Green Passport" authorized only for senior public servants issued by the Interior Ministry. Both were made out in the name of Mehmet Ozbay but bore the photo of Catli, the fugitive drug trafficker.

Although Interior Minister Agar denied that the documents were real, gendarmes and forensic specialists confirmed that the Green Passport was genuine, not forged, and that the related signatures on it were authentic. The special perks and privileges given Catli, a drug dealer and suspected killer, were not unique. Haluk Kirci, his accomplice in a series of murders during the Gray Wolves days, and Yasar Oz, another international drug smuggler, also carried similar documents signed by Agar.

The links between one of Turkey's most prominent security officials and organized criminals and fascist assassins were now incontrovertible. But the question remained: What was the common agenda that joined them together?

One explanation is a shared ideology. Agar's fascist sympathies are well- known. Although he is a deputy in the parliament of Tansu Ciller's conservative True Path Party, he is also considered an heir to the throne of Alpaslan Turkes. After 30 years of unbroken, unrivaled command of Turkey's neo-fascist National Action Party (MHP), Turkes died in early April. The party he led is notorious for anticommunist campaigns throughout the 1960s and 1970s which involved physical attacks against left-wing activists, intellectuals, and trade union leaders. Agar was one of his key disciples.

But investigative journalists, members of the parliamentary investigation commission to the Susurluk affair, and prominent "witnesses," found a broader explanation for the government-extremist-criminal alliance than shared affection for fascism. They concurred that Ciller, Agar, and other affiliates of the "gang," even including Turkes himself, are only a few of the many corrupt links in a long chain of "counterinsurgency strategies" overseen by Turkey's military high command.

THE MGK VS. THE PKK

"It all started in early 1992," believes Ismet Berkan, senior Ankara correspondent for the national daily Radikal. "That year, the Turkish armed forces high command underwent a dramatic shift in its counterinsurgency strategy in the combat against [the] rebel Kurdish guerrilla PKK."

In 1984, seeking self-determination for Turkey's 15 million Kurds, the PKK launched its guerrilla war against Ankara.Since then, the Kurdish rebels and the Turkish army have been deadlocked in bitter war. According to semiofficial figures from then-Interior Minister Nahit Mentese, the PKK forces grew from 200 in 1984, to 10,000 active combatants and some 50,000 militias and 375,000 sympathizers by late 1993.

According to Berkan, in 1992, faced with the guerrillas' growing strength, the Turkish army units which had previously pursued a reactive strategy, shifted tactics "to bring the war to the PKK." They would not wait, they proclaimed, arms folded, while the PKK raided gendarme posts and army garrisons. Instead, the army would seek out and attack guerrilla strongholds in urban areas, cut the rebels' local support in the southeast countryside, and forcibly depopulate remote villages and hamlets suspected of providing support to the rebels. Adopting a euphemism the US made infamous in the counterinsurgency wars it sponsors in Central America, then-Chief of Staff Gen. Dogan Gures designated the overall operation "low-intensity conflict."

But the PKK was not simply a rural guerrilla force that could be easily identified and destroyed. It had considerable support both inside the country and overseas among Kurdish intellectuals and "businessmen" who were believed to funnel profits from black market operations to the PKK. Faced with a strong, well-financed foe, the military launched a two-pronged strategy: "While the army ruthlessly fought the guerrillas in the countryside, blows should have been inflicted on PKK's individual financial and moral supporters," Berkan quotes his anonymous sources. The second prong of this strategic shift targeting civilian

PKK support was introduced to the National Security Council (MGK) in 1992. Berkan says that he had the opportunity to study some MGK files detailing the "new counterinsurgency concept" after they were leaked to him by an anonymous former security official. "These documents," he said, "alongside tactical military schemes, included a list of the prospective members of the would-be death squads, including Abdullah Catli, some of his notorious companions from the Gray Wolves days, and some special police team members."

For a year, the second prong was not implemented because of strong opposition, particularly from President Turgut Ozal and Gendarme High Commander Gen. Esref Bitlis. Then, in 1993, Ozal and Bitlis both died under controversial circumstances: The president succumbed to a heart attack for which he allegedly received tardy and inadequate treatment; Bitlis was killed in a mysterious plane crash. That same year, according to Berkan, the National Security Council endorsed the counterinsurgency schemes.

During the three fatal years that followed, 1993-95 with Tansu Ciller as prime minister and Suleyman Demirel as president, Kurdish civil society was shattered. Kurdish political, cultural and press organizations faced violent attacks. Their headquarters were bombed, scores of local Kurdish politicians, including pro-Kurdish DEP (Democracy Party) deputy Mehmet Sincar were killed by mysterious assassins, other Kurdish

DEP deputies were expelled from parliament and jailed or forced into exile; and hundreds of Kurdish activists were disappeared. The "gang" was particularly active in eliminating scores of Kurdish "businessmen" in an attempt to cut off the PKK's financial base. Behcet Canturk, Savas Buldan, Yusuf Ekinci, Medet Serhat, Haci Karay, and Omer Lutfu Topal were among those kidnapped and later found killed.

THE HIGH PRICE OF COVERT OPS

By the time Ciller left office in 1995, Kurdish nationalism had been dealt a heavy blow by the two-pronged approach. Although the "gang" was becoming increasingly violent, its existence and the extent of operations remained elusive. Then in February, in the wake of the car crash, a senior police official provided further confirmation of Berkan's version of the collaboration among fascist assassins, criminal gangs, and security officials as part of MGK's new counterinsurgency strategy. Hanefi Avci, deputy intelligence department chief of Turkish Security, testified before an investigatory commission convened by parliament:

"Some officials believed that the Turkish security remained incapable of eliminating the PKK supporters as long as [the security forces] functioned within legal means. Thus, they arrived at the conclusion that the PKK could have been fought only through extra-legal methods."

"The first organization to be set up on this guideline was the JITEM (Gendarme Intelligence and Counter Terrorism) which was first established in the southeast. ... JITEM was effectively controlled by now Lt. Gen. Veli Kucuk. Alongside JITEM, two other units were carved out of the body of the MIT [Turkish Intelligence Organization] and Special Police Teams and henchmen were co-opted from among former PKK guerrillas who had turned informer."

Gen. Teoman Koman, the current gendarme general commander, officially denies the existence of such a unit within his organization. "There exists a JITEM," Gen. Koman acknowledged, "but not as an official intelligence organization set up by the state. [Rather it is run] by some irresponsible elements within the gendarme. ... I banned the usage of such a title as soon as I recognized counter-terrorism efforts conducted under such a name."

Noncommissioned gendarme Huseyin Oguz, an active counterinsurgency officer in the southeast, however, contradicted Gen. Koman. In testimony before the parliamentary investigatory commission, he asserted that JITEM has existed as an official unit linked to the Intelligence Department of the Gendarme General Command.

According to Hanefi Avci, deputy intelligence department chief of Turkish Security, "One gang was headed by ex- Interior Minister Mehmet Agar and seconded by Special Police Teams boss Ibrahim Sahin and counterinsurgency specialist former army officer Korkut Eken, with whom Catli was directly linked; and another [gang] was headed by Mehmet Eymur, chair of the Turkish Intelligence Organization's (MIT) counterterrorism department." Shortly after his resignation, Mehmet Agar testified to that same commission.

He confirmed that his "operations" were in line with his National Security Council-endorsed schemes of"bringing the war to the PKK."

THE "GANG" PATROLS

THE HEROIN HIGHWAY

As the counterinsurgency campaign escalated, greed became a driving and ultimately divisive force. According to intelligence official Avci, "after 1994-95 when the ruthless army crackdown on the PKK forced the guerrillas to retreat, these [government-linked] units degenerated into corrupt gangs which were mainly concerned with grabbing the enormous revenues from drug trafficking and money laundering that had previously been controlled by organized criminals of Kurdish origin."

Journalist Berkan concurred that the state-linked gangs effectively took over the drug trafficking routes and drove out the Kurdish "businessmen." It was not long before the massive profits about $20 billion a year set off a bitter war within the extra-legal units.

The large arsenal of assault weapons found in the crashed car fueled widespread speculation that when the"Susurluk" trio died, they may have been on "duty" against a rival "gang" based in their point of departure Kusadasi. The district is one of Turkey's prospective casino hubs. The suspicion was further confirmed when an Istanbul State Security Court prosecutor indicted Sedat Bucak, the sole survivor of the Susurluk car crash. He was charged with carrying a quantity of unauthorized assault weapons beyond what could be justified by self-defense. The prosecutor charged that the passengers intended to assassinate as yet unknown targets.

More light was soon shed on the role of Gray Wolf Abdullah Catli. Mehmet Eymur, MIT's counterterrorism department chief, and also his rival, counterinsurgency specialist Korkut Eken admitted that Catli was not a simple"gang" henchman. Rather, he had a long- standing official role and had been "used by the state" during the 1970s, bitter conflict between right- and left-wing activists.

TRACING THE "GANG" TO CIA The parliamentary investigation commission found irrefutable links between organized criminals, fascist assassins, and senior counterinsurgency officials. It also established the existence of a widely

organized gang within the state security structures. Nonetheless, many critics charge that the commission did not go far enough in digging out the roots of the problem.

"The links between the illegal right-wing organizations and the Turkish security should be traced back to Gladio," says opposition CHP (Republican People's Party) Deputy Fikri Saglar in his minority report to the parliamentary commission. "Gladio" was a network of secret security organizations set

up largely by the US in almost all European NATO-member countries after the end of World War II.

"A secret clause in the initial NATO agreement in 1949 required that before a nation could join, it must have already established a national security authority to fight communism through clandestine citizen cadres. This Stay Behind clause grew out of a secret committee set up at US insistence in the Atlantic Pact, the forerunner of NATO."

Under these Stay Behind programs, anticommunist elements, often overtly fascist, were organized, armed, and funded supposedly as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. Some had links to organized crime; many were involved in terrorist incidents aimed at undermining the left. After public exposure and the disintegration of Washington's major Cold War rival, most countries shelved the US-dominated counterinsurgency schemes.Italy("Gladio"), Belgium ("SDRA-8"),France ("Rose des Vents"), Holland ("P:26" or "NATO Command"),

Greece("Sheepskin"), Denmark,Luxembourg, Switzerland ("Schwert"),Norway, Austria, Spain, Britain ("Secret British Network"), Portugal, and Germany have all acknowledged that they participated in the covert network. But although Gladio became public knowledge in Turkey ("Special Warfare Department") years ago and former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said "patriotic volunteers" staffed a US-funded unit that was ready to go into action in the event of a Communist takeover, Ankara officially denies that such an organization ever existed.

Some find this denial coming as it does from a NATO front-line member incredible and call for openness. "Unless the operations of the Gladio, the NATO-linked international counterinsurgency organization within the Turkish security system is investigated," says commission member Saglar, "the real source of the security corruption will not be effectively discovered. It is necessary to investigate the Special Forces Command, previously known as Special Warfare Department of the Chief of Staff."

Despite the continuing coverup, it is known that during the 1970s, the Turkish army's Special Warfare Department (Gladio) operated the Counterguerrilla Organization. The department was headquartered in the US Military Aid Mission building in Ankara and received funds and training from US advisers to create the Stay Behind squads. The Gray Wolves,headed by Catli, enjoyed official encouragement and protection.

"In the late '70s, former military prosecutor and Turkish Military Supreme Court Justice Emin Deger documented collaboration between the Gray Wolves and the government's counterguerrilla forces, as well as the close ties of the latter to the CIA. The Counterguerrilla Organization provided weapons to terrorist groups such as the Gray Wolves, who instigated much of the political violence that culminated in a 1980 coup by the Turkish military that deposed Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel. State security forces justified the coup in the name of restoring order and stability. Cold War realpolitik compelled the Gray Wolves and their institutional sponsor, the ultra-right National Action Party, to favor a discreet alliance with NATO and U.S. intelligence. Led by Col. Alpaslan Turkes, the National Action Party espoused a fanatical pan-Turkish ideology that called for repatriating whole sections of the Soviet Union under the flag of a reborn Turkish

empire. The Gray Wolves forged ties with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, a CIA-backed coalition led by erstwhile fascist collaborators from Eastern Europe. ... Colleagues of Turkes controlled a Turkish chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, an umbrella group that functioned as a cat's paw for US intelligence in Latin America, Southwest Asia and other Cold War battlegrounds."

As the Susurluk affair illuminated, the clandestine dynamic had not ended with the Cold War. Citing links dating back to the 1970s between Catli and the state security units, Saglar wrote in his report that "the gangs that were formed in 1993 were actually based on an already existing extra-legal mechanism which has been publicly known as counter-guerrilla during the 1970s." Saglar quotes government Deputy Niyazi Unsal: "The counter-guerrilla organization has survived until this day without losing any of its former influence. All those who testified at the investigatory commission, says Saglar,"have introduced serious claims regarding links between `gangs' and the security units, that undeniably confirm moral and material support to those gangs from among high security officials."

Chief among those carrying Gladio's standard into the 1990s are the Gray Wolves. With little subtlety, Catli's companions in the neo-fascist Wolves proudly carried a banner in his funeral procession inscribed: "He fought like a Sword and died like a sword!" (Gladio means sword in Italian.)

"OUR BOYS HAVE DONE IT!" The crash of the Mercedes has not only provided answers about the relationship between criminal, fascist, and security elements, but has raised new questions. Fikri Saglar, in his minority report to the parliamentary commission, expresses concerns that the presence of Catli, the fugitive drug dealer in the Mercedes of a police chief 16 years after the military takeover, might point to the fact that Catli and his kind had played an effective role in the coup. "Catli, his family and companions had left Turkey with false passports provided by the security officials immediately after the coup and under apparent protection by the state," Saglar charges, referring to Turkey's military rulers of the 1980s.

Also being questioned is the role of the US and especially that of the CIA. Throughout the Cold War era, Turkey was the frontline state in NATO's Southeastern flank and Washington's major regional military ally against the former Soviet Bloc. It was then, and continues to be, a vanguard post for US strategic interests.

The close ties between the Turkish, US military, and intelligence circles, along with US concerns over Turkey's military cooperation, have been major obstacles in Turkey's path to broader democracy. Turkey's

US-backed military has viewed movements for increased democracy with hostility and accused them of undermining the country's stability and consequently its military might. Turkey's pro-US conservative politicians and military rulers have continually targeted leftist, democratic, and labor movements that have striven for broader rights. Alongside official pressure, the military has frequently resorted to unofficial force to quell the massive opposition movements that began in the second half of the 1960s. During the last four

decades, Turkey has been subjected to three military coups, all of which have declared their obedience to NATO obligations and all of which have been unreservedly backed and even encouraged by Washington. Ankara continues to be the fourth largest recipient of US aid.

Saglar charges that US interest in Turkish affairs is not confined to official NATO relations and trade ties. He points to the notorious message by the CIA's then-Turkey Station Chief Paul Henze in Ankara to his colleagues in Washington the day after the 1980 coup "Our boys have done it!" Henze crowed. Saglar concludes that foreign intelligence organizations including the CIA, have coopted collaborators from among the extreme-right and exploited them for their particular interests.

Saglar's charge is lent credence by the fact that Yasar Oz one of the drug traffickers carrying the Green Passports signed by Mehmet Agar was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Adminstration in New York and immediately released. There is also evidence that Catli himself entered the US in 1982 in Miami with his "false" green passport. Traveling with him was Italian Gladio agent Stefano Delle Chiaie, who has been charged with involvement in the blast in Italy's Bologna Train Station in the 1980s

SHIFTING THREATS

The "Susurluk affair" has capped an overwhelming body of evidence and testimony against major military and security officials. If Turkey were a functioning democracy, the immediate outcome would at the very least have been a series of prosecutions.

However, the Turkish military, which set up, conducted, and oversaw this uninterrupted deadly counterinsurgency operation against leftists and Kurdish nationalists throughout the last three decades, is in an enviable position. It has emerged from an embarrassing period during the first two months of the year when sweeping public protest rang in the streets of Turkey. Every night at 9 p.m., angry crowds called for "cleansing the country from the gangs." Since February 28, the military has regained confidence and restored

its reputation as the traditional watchdog of Turkish secularism. This recovery is largely due to an extensive media-backed drive launched by the military high command against the Islamist-led coalition. The army has positioned itself as champion of the secular republic against a fundamentalist "threat" posed by Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's senior coalition Welfare Party (RP). The military high command has called on Erbakan and his party to enforce existing anti-fundamentalist laws and to draft new legislation for educational reforms, including closure of the religious seminaries which they consider the hotbed of Islamist fundamentalism.

Overnight, the carefully designed and precisely timed military drive has changed the public agenda from that of "cleansing the Turkish democracy of the gangs" to "safeguarding the secular republic against the fundamentalist threat." As a result, a considerable section of the opposition has realigned itself behind the military which has positioned itself as Turkey's hope for maintaining Westernist secularism and modernist aspirations.

These days, few of the "modernists" recall the era of military juntas in the early 1980s when Turkey's military rulers adopted "a green belt strategy" after the revolution in Iran and the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. The idea, promoted in some Washington circles, was to construct a bulwark alliance of US-backed Muslim countries in order to confine Soviet southward expansion, and to combat radical Islamist power in Iran and elsewhere in the region.

It was in accordance with this "green belt strategy," and in the name of"secularism," that the army has seized on Erbakan's "Islamic threat" as a major justification for increasing its already substantial powers. To a large extent, this stance is hypocritical. "The constitution drafted by military rulers, for instance, deemed religious courses obligatory for all levels of pre-university education, and set up religious seminaries which served as seedbeds for Islamist ideology. This was much more than any civilian government, in a political compromise with the Islamists might have dared to try."

Turkey is now trapped between the two giants the "gang" and the fundamentalists both of which have been nurtured by the army to serve its needs. At the same time, as Turkey's secularist establishment seeks salvation by calling on the army for aid for a fourth time in the last four decades, the country seems to have lost its historical memory. Meanwhile, Turkey's key dilemma remains: How to set up and maintain a functioning democracy on Western standards in a majority Muslim country.

[Guest]

I almost forgot about these folks:

What happened to the Turkish Assyrians?

 

 

Turkish Daily News, Thursday, August 29, 1996

 

It got all mixed up when the investigators who had called the Kurds Mountain Turks’ named the

 

Assyrians ‘Semite-Turks’ in order to make them ‘Turks’

 

The 45,000 Assyrians who wanted democracy emigrated from Turkey. Today, there are just 5,000 left

 

By Jan Pacal

 

Turkish Daily News / ISTANBUL

 

Despite the definition used by political leaders of a "colorful mosaic Turkey," the fading and disappearing of those colors cannot be hidden any more-and the most blatant example of colors that are about to disappear altogether are the 45,000 Assyrians out of a total of 50,000 who have emigrated from Turkey in the last 20 years. The number of Assyrians in Turkey today is about 5,000. This population is limited to the big cities only because every single once-Assyrian village has now become a ghost town. The Assyrians have been forced to look for a future outside Turkey. The villages that were burnt, unequal education, pressures-many problems can be listed now-all served to push them into searching for a country in which they could live in a more democratic way. It will be enough to look at recent history without rose-tinted spectacles to see and judge all these developments in a more objective way.

 

A Citizen

 

My Dear Minister, I wonder if Abdullah Ocalan is circumcised or not? The evidence I am bringing to your attention here implicates a singer. His name is Coskun Sabah. My dear Minister, I do not know what his real name is, but I know this person, who earns money by playing his ud to millions of Muslirns, is an Assyrian. I mean an Armenian... And I want to quote here a part of his song called "Southeast," the lyrics and music of which belong to him. This is what the Assyrian says: ‘Southeast, Southeast / The way of my parents/ I cannot stand this yearning/ I missed Diyarbakir.’ "The South East has been the home of Islam for nearly 13 centuries. Is the ‘missing’ Sabah mentions in his song a missing of his private life? Or is the Assyrian the translator of the thousand-year ‘missing’ of the crusaders? The DGM (Court) has to open an investigation into this Assyrian, and if necessary, this song that threatens our integrity should be banned..." This letter, which was sent to the Interior Minister of the period, Ismet Sezgin, and was also printed in the paper, Zaman, and continues in the same vein. However, it is not a simple letter, but an instrument to reveal the threatening approach the Assyrians face, and the owner of the letter, not even able to distinguish Assyrians from Armenians, uses "Assyrian" as an insult.

 

Right to asylum for Assyrians

 

In Turkey, such events do not only stay on paper: villages are burnt and people tortured. Given the fact that this reality is not hidden, the German Federal Court, after a resolution passed last year, explained that the Assyrians would be taken under consideration as a complete group. The reason of this decision was that the Turkish Government do not pursue the complaints of the Assyrian minority so as not to risk the loyalty to the state of the "Aghas," local chiefs, the village guards and Hizbullah in the South East.

 

Another interesting point was that Germany, which believes that Kurds can live securely outside the South East, has concluded that the Assyrians are safe nowhere in the country, and has given them the right to refuge. In addition, it is also true that emigration is not something new for the Assyrians, as they have

 

been doing it for the last 20 years. Researchers are generally agreed that the reason for this emigration

 

has not been economic, but people have been in the South East... The conflict has become more violent with the interference of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and this has put the Assyrians in a worse situation. Although the Assyrians have taken no side, they have been submitted to unsolved murders and

 

pressure. All these things have taken the Assyrians away from the land that they had been devoted to for 5,000 years. In other words, they have been forced to seek their future somewhere else-out of this land," Bilge continues.

 

Bilge draws attention to the fact that the Assyrian population was about 50,000 in the South East in the 1950’s, but this number has by now decreased to 2,000, with the majority in Midyat and its surrounding villages. With the majority of Assyrians in Istanbul, the total population for the whole country is about 5,000. According to Yakup Bilge, the Assyrians do not see themselves as a part of the "Turkish mosaic" anymore. "Whatever the reason is, the Assyrians are living out their new lives in exile. But even if this color is fading away, it is still protecting its existence in Turkey. The final disappearance of this color completely depends on Turkish democracy because the Assyrians have decided not to live in a place where there is no peace and democracy. And the emigration will go on unless Turkey provides these two elements," Bilge warns.

 

A representative of the Orthodox churches, journalist and writer Isa Karatas, draws attention to another point: "In Turkey only Armenians and Greeks have the rights of minorities, but although Assyrians are Christian, they cannot benefit from these rights. "The Assyrians are Christian, but not a minority, and because they do not have minority rights, they cannot establish their own schools, and as a natural result cannot provide for the development and learning of their own language. The language courses opened in the churches have not been able to expand due to various reasons. Unfortunately, the government cannot stand these kinds of courses and has tried to close them.

 

"The most blatant example of the situation was experienced in the Deyrulzafaran monastery in Mardin. In 1979 the education of religion and language was banned, and the reason that was given was that the Assyrian children who were being educated there were joining terrorist organizations. These false claims were also in the papers.

 

"Religion classes at school are one of the other problems of the Assyrians --- as with other minorities. Although this problem doesn’t appear to be important, it is one of the greatest reasons for emigration because these people are kept away from defending their own religious values. In the official religion classes, religions other than Islam take only three pages in the course books, and are also not given within the framework of their own values. While Assyrian parents introduce their children to the Bible as the book that shows the way to God and the priests as respected people explaining this way, the ministry’s books introduce the Bible as something that has been destroyed and changed and the priests as the ones who changed it to their advantage."

 

Isa Karatas, sums up the results of this situation with the question "Should Assyrian children try to explain that these claims are untrue, or should they study their lessons? Some have tried to be silent and accept the situation, but the emigration has been a continuation of this; and that was the purpose, anyway."

 

Majority or Minority?

 

Karatas, who stales that the problem in Turkey is not that of being an Assyrian, but of being a Christian, brings forward the problem of religion rather than the concept of national or ethnic origin.

 

He also mentions the 39th article of the Lausanne peace treaty, signed between Turkey and the Allied powers in 1922 and which established the sovereignty of the Turkish republic. The treaty states that: "Turkish citizens categorized as minorities will benefit from the same political and social rights as Muslims. Religious belief and difference of sect cannot inhibit a Turkish citizen from benefiting from any civil or political rights or being appointed to any official position."

 

Karatas, continues. "Today, no member of a minority can be a policeman or an officer. Assyrians had the rights of the majority and not of the minority, but to be Christian inhibited them in benefiting from the rights of majorities. The Assyrians living within Turkey’s frontiers still do not have those rights." Another point Isa Karatas mentions is the media and intelligentsia. He claims that there are some writers who pretend they know a lot and write as if they knew much, but says that in one of the books of the Education Ministry, entitled "Fast and sacrifice in Islam and other religions," writer Tahsir Feyizli declares in the section called "Fast in the Assyrians" that "The Assyrians have been so influenced by Christians that they are like a sect of Christianity," showing that this ‘respected’ person does not even know that the Assyrians are indeed Christian.

 

The article entitles "Ahdi-cedid," in the first volume of the Islamic Encyclopedia, also contains some false claims. One of them is that the Bible used by the Assyrians does not include two sections. But a more important distortion is in Professor Mehlika Aktot Kasgarli’s book entitled "Turco-Semites in Mardin and surrounding populations," published by Erciyes University. The professor writes of the Assyrians: "These Turkish Christians, who accepted our language and traditions and who do not have the status of a minority, are called Turco-Semites, in consideration of their origin. Turco-semites are not a different nation from the Turkish nation, and they even have Turkish characteristics." We should not forget that Kasgarli has also called Kurds "Mountain Turks," and so follows this new innovation, the "Turco-Semites."

 

Burnt and evacuated villages

 

Karatas’ revelations of facts and reasons do not seem to end, but the concrete data underlines once again the reason for emigration. In 1992 the graveyard of the village of Midyat Bulbuk was bombed, and the reason given was that possibly it was a place for a secret PKK arms cache.

 

In another case, a fire which started in the Ogunduk Village Police station, which was attacked by the PKK on July 21, 1992, led to the village and its fields and vineyard being burnt, and Sukru Yalin, who was 17, being wounded.

 

On August 2, 1992 Catalcam village, located in Dargecit, was attacked. The Assyrian graveyard and houses were destroyed. On January 21, 1993 Izbirak village located in Midyat was attacked by village guards and Melke, Suleyman, Borsoma and a woman whose name is unknown were kidnapped. The villagers were forced to be village guards. The incidents are listed like this, but in the last two years approximately 20 Assyrian villages have been evacuated. Here are some villages names and the provinces where they were located:

 

Kosrall (Silopi), Elbeyendi (Midyat), Bardakci, (Midyat), Baglarbasi (Midyat), Yamanlar (Midyat), Baristepe (Midyat), Murcemekli (Midyat), Gungoren (Midyat), Dagici (Nusaybin), Ocyol (Nusaybin), Guzelsu (Nusaybin) Dibek (Nusaybin), Taskoy (Nusaybin), Girmeli (Nusaybin), Sare (Idil), Yarbasi (Idil), Izbirak Koyu (Daragecit), Alayurt Koyu (Idil), Arica (Gercus), Yamanlar (Gercus) and Binkalbe (Gercus).

 

Citizenship revoked

 

Not only were the homes of many Assyrians destroyed but the Turkish state in a number of cases went a step further, removing the citizenship of many supposed "Turco-semites". Here is the list of Assyrians whose Turkish citizenship has been revoked by the ruling of the ministry commission numbered 95-6805: Melke Davut (Midyat), Yakup Gonen (Midyat-Gevriye), Bulut Samuel Bulut (Midyat-Yemisli), Yusuf Aykil, Edibe Aykil (Midyat-Baglarbasi), Bahi Akul Semun Unal, Yusuf Surer, Celil Buyukbas, Mardin Bulbul, Fehmi Yarar (Midyat), Aho Erdinc, (Nusaybin-Tas,koy), Ishak Tahan (Midyat), Afem Adil, Ismuni Adil (Midyat-Yemisli), Mihayel Bayru, Idil Fikri Aksoy (Midyat), Yakup Yontan (Kiziltepe) Circis Yuksel, Savur Dereici, Aydin Aydin, Nusaybin Uckoy, Musa Demir, Yusuf Ozbakir, Isa Koc (Midyat-Yemisli), Gevriye Durmaz, Midyat Dogancay, Gorgis Savci, Dargecit Anitli, Fuat Bayindir, Idil Hanna (Aydin), Dargecit Arutil, Yakip Mete (Midyat), Sukru Tutus (Idil), Aziz Ciftci (Mardin) Doctor Edvart Tanriverdi (Midyat).

 

Kidnapped Assyrians

 

Since 1980, 20 Assyrian girls, including children, have been kidnapped. Hasine Selege, aged 14, was taken in 1994 from Midyat Mercimekli village; in March, 1994, Turkan Gulec, was taken from Midyat Altinbas village; Marta Ilik in September, 1994 from Nusaybin Odabasi village and Lahdo Barinc from Ogunduk village, who was kidnapped on February 22, 1993 by people claiming they were village guards. She was set free in return for DM100,000 eight months later.

 

Priest Melke Tok

 

The priest of Ogunduk village, Melke Tok, was kidnapped on January 9, 1994 by people suspected of being Hizbullah supporters: After being buried alive, he succeeded in escaping. He said he had been put under pressure to change his religion to Islam.

 

The arrests and the missing

 

Heylan Simsek explains how her husband and son, Hamdi and Hikmet Simsek, disappeared: "On January 13, 1993, my husband and son were arrested by soldiers. They gathered us in the center of the village. They hung the cross that signifies our religious beliefs on the neck of the imam of the village, Ibrahim Akil, and said, "We will kill you all because you are Christian." The brothers Edip and Ercan Diril Idil, who wanted to go back from Istanbul to the Kumkaya village of Silopi, got lost somewhere near Cizre. The last news from them was that the road was filled with mines and the soldiers were not allowing them to pass. If o one has heard from them since. On June 18, 1994, Hurmuz Diril was arrested and put in prison in the Beytussebab Attorney-Generalship, where he had gone to question why the Assyrian Keldani village that had been evacuated by security forces had been burnt. The alderman of the village is still in prison, his stated crime was that he offered help and was an accomplice to terrorists.

 

In the face of such pressures the Assyrians of Turkey have drifted away from the country of their birth to find a new life in lands more accepting of their faith and identity. Another piece of the mosaic has been chipped away.

[MJ]

Edward,

 

Somehow I missed... Is there a relation between these materials and "Our support for Kurds?"

[Guest]

Oops, sorry about that.

[Guest]

This is more on topic I hope:

In Turkey, an undercurrent of Kurd unrest

By Jeffrey Fleishman

May 31, 2001

Philadelphia Inquirer

 

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - As dusk slipped across the black-stone city walls, sparks flew

from the flint wheels of metal grinders, women in chadors bargained for cumin and cheese,

men puffed on water pipes in grimy tea dens, and no one seemed in a particular hurry to get

home.

 

There were few smiles. Most went about their business with stern faces and suspicious eyes.

But there was calm, from the dirt alleys of the Yogurt Bazaar to the trickling faucets outside

the mosque, where men washed their feet before bowing in prayer. A city tormented by 15

years of war, Diyarbakir, whose streets were once empty by nightfall, has settled into an

eerie peace.

 

One that could easily be shattered.

 

The war between the Turkish military and the 6,000 guerrillas in the Kurdistan Workers

Party (PKK) has been largely quieted by a two-year-old cease-fire. The rebels, who are

seeking an independent Kurdish state, have mostly retreated into the mountains of northern

Iraq. The military - with tanks and helicopter gunships - controls southeast Turkey, where

37,000 people were killed and 3,500 Kurdish villages destroyed between 1984 and 1999.

 

The passions that ignited the fighting have gone largely unresolved. Most of Turkey's 12

million Kurds - 18 percent of the population - still live in poverty. They are discriminated

against, tortured by police, and often forbidden from expressing their cultural heritage.

Kurdish-language radio broadcasts are outlawed, and most Turkish politicians and military

leaders will not publicly utter the word Kurd.

 

"We are all Turks," the government motto goes.

 

Many in the PKK have recast their dreams for an independent homeland, settling these days

for equal rights and economic opportunities within Turkey. But there have been few tangible

improvements in the southeast. The country is consumed with an economy devastated by

hyperinflation and a string of financial crises. And the nationalist government, except for a

minority of reformers, is loath to recognize Kurdish rights and considers the PKK a terrorist

organization.

 

Government forces still clash with roving units of PKK hard-liners. Last week, the Turkish

military said it killed a senior rebel commander and 14 guerrillas in the southeastern

province of Bingol. It was the costliest loss to the PKK in more than a year.

 

Some analysts predict the "Kurdish problem" will have to be fixed soon. Turkey may no

longer be able to afford huge sums for military-enforced security in the southeast. Fifteen

years of war cost the government about $150 billion. Another messy uprising could also

jeopardize the nation's chances for admission to the European Union, a prize sought for years

by Turkey's political and military leadership.

 

"Things are calmer on the surface, but in reality nothing has changed," said Osman

Baydemir, head of Diyarbakir's Human Rights Association, which has documented what it

says are 43 cases of torture in the southeast by Turkish police since January. "Fifty-five

people have died in military actions this year. Abuses are going up. The government is doing

little to improve the Kurdish issue. I don't think the government has a desire for change."

 

The Turkish governor for the region, A. Cemil Serhatli, acknowledged past human-rights

abuses but said such cases were declining as police become better trained. The PKK also

tortured and murdered, Serhatli said, adding that the Kurdish population was wedged

between the terror of the guerrillas and the pressure of the government to crush the uprising.

 

"There has been conflict in this region for years, and there is a lot of mistrust," he said. "You

cannot bring government programs to the people during war. But since the cease-fire, there is

an effort to provide wells, schools and roads. We have built 150 kilometers [about 90 miles]

of new roads and added 837 new classrooms in the southeast."

 

That does not impress Azez Akatas, a portly man with a wisp of a white mustache. Akatas

sat the other day inhaling from a water pipe at a tea shop filled with the scent of

apple-flavored tobacco. He brushed smoke away from his face and spoke into the chattering

din.

 

"People are tired of war," he said. "They're tired of the government and the PKK. There was

a fight for the Kurdish society, but the PKK made a mistake by not getting the people on its

side. The PKK sometimes killed its own people. The government was no better. It played

bad politics. It promised jobs and education. But we have nothing. We have 70 percent

unemployment. People are disillusioned."

 

Another puff of smoke, another voice.

 

"It's America's fault," said Huseyin Acikgoz, a soccer coach whose five children attend a

school where 80 children are often crammed into classrooms. "America sided with the

Turkish military regime so it can use Turkey's air bases to bomb Iraq. The Turkish

government does not want to change things here. The reality is you cannot make a Kurd a

Turk. I'm just a citizen in my country, but the government sees me as a terrorist because I'm

Kurdish.

 

"What kind of future is in that for me or for my children?"

 

Southeast Turkey is a fertile land stretching between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and

bordered by Syria, Iraq and Iran. This Turkish Anatolian region was home to ancient

peoples, including, biblical scholars believe, Abraham and Noah. It is a region haunted

through the centuries by religious wars, turmoil and misery. The Kurds have found little rest

here. A mountainous people, about 25 million Kurds are scattered over the four countries,

lacking a unified political strategy for a homeland they refer to as Kurdistan.

 

In Iraq, they are pitted against Saddam Hussein. In Iran, they are cut off from politics. In

Syria, they live in poverty. In 1984, Abdullah Ocalan and his PKK rebels captured the

imagination of Kurds across Europe and the Middle East in his war against Turkey. That

struggle ended when Ocalan was arrested in 1998. From his Turkish prison cell, facing a

death sentence, he has called for the PKK, which intimidated its own people and funded itself

with drug money, to lay down its arms and seek changes through democratic means.

 

But this strategy has done little to alter Turkey's repression. Earlier this year, Diyarbakir's

popular police chief was slain by 20 gunmen. Only one suspect has been arrested. Many here

believe the murder was orchestrated by Turkish nationalists angry at the chief's respect for

Kurdish rights and a culturally tolerant society. The chief stunned Turks and Kurds alike

when he attempted to learn Kurdish and donated money to Diyarbakir's mostly Kurdish

soccer team.

 

A Kurdish law student who would give his name only as Baris said the chief's death and the

military atmosphere gripping Diyarbakir proved "the Turkish government is not taking

advantage of the cease-fire."

 

"I think the government was really hoping that Ocalan's arrest would start an even more

bloody war that would give Turks the excuse to destroy the Kurdish people. But this won't

happen. Arms will not be taken up. We will get our rights through politics and negotiations.

 

"I grew up with clashes in my village and soldiers on my rooftops. Now I want to find

another way for a future."

[Guest]

Why not an Independent Kurdish State?

May 25, 2001

 

 

By Rashid Karadaghi

 

It seems that Turkey misses no opportunity to repeat its strong opposition to any type of

Kurdish State in what is known by most of the official world as “Northern Iraq” and by Kurds

as “South/Southern Kurdistan.” According to the Turkish newspaper “Hurriyet,” the latest of

such declarations was made last week in a “secret report” prepared by the Turkish foreign

ministry and sent to eight strategic Turkish institutions, including that of the general staff. Again

according to the same newspaper, the report reads: “The scenario which is impossible for us to

accept is the declaration of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Such a declaration

must be regarded as a reason for intervention.”

 

This and all the previous declarations are less shocking than they are sad. They are not shocking

because every Kurd knows that there is an irrational, deep-rooted, and intense hatred by official

Turkey for anything Kurdish, let alone an independent State. They are sad, however, because

they are fresh reminders that such a strange mentality still exists today. Our reaction: “ Wake up

Turkish politicians and political parties, for this is not the Middle Ages but the twenty-first

century! Enough of your blind hatred for all things Kurdish, please! ”

 

An independent Kurdish State is coming eighty years too late even if it is declared today.

Turkey and its partners in crime know full well how the Kurds were cheated out of their rights at

the end of World War I to form their own independent State like the other people coming out

from under the yoke of the Ottoman rule. Haven’t the countries that have so unjustly divided

Kurdistan among them and oppressed the Kurds in the most ruthless way for almost a century

had their pound of flesh? How much longer do they want to punish this nation that has done

nothing against them except refuse to bow its head to tyranny and injustice, and with whom they

falsely claim to have a “ historic brotherhood”? And how much longer do they want to live by

the inhuman philosophy of “Live and let die”? We don’t wish for these countries the same hell

that they have created for the Kurds, but it might be instructive if they could have a taste of their

own medicine.

 

Let us debate the issue of a Kurdish State in a quiet, balanced, fair, and non-belligerent way and

not only from a purely national and human rights point of view but also from a common sense

point of view so we can arrive at a logical conclusion.

 

In the last eighty years, Turkey has done everything it could from imprisonment to torture to

killing and burning of villages not only to deny the Kurds their human and national rights but also

to deny them their very existence as a distinct ethnic group and eradicate any feeling or

manifestation of Kurdicity. And yet, it has failed utterly to achieve its objective and the proof is

that the Kurds feel more Kurdish today than ever before and they are demanding their human

and national rights with a louder and stronger voice than ever before. And if the situation were

reversed in Turkey by a miracle and the Turks were oppressed by a Kurdish government, there

is no doubt that the Turks would have done exactly what the Kurds have been doing to fight

oppression--as they should have. What the Turkish Establishment fails to understand,

unfortunately, is that inherent feeling in every human being and every nation that yearns for

freedom and recognition and refuses to submit to injustice no matter what the price.

 

Keeping the Kurds subjugated has been very costly both in human and material terms for

Turkey as well as its partners in crime. Imagine the billions of dollars Turkey and Iraq have lost,

for instance, in their war against the Kurds and the billions more that Turkey has lost in tourism

because of the war. And for what? Just to prove that they are stronger than the Kurds? Would

it not have been better to spend those billions on building those countries and a better future for

their people? When will these States (and others) stop behaving like a beast just to prove they

are stronger than their perceived opponent, and when will they stop using every lethal weapon

that mankind has unfortunately invented and produced simply to break the spirit of the other

side or to prove they are better than them when in reality they prove neither?

 

And what about the cost in human lives and human tragedy? Every time you kill one of your

perceived enemies or one of yours gets killed in this unnecessary and endless war you bring

tragedy home to many families because you orphan a child (or children) and/or you take away

someone’s son, brother, husband, etc. And multiply this by the thirty-five thousand persons who

have lost their lives just in the last fifteen years in Turkey, and the more than a quarter of a

million Kurds and the countless Iraqi Arabs in Iraq and you get the picture. Isn’t it time for some

visionary leaders and people of wisdom to end this madness by simply recognizing the other

guy’s humanity and his right to the same rights that you hold so dear and you take for granted?

 

What is so irrational about Turkey’s behavior is that it does not only silence, control, intimidate,

dehumanize, and kill the Kurds it holds captive within its borders but wants to exercise a veto

power over every move by the Kurds in the other parts of occupied Kurdistan that have not

even been part of Turkey for the last eighty years, as if Turkey’s only mission in life is to keep

the Kurds in the box that it and the imperial powers put them in eighty years ago and lash out

every time the Kurds raise their heads and demand release from the larger prison they have

been forced to live in.

 

What is really amazing is that the Turkish Establishment opposes every activity by Kurds

anywhere in the world. Even when there is a peaceful demonstration by a Kurdish community in

another country thousands of miles away, for instance, Turkey gets upset at that country

because it did not follow Turkish standards and ban the demonstration or throw the

demonstrators in jail. Turkey should examine its unreasonable attitude and its obsession with

opposing everything Kurdish in this world.

 

During the Kosovo crisis in 1999, Turkey helped NATO free the Kosovars from Serbian

attacks. This was a correct move by Turkey. During this same crisis, the Turkish prime minister

said that there was no way for the Kosovars to live with the Serbs anymore. There isn’t

probably a Kurd who disagrees with the prime minister on this. The Kosovars were right in

demanding their freedom from Serbia. But what we are wondering about is why the prime

minister is so right on Kosovo and the Kosovars and yet so wrong on Kurdistan and the Kurds.

Isn’t the Kurdish situation very similar to that of the Kosovars, only worse?

 

We believe that Turkey, as well as the other States occupying Kurdistan, should take the ideas

put forward by the Kurds seriously instead of dismissing them as usual without a thought and

characterizing them as “separatist” because that is no way to solve a problem that has been

festering for almost a century and keeps getting worse. That kind of attitude is like putting one’s

proverbial head in the sand and ignoring reality.

 

If Turkey wants the best for its people, it should re-examine, in a fundamental way, its attitude

since its creation toward the Kurdish people? . What makes a nation strong is its openness and

recognition of differences, not their suppression. Here is a story that might be instructive to all

those who simply cannot accept the notion that the Kurds are a people like all others and are

entitled to what others are entitled, too. According to news reports, there is an attempt by some

language specialists in the United States to reconstruct a dead native American (American

Indian) dialect which no one speaks anymore. This is done to preserve it for posterity. Does this

make the U. S. any weaker? Isn’t this what makes the U. S. the country it is? Compare this

attitude of acceptance and recognition to the attitude of the States which either deny the Kurds

their human and national rights or deny their very existence outright and you will see the stark

difference. Official Turkey, for instance, denies the existence of a living language which is

spoken by twelve to fifteen million living human beings within its borders and at least fifteen

million more outside. Does this make any sense? Why do the States that hold the Kurds captive

allow themselves to be ruled by the worst human instincts instead of the best, when we know

and they know that by doing so they are hurting themselves, too? Is cutting off your nose to

spite your face the right answer to life’s challenges?

 

The threat of military intervention by Turkey if a Kurdish State is declared in “Northern Iraq” is

based at least in part on the claim that such a State would encourage other Kurds in the rest of

Kurdistan to demand their rights, too. First, it is not up to a Kurdish State whether the Kurds in

the rest of Kurdistan will demand their rights or not ; it is up to the Kurds in those parts whether

that will happen or not. Second, isn’t that statement in itself an admission that the Kurds do not

have their rights now? And if this is the case, which it is, what is wrong with demanding those

rights? Are the Kurds part of the human race or are they from another planet? And if they are

part of the human race, aren’t they entitled to the same rights that the rest are entitled to?

 

The other claim, which is connected to the one we just discussed, is that a Kurdish State would

destabilize the region. Now, we want to address not only the States that are dividing and

occupying Kurdistan but the Western Powers, too. We want to ask them all: “Why didn’t the

creation of all those other States destabilize the region but a Kurdish State would?” Isn’t this the

flimsiest of pretexts to justify keeping the Kurds from achieving their rights? How much more

unstable can the region get than it is now anyway? And isn’t keeping the Kurds subjugated and

divided the main reason for the unending wars and conflicts which lead to instability in the

region? Don’t you have your logic upside down? And how long can you keep up this big lie?

Are the Kurds such a dangerous and expansionistic people that they would overrun the

neighboring countries the minute they have a chance? Everybody knows that there isn’t one

iota of historical evidence to support this fallacy. Throughout their history the Kurds have always

fought defensive wars against invaders of all kinds but never an offensive one to take over other

peoples’ land. So, please tell us exactly how a Kurdish State would destabilize the region.

 

Contrary to the myth that the enemies of the Kurds have been creating and spreading for a very

long time, a Kurdish State would help make the region much more stable and safer than it has

ever been. The countries holing Kurdistan, as well as Europe and the United States and anyone

else concerned, should know that a Kurdish State will never be a threat to anyone; on the

contrary, such a State would give a tremendous boost to peace and security in the region. If

accepted by its immediate neighbors, and there is no logical and convincing reason why it should

not be, a Kurdish State would go a long way to eliminate the root causes of the perennial

conflicts and wars and their aftermath in both human suffering and material cost. Chronic

conflicts and wars can be replaced by co-operation and friendly relations between such a

Kurdish State and its neighbors. And how can anyone, in good conscience, stand in opposition

to that?

 

The Kurds have no quarrel with the peoples of the countries that hold Kurdistan and the Kurds

captive ; their quarrel is with the regimes in those countries. If the peoples of those countries are

fair-minded and far-sighted enough, which we hope they are, they will stand with the Kurds and

support their right of self-determination because it will eliminate the most obvious reasons for

continuous warfare, which has taken its toll on them also even if not anywhere near what it has

done to the Kurds. We are not taking anything away from them; we simply want to take back

what is ours and has always been ours. What was stolen and kept for so long should be

returned to its rightful owners. Can any logical and fair-minded person find anything wrong with

that?

 

And finally, Turkey and the other countries holding Kurdistan must know that time is against

them and on the side of the Kurds. They must know that they cannot stop the march of history.

They must also know that a Kurdish State is inevitable whether they like it or not, perhaps not

this year or next but sooner than they think, because it is the only natural and logical next step

from here. If eighty years of denial, abuse, killing and burning have not succeeded in eradicating

the Kurdish yearning for freedom from occupation, why do these countries think it will

succeeded now when international conditions are much more favorable than ever before to

every oppressed nation to finally tear down the prison walls and be free?

[Harut]

i haven't read all your postings but i'm going to say: why should we?

 

as a democratic country we should express our feelings only and only when Turks go beyond the line and become cruel.

 

[ June 01, 2001: Message edited by: Harut ]

[Guest]

I see my posts are being put under by the moderators. Thats Ok. I expected that. I have my own forums. This is my last post to this forum! Good luck to you!

[Berj]

What do you mean by "put under"?

[Guest]

quote:

---

Originally posted by MJ:



We could, but it requires that Turks assess their past, and move away from it ...

---

I did not know it was revision time.

More likely & easier to change the diasporean armenian activities spearheading what is perceived as anti-turkish propaganda in the western christian hemisphere.

More likely that the turkey will change it's behaviour & treatment of those armenians who want to do business within turkey.

It can easily be said that this situation is one of the best example of politics & diplomacy not working for people in general.

Genocide issue , as long as it's approached with a view to defeat the turk morally in the human court will virtualy have no validity nor any bearing on how the REAL POLITIK is being played.

Moving away from the past of ottoman is what TC has been doing since it's inception.

Re-discovery of what it means to be a TURK in the eyes of the western countries have largely been rendered Invalid due to conduct of successive TC governments & their participation in the Nato and it's affilliated organisations.

If I am incorrect & diasporean armenians succed in their drive to isolate turkey further , MHP supporters gets tremendous boost.

If turkey decides to go without the west & USA then there is russians or chinesee to be approached for a formative partnership in relation to new world order & it's implications.

In the scheme of greater things in life , ironically I may add ; armenian diaspora has become the harbinger of doom for the humanity
in an around caucasus & Anatolia.

Poeple in turkey are becoming aware of what is being asked from all the people in turkey regardless of their innocence or guilt .

Also diasporean armenians should recognize the fact almost all turks thinks that armenians are after land not just an apology.

Since Turkey has not been defeated in any war and it's people can not be treated like the Germans has been treated by allies after ww2.
Otherwise it's bias & turks would not have it.

[ThornyRose]

Mehmet, if my grandfather's property was confiscated because of the Varlık Vergisi, need we have to wait for a war so Turkey is defeated and we can go after it?

Analogies, you use them were they are applicable.

We are talking about individuals here, who could have been you or me.... (And please do not try to dilute my arguments by saying that we cannot know what it is like.)

One thing is for certain, though: punishment is not the way to solve problems. If you really care about preserving the dignity of a people, you do not treat them like Germany was treated by way of the Treaty of Versailles... If a historical example you crave for, guys...

Turks need to be talked to - not pointed fingers at. Otherwise, they knee-jerk and become like Circassian (no pun intended).

 

I'm off to bed. Later.

[Guest]

Should Armenians support the Kurdish right of self determination?? The answer is obvious. Did Armenia have a right of self determination?? Does Artsakh have a right of

self determination??

 

The Turkish government in its efforts to turn Kurds into Turks has failed. The Kurds are a unique ethnic group considered second class citizens in Turkey. Turkey until recently referred to Kurds a mountain Turks. Kurdistan was to have become an autonomous region according to the treaty of Sevres. After Turkey attacked the original Armenian republic and finished off the genocide of the Armenian people, she began the slow Kurdish genocide. Which continues today.

 

Turkey wants to destroy the ethnic identity of Kurds within Turkey.