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March 31, 2009
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An Independent Online Kurdish-English Newspaper
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Peace Now! Unban the PKK!
Kurdishaspect.com - By Alex Fitch
This year Kurds in London celebrated Newroz, Kurdish New Year, in London's famous Trafalgar Square. Some 10,000 Kurds and their friends gathered to see and hear a programme of music, dance and speeches to welcome in the new year.
By Kurdish standards it was quite a restrained affair there were no Newroz fires, no fire works (casualties of health and safety obsessed Britain), and the cry for relief from the centuries of oppression Kurds have suffered in their homeland was enacted through an expression of cultural pride.
Despite this there was a reported air of victory and a feeling that the years of struggle were closer than ever to delivering the long yearned for freedom and peace.
Meanwhile, across Kurdistan and Turkey hundreds of thousands of people celebrated Newroz with an unstoppable enthusiasm and determination. The days when the Turkish state could get away with the wholesale public massacre of Kurds are in the past.
The crowds were beyond anything the security forces could hope to control without risking their control of the Turkish nation. The Kurdish people from Istanbul to Diyarbakir proudly and publicly displayed their support the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, which has defended the Kurdish people throughout the long dark years of Turkish State oppression.
Photographs from across Turkey show crowds displaying the flags and banners of the PKK and wearing t-shirts proclaiming their support for the freedom movement. Today the PKK remains a guarantor of security for the Kurdish people in the absence of a just resolution of the Kurdish question in Turkey.
The PKK continues its defense despite its political "banning" by Britain, the E.U. and the United States as a "terrorist organization".
In the light of the above it is more than a little curious that in Britain the security services, at the behest of their political masters, have at this moment cracked down on the Kurdish freedom movement in Britain.
While this is in line with what has been happening in the rest of Europe, especially Germany, it is ironic that at a time when support for the PKK is freely proclaimed in Diyarbakir it is oppressed in Britain.
In Trafalgar Square groups of slightly embarrassed - and certainly confused - police trawled the crowds attempting to confiscate a range of proscribed flags and banners. One young Kurdish woman with a PKK banner refused to surrender it demanding to see the official documentation entitling the officer to take it.
He replied that he was instructed to confiscate anything with a star on it. She asked if he would therefore confiscate the Turkish flag if she were holding that and then saw a group of American tourists wearing "Stars and Stripes" jackets and demanded that the officer request them to hand over their clothing.
By this point the woman had gathered a crowd of supporters eager to hear the officers reply, he backed off.
In another incident a supporter of the Kurdish freedom movement was told to surrender his PKK t-shirt which he refused and harangued the officer for being in allegiance with the forces of Turkish state repression. He pointed out the sea of banners of Kurdish leader Mr. Abdullah Ocalan and asked about those to which the officer actually responded that he'd been told (correctly) that Mr. Ocalan was “a Mandela figure” to Kurds and the banners were therefore not a problem.
A fine example of where “I was only following orders” can lead you.
Ultimately it is not the British police or security forces who are the problem here, they are “just following orders”. While they do their duty as instructed, as they are paid to, they are not paid to consider the political justice or injustice of the many actions expected of them. At higher levels and in the “intelligence” divisions the story may be different.
Many in the security services know that the Kurdish people have a cause that is just. They also know that their political masters are sacrificing this just cause in a typically bizarre display of short-termism and Realpolitik.
There must be some in the security and intelligence services who, mindful of recent examples of where their political masters have known “best”, are telling their paymasters that a political solution to the Kurdish question is essential to peace and stability in Europe and that region of the Middle East.
In a region increasingly racked by religiously inspired hate and conflict the Kurdish freedom movement represented by the PKK is a breath of fresh air. With its progressive secular outlook and a commitment to grassroots regional democratic participatory society it sits comfortably with visionaries such as Altiero Spinelli whose vision of a united Europe shared much in common with that of imprisoned PKK founder and Kurdish leader Mr. Abdullah Ocalan.
While imprisoned Mr. Ocalan has not been idle but has continued the struggle for a Kurdish freedom based upon the common interests of the people of Turkey, and indeed Europe, as a whole.
Mr. Ocalan's call for a democratic federalist solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey cries out to be heeded and offers a model for the resolution of similar disputes in other European regions.
The PKK is not al-Qaeda. The PKK has actively resisted the terrorism of the Turkish state against its own citizens. The PKK has opposed the cultural genocide waged against the Kurdish people.
The PKK is a secular organization struggling for the right of Kurdish people to the type of freedom most people in Europe enjoy. The labeling of the PKK as a “terrorist” organization is simply a ploy by a section of the Turkish state to continue its age old oppression of the Kurdish people under a cloak of legitimacy.
The ‘war on terrorism” most recently promoted by the corrupt and discredited regime of G.W.Bush has put back by years the work of peace makers everywhere. Not only that it has stoked the fires of hate that only serve to encourage the very acts that this misnamed “war” claims to prevent.
By promoting and allying themselves with this bankrupt and meaningless “war” in which the world is represented in a simplistic “friend” / “enemy” model European leaders have rejected an opportunity to facilitate as peace makers.
Not only this, but in an ideological system where only states count anyone who opposes the state under which they live risks denunciation as a “terrorist” while states that persecute their people can claim those who oppose them are all “terrorists”.
War does not only kill. It scars. It creates hatreds. It removes memories and it rewrites histories. The Kurdish people want to be allowed to live in peace as themselves alongside their neighbors as equals.
They want what we want.
The PKK and Kurdish leader Mr. Ocalan are the key to peace in Turkey and as the trusted representatives of the Kurdish people in Turkey their participation is instrumental in the peaceful resolution to the Kurdish question.
The PKK and Mr. Ocalan are ready to begin talks today.
The question is why are Ankara, London, the E.U. and the U.S.A. unwilling to support this genuine desire and commitment to peace?
The big question is why, when the Kurdish freedom movement has bent over backwards to bring everyone else to the peace table, why is it that there is either denunciation or and embarrassed silence from those who should be participants in, or who should be encouraging, the peace process?
Persecution in Turkey has not crushed the Kurdish freedom movement.
Persecution in Europe will not crush the Kurdish freedom movement.
It is time to reject the failed ideology of the “war on terrorism” and embrace a real and democratic peace process.
The PKK's proscription must be ended, it must be given the legitimacy it deserves as a legal representative of the Kurdish people in Turkey and must be invited as a party to the inevitable peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.
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