Hatip Dicle, a prominent Kurdish politician and former MP who served as the chairman of the Democracy Party for a brief period in Turkey – before he was arrested in 1994 and served a10 year imprisonment sentence until 2004 – shared his opinions about the recent massacre of a Kurdish family in Konya.
Speaking to ANHA, Dicle stated that he believed that the massacre was professionally carried out: “Considering how calmly the perpetrator acted, we can say he was actually a trained killer – like the murderer of Deniz Poyraz,” a member of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) who was killed at the party’s headquarters in Izmir on 17 June.
Observing that the attack on the Kurdish family was probably connected to a strategic objective, Dicle recalled the historical “talks” in Imralı Island Prison with the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan. The “talks” were a series of meetings that took place during 2013-14 to end the armed conflict with the PKK, dubbed by some as “the solution process.”
Dicle pointed out the significance of the messages Öcalan had addressed to the Turkish officials at the time: “During the talks, Öcalan sent the following message to the state delegation: ‘There are two paths for the Turkish state under given conditions. The first one is embracing democracy and focusing on the equality and brotherhood of the peoples; a path which will make Turkey a centre of attraction in the Middle East. The second path is the resumption of the policies that have been carried out continuously since the Union and Progress government [1913-18], based solely on violence.”
“They [i.e., government officials] have decided to take the second path,” Dicle noted. “They went on with a ‘destruction plan’ after the National Security Council resolution of 30 October 2014.”
Referring to current international theatres of conflict as a “Third World war,” Dicle stated that a Kurdish genocide has been planned at present, similar to the Armenian, Assyrian and Anatolian Greek genocides that were committed during the First World War.
“Attempts to dissolve the status of Shengal, attacks against Afrin, Serekaniye and Gire Spi in Rojava, have all proceeded within this framework,” he said, adding: “Their objective is an entire occupation of the so-called Ottoman Kurdistan, Bakurê [Northern Kurdistan], Rojava [Western Kurdistan] and Başûrê [Southern Kurdistan] by 2023, by the time of the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne.”
Predicting that new waves of attacks by “civil professionals” against Kurds have been planned, Dicle indicated that the objective has been to move the Kurdish people away from the freedom struggle.
“They think there’s only one way of putting the genocide into practice,” he observed. “That is, first eliminating all resistance, including the People’s Defence Forces (HPG) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG). They launched a huge offensive on 24 April to do this. The resistance of the guerrillas prevents them from concluding it. So they make modifications on their plans and this time, they start attacking civilians.
“If they were able to eliminate the guerrilla forces, they would come close to realising their objective, and it would be time for Başûrê [Northern Kurdistan]. Then, they would go on with the destruction of the status the Kurds gained in Rojava. This is their plan. They’re trying to execute it, step by step. But they are confronted by Kurdish people resisting; by guerrilla forces resisting. It is not so easy to succeed.”
Dicle concluded by recalling the troubled times of the 1970s in Turkey, when the so-called “Grey Wolves” of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP – now in coalition with the governing Justice and Development Party, AKP) killed thousands of people in political assassinations, bombings and massacres.
“We are the youth of the 70s,” he noted. “We had defended ourselves against the fascist groups back then. They were armed and constantly attacking us and we responded in the language they knew. This went on until the military coup of 1980. We must now draw lessons from the past. Self defence mechanisms must be developed. Otherwise, history won’t excuse us.”