Ferda Çetin
“Bilmez does not mince his words, he directly says Kurdish tribes will fight in the name of the Turkish state. However, the trustee does not say who Muslim Kurdish tribes would be fighting against, or why,” writes Ferda Çetin for Yeni Özgür Politika.
If it had not been for the Kurdish media, how would we have known all the trickery and deceit of the Turkish state?
An article on ANF reads: “In Van, trustee governors lead establishment of tribal associations.”
It continues:
“A process began in 2015 with the Brûkî tribe, and continued with the ‘Federation for Ancient Tribes’. Now, associations have been established in the name of Pinyanişî and Mukkurî tribes, whose populations in Van have been in decline. Former and current governors of Van attend the opening ceremonies. TRT Kurdî, the Kurdish propaganda channel for the Turkish state, broadcasts live from these events.”
In the opening ceremony for the Pinyanişî Tribal Association on Dec. 25, 2021, the Governor of Van and the trustee appointed to the municipality M. Emin Bilmez said: “With the arrival of Islam, all tribes in the region volunteered to convert. Muslims have often lived nomadically in this area, and acted as the fighting power for states. This is how it will continue to be in the future.”
Bilmez does not mince his words, he directly says Kurdish tribes will fight in the name of the Turkish state. However, the trustee does not say who Muslim Kurdish tribes would be fighting against, or why.
And Bilmez is terribly wrong about one thing: Those who were nomadic in the area were not autochthonous Kurdish tribes, but the people who rode in on horseback from Central Asia and later learned to till the land, sow seeds, produce and settle down.
The oldest tribal meeting was organised by Van’s former governor Murat Zorluoğlu and current governor Bilmez. Both governors are alumni of religious schools for imams. Zorluoğlu is the mayor of Trabzon metropolitan area, elected from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Bilmez acts as the trustee for the Van metropolitan municipality. Fate has brought the pair together in a sacred (!) mission to make associations out of Van’s tribes, and then form a ‘federation’ of tribes.
Let it be that way.
One cannot chose one’s mother, father, tribe or ethnicity.
Although obviously all have one, as well as a family tree.
The Van trustee has these, too.
The village he was born in, Melekan in Bingöl’s Solhan district, was a trusted village that Şêx Seîd visited during the 1925 resistance. Bilmez is the grandson of Şêx Abdullah, who was executed alongside Şêx Seîd in Amed. Şêx Abdullah was a commander in the 1925 national resistance, holding the Varto-Muş line with his forces.
Şêx Abdullah is both the son of Şêx Seîd’s uncle, and married to his daughter. This makes Şêx Seid the maternal great-grandfather of Trustee Bilmez.
Miralay Cibranlı Halit Bey, the son of Şêx Seîd’s aunt and his brother-in-law, is also related to Bilmez.
Halit Bey was an Ottoman officer who rose to the high rank of miralay (colonel) in the army. After the end of World War I, he took on the work for the freedom of the Kurdish people.
Cibranlı Halit Bey held meetings in Dersim and Varto with the purpose to bring Alevi and Sunni Kurdish tribes together. In 1919, together with Şerif Pasha, he attended the Paris Conference as part of the Kurdish delegation. He fell out of favour with the government in Ankara due to his activities, and was appointed to a passive post in the Erzurum Garrison in 1920.
As he started to work towards a Kurdish insurgency in Erzurum, he was arrested on Dec. 20, 1924. He was put on trial in Bitlis, and was executed on April 14, 1924 alongside four of his friends.
Does Trustee Bilmez feel shame when he thinks of Cibranlı Halit Bey as he pushes Kurdish tribes in Van to fight against the Kurdish Freedom Movement?
This article is getting to be a bit convoluted, I am aware. Stay with me.
Major Kasım Bey (Ataç) is another member of Bilmez’s family. Kasım Bey was one of the first alumni of the Hamidiye Tribal School, and a major in the Ottoman army. Kasım Bey is the son of Cibranlı Halit’s uncle and his brother-in-law. He is also the brother-in-law of Şêx Seîd by marriage.
Kasım Bey was a regular in meetings before the 1925 resistance began, and during the resistance he remained close to Şêx Seîd.
However, like Bilmez himself, he worked for the colonists and the enemies of the Kurdish people. It later came to light that he had been communicating with Mustafa Kemal and writing regular reports for the Ankara government since the Erzurum Congress, one of the most significant corner stones towards the founding of the Turkish republic, held between July 23 and Aug. 4, 1919.
In 1923, after the republic was declared, Kasım Bey submitted a special report to Recep Peker, the secretary general of the founding Republican People’s Party, saying there was pro-Kurdish ideology gaining traction in the region and that he himself was against it.
Major Kasım reported on the 1925 resistance from October 1924 to April 1925, when Şêx Seîd was captured. All this treason he wrote about himself in his memoir.
Siding with tyrants and oppressors, serving colonialists instead of joining the ranks of the resistance while one’s own country and people are under the invasion of outsiders and colonialists would be called treason, lowliness and bankruptcy anywhere and at any period.
Major Kasım is the most infamous among traitors.