by Abdullah Öcalan
Medya News translated a selected section from Abdullah Öcalan’s book, ‘The Kurdish Question and the Solution of a Democratic Nation’.
The European capitalist hegemony over the central civilisation system rooted in the Middle East could only be possible as a result of great disasters. This hegemonic construction which was built upon through massacres, colonialism, assimilation and genocide amid a state of war waged by the small nation-states brought the ancient cultures of thousands of years to the point of extinction.
Local agent hegemonic institutions built over time by taking advantage of two centuries of conflicts of the Middle East have not been yet brought to a [proper or progressive] consciousness. Not just in terms of the mentality of orientalism, but in the mentality of a way of living and life, this hegemony tries to adopt the thought of capitalist modernity.
Capitalist modernity has never been questioned regarding its role in the extinction of Assyrian, Armenian, Ionian and Georgian cultures, which lead to thousands of years of authentic cultures. The massacres and genocides these cultures were subjected to have never been brought to the daylight of dialectical thought. The dominant Arabic, Persian and Turkish rulers, which built themselves as nation-states, used their power as a genocidal machine against the social cultures, but this is also a fact that has been swept under the carpet.
The fact that “nation-state” dissolves and its mask has started to fall has revealed that this institution has a totalitarian-fascist character due to its urge to create “homogenic nation states” for “maximum profit” in all spheres of hegemonic power, not just on the colonial territories.
White Turkish fascism and genocide
This renewed Leviathan of capitalist modernity takes an invisible shape when it’s about the Kurds and it can promote a deepening cultural genocide under the name of so-called “progressive thought”.
The genocide of Kurdish culture has no doubt its roots in the Middle-Eastern-based central civilisation system and it can not only be linked to capitalist modernity. However, we can not conceptualise or theorise the Kurdish reality nor the Kurdish question, which has turned into a necrosis, unless we can reveal the two-century-old role of the Europe-based hegemony of the capitalist modernity.
The responsibility of Britain, Germany, France and other leading European hegemonic powers is decisive for the “White Turkish Fascist” elite that were born not out of patriotism but of their wielding naked power and have been used as a genocide machine on all Middle Eastern cultures, including the Turkish people’s own culture.
The much-discussed Armenian genocide could easily be explained by saying that it was committed with the use of White Turkish Fascism as a tool, but they try to hide their own responsibility in this crime and willingly put all the blame on to the Turks.
This reality can be seen more explicitly in the Kurdish cultural genocide. I will try to enlighten more on this aspect in my defence before the European Court of Human Rights.
My trial on Imralı Island was held within the borders of the Turkish Republic and in the guise of a European nation-state system. The role of the Turkish ruling elite is nothing more than a subcontractor.
Turkish Judiciary and ECHR
The oppression imposed upon me and the judiciary games played with me are not admitted to or acknowledged. My trial should have been concluded by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which is supposed to be just, when I was imprisoned after a Gladio (secret NATO) operation.
The resolution of the ECHR regarding my re-trial was administratively closed by the Turkish judicary and sent back to the ECHR and they assumed the major part of the case against me was completed. A number of my rights were violated by the Turkish judiciary which disregarded all international law principles and I still wait for a resolution of the ECHR.
They attempt to find a legal cover for the cultural genocide of the Kurdish people by using me personally.
My defence and the hypocracy
My final defence aims at decyphering the neo-liberal game, which is imposed on peoples of the world, especially the peoples of the Middle East, by the global capitalist hegemony. Without question, I find I get the majority of support from the European intellectuals who have contributed much to the concept of truth. Moreover, the struggles of freedom, socialism and democracy that the peoples of Europe have raised with great devotion are as valuable as the intellectual movements.
The understanding of the universality lying as the foundations of my defense explicitly state the unbreakable unity of struggles of intellectuals and peoples for the freedom, socialism and democracy. My basic method is the entirity of the particular and the universal.
I do not expect a legal achievement or result from my defense. My defense not only explains how brutal and low it is for them to believe that they can tame the Kurdish people on my behalf as if they tame a barbaric vulgar being, but also it reveals the true faces of the system, which is the lowest and most unethical system ever that does not comply with any humanitarian values and reveals the true faces of those, who own this system.
It is a fact that my defence has had a major impact on the cultures of Anatolia and Mesopotamia to respresent themselves as part of a truth and to liberate themselves politically.
What I believe is that one of those corner stones of humanity buried from within these cultures may have opened the path for a real humanitarian life and turned into a real step taken towards freedom, democracy and socialism.
