Meral Çiçek
“It has become clearer after the recent NATO meeting that the West, especially the US and Germany, has once again shown its intent to keep the fascist regime of the Justice and Development Party – Nationalist Movement Party (AKP-MHP) alliance in power,” writes Meral Çiçek for Yeni Özgür Politika.
The assembly of the European Kurdish Democratic Societies Congress (KCDK-E), which was due to have been held last Sunday, was banned by German authorities two days prior to the event. The authorities related the decision to ban the assembly of the KCDK-E, a legal organisation, to the ban on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The ban on the PKK in Germany, the first Western state to ban the organisation in 1993, has been used as a resourceful instrument of criminalisation for almost 30 years. This ban has not only denied the universal rights of organisation, political expression and the right of resisting the oppression of the Kurds, but it has also created the grounds upon which ‘special warfare methods’ have been utilised to manufacture a social perception that favours the German state’s hostile policy.
A “news story” was published on Focus magazine’s website around the time the ban on the assembly was announced. The title was: “A first since 1993: The banned, extreme left group PKK wants to hold a gathering in Germany on Sunday.”
This story can be regarded as an example of the special warfare methods mentioned above. Whilst you read it, you get the impression that you are reading a story translated from Anadolu Agency (the Turkish state news agency) or the daily Yeni Safak. It is full of lies: a nauseous manipulative piece, a total reflection of the German state’s policy.
It is stated – actually known for some time now – that Germany has been assigned in NATO with the objective of keeping ‘Kurdish dynamics’ under control. The international concept that is in circulation since the termination of the İmralı talks is actually an upgrade of the 15 February plot,* and seems to have been confirmed at the recent NATO meeting. The aggression of the German state against “Defend Kurdistan Initiative” campaigners, the recent house raids and the ban on the assembly of the KCDK-E must all be read in the same context.
The first thing that comes to mind upon assessing such attempts of criminalisation is that the German State is trying to make Erdogan happy. This, in my opinion, is either a wrong analysis or is at least an incomplete one. The German state’s hostility against the Kurdish freedom movement hasn’t started with Erdogan. This is a policy of at least 40 years. We may actually go further back and recall how Helmuth von Moltke, the German military commander, advised the Ottoman Empire long before the foundation of the Turkish Republic on how to crush the Kurdish rebellions. His book, translated into Turkish under the title ‘From the Mountains of Kurdistan,’ is an important source for understanding the roots of the German policy. The Prussian general, in his book, describes how the rebellions in Kurdistan were suppressed. He writes in his diary in June 1838: “The Kurdish resistance couldn’t be ended after the elimination of Said as as we had expected.” He then goes on to describe in detail how the resistance in Garzan Mountain was crushed through a massacre.
It must always be remembered that the German State has a historically problematic Kurdish policy that needs to be confronted.
It has become clearer after the recent NATO meeting that the West, especially US and Germany, has once again shown its intent to keep the fascist regime of the Justice and Development Party – Nationalist Movement Party (AKP-MHP) alliance in power. The attitude of remaining silent before all the corruption was revealed and the attempts to criminalise people struggling against the dictatorship must be read in this context.
The German state is a part of the ‘Kurdish Problem.’ Despite its own past, it is now maintaining a policy of supporting a fascist regime. This policy must be exposed to the public.
* Editor’s note: The PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was abducted in Nairobi, Kenya, by the Turkish National Intelligence Agency MIT with the assistance of the US in 1999. He has been kept in solitary confinement in İmralı Island Prison in Turkey ever since.
