Followıng the 22 May and 5 June meetings with the Peoples Leader, Abdullah Ocalan, he clearly expressed his gratitude for the hunger strike, and death fast actions and called that they come to an end. İn this he explained his demand of more theoretical and organized approaches to the actions being carried out in regards to the democratization of Turkey, and the liberation of the Kurdish people; using Gandhi as an example for his hunger strike, he said that Gandhi made his hunger strike meaningful by his social struggle.
“No solution can be found through deaths. Methods for the solution of the problem, which will lead to an honorable peace, should be developed. There can be no solution with destruction policies”.
As it is important to draw meaning from the limited words of the Peoples Leader, one must truly understand the concept that he has set out. In this process, it is vital to take only that which applies to the reality of the Kurdish peoples.
The foundations of the Kurdistan Workers Party, is set out on the teachings of many intellectuals including Marx and Gandhi. Often the Peoples Leader is described as a bee that picks the sweetest honey from the most beautiful flowers to feed to the people. This comparison becomes an essential point to understand in regards to the ideology set out by the Peoples Leader. Where Marx has become a major economic guide to our movement, Gandhi’s approach is closer to the reality of Kurdistan.
The difference in approaches between the two major intellectuals, Marx and Gandhi, is that where Marx focuses on the oppression of labourer by capitalist, and cultivator by landlord, Gandhi sets out a third principle, which is the oppression of village by city. The reason Gandhi’s teachings apply more widely to the Kurdistan region is that the Kurdish people are people who protect the values of villages.
Gandhi clearly sets out that it is in the interest of urban society to offer as unfavorable terms as possible in its trade with rural people. This is seen in the exploitation of labor and agriculture, where low wage couples with low terms of trade for the food and raw materials the urban society needs to maintain itself. This provides the basis of modern industrialization, from which capitalism benefits.
Historically, whilst it is often argued that the Kurds are undeveloped, due to being based in mountainous terrains, it becomes critical to understand that civilization does not originate in cities. This Notion derives from capitalist distortion of the values of people, to say the least. Whilst it is evident that cities are physically advanced hubs of income, it cannot be said that they are in any means developed, or any more so than the villages, where communal, social and ecological lives are predominant.
It would be wrong to claim that this is the only reason why the Peoples leader has cited Gandhi in such a critical stage. The aim in this is to draw focus to Gandhi’s teachings on social conflict, and the techniques underlined in which independence is achievable.
Whilst it is clear that not only Gandhi’s teachings have achieved Indian independence, it would also be foolish to deny that whilst the INA was the physical force behind the revolution, Gandhi was also a key player in an ideological aspect. And as we have seen time and time again in the history of revolutionary movements, where there is a lack of ideological guidance, even when the war is a success, a true revolution is not reached.
The Peoples Leader has expressed the opinion that Turkeys fundamental need was a debate on social consensus, democratic politics, democratic negotiation, and honorable peace. Where a democratic, truthful peace solution is on the table, the Leader has always been willing to take it. In this sense, strong connections could be drawn to Gandhi.
But alongside this, it is also important to analyze Gandhis outlined path to resistance. Gandhi stands strongly for the invoking of stronger forces within human nature to terminate exploitation. In achieving this, the two routes he sets out are firstly, trusteeship, and secondly, passive resistance.
THE HISTORY OF GANDHI AS A BASIS OF EXAMPLE
Born in 1869, in the Western coast of India and raised by Hindu parents, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi found many opportunities in his youth to meet people of all faiths. He had many Christian and Muslim friends, as well as being heavily influenced by Jainism in his youth. Gandhi probably took the religious principle of doing no harm from his Jain neighbors, and from it developed his own famous principle of insistence upon the truth.
Gandhi hoped to win people over by changing their hearts and minds and advocated non-violence in all things. He himself remained a committed Hindu throughout his life but was critical of all faiths and what he saw as the hypocrisy of organized religion.
Even as a young child his morals were tested when an inspector of schools came to visit during a spelling test. Noticing an incorrect spelling, his teacher motioned for him to copy his neighbor’s spelling but he refused to do so, at a young age Gandhi had refused to steal from his neighbor, something which he did not rightfully own.
On 19 September 1932, in his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste.
Gandhi worked throughout his life to spread passive resistance across India and the world. By 1920, his concept of insistence upon truth had made Gandhi an enormously influential figure for millions of followers. Jailed by the British government from 1922-24, he returned in 1930, with a new civil disobedience campaign. Gandhi was soon imprisoned again, briefly, as the British made concessions to his demands and invited him to represent the Indian National Congress Party at a round-table conference in London.
After his return to India in January 1932, Gandhi, beginning another civil disobedience campaign, was jailed yet again. After many years of struggle, eight months into his prison sentence, Gandhi announced he was beginning a death fast in order to protest British support of a new Indian constitution, which gave the country’s lowest classes–known as “untouchables”–their own separate political representation for a period of 70 years. He believed this would permanently and unfairly divide India’s social classes; as a member of the more powerful merchant caste, Gandhi nonetheless advocated the emancipation of the ‘untouchables’, whom he referred to as “Children of God.”
“This is a God-given opportunity that has come to me, to offer my life as a final sacrifice to the downtrodden.”
Though the official political representative of the untouchables–had questioned Gandhi’s true commitment to the lower classes, his six-day fast ended after the British government accepted the principal terms of a settlement between higher caste Indians and the untouchables that reversed the caste division.
As India slowly moved towards independence, Gandhi’s influence only grew. He continued to resort to the hunger strike as a method of resistance, knowing the British government would not be able to withstand the pressure of the public’s concern for the man they called Mahatma, or “Great Soul.”
On January 12, 1948, Gandhi undertook his last successful fast in New Delhi, to persuade Hindus and Muslims in that city to work toward peace. On January 30, less than two weeks after breaking that fast, he was assassinated by a Hindu extremist on his way to an evening prayer meeting.
Passive Resistance
The passive resistance campaigns led by Gandhi in South Africa had huge impacts, globally. Gandhi’s campaigns forged a new form of struggle against oppression that became a model for political and ethical struggles in other parts of the world.
After the victory of the British in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), Indians in the Transvaal had hoped that the British administration would treat them more favorably, but the British instead passed a string of laws to limit the rights of Indians.
Now Gandhi began to clarify his concept of passive resistance, outlining its rationale; Sadagraha (firmness in a good cause/truth cause) was adopted by Gandhi. The intention is to convince the opponent and not to crush him, to convert the opponent, who must be ‘weaned from error by patience and sympathy’.
Before the law came into force, Gandhi organized a mass meeting on 11 September 1906 where 3000 people pledged to defy the law – a short while later this would develop into the first passive resistance campaign.
The First Campaign
Of the 13,000 Indians in the Transvaal, only 511 had registered, the campaign was thus underway, with the majority refusing to register.
Indians were served with official notices to register or leave the Transvaal and Gandhi was arrested on 27 December. Gandhi and a group of resisters appeared before a magistrate on 11 January 1908. He appealed to the judge to be given the heaviest sentence, and he was sentenced to a term of two months. Four other Satyagrahis were jailed with Gandhi and by 29 January the figure had risen to 155.
In jail, Gandhi spent his time reading Ruskin, Tolstoy and the holy books of various religions – the Baghavad Gita and the Qur’an. He was approached by Albert Cartwright, editor of the Transvaal Leader, on behalf of Jan Smuts. Cartwright promised that if Gandhi and his supporters registered voluntarily, the Black Act would be repealed. Gandhi met with Smuts on 30 January, the agreement was formalized and he was immediately set free. The other resisters were released the next morning.
The agreement with Smuts drew criticism from some passive resisters. They wanted the act repealed before they would register, but Gandhi saw the move as the way of the Satyagrahi. He said:
‘A Satyagrahi bids goodbye to fear. He is therefore never afraid of trusting the opponent. Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times, the Satyagrahi is ready to trust him for the 21st time – for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of his creed.’
At a public meeting, Gandhi, cognisant of the predicament of his opponents, explained to the community that Smuts was under pressure from whites to limit Indian immigration, and that a voluntary registration would leave room for the state to treat all citizens equally. This way, Indians would not be bowing to force, which took away from their dignity. Voluntary registration would indicate to the state that the Indians would not bring other Indians into the Transvaal illegally and would place an obligation on the state to treat all equally.
When Gandhi and a few Satyagrahis were followed by Pathans, and later assaulted, the Pathans were arrested but Gandhi called for their release, saying he had no desire to prosecute them as they had acted in the belief that what they were doing was the right course.
‘Death is the appointed end of all life. To die by the hand of a brother, rather than by disease or in such other way, cannot be for me a matter of sorrow. And if, even in such a case, I am free from the thought of anger or hatred against my assailant, I know that that will redound to my eternal welfare, and even the assailant will later on realise my perfect innocence.’
On 16 August 1908 thousands of resisters met at the Hamidia Mosque, and more than 2000 registration documents were burnt in a large cauldron. Resisters also began engaging in other forms of resistance – trading without licenses and crossing over from one province to another without permits.
Perspective
On this note, whilst it is clear that such a passive resistance is not possible in the face of the harsh fascist regimes of the Turkish State, it is nonetheless an important stance. As criticized by the Peoples Leader, Abdullah Ocalan, hunger strikes are valuable actions but should only be resorted to, when there are no other means of meeting demands. In this sense, it is important for the Kurdish struggle that traditional methods are not exploited, and initiative is taken in other areas that may force the State to consider the demands of the people.
The Middle East has seen many vicious wars, and it seems so that this notion is trying to be normalized especially within the Kurdistan region, as instability equates to more interest and interference power to the imperialist forces, disguised as Police nations.
