Demir Çelik
“On 26 October, a new ‘war motion,’ which extends Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s powers for cross-border operations in Iraq and Syria for two more years, passed the Turkish parliament as a consequence of the votes of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) alliance, alongside the votes of the İyi Party,” Demir Çelik writes for Yeni Özgür Politika.
Often complaining about the territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria does not mean that they will not launch a new military intervention. On the contrary, it has shown us that the hysteria of the Turkish state as ‘one nation, one state, one religion, one flag’ continues, and it has no agenda other than war policies.
The main purpose of the war motion against Syria and Iraq is to prevent the recognition of the status of the Kurds and to deprive the Syrian Kurds of their most legitimate rights.
The main reason why they say, “We don’t have a problem with our Kurdish brothers, except for the YPG (People’s Protection Units), YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) and the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party),” is to show their target as limited as possible and to keep their war front as wide as possible.
For them, there is no difference between the YPG, YPJ, Kurdistan Workers’ Party or any other Kurdish political movement. Whoever defends the rights of the Kurds is a primary enemy, which must be eliminated. The Kurds top the list of the definition of the “strategic enemy” of the Turkish nation-state.
Since the PKK’s listing as a ‘terrorist organisation’ internationally creates a great opportunity for the Turkish state, occasionally voicing its hostility towards the PKK is used as a cover for an anti-Kurd strategy.
In this way, the government not only succeeds in keeping society, social dynamics and political parties under its influence, but it also earns new foreign allies.
The politicians do not worry about the cultural, linguistic rights and the identity of the Kurdish people, which constitute one quarter of the Turkish population as they don’t care about the ban on the Kurdish language.
Just like all other social beings, the Kurds wants to speak freely in their own language. It is only natural that the Kurds demand recognition of their language, their culture and their identity.
When they express their demands politically, they are considered as ‘terrorists.’
When they express their demands using artistic or any other intellectual means, they are, again, considered as ‘terrorists.’
Under such circumstances, when thousands of politicians, artists, journalists and intellectuals who have never been a part of even a very simple act of violence have been targeted, taken hostage in prisons unlawfully, been considered as ‘terrorists,’ the politicians who play the ‘three monkeys,’ all of a sudden turn into roaring lions and begin to throw their weight around when it comes to a war against the Kurds.
The rights and the reality of a people, who live in exile in many different countries, coping with the governments of different states to earn their rights are known by the world. Rather than acknowledging this reality, Kurdish people continue to be terrorised.
If the art of politics is an art of problem solving, what politicians are supposed to do is to deal with solving political, social, cultural, economic and identity-related problems.
If a politician is not able to propose any solution to a given problem, and hands over their vital duty to the military or to the bureaucracy that only understands dying or killing when somebody talks about a solution, it means that the politician denies their own function.
The ‘Kurdish Question,’ which was handed over to the military to be ‘resolved,’ could still be somehow tolerable if what happened was only that some parties were banned or some governments had to be toppled. However, the political, social, cultural and economic trauma caused by the ‘Kurdish Question’ is not something that is tolerable.
The ‘Kurdish Question’ is not an ordinary social issue that can be eliminated with war and military operations: it is a regional and global problem with political and cultural aspects.
Kurdistan’s geography was colonised by four nation states, so it is a part of the Middle East problem.
The ‘Kurdish Question’ became an international issue after the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement (also known as the Asia Minor Agreement) in which the imperialists divided Kurdistan into four parts.
Therefore, it is an intricate and complex issue that cannot be solved with a simple military operation or a war motion. The insistence on war blindly continues to darken our future.
War is destruction
War is a political, cultural and social slaughter. It means slaughter for women and nature. War is poverty, hunger and misery for us.
Insistence on this war, by which they ruined the lives of the Kurds whom they call “sisters and brothers,” burned down the 4,000 villages of the Kurds, killed over 17,000 Kurds with ‘unsolved murders’ and expended two billion dollars on bombing the mountains of Kurdistan for 50 years represents death. It has nothing to do with humanitarian values.
What has been left behind from this blind war is hatred and resentment.
In such a process, the dictator is about to lose: standing in line as he plays the drums of war means a kiss of life for him as opposed to what it means to us, which is death, blood and tears.
