Ferda Çetin
They should be able to say to those, who keep creating demagogies and telling the Kurdish people and institutions, to ‘put a distance between yourself and the PKK’ that -and tell that loud and clear- “You, put a distance between yourselves and Al-Qaida, Al-Nusra and ISIS gangs,” writes Ferda Çetin for Yeni Özgür Politika.
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has refused to accept the slippery statement of support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This was such a legitimate refusal.
Because that statement was not a statement of support for the HDP, but it was a statement to support for Turkey’s attempts to close the HDP as it strengthened the hand of Tayyip Erdoğan and the prosecutor he gave orders to.
Ali Shariati has found a great idiom for such sentences with “buts.
To hell with the rest of the sentence after ‘but’!
The US and EU ambassadors meet with representatives of the HDP quite often; they state that they appraise the ecologic, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and gender-equal centred program of the HDP.
The US and EU are aware of the fact that Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan is the architect of this project. They also know well that the 6 million voters of the HDP (representing around 25 million people counting their families) are the most politically conscious voters of the country. They know that these voters do not accept the criminalisation policies and the “terror list” fabricated by the US and the Europe.
But…
They never stop repeating the mantra, “Kurds are seperate, Öcalan is seperate, PKK is seperate”.
They talk about the Kurdish women who fight against Al-Qaida, Al-Nusra, ISIS and Free Syrian Army with envy, they carry their uniforms on the cover pages of their fashion magazines, they write books and make movies about them, they write long articles about them. On the other hand though, they declare and label those, who gave the political consciousness of freedom, of the organisation, of the struggle to these people, to these fighters, to these women, as “terrorists”.
Back in 2014, remember the times when ISIS attacked Sinjar and how the forces of the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) and the Iraq soldiers who were supposed to be protecting Sinjar ran away without firing a single bullet against ISIS and leaving ten thousands of people in Sinjar to the bloody hands of ISIS.
During those times, it was the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) guerillas who resisted against ISIS and pushed back the attacks at all costs including sacrificing their own lives.
Now they act as if the PKK guerillas are “terrorists” and as if those who ran away from ISIS are the real security forces of the region.
They all join forces to take away the autonomous status of the people of Sinjar, who organised their own councils and militia for self-defence in order not to experience a genocide again.
They declare Öcalan a “terrorist”, who turned Rojava into a multi-cultural democratic region like an oasis in the middle of the desert on such lands like the Middle East, where wars among ethnicities and religions and sects never end and yet they declare PKK members, who are the architects of this system as “terrorists”.
They offer monetary reward for their capture. They organise explicit and implicit plans to eject them from Iraq, from Rojava, from Syria.
Giving room to the Turkish army, Al-Qaida and ISIS gangs, they form multi-partnered alliances that seek to turn these enemies of the humanity to permanent powers in the region
On 11 September 2020, on the anniversary of 9/11, the US held meetings with Al-Qaida in Doha and they are still in contact.
Taliban and Afghan governments backed by the US make preparations to hold meetings with Turkey. The new US administration is the new sponsor of the meetings/negotiations launched by the Trump administration.
They have invented a new name for the rapist murderers who fight in Syria, in Libya, in Karabakh inside the Turkish army with the uniforms and arms of the Turkish Armed Forces.
They call these gangs, “The military forces backed by Turkey”. By doing so, they have turned the 60-80 thousand of killers who were transferred to Iraq and Syria into “legal” forces.
In international law, there are “armies linked to a state”, but there is no such thing as “military forces backed by a state/linked to a state”. This is such a fabricated definition, which is fake and illegal.
Not just PKK supporters and members; but also Kurdish people as a whole, Kurdish parties, Kurdish institutions, politicians, intellectuals, artists and writers should say “stop” to this universal banality.
“They should be able to say to those, who keep creating demagogies and telling the Kurdish people and institutions, to ‘put a distance between yourself and the PKK'” that -and tell them loud and clear- “You, first, put a distance between yourselves and the Al-Qaida, Al-Nusra, ISIS gangs.”
Because the PKK is the biggest freedom movement of the last century, which struggles for the freedom of the Kurdish people, the oppressed people, women, the poor and the ones whose rights have been stolen.
