MP Nyholt discusses Norway’s role in securing peaceful solution to Kurdish question
🔴Medya News interviews Red Party member Hege Bae Nyholt about the role Norway can play in securing peace in Kurdistan. Watch here: #HegeBaeNyholt I #Turkey I #SoutheastTurkey… pic.twitter.com/OHhDx0QkrN
— MedyaNews (@medyanews_) November 22, 2024
Hege Bae Nyholt is one of the Red Party’s eight representatives to the Norwegian parliament. In March 2024 she acted as an election observer to the Turkish municipal elections, after being invited by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party. Earlier this month, Bae Nyholt submitted a parliamentary question asking whether the Norwegian government would protest the replacement of DEM Party elected mayors with state appointed trustees.
In this video interview with Medya News, Bae Nyholt speaks about her experience as an election observer, and about the prospects of Norway helping to mediate a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.
Read the full interview transcript here:
Hello, my name is Hege Bae Nyholt, and I’m an MP, a member of Parliament from the Red Party in Norway. I live in Trondheim. It’s kind of in the middle of Norway up north. But of course, the parliament is in the capital, Oslo. And the reason why I’m here today is because I have been in Kurdistan during the election in March, and I also asked our Foreign Minister some questions about what’s happening now.
In Norway, we have 169 seats in the parliament, and my party, the Red Party, have eight of them, and international solidarity has always been a big issue and a big part of our politics. We are indeed very interested in what’s happening in Kurdistan and, of course, what’s happening in Palestine. It’s maybe the two biggest struggles right now, as well as the war in Ukraine, of course, this year I was an observer, an international observer in Kurdistan during the elections. I was invited by the DEM Party, and I was first of all in Diyarbakır (Amed) but I was an observer in Mardin (Mêrdîn). It was extremely interesting and an eye opener.
Me and my friend Aram Zaheri, we went with the locals observers from school to school to watch what was happening. Everywhere we were denied to go inside the school. We were asked, [in a] not that friendly [way] to leave. One of the policeman showed me his gun and pointed me out of the schoolyard, pretty firm, telling me that I was not allowed to be here, even though I was assured by our friends that we were allowed to be here.
I think we visited seven or eight schools in the Mardin province, in the bigger cities, and also in up in the mountains. In the bigger cities it was mainly policemen and women who were in the election schools, but in the mountains, it was heavily armed soldiers, and I found it extremely provoking to see the schoolyards where the children are supposed to learn and play and find their friends and become, you know, grown ups and human – filled with heavily armed Turkish soldiers with machine guns.
It was kind of scary, and they were also a bit aggressive in the bigger cities. It was like I said, the police. They were inside the school – I could not enter, but those who could went inside and filmed and showed me that the policemen were sitting in the classroom where the election happened, and that it was also policemen in in the hallways, in the staircases. It was a lot of policemen outside of the building in the schoolyard, and like I said, many of them were not that polite or nice.
I was also travelling with an MP, a Kurdish MP, and the way they talked to him was disrespectful. They called him a terrorist. They said that he was not allowed to be in the schools. They said that he should leave. And of course, he got provoked, and he answered back, and he showed an extremely strange power in his way of talking back to the policeman and also the local Turkish fascists trying to win this elections.
It was disturbing, and it was an eye opener to see how systematically [intimidated] people were. They were, of course, allowed to vote, but it was made difficult to vote, and in one school that we visited, they also had put some policemen in the gate checking for ID papers. That’s not allowed. When they found out that we were there, they stopped it immediately. The whole day, we were followed by two cars, not one, but two, and they were not trying to hide that they were following us.
They were driving close up to our vehicles. They were parking next to us. They were, you know, walking around with sunglasses, taking our pictures. And we were also told the rumour that the ‘french lady’ was in Kurdistan. That was me. I’m not French, but thank you! And it was this feeling that they [were trying] to make us scared, they tried to make us nervous and tried to make us stop the job that we were there to do.
I talked with a lot of locals in the different areas and we listened to a lot of stories that the rest of the world need to know. They told us how many soldiers were moved from their stations to the Kurdish areas three months before the election. They told us how suddenly, 300 people were registered at the same address, at one house… so they could vote in the Kurdish areas.
They also told us stories how there were busses of soldiers who were coming into the city to vote during the election days, it was all young men. Nobody had seen them before when they tried to talk with them, they didn’t answer when they tried to ask them: Where are you from? They didn’t answer when they tried to ask them: who’s your father? Who’s your grandfather? They didn’t answer. They were just staring down and not talking.
And of course, we know that this was part of the strategy of [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan to try to make it impossible for the Kurdish party to win this election. And a lot of the people I talked with were extremely upset and angry, and that is not difficult to understand that, because it’s, you know, it’s not fair to do it like this.
It’s not fair to to move people from one part of the city to another part of the country. This was people who’s living in Izmir and Istanbul, who suddenly had an address in Diyarbakır and Mardin, and suddenly they were there to vote.
But as we also know, it didn’t work as Erdoğan wanted it. They didn’t vote for him. They didn’t vote for Erdoğan. They were also maybe not that happy about being used in this [game], and they voted, even further, outright. It was a pretty tense day. Everybody was on their heels, and that’s not strange. They have been working for a long time. They told me also about the election campaign they have been doing in Kurdistan, how they went to the old families and talked with them and tried to find out ‘what’s important for you. How can we make the politics better for you? What are the issues?’
But they also told us about how Erdoğan’s party tried to buy people’s vote, how they gave them jobs if they wanted to vote for them, how they gave them food, money if they could show that they have voted for Erdoğan. And of course, that is terrible. A lot of people are poor. A lot of people need a job. A lot of people need to put food on the table, and they need the ability to do that. And it’s pressure to say you can have the money, you can have this job, as long as you support another politics than the one which you actually do, and the one who you need.
But as we know, it did not work. Erdoğan did not win Kurdistan, but the Kurdish people did. And it was so revealing. It was so nice. It was a big victory when we did see how the Kurdish people won this election, not only in in the Kurdish areas, but also in Istanbul and other big cities. Erdoğan was losing, and the Kurdish parties and the parties they were working together with did win this election.
I talked with some local politicians, and they said to me, you know that when we are running for government or running for different [roles] in our society, we are kind of also running for jail. And I said, What do you mean? And then they told me that Turkey have this habit of arresting local politicians in Kurdistan and jailing them, and I tried to ask for what? And they say, you know, whatever, whatever, the main thing is to keep us away and make it difficult for us to build our society, to build our independence.
And unfortunately, this has happened also now… we do know that some mayors in Kurdish cities, but also part of Istanbul, have been arrested, and they’ve been accused of being part of what Turkey says is a ‘terrorist organisation’, and they are taken away from their families, from their jobs, from the very, very important work they are doing. And they have been elected to do this work.
I asked our Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, what he thinks about this, what the Norwegian reaction is when Turkey is arresting elected people and putting in their own loyal people in the same position? I think it’s important to address this in Norway as well, we are in NATO together with Turkey. We are, you know, sometimes calling myself a peace loving nation, a freedom loving nation, and I think it’s important to address this question to the government and, of course, to the Foreign Minister.
And he answered me last week that for the government – and for him as well – it’s always important to follow international law. It’s always important to keep elections safe. It’s always important to be part of the international system who supposedly should make life easier for all people, also the Kurdish people. And he said, if there is proof that something wrong has happened, then Norway has to react.
The big problem is that during the election, there were no official observers in the Kurdish area. That’s the reason why you have all the international observers there, the official ones. They are in Ankara. They are in Istanbul. They are they are not in Mardin, and they’re not in the mountain villages. They are not there, watching, looking, seeing with their own eyes what’s happening.
We made a report, a big report. We were 129 international observers, and we made a report about what was happening, and we sent it to all politicians in the EU. I hope – but I don’t think – that they will read it. And I’m unfortunately not sure that the Norwegian government will do anything to find out [about] what’s happened with our Kurdish elected friends. But of course, we will keep the pressure on right now.
In these days, the Norwegian government has also opened [up] for selling weapon to Turkey again. In our law, we [should] not sell weapons to countries who are in war, or are oppressing parts of the people in the country. And this is new that we are going to sell weapon again to Turkey, and of course, the Red Party is against it, and they will work against it.
Norway has before been a part of the different talks between the Kurdish people and the Turkish government. We played a role in these negotiations before, and I think it’s important to know the history and know that Norway had this part, this role, earlier on, and we can have it again. But then we also have to listen to the people who tell the story about how Kurdish leaders are arrested, who tell the story about how civil people are arrested, how women in jail are beaten, raped, not having a fair trial, how they are moving the Kurdish political prisoners to other parts of the country, so it’s impossible for the family to visit them. If we are going to play a role, we also need to listen to the Kurdish stories, and I hope we will.
Right now, there is a campaign for Mr [Abdullah] Öcalan [the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK]. To free him, to find out how he is. He’s been isolated for a long, long, long time. I remember in the ’90s, when he was seeking asylum. I remember how we [held] our breath hoping that somebody would help him, and nobody did, and the way they have treated Mr Öcalan is a shame. Nobody deserves to be isolated in that way. Its torture.
Its torture to isolate a person for days, weeks, months, years, like they’ve done with Abdullah Öcalan. He has rights, and he was the elected leader of the Kurdish people, and he’s an extremely important symbol. The claim of freeing him is also the claim of freeing all political prisoners. It’s the claim of justice for all the people who’s fighting for their rights. And the Red Party supports that claim, we think it’s important that people who [are] fighting for their freedom, for their justice, for their rights, should be able to do so without being arrested, put in jail for maybe years without a trial.
Turkey should be addressed for this, we have to put a big pressure on them to free the political prisoners, but also to free the reports about the torture in Turkish jail. We know that this report has been made. We also know that they don’t want us to read it. And of course, then we have to read it. If you don’t have anything to hide, then it should not be a problem to free this report. So I strongly believe that it is a reason why the Turkish government doesn’t want this report to get freed.
The Kurdish struggle is long and hard and tough. Every time I meet Kurdish activists, I get impressed by their spirit, their willingness to fight, their hopes for freedom.
But also, when I was in Kurdistan, I learned that the language is fading – when you’re not allowed to speak it in schools. When you’re not allowed to use it, you can only use it at home. It’s fading when your culture is not allowed, it’s difficult to keep it and we also know that the reason why it’s not allowed is because culture, language, the stories of the past, [are] a way to keep alive the dream about being a people with freedom.
We have the same in Norway. We have Sápmi, where our Sámi people are living, and for many years, the Norwegian government did not allow them to speak their language, did not allow them to sing their songs did not allow them to wear their… traditional customs, and because of that, a lot of people don’t know how to talk the language, don’t know the history, don’t know their identity. Now its the same story, and it’s an extremely tough story, and the Norwegian government, as well as the Turkish government, are, I [can’t] actually find the [right] word, but they’re occupying the Kurdish and the Sápmi country and colonising it, and stealing the land, stealing the minerals, stealing people’s dreams and hope.
The Red Party will always fight for freedom. We will always fight for justice, and we will also be fighting for other people’s freedom and justice as part of international solidarity, which [is] extremely important, and standing strong in our party. All my hopes and all my love goes to the Kurdish people.
I do hope that someday, this fight, this struggle, will give you the freedom and the justice that you deserve, which is yours. And of course, all the political prisoners have to be free. Mr Öcalan has to be free. But also all the other Kurdish prisoners need their freedom and their justice.
I hope that Norway could play a progressive role in this. But if that is supposed to happen, then the government also needs to be critical against the Turkish way of treating the Kurdish question. Thank you.
