KurdistanObserver.com

A forgotten Hero

By: Majid Kurdistani

March 18, 2005

Like other Middle Eastern countries with Kurdish minorities, Turkey sees Kurdish nationalism as a threat to its national security and to the modern borders drawn up after World War I. This fear is particularly acute in Turkey, where about one-fourth of the population—some 20 million people—is Kurdish. These ethnic conflicts are the legacy of British imperialist conquest following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The British deliberately created a country divided against itself, with the Shi’ites in the south and Kurds in the north lorded over by the same Sunni Muslim elites who had ruled under the Ottomans. Decades of rule by bourgeois-nationalist regimes further deepened ethnic divides.

The Government of Turkey has long denied the Kurdish population basic political, cultural, and linguistic rights. The arrest of Abdullah Ocalan has brought the oppression of the Kurdish people to the attention of the whole world. The Turkish government has attempted to portray Ocalan, as a terrorist, responsible for the deaths of thousands of Turks. It is true that many Turkish soldiers and civilians have died in the 15 year war against Kurdish separatism. But that is not the responsibility of one man. It is the result of the national oppression of the Kurds meted out by the Turkish ruling class, the same class that oppresses all workers in Turkey, whether Kurdish or Turkish. Thousands of Kurds have also died as a result of the operations of the Turkish army in South East Turkey. The huge military onslaught on the part of the Turkish army, together with the mounting pressure on the PKK to dismantle its bases in Syria now means that the PKK went militarily on the retreat. But this was already the case before Ocalan's capture. In fact, the irony of the situation is that Ocalan was proposing a "political solution" to the conflict. The PKK, basing itself on the examples of Northern Ireland, the Palestinians, and ETA in the Basque Country declared, for the second time, a unilateral cease-fire in September 1998.

 Commentators speculated that this conciliatory stance might have more to do with Ocalan being on trial for his life than any real strategic change. The truth is: The PKK have declared cease-fires three times since 1993. This last one has been in operation since September 1998—before Ocalan was captured. The aim was to keep the Kurds in the world’s mind. Many people have been killed to win the Kurds an important place. The PKK’s aim has been achieved. Now, violence is not needed.

The group’s goal has been to establish an independent, democratic Kurdish state in the Middle East. The refusal of the European governments to grant Ocalan asylum and his subsequent abduction to the Turkish capital, Ankara, represents a dangerous assault on basic democratic rights. This should be considered another biggest treason against Kurds. PKK is not a terrorist grouping, but a political organization of an oppressed national minority. Kurdistan, according to Ocalan and his followers, a country that has been colonized by Turkey, must first establish its national independence. In the past, the PKK had constantly delineated itself from all other Kurdish organizations through its unconditional call for an independent state and the rejection of any partial solution based on autonomy for the Kurds within Turkey.

 This should be the sacred slogan of any political group or true nationalist Kurd. We can see little love lost among Turks, Arabs, and Iranians, but there is one issue that unites them: opposition to any form of Kurdish independence whatsoever and anywhere (well, perhaps they could live with a Kurdish state in Berlin). Their shared antipathy to a Kurdish state has recently led to high-level military and political meetings among Damascus, Ankara, and Teheran—not normally the best of buddies.  The PKK used Syria as its main base for almost two decades. Several of Turkey’s neighbor’s harbored PKK fighters, and Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Greece gave the group modest financial support, experts say. Iran transported PKK fighters to northern Iraq in exchange for Syrian assistance to the Iranian-supported Hezbollah. But eventually, they embarked upon destroying it. The olden times proves that discrepancy, grudge and negligence about our compatriots has been the key factor o our retreat.