Where is all this going? The week in Silivri, the weekend in Gezi Park

I must be careful of words—the old cliches don’t work anymore. Freedom, democracy, liberty, tolerance—the wrong people have used them for the wrong things for so many years. Sometimes with good intentions, sometimes with bad. My ears hurt to hear them.

So let me paint a picture.

Gezi Park, Taksim Square—The heart of Istanbul. To the left of the stairs that lead to the park, the Kurds dance the Halay in an everwidening circle. The Kurdish flag flies and the radio blasts guerilla songs. A crowd moves past them—‘Turkey for the Turks’ Kemalists most likely with red star and crescent banners emblazened with Atatürk’s face. They chant ‘We are soldiers of Mustafa Kemal!’ Down the path a little bit, they will come across a group of gay men marching in the other direction chanting, ‘We are NOBODY’S soldiers.’ They are hamming it up big time. Between the two converging groups you find a tent for the Turkish Socialist Party—old school hardliners, and another tent of middle-aged Armenian churchladies distributing cookies. Down in the main square, some Black Sea people dance the wild horon.

A week ago--you would never have seen an Ataturk flag and a BDP banner together...
 

 

A few weeks ago, things would have been very different. The Kurds and Kemalists would have been fighting in the streets; the gay men harassed or jeered, maybe by the Black Sea boys, the Armenians would have been trying to keep a low profile and everyone would have beeb watching what they said—as afraid of each other, even, as they are of the government. But in Gezi Park this weekend they are all here, speaking out, without fear or censure. They don’t necessarily like each other—make no mistake about that--but they tolerate each other, they leave each other alone.

The media calls it a carnival or a festival or a party. But it’s much more organized than that—a funhouse reflection of a state. And together our protesters have created a miniature city within a city that reflects the dream of Martin Luther King—however ephemeral, however tenuous, however fast the army of police and marauders approach, people feel ‘free at last’.

Together, these disparate groups have built a ‘Museum of the Revolution’ pasting pictures of the police attacks and subsequent resistance in the abandoned trailer of the construction crew’s foreman. They have transformed the overturned and looted cars of the civil police into day-glo platforms of free speech—everyone grabs a spray can and writes what they think. And, in a first for Turkey, they write it with no fear or hesitation.

They’ve created a ‘Market of the Uprising’ where they distribute drinks for free. They set up a ‘children’s studio’ where kids get messy with tempera paints and create whatever they hell picture they want on huge sheets of white paper, emerging from their efforts covered in color.

They have trash teams that do clean up of the grounds and somehow have managed to publish two newspapers ‘Tomorrow’ and ‘The Future’ which they distribute among the hundreds of thousands of people who come to visit every day. They’ve set up a television station (online of course), a radio station, several different websites in a multiplicity of languages. They’ve created a ‘Parliament’ where different people come and debate each other and a moderator turns off their microphone whenever they get aggressive or insulting.

Now let me give you a bit of what Erdoğan’s AKP has in mind for these people—in case you couldn’t guess from the continuing brutal police attacks and arrests in Antakya, Ankara, Eskişehir and Izmir. Or from the tortures of detainees here in Istanbul (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/sex-as-a-police-punishment-.aspx?pageID=500&eid=258#.UbHIMd3zpWI.facebook)

You see,  I could not make it down to Gezi Park until Friday because the rest of the week my family was kept busy by the KCK show trial of my father-in-law and hundreds of others. The trial took place in Silivri and has been going on for almost two years. For some reason, my more enlightened work colleagues at the protests were under the impression that everyone had been released. This was a devastating blow to our morale. How could people aware enough to come to Gezi NOT KNOW??

For the past year and half, the trial has been held in Silivri prison’s old courtroom. The first time I was there, I counted about 60 chairs on the right of the court room for defense attorneys, another 60 on the left of the courtroom for government officials and parlementarians, in the middle over 200 chairs for defendants, and in the back a small section for visitors. Well we’re in the new and improved courtroom now. Recently completed, AKP authorities have added another section for defendants—I think it is up to 250 chairs now. There are now 180 chairs on the right for defense lawyers and 180 more on the left. The section for the journalist and parliamentarians is now in the far back corner where it is difficult to see or hear and numbers maybe 45 chairs—3 in a row and 15 deep. Only the first two rows could see anything.

What is the symobilism here? What needs is the government anticipating? Even larger mass trials with hundreds of defense attorneys and a pliant press that sits obediently and silently in the back?

The crowds here--these are the people that the Prime Minister is expanding the size of his courtrooms for.

These chairs are meant for groups like our young protesters—the children painting in the ‘art’ tent. The old lady distrubiting lemonade. The bagpipe band I saw perform on the square.

And when the protesters are brought here, what sort of justice awaits them? Well, let me give you a sample. Most things you’ll be forced to buy from the prison. Socks for instance. Your family won’t be able to bring much to you at all. And take a book because you’re going to be there a while. We waited a year while the court read the indictment aloud—it was over 2000 pages (you need that many for mass trials of over 200 people at a time) and while we waited for them to finish reading, our relatives and friends languished in prison, many nearly dying in a hunger strike last fall. The reward for the hunger strike? More of the police attacks the protesters are eating on the square and a year and a half of no visitations, five months of no outside contact, ten days in isolation. But if you have been reading this blog, you know all this.

So what happens to the protesters once the indictment is read?

These days, at our trial, the suspects are coming up one by one before the court and giving the statements of defense. They are allowed to do this in Kurdish now. There are three translators in the courtroom, though they have a hard job at times. After decades of prohibiting the language, no one is confident that they speak it well enough for a courtroom. And in many cases they don’t. Still, here is what some of the defendants said. I am summarizing from notes—this is not a word for word dictation and it’s been twice translated. But please government reporters and conspiracy nuts, rest assured, I am not hiding any sudden outbursts of ‘Hey everybody, I’m a terrorist! And I’m gonna get you!

These girls--some of the drunks and looters (chapulcu) Erdoğan spoke about. Will they be arrested when the show trials begin?

’

A man named Kemal Aydin was first—he once was the local chairman of the BDP offices in Esenler. After paying respects to the court and judge, he reminded them that he was a member of a legal political party, whose bylaws and platform had been submitted to the Constitutional Court and approved.

‘You say working for this party is a crime. Going to rallies, making phone calls—crimes. We submitted all the paperwork to your courts. Everything I’ve done has been legal and open. Your courts recognized our legitmacy—then how now are we criminals?’

Our protesters might make a similar argument—that civil disobedience is a legally recognized right protected by most constitutions in the world.

 ‘I am an activist,’ Mr. Aydin went on. ‘And I feel a great responsibility to my conscience. In our thirty years of activism, five of my relatives have lost their lives. One was my brother, one was my daughter, and three were my nieces and nephews. If you want to open a case against us, then you should start by opening their graves.’

This little looter girl and her drunk dad will be rounded up maybe, and the little drunk soccer fan above them, too.

The judge started to ask about contents of certain secret files whose contents have not been read aloud to the court—do we have no idea what they said. Have no doubt that enthusiastic police are preparing similar secret files for the protesters.

‘Our secret witness Haydar says you were present at rallies where terrorist slogans were chanted,’ says the judge.

‘Excuse me,’ Mr. Aydin answers. ‘But who is this secret witness, Haydar? How can I respond to that if I don’t know who he is? How do I know that your secret witness was not coerced into confession by torture or even real?’

Here you are—terrorist slogans at rallies. This is what the Prime Minister says about the Gezi Park protests now. Terrorist and secret agents agitating the masses. How many secret witnesses might this government find, how many ‘Haydars’ to accuse those braveyoung people in Taksim and Ankara and Beşiktaş and Izmir. They are clearly getting the stage ready—hundreds have been arrested already—five today were arrested in Adana (June 8th).

Perhaps police will use secret witnesses or phone recorders to prosecute this terrorist member of a marginal group

Osman Akdağ is another defendant who tried to explain to the court where he was coming from.

‘I have never spent more than one month together with my children. I spent 28 years in exile and when I came back, I was arrested within 3 months for ‘terrorist’ activities. How could I manage such a range of ‘activities’ in just three months!? I spent many years in prison in this country. So did my children. Many of my friends in prison suffered severe torture. One man lost his eyes. Two set themselves on fire to protest their treatment—one of these guys had been so badly maimed by police torture that he was paralyzed and we had to carry him to the toilet. And my story is not unique, hundreds upon hundreds of people experienced the same sorts of things. The only thing that prison gave me was time to learn to read and write—but the funny thing is one of your pieces of ‘evidence’ is a notebook that supposedly belongs to me. Well that notebook is 18 years old and was written long before I’d learned to write it. How is that possible? And how could I have written it in Turkish when I still can’t write that language? I write only in Kurdish!’

Police brutality, eyes put out, fabricated evidence—the net has widened now. Everyone in Turkey can now experience these things. How many eyes have been put out by plastic bullets in Beşiktaş and Ankara? Two young men have lost their lives to beatings—I heard rumors of a third this morning-- most likely by secret police—Abdullah Comert died in Hatay, the other boy in Eskişehir.

Perhaps these are the foreign spies that the AKP say instigate the crowd.

Defendant Ahmet Demirsoy speaks after the lunch break. ‘I am a conscientious objector,’ he tells the court. ‘I do not believe in violence of any sort.’

I think of the gay men with the sign, ‘We are no one’s soldiers.’

‘I am against all forms of militarism,’ he continues. ‘I saw villages burned, children shot and killed. I have worked to have everyone’s rights recognized. I emphasize the word everyone. Any militarized country says to its army, ‘You will kill take this gun and kill or you will die.’ They turn us into murderers or martyrs. I refused. I cannot be a terrorist, and I am no robotic follower. You say you have telephone recordings that show I was part of a ‘terrorist group’. Let me discuss one of your recordings. I was speaking to a French friend who had trouble pronouncing certain letters. He said, in French, ‘Lets go to Akhtamar’ but it came out like a guttural ‘Amara’ (The Kurdish name for the village Abdullah Ocalan was born). That is admissable evidence for you. The misunderpronounced name of a city spoken in a language your police could not understand.’

 

I think of all the foreigners I saw in Gezi Park yesterday—the marchers with signs in French, German, English and Dutch. How will police use this agains them? The police shout out for people not to listen to ‘provocateurs’ right before they gas them. The Prime Minister warns of foreign agents. What is it they have planned? They can twist anything you say into evidence. One of the tweets used to arrest the Twitter writers was ‘The police are here. Don’t come!’ This is proof of terror and incitement to violence?

The last person to speak is Mehmet Kıymaz. He repeats the argument that they have all been brought in for working for a party recognized as legal by the government. ‘I lived and worked in Küçükçekmece for  22 years. I retired in 2008 and became the BDP party’s accountant there. As the accountant, I was very busy and had to intend every single meeting and rally we had. It was my job! And now you say I am guilty for ‘my presence at certain meetings?’ I am guilty for performing my legal duties as accountant for a legal political party? Some of our people are very poor, as you know. I gave them bus money to attend our rallies—men, women, children. They couldn’t have gone otherwide. Bus money! And because of that you accuse me of funding terrorist organizations?’

The people in Ankara, from what I understand, were arrested by a similar leap of logic. By their protest in the street, they were fomenting a coup. Every action taken by a protester is interpreted as incitement to violence, a terrorist acts, plotting and meddling.

On Friday, June 7th, we got the news. 14 people in the KCK Silivri trial were released leaving 90 more behind in prison. And the one hundred or so who have been released are still being tried—let me emphasize that. Life sentences are being planned for many of them. And this is just at Silvri. KCK trials are being run all over the country—two more are in Istanbul alone. And people think they are all released. We’re forgotten—even by those who shouldn’t forget. After a few years they will forget about our protesters, too. They will sit in jail, yesterday’s news.

The government has already done away with the army in the Ergenekon case, for better and worse, and the Kemalist with the Balyoz case. Now the Kurds of the BDP are being finished off. One by one the opposition is being picked off. I suppose they have the Gezi Park protesters in their sights now. A big spacious courtroom is waiting, and 30 years of precedence.

Some more of the vandals and provocateurs who need to be rounded up for a mass trial

As you resist, remember what waits for you if you lose, and if you win, remember all of those who went before you. I admire what you’ve done. The whole world does. Carry forth in peace and fairness, and remember that democracy is for us all.

 

Newroz Piroz be--And Happy St. Patrick's

It’s been a long time since I posted anything—I haven’t felt much like writing lately. Maybe it’s the winter. If that’s the case, then yesterday’s Newroz celebrations in Istanbul should have broken the wicked season’s spell—I’ve jumped the proverbial Newrozian fire.

For those overseas: Newroz is the traditional Kurdish holiday to welcome spring and has become quite the political flashpoint in recent years. Then again, in Turkey, what doesn’t? The big hullabaloo this year is an argument over the spelling—Yes, spelling. According to crazed nationalists—patriorts--spell it Nevruz and it shows you don’t hate Turkey’s martyrs, spell it Newroz (with the evil Kurdish W!) and it showsy you are a crazed terrorist.

The devil evilly typing the evil W into every noble Nevruz

Last year, Newroz celebrations were forbidden by the government and police blocked access to transportation as far away as the ferries in Kadıköy. The usual chaos ensued—with one man losing his life to police tear gas cannister. The official Newroz celebrations are set for March 21st in Diyarbakır—and it’s going to be a big day this year because that is the day the Kurdish BDP party announces their vision for a peace plan after long negotiations between them, the government, and Abdullah Öcalan. Okay, it’s a long story—but the most ridiculously hopeful think that it could all mark the beginning of the end—the end of random arrests and of all official oppression as well as the end of the guerilla war that has gone on for 30 years. I don’t enough about politics to speak (comfortably) much about it, but let’s just say, this year, Newroz carries a great deal of weight.

Diyarbakır—unofficial capital of unofficial Kurdistan--is being given the exclusive for the official celebration, so other cities like Istanbul chose to celebrate on the weekend—for us, that meant March 17th.

We caught the ferry from Kadıköy, across the Marmara and Golden Horn to Eminönü. Then from there, hopped the commuter rail from Sirkeci station—a train I’ve only ridden one other time in my five years in Istanbul. It runs along the ruins of old Byzantine walls through neighborhoods of rickety but grand Ottoman and Greek houses that are heart breakingly picturesque, but have seen better days. We got out at Yedikule—the stop for the fortress of torture where the Sultan’s enemies used to rot before being killed and tossed into the sea. From the moment we exited the train, there were huge crowds, a river of people flowing past the fortress, through all the side streets to the Kazlıçesme fair grounds. Tens of thousands of people.

I’ve gotten kind of accustomed to this—but the walk to the fairgrounds is historically stunning. Through the old Greek and Armenian neighborhoods, past the ruins of the Imperial Byzantine gate, along the thousand year old city walls and then down to the fairgrounds. It was nearly a half-mile walk and was packed with people the whole way. Then the fair ground itself was bursting with bodies. The fences set were swelling outward with people and every inch of space was crammed with human beings—they even stretched vertically with lots of people climbing the ruins of an old mosque. Every free space was full. During election year, the AK party filled this space and claimed it held over 200,000 people. I suspect their calculations (made according to how many human bodies could fit into a square meter of land), but I wouldn’t be surprised of that’s how many were there yesterday. Or more—they spilled out into all the side streets after all.

Picture borrowed from Yuksekovahaber.com--gives you an idea of the crowds. Go to the website for more.

All the woman were gussied up in bright colored dresses with silver bangles and head dresses of the Kurdish colors green, red, and gold. There were purple fistans and orange ones and men in the olive green of the mountains. Every member of the Turkish left (an alphabet soup of political parties. Really, it’s best just to nod and smile and sing something pretty in your head when they start naming them all). You had your usual stupid young men climbing the towers that held the speakers and hanging from the rafters with Kurdish flags. Tons of people were dancing the halay, music was blasting between the political speeches and towers of cotton candy were floating over everyone’s heads as vendors wove in and out of the horde. People sold hot köfte sandwiches from carts and the smell of roasting meat filled the air. Some one lit a fire and, feeding it with plastic bags, led a group of boys in the Newroz tradition of fire jumping.

But what everyone was really waiting for were the political speeches—this is the year things are changing. And it was in one of these speeches that something interesting happened, something that made me want to pick up my pen. I was standing in the mud, shivering in the cold, when the speaker who was trying to introduce the Kurdish Party’s chairman, Selahattin Demirtaş, said the word ‘Martin Luther King’ into the microphone. He then quoted the famous ‘I have a dream’ segment of King’s eponymous speech.  He ended with King’s geographic call to the four corners of the American continent:

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

Then he began the speech again, substituting this time the cities and towns of Turkey for those of America. Let freedom ring from the plains of Anatolia, let freedom ring from great river valley of Mesopotamia. Let freedom ring from the lake of Van. And I got chills, the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. This could very well be history in the making, and the connection to another history that greatly affected my life and my home was electrifying.

I thought of my trip home, this winter, to Washington DC. I stood at the top of the steps to the Lincoln Memorial. It was an extraordinary day, strangely warm and sunny. At the spot where King stood during his famous speech at the March on Washington is a marble block carved with his name and the date, August 28, 1963, ‘the hallowed spot to remind us of the fierce urgency of now.’ I had just stood on that marble block and imagined myself addressing a crowd of tens of thousands on that historical day (I remember the crowds from the video—millions it seemed stretching from horizon to horizon with their banners and their children on their shoulders—just like now in Istanbul) and as I rested on the top step I saw a young black man coming out of the shadow of Lincoln’s statue. He was dapper in a fedora and long coat and carried g a Bible—obviously the preacher of a Baptist bus from Louisiana I’d seen parked down the road. He was very careful in placing his feet on either side of the block, as if measuring the exact place King’s own feet would have touched and then he square his shoulders and looked out over the Washington Mall. I heard him say to himself, ‘So this is where it happened! This is what it feels like!’ He couldn’t stop grinning. And I knew why. I had imagined the same thing myself not five minutes before. And now on this cold Newroz in Istanbul, fifty years later, another group of people who marched to this place compare themselves to the people who marched on Washington that day. From other cities, we heard of attacks by nationalist groups, people disappeared even, and yet here they were, these two hundred thousand with their flags and their optimism and their music facing decades of systematic repression, here, at the ‘thresshold of freedom’ at long last.

We are all skeptical of course. The people on the other side of the negotiating table are still making random arrests, my father in law is still in prison along with all his friends. But we are hopeful.

After the rally, we went to the apartment of a Conag villager in Kadıköy, where the neighborhood of Yeldeğirmeni (Windmill) is a defacto Little Conag. A bunch of ladies were at the house and as the only male in sight every morsel of food available somehow found its way to my plate—a feast of Turkey and lavash and celery root and afterwards, rice pudding. And they talked—in Turkish—about the loss of their mother tongue. One woman told me how, when she was a girl, she had understood nothing of school. She failed the 2^nd grade and only later learned enough Turkish to pass.

‘They’d beat our hands with sticks for speaking Kurdish,’ she told me. ‘And it wasn’t just at school either. We were supposed to spy on our friends. And on our families, too. If anyone spoke Kurdish we were to report to the teacher.’

Dede, our trusty granddad, added his two cents, or kuruş. ‘I remember the teacher would line us up and look at our tongues. He said he could see the Kurdish words on our tongues. We believed him because they say ‘mother tongue’ you know and so of course you could see it on our tongues!’

‘We have no strength as a people,’ the first woman said sadly. And then our host reminded her of where she’d just come from, the rally of hundreds of thousands of people, and said ‘We’ve found our strength.’

A Letter to a Turk--by Adil Kurt

During the hunger strike, we read a lot of letters from the strikers. This particular document by Hakkari representative Adil Kurt has stuck with me. It changed my views on the subject of Kurdish-Turkish relations, or more precisely, refined them. It was printed, after our translation and edits for the English, on the BDP's blogsite over at Word Press.  I am reprinting it here.

 (Türkçe aşağıda)

We are sharing the letter of our hunger strike activist deputy Adil Kurt.

I am writing this letter on the 61st day of the indefinite hunger strike started by Kurdish political prisoners.

I don’t know on which day you will be reading this. To make things easier for you, I will state the day and hour that I write this letter. November 11, 2012, around 21.00. Diyarbakır…

What I feel now is not the feeling of a member of parliament.

I will try to express my sentiments as a Kurd who has lived in the famous Kato region of Hakkâri and used to think of himself as the luckiest person on earth when he got a hold of a new pair of rubber shoes.

Yes, I, who used to be content with a pair of rubber shoes, who found no comfort (in life) except in listening to the (Kurdish) national anthem of Herne Pêş, the song which symbolizes the Kurds’ struggles in the Kurdish Federal Region of Iraq, and to the epic of Rustemê Zal in the late hours of the night on Radio Erivan, now, by God's providence, have to continue my people’s struggle for freedom by going on hunger strike.

I do not intend to repeat all those experiences that most of you already know and that we are so tired of telling.

Based on my 1.5-year period of membership in parliament, I now think that there are no words left to say to resolve the Kurdish question through democratic and peaceful means. Someone has always attempted to test our sincerity. We have always been treated as the kids of 'The Kurd, The Doorman.” Most of the time they meant to say ‘it would have been better if you were not here’ . True, we are frustrated by such discourse; but this is not the problem; that we lost our hopes is the problem.

Our experiences are reminiscent of the Algerians’. You know, the elderly French needed Algerian nursemaids. The only reason for their coexistence was the Algerian’s ‘right’ to be the caretaker of the Frenchman. However, the same Frenchman who cannot survive without the Algerian’s existence cannot even stand seeing the Algerian in his neighborhood. Not long ago,
only 3-5 years ago, the streets of Paris turned into a huge fireball. Those who set the fire were Moroccan, Algerian and Arab kids but the fuel for that fire was nothing but the incurable arrogance of the French.

This case also describes our ‘brotherhood’ with you. The first scene that met my eyes when I first encountered the Turkish metropolises reminded me of this. I was like the child of the Kurdish porter who feels the need to be the servant in that high-rise, garish life style. Each apartment building had a doorman and I saw it was Kurds in those apartments serving as these doormen.

Please remember the Kurd that rang your bell to visit you on a holiday, the one you wanted to leave as soon as possible, also the Kurd with whom you got angry because he took your garbage five minutes late.

When you label this ‘unity’ as brotherhood, our objection intensifies. This is not the brand of brotherhood we want. As a Kurd I have never felt like a conqueror of İstanbul (Turks are taught as children that they are the sons and daughters of the conquerors of Constantinople). I saw the feeling of conquest as dangerous because we have already learned through experience how cruel it was to be conquered.

Not to say that Kurds who came to İstanbul with a sense of conquest did not exist. With every step they took, they had to become more ‘white’. Looking back, they no longer liked what they had left behind.

Most of those, by denigrating the ones who stayed behind and wanted to remain ‘black’, hoped to save themselves from becoming doormen. In this way, they took on the role of the ‘bad black cat’ between us. There are also non-Turkish Turkish nationalists. They are the ones who sabotage our brotherhood.

‘Understandably’, you may think of the following question: ‘Not all Kurds think like you. Look, there are Kurds from parties other than the BDP, and they don’t make so much noise.’ This is also true. We don’t claim that all Kurds are like us. But you should also know this. You have to accept the fact that the Kurdish elite have always acted in collusion with the government. Now, let me address a dimension of the above that needs to be clarified. Let me clarify the obstacles faced by the Kurds that have become entrenched in-the-system. I am thinking by putting myself in your shoes. If I also had a Turkish phenomenon split into two camps, I would prefer the one that looks like me. This again does not make sense to me. But here I’m talking about another reality. Those you consider in the category of unproblematic Kurds, in fact, constitute the essence of the problem.

How? Let me explain. All over the world, influential classes are ‘married’ to those in power by ‘obligation’. Obligatory marriage of our Kurdish elite to power holders is a bit more complicated. They have no confidence. They use every kind of clownery to look well-behaved. It’s enough for them that they simply continue to exist and retain their influence. This kind of Kurd with his influence does not desire to solve the question.

Let me also mention the non-Turkish Turkish nationalists. How can a human being become such? For example, Ziya Gökalp… Abdullah Cevdet … and today many other names that you can easily add to the list. I’d like to sit with a Turk and talk about this paradox. I would not desire someone else to form a great-syntheses for myself. So much that ‘Turkishness’ as an identity has become something that is repulsive. What would you think, if your child recited the nationalist oath every morning at school by saying “My existence shall be dedicated to the Kurdish existence” which actually means your child should dedicate his existence to my child’s existence every day? Please, think of me doing this very thing. (Note: One line of the Turkish national oath that is recited every week by school children is 'I dedicate my existence to the Turkish existence)

Let’s finish here the issue of empathy.

On 12 September 2012 Kurdish politicians in prison initiated an indefinite hunger strike.I hope it will have ended by the time you read this letter. Even if the strike ends we will be feeling the weight of its purpose.

This strike is based on two principle demands.

First, an end is demanded to the isolation at Imralı that has lasted for a year and 3 months and 15 days (as of November 11th) and which is in violation of the state’s own laws. Second, the right to a legal defence in the mother tongue in the courts.

The argument put forth by the politics dominating Turkey, is that today they want education in their mother tongue, but tomorrow they will want something else. “Their biggest wish is for an Independent United Kurdistan, anyway” This sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? I hear you saying “It is true, isn’t it?”

Look, lets be frank. I want to share a truth with you. If what the Kurdophobic politicians said were true and Kurdish politicians did the bidding of international forces then be assured that the PKK would not be on the terrorist lists of America, Europe or any other country in the world. The PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan would not now be in an isolation cell in Imralı Prison. If today Ocalan is in Imrali, and if the PKK is on the global terrorist lists there is only one reason for that. It is because they did NOT do the bidding of those powers.

We, Kurds have said what we wanted many times. Let me repeat because talk is easy but the written word is permanent.

We want education in our mother tongue. From primary school to the university. We want to recieve public services in our mother tongue. We want to manage ourselves. Rather than be managed by officials appointed by the state, let us choose our own.

We want a constitutional guarantee of our identity and status.

To meet all these demands means a thousand year old unity continues under a new social contract. It also means to draw in the Kurds who are living outside the borders of Turkey. Can't you understand that does not mean that the dismemberment of Turkey? On the contrary it means growth. So where is the problem? The reason I write this letter is to make you think about this. You will find an answer to this question when you stop seeing me as the Kurd, the doorman to whom you toss a holiday tip without even inviting into your home.

Finally, I would like to make this clear. Yes, we have a thousand year old unity. But Kurds have another history older than that. Just like you do. How come a thousand years later you exist but we don’t? Please put yourself in our place, and give an answer to this question.

As I finish this up the calender has advanced to November 12th. It has already passed midnight. In my struggle against the “lamb-kebab' polemic, right will win. It will not lose, because I know that the thing we fight for is human life. No softer pillow than conscience was invented. When I put my head on the pillow, I hope to wake up to a day when brotherhood is victorius.

Adil Kurt / Member of Parliament from Hakkari

Türkçesi

Kürt siyasi tutukluların süresiz dönüşümsüz açlık grevlerinin 61. gününde yazıyorum. Sizler kaçıncı gününde okuyor olacaksınız bilmiyorum. İşinizi kolaylaştırmak için yazdığım gün ve saati yazıyorum. 11 Kasım 2012, saat 21.00 suları. Diyarbakır...
Şu anda hissettiklerim, milletvekili olarak taşıdığım hisler değildir. Hakkari’nin meşhur Kato bölgesinde yaşamış, çocukluğunda yeni cizlavit ayakkabıları olduğu zamanlar kendisini dünyanın en mutlu insanı zanneden bir Kürt olarak duygularımı ifade etmeye çalışacağım.
Takdir-i ilahi cizlavit ayakkabıları olduğunda sevinen, Irak Kürdistan Federal Bölgesi'nde yaşayan Kürtlerin mücadelesini simgeleyen 'Herne Pêş' marşı dışında Erivan Radyosundan gecenin geç saatlerinde dinlediğim 'Rustemê Zal' destanı dışında bir avuntusu olmayan ben; bugün halkımın özgürlük mücadelesini açlığa yatarak sürdürmek durumundayım.
Çoğunuzun bildiği, bize de anlatmaktan gına gelen yaşanmışlıkları tekrar etmek niyetinde değilim...
Bir milletvekili olarak 1.5 yıllık zaman diliminde; Kürt sorununun demokratik ve barışçıl yöntemlerle çözülmesi için söylenmedik sözün kalmadığını düşünüyorum. Birileri sürekli olarak bizi samimiyet testinden geçirme gayreti içinde oldu. Bize sürekli olarak 'kapıcı kürdün' çocukları muamelesi yapıldı. Çoğu zaman da 'burada olmasaydınız daha iyi olurdu' demeye getirdiler sözü. Yılmaya yıldık bu söylemden ama dert burada değil, dert artık umudumuzun kırılmış olmasıdır.
Yaşadıklarımız Cezayirlilerin yaşadıklarını anımsatıyor. Bilirsiniz, yaşlı Fransızların bakımları için Cezayirlilere ihtiyaçları var. Bir arada yaşamlarını sağlayan tek unsur Cezayirlinin Fransız’a bakıcı olma ‘hakkı’ndan ibarettir. Gelgelelim Cezayirli olmazsa yaşayamayacak olan Fransız, onu kendi mahallesinde görmeye de katlanamıyor. Çok değil,
3-5 yıl önce Paris sokakları ateş topuna dönmüştü. Bu ateşi yakanlar Faslı, Cezayirli Arap çocuklarıydı ama ortaya bu ateşin odununu yolarak yığılan, Fransızların onulmaz kibrinden başka bir şey değildi.
Bu durum bizim sizinle olan ‘kardeşliğimizi’ de tanımlıyor. Türkiye metropolleriyle ilk tanışmamda karşıma çıkan ilk görüntü bana bunu anımsattı. Çok katlı cafcaflı yaşamın içinde kapıcı Kürdün hizmetkarlığına muhtaç çocuğu olduğumu hissettim. Her apartmanın bir kapıcı dairesi var ve bu dairelerin müdavimleri Kürtleri gördüm.
Anımsayın lütfen, bayram ziyareti için kapınızı çaldığında biran önce gitmesini istediğiniz ama çöpünüzü beş dakika geç aldığında da kızdığınız Kürt.
Bu ‘birlikteliğin’ adını kardeşlik koyduğunuz da itirazımız yükseliyor. Bizim istediğimiz kardeşlik bu değil. Benim içimden hiçbir zaman İstanbul’u fethe gelen Kürt olma hissi oluşmadı. Fetih duygusunu tehlikeli gördüm. Çünkü fethedilmenin ne denli zalimane bir şey olduğunu yaşayarak öğrenmiş bulunuyoruz.
Fetih duygusuyla İstanbul’a kulaç atan Kürtler olmadı değil. Attıkları her kulaçta biraz daha ‘beyazlaşmak’ durumunda kaldılar. Geriye dönüp baktıklarında da geride bıraktıklarını beğenmez oldular.
‘Siyah’ kalan ve öyle kalmayı tercih edenlerin rengine çamur kalmakla kapıcı çocuğu olmaktan kurtulacaklarını zannettiler. Bunu yaptıkça da aramızdaki ‘kara kedi’ rolüne büründüler. Bir de Türk olmayan Türk milliyetçileri vardır. Onlar ki kardeşliğin ayağına takoz koyanlardır.
'Haklı' olarak şu soru aklınıza gelebilir. 'Kürtlerin hepsi sizin gibi düşünmüyor. Bakın BDP dışındaki partilerde de Kürtler var ve seslerini çıkarmıyorlar.' Bu da doğru. Kürtler bizden ibarettir gibi iddiaya sahip değiliz. Ama sizlerin de şunu bilmeniz lazım. Nüfuzlu Kürtlerin her dönem iktidarlarla birlikte hareket ettikleri de sizin kabul etmeniz gereken bir başka gerçek. Şimdi yeri gelmişken yukarıda açıklığa kavuşturulması gereken gerçeğin bir boyutuna değineyim. Sistem-içileşmiş Kürtlerin engelleyiciliğine açıklık getireyim. Kendimi sizin yerine koyup düşünüyorum. Benim de karşımda iki kategori oluşturan bir Türk olgusu olmuş olsa, kendime yakın olanı tercih ederim. Ama ben burada başka bir gerçeklikten söz ediyorum. Sizin sorunsuz Kürtler kategorisinde gördükleriniz, aslında sorunun özünü oluşturuyorlar.
Nasıl mı? Hemen açıklayayım. Dünyanın her yerinde nüfuzlu sınıflar iktidarla 'zorunlu nikahlıdırlar'. Bizim Kürtlerin nüfuzlularının iktidarla 'zorunlu nikahları' biraz daha katmerlidir. Zilliyetleri yok. Şirin görünmek için yapmadıkları şaklabanlık yok. İşleri görünsün, nüfuzları son bulmasın yeter. Böyle düşünen nüfuzlu Kürt sorunun çözümünü arzulamıyor.
Söz buradan açılmışken, Türk olmayan Türk milliyetçilerine de değineyim. Bir insan nasıl bu duruma gelebiliyor? Mesela Ziya Gökalp... Abdullah Cevdet... ve bugün devamında sizin de rahatlıkla ekleyebileceğiniz daha nice isimler. Bir Türk ile oturup bu paradoksu konuşmak isterim. Bir benim dışımdaki birilerinin bana ulu-sentezler oluşturmasını hazetmem. Öyle ki 'Türklük' kimlik olarak gözümde itici bir hal almaya başladı. Sizin çocuğunuz her gün okulda 'kendi varlığını benim çocuğumun varlığına armağan etse' ne düşünürsünüz? Lütfen, aynı şeyi benim için de düşün.
Empati faslını burada noktalayalım.
12 Eylül 2012 tarihinden bu yana Cezaevlerinde Kürt siyasetçilerinin başlatmış oldukları süresiz-dönüşümsüz bir açlık grevi var.-Umut ediyorum, sizler bu satırları okuyorken açlık grevi sonlanmış olsun.- Grev son bulmuş olsa dahi gerekçelerinin ağırlığını hissediyor olacağız.
Bu grevin iki temel talebi var.
Birincisi; devletin kendi hukukunu da çiğneyerek bir yıl 3 ay 15 gündür (11 kasım itibarıyla) devam ettirdiği İmarlı tecridinin son bulması isteniyor. İkincisi; kendi ana dillerinde mahkemelerde savunma yapmak istiyorlar.
Türkiye siyasetine egemen olan aklın bizlerin önüne koyduğu argüman şu: Bugün anadil isterler yarın başka şeyler de isterler. 'Zaten bizim en büyük ukdemiz Bağımsız Birleşik Kürdistan kurmaktır'. Bu söz çok tanıdık geliyor, değil mi? 'Haksız mıyız' dediğinizi hisseder gibiyim.
Bakın karından konuşmaksızın çıplak bir gerçeği sizinle paylaşmak istiyorum. Eğer ki Kürt siyasetçileri Kurdofobiaya dönüştürüldüğü üzere uluslararası aktörlerin oyunlarına teşne olmayı kabul etmiş olsalardı, emin olun ne Amerika'da ne Avrupa'da ne de dünyanın başka bir yerinde 'PKK terör listesinde' olmuş olmazdı. PKK Lideri Abdullah Ocalan şimdi tek kişilik İmralı Zindanında olmuş olmazdı. Eğer bugün Ocalan İmralı'da ise, eğer PKK terör listelerinde yer alıyorsa bir tek sebebi var. Terör listesi oluşturanların oyunlarına teşne olmadığı içindir.
Biz Kürtlerin ne istediklerini toplu halde çok kere dile getirdik. Tekrar babında yeniden söyleyeyim. Söz uçar yazı baki kalır.
Kendi anadilimizle eğitim istiyoruz. İlkokuldan üniversiteye kadar. Kamusal alanda kendi anadilimizle hizmet almak istiyoruz. Kendimizi yönetmek istiyoruz. Devletin atadığı vali yerine bizim seçtiğimiz vali bizi yönetsin...
Kimliğimizin ve statümüzün anayasal güvenceye kavuşturulmasını istiyoruz.
Bu taleplere bir karşılık koymak doğru olmamakla birlikte, biz bir karşılık da koyuyoruz. Bu taleplerin karşılanması demek bin yıllık birlikteliğin yeni bir toplumsal mutabakatla sürdürülmesi anlamına gelir. Ki bu da Türkiye'nin Türkiye sınırları dışında yaşayan Kürtler için de çekim merkezi olması demektir. Takdir edersiniz ki bu da Türkiye'nin bölünmesi anlamına gelmiyor. Tersine büyümesi anlamına gelir. Öyleyse sorun nerede? Bu soru üzerine biraz düşünmenizi arzuladığım için bunları yazıyorum. Beni, bizi kapı eşiğinde içeri almadan vestiyer üzerine önceden benim için bıraktığınız bayram harçlığını vererek gönderdiğiniz kapıcı Kürt olarak görmekten vazgeçtiğiniz gün bu sorunun cevabı bulunmuş olacaktır.
Son olarak şunu da belirtmek istiyorum. Evet bin yıllık birlikteliğimiz var. Ama bizim bin yıl öncesi tarihimiz de var. Tıpkı sizin de olduğu gibi. Nasıl oluyor da bin yıl sonra, siz hala varsınız ama biz yokuz? Lütfen kendinizi bizim yerimize koyun ve bu soruya bir cevap verin.
Yazıyı bitirirken, takvim yaprağı 12'ye evrildi. Gece yarısını çoktan geçti. İradem, 'kuzu-kebaba' karşı mücadelesinde galibiyetini sürdürüyor ve yenilmeyecek. Çünkü uğruna mücadele ettiğimiz şeyin insan hayatı olduğunu biliyorum. Vicdandan daha yumuşak bir yastık icat edilmemiştir. Kafamı yastığa koyduğumda kardeşliğin güç kazandığı bir güne uyanmayı diliyorum.

A Letter Home OR My First Whiff of Tear Gas--the November 17 Solidarity Hunger Strike

Dear Defense Technologies,

The sexy and sleek, Spede Heat CS

Today I tasted some of your gas—probably from a long range Spede Heat CS cannister , the preferred model of the Turkish police, but I can’t be sure because there wasn’t a lot of time to stop and check the exact model.  

No I am not a soldier or an agitator or a regular attender of protests.  I am a middle school English teacher living in Istanbul. We have something in common because the contact page on your website lists you as headquartering in Jacksonville, Florida and I was born and raised in Florida. In fact, my father lived in Jacksonville for a long time when he first moved down from his small farm community in Georgia. My mother is your proverbial ‘country girl’ from West Virginia—she likes Michelob Lite, can ride a horse, and worked for years as a P.E. teacher. She lives in tiny Pinson, Alabama now along with the rest of my family. They attend a Baptist church. My sister works with handicapped kids. My brother’s a fireman. My nephew works in disaster clean-up.

Today, my wife and I went to a demonstration on a public fairground on the outskirts of Istanbul to support thousands of political prisoners who were hunger striking in Turkey’s prisons—most of them Kurdish.  64 of the strikers had not eaten for 67 days and were literally on death’s door—the pictures of them that came out of the prison reminded me of concentration camp victims—gaunt, hollow eyed. Several thousand who had joined later were well on their way to the same end—including my wife’s 60-year-old father, a retired elementary school teacher and a diabetic. Family members on the outside felt it was the least we could do to come together and conduct a two day hunger strike of our own to show that we had not forgotten them.

We arrived at the fair grounds to a small gathering of mostly old men and women. A good eighty percent of the crowd was over fifty. I may sound like I am exaggerating for effect, but the busses carrying the younger people from the center of the city, an hour away, had not yet arrived. There were only about six or seven young men in a crowd of not quite a hundred people. It was cold—a gathering of chubby  grandmas sat huddled together on make-shift stools and a group of old men talked over cigarettes.

Gendarmes with riot shields took position on the sidewalk. Three alleys across the street were shoulder to shoulder with police and ten police busses filled the parking lot of the city hall. Two police tanks and several armored cars were parked along the side of the road. I laughed at first because, honestly, what in the world did this small army think was coming from this crowd of shivering retirees?

Winter rain clouds turned the sky an ashen gray—we chatted with a friend of my father-in-law’s, Zekiye. She is sixty years old and has long, cotton-white hair with dark expressive eyes that, despite her not being able to read or write, shine with intelligence.  We’ve brought tea and sugar—she seems pleased.

The first volley of water cannons--no one's all that convinced yet

I notice a man standing on the side walk with a megaphone. He is middle-aged, pale, with thinning blond hair and thick glasses. He is dressed in a powder-blue jacket and slacks.  ‘We are asking you to disperse,’ he says in a quiet voice. ‘Who is this guy?’ an old man asks. ‘Disperse for who?’  Then in quick succession, the man with the megaphone issues 3 warnings, as required by Turkish law, ‘We will not permit this, we will intervene.’ The old ladies on the stools looked puzzled—then stood and started gathering their things. That’s when the tank moved in, firing water from the cannon on the top. It struck the smokers first who were slow to react. They behaved like cats chased away from a meal, grumbling and flinging their cigarettes down in frustration. Then the tear gas cannisters began to fly—I’ll never forget those trails of yellowish smoke streaking across the grey sky--and we fled.

I have never breathed in tear gas before—it hurts, but then I am fairly young and can run. The hobbling old women in layers of skirts and the limping old men, on the other hand, though a whole lot spryer than I gave them credit for, were far slower than I, and had a hard time getting away.

Those first few moments were strange. I remember wondering if the police could possibly be serious. I stopped and ran backward. My wife was running toward me, covering her mouth with her scarf. Her sister came next, tossing me an extra handkerchief so I could cover mine. I didn’t at first—just watched in a kind of stunned disbelief as the tank advanced on us and more tear gas cannisters rained down. A young man fell in the mud and couldn’t get up. Another came behind and tried to lift him. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ my wife cried. Then a tear gas cannister fell near me and my lungs began to burn, though thank God it was far enough a way that my eyes were only slightly affected.  One woman took a direct hit and had to be rushed to the hospital. I covered my face with the handkerchief, but my glasses immediately fogged up so I had to give it up. If I choked, I choked. We ran toward the line of apartment buildings at the opposite end of the fairgrounds—and then ducked down a side street.  All the neighbors poked their heads out the window to find out what was going on and then quickly ducked back in once they understood.

We stopped in front of a small convenience store and frantically discussed what to do. ‘Let’s go back,’ someone said. I was in tears from the frustration and rage—looking at all these ordinary people around me wiping at the burning eyes and clutching their throats. One young woman was shouting ‘What do we do?’ and as if in answer some of the young men started scrounging the street for rocks. The old folks in the crowd were trying to stop them.  One man waved his arms and cried, ‘Don’t hurt anyone! This is our neighborhood! These are our people!’  Thanks to him, no one broke any shop windows, but they all rushed back the way we had come for a go at the tanks, and soon they came running back toward us, this time with armored cars following.

The subsequent chase through the backstreets and alleyways was terrifying. The armored cars left the rock-throwers behind and came after all of us. I dashed down an alley with an old man in a beret and very fat woman who couldn’t really run at all but only waddle quickly in front of me, clutching the wall as she went for support, and panting as if she were about to have a heart attack. The three of us tried to leap a brick wall and climb over a wood pile—to my astonishment the woman didn’t need any help--but a group of our people from the other street were coming from the opposite direction, fleeing from armored car on that side, and we realized we were trapped. We ran back to where we came from. On that street, one of the armored cars was speeding down the road swerving left and right after anyone it saw in the street as if it were trying to run them down.

I grabbed my wife’s hand, or she grabbed mine, and together we ran out onto the main highway and fell into a crowd of ordinary pedestrians. By now, the police were wandering the streets in plain clothes making arrests, so we all dispersed and tried to look like tourists seeing the sights.

I find it difficult to articulate all the things I felt during this attack. There was anger—watching all those old people flee in terror from what amounted to a small army. And for what?  I could certainly understand why those men threw the rocks. Why so many police against so innocuous a crowd? Why attack the demonstration in the first place? It was infuriating that they could make you feel like such a criminal, so immediately on the defensive. As soon as I saw those men pick up the rocks, I knew how this would be portrayed in the Turkish papers—‘Police had to intervene when protesters turned violent,’ and I started framing a defense in my head though anyone who was there would not require it.  This was the undeserved humiliation they imposed--at the end, we were skulking through the streets as if we had just committed a crime.  I wonder, is this the kind of society our country wants to support—where ordinary people have to live in fear of the very people who protect them?

During the whole ordeal, I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that I didn’t have time to feel afraid—at least not until we were cornered between the houses. I was worried for those closest to me--my wife for one—though of course to be honest I have the general impression that should she so desire she could, Wonder Woman like, pick up one of those tanks and hurl it through that line of riot police. Watching her younger sister run was more surreal—Zelal never leaves the house without going through a three-hour salon treatment. How odd to see this pain-stakingly made-up woman in a leather jacket, designer jeans, and chic boots fleeing from a rain of tear gas and tanks.

Later on, we all gathered together in the headquarters of the Kurdish political party. I met a young man there from Diyarbakır, an eighteen-year-old jazz percussionist. He told me his mother had warned him that if he joined this protest today, she would never cook for him again. He laughed.

‘She said ‘That will teach you to hunger strike!’ She’s scared for me, of course. The police used to harass us all the time. I remember one night my dad was coming home from playing cards and some gendarmes stopped him in the street. They poked him in the belly with the rifle and said ‘Why are you strutting so slowly down the street?’ ‘No reason,’ he answered. ‘Then walk faster!’ they told him. So he did and one of them stopped him again, and again poked him in the belly with the barrel of the gun. ‘What are you running from? What did you do?’ This was every day life for us. We lived in the Bağlar neighborhood of Diyarbakır when I was a kid—a very active neighborhood. That’s where I went to elementary school. We breathed tear gas every day on the way home from school! It was just a part of normal life. One day, when I was in first grade, me and a friend decided to join one of the protests.  I was about 7 and he was about 12. We had both started school when we were older. My friend got caught throwing rocks at the police and a group of them knocked him down and beat him with billy clubs. They killed him.’

He says it so quickly, it doesn’t quite register.

‘They what?’

‘They killed him.  Oh, that happened to a lot of guys.’

During the course of the night, I hear stories from others. One woman’s little sister was tortured so badly in prison that she now cannot walk. ‘I came today for her,’ she tells the crowd. ‘Because I can do nothing else for her.’

This is the government you are selling your tear gas to.

I have no doubt that the millions of dollars worth of tear gas cannisters you produce have their place—a non-lethal and usually harmless method of dispersing mobs who have gone out of control, but this is not how the Republic of Turkey uses your product. The police break up every manner of gathering in a similar way that they did ours—whether it is a group of secular nationalist on Indepence Day, a gathering of Kurdish mothers in a tent, townspeople protesting the building of a dam or students objecting to tuition hikes. They attack teachers, church goers (a sizeable Christian community lives in Istanbul), democrats, rock musicians, children and housewives.  And the gas cannisters are certainly not always harmless—a Google image search on ‘tear gas cannisters’ is enough to yield some pictures of injuries from these things that turns your stomach. There are rumors sometimes that the police are deliberately targeting people.

I am writing to ask you to be more judicial in who you select as your customers, to not sell your product who regularly use it to attack their own people. As men and women of morals and good conscience, I am sure you don’t want the name of your company and those who work for it connected to such primitive brutality.

Thank you for your time,

Jeff Gibbs

Where does it all come from?

Ambitious title: we are now embroiled in the struggles of the prison hunger strike. According to the BDP there are 10,000 people now on strike--a number difficult to confirm. In any case, my father in law is now one of them. We are proud, worried, and distraught at the increasingly militant stance of the government. I have been meaning to write something all week about it--time is running out--but I can't seem to gather the thoughts. They are a mess of emotion, fear, excitement, desperation, nerves. We have faced down police tanks at demonstrations--others in the East and farther from the eyes of the press were attacked by them. In any case, I took a textbook from our high school. It's used to teach the mandatory class of 'National Security Science' which everyone in Turkey is required to take. Here is a section from this 170 page book that I think neatly encapsulates that what hunger strikers and indeed, anyone who wants to live in a just society are facing. A people trained to delude themselves into thinking a militarist, paranoid dictatorship is actually the true meaning of democracy. The parenthesis and italics are mine.

HIGH SCHOOL NATIONAL SECURITY SCIENCE
Distributed by the Ministry of Education
Published in 2010

 

FROM CHAPTER ON 'THREATS DIRECTED AGAINST TURKEY'

 

DESTRUCTIVE ACTIONS

Those termed 'destructive actions', in general, have the aim of destroying the existing regime (The secular-democratic system) through force of arms and setting up a system governed by their own ideology. Actions designed to destroy the country from the inside arrive at their goals through four phases (preparation, organization, action, and civil war). First and foremost, these activities are financed through human and narcotic trafficking. At the same time, these organizations profit from donation campaigns, the sale of illegal magazines and newspapers, the collection of monthy fees and concerts.

Our country stands confronted with constant attacks designed to spread ideology and remains the target of destructive activities aimed at obliterating the rapidly developing social and cultural integrity that goes hand in hand with a developing economy taking its place in the world of international and geopolitical politics.

In this arena, the 1980s saw the development of organizations designed with the sole aim of destroying the Constitution of the Turkish Republic and setting up their own views in its place.

 

SPLITTIST ACTIONS

Splittist threats directed at our country with great constancy go back 200 years. Throughout the process of history, threats have appeared that are extensions of the Imperialist Powers efforts to profit from the Middle East region. Today, too, movements, and demonstrations have surfaced with their own internal conditions and alliances with outsiders.

As for today, splittist activities among elements of our fatherland claiming to be separate races or nations and carrying the quality of a threat were begun by outside powers in the days of the rise of the Ottoman empire. European states, during the 19th century, not only exerted efforts to foment rebellion but at the same time played an effective role in the creation of splittist-ethnic organizations.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, westerners in various disguises as archaeologist, historians, theologians and geographers at every opportunity sowed the seeds of dissent among eastern tribes as part of their missionary work. These actions opened the road to the weakening of state power through various rebellions and uprisings at different periods.

One of the most important of these rebellions supported by foreign powers was the Sheik Sait uprising, the results of which, forced The Turkish Republic, with the Lozan Peace Treaty, to give up its right to the Musul-Kirkuk region that lay well within its borders.

The PKK, with which the Turkish Republic has struggled since the last quarter of the 20^th century, was founded on November 27^th, 1978 with the support of foreign countries. It began operations with the raids on Eruh and Şemdinli in 1984. The final and true aim of this terrorist organization has been to split off lands starting with Turkey, and spreading to Iraq, Iran and Syria; lands that have been theirs since their foundations, to have the Kurdish identity recognized in the constitution (this makes saying the word Kurd a terrorist act essentially) and to form an autonomous or federal Kurdistan region which later will become the United Democratic Greater Kurdistan.

                This terrorist organization, with these aims, has endeavored to implement the following struggles.

·         The murders of 30,000 people charged with the duty of securing the state without regard for the elderly, women, or children

·         To destroy the vehicles of service to our citizens and hinder the development of the Southeast region

……..

Since February 16^th, 1999, with the capture of the head of this organization, they understood that they had lost on the battlefield and changed their tactics to attacks on the political field. (Thus nonviolent political struggle is also terrorism). With this aim, they took advantage of our citizens living in the East and Southeast who for various reasons were not able to find educational opportunities. This terrorist organization:

·         Forced young people without regard to gender to take up arms during their education years and turned them against the state.

·         Tried to break the national unity spirit of the Turkish people by fomenting divisiveness and splittism.

·         Profitted from the civil services for years and used them in actions against the state to incite the loyal people at every opportunity against the state.

·         Forced our children still at a tender age when they are still playing with toys to join protests and instilling in their vulnerable minds violence and disobedience against the state.

·         The above activities have been propagated side by side with armed actions and with the support of foreign powers.

This terror organization, after the terrorist attack of 9/11, in order not to draw the ire of the world have struggled to disassociate themselves from the word ‘terror’ but several countries and foundations have put these new names on their terrorist lists.

Let them change their name as often as they want, every foundation that takes aim at human life is a terrorist organization (which qualifies all the militaries of every country as terrorist) and they are responsible for all damage done to the state and every murder they’ve ever committed.

The desire and wish for humans to live in peace and security grows all the faster as the regional services and investments by the state and the passionate endeavors by the state for the people are lost through terrorist influence in the region.

THE DUTIES THAT FALL TO CITIZENS WHO ARE AGAINST THESE THREATS TO THE STATE (Though all sections of this chapter have been underlined by the student who used this book, this one is double underlined)

·         To take responsibility for the development and enrichment of a nation and people reliant on the principles of secularism, democracy, and modernity.

·         To know Turkish history and draw lessons from the past

·         As Turkish Youth (not my capitalization) to work diligently to raise Turkey to a high level of strength, wealth, and prosperity.

·         To learn the ideas of Atatürk and use them in our daily lives.

·         To know the aims of cadres of threat and propaganda from both internal and external sources who aim to impede Turkey’s progress.

·         To learn the Turkish language, tongue, culture and literature and bring it to life through the example of their own lives.

·         To know and defend the principles of Atatürk regarding the People and Nation in terms of national unity and togetherness.

·         To see clearly the truths and falsehoods of the publications of media press organizations both outside and inside the country and support ones that benefit the country and reject those that don’t.

·         To live knowing that knowledge is the guide toward the truest path and knowing the need for work and production.