KURDISTAN
The cross-border attacks of the Turkish state, which has been bombing southern Kurdistan (Bashur) from the air at intervals since 1986, have stimulated an important discussion in the last 15 days. Especially on social media, a narrative that is constantly repeated by the political power in South Kurdistan is openly rejected. According to this official narrative – mostly told by the KDP (Kurdistan ‘Democratic’ Party) – the main reason for the Turkish air attacks on Bashur is the existence of the PKK. “The only way to stop these air attacks would be to end the existence of the PKK in Bashur”, they say. The civilians who are being bombarded jointly by the KDP and Turkish state, though, disagree.
According to the logic of the KDP, it is not those who turn a blind eye or even cooperate that are to blame for the fact that the Turkish state “walks freely” in Bashur with its army and secret service, but the PKK. It is not the aggressor, but the attacked side that is responsible. That a state which is hostile to Kurds carries out occupation and air operations outside its borders freely, but the existence of the PKK as a Kurdish resistance movement in Kurdistan is illegitimate.
Campaigns are often launched by the people of the south. With every operation launched by the fascist Turkish state, hundreds and thousands race to the free mountains and create walls of protection around the guerrillas. These walls are made up of young people who stand facing warplanes, knowing they may fall, but protecting the protectors of their land anyway. Their reason is clear: “Turkey doesn’t bomb the Kurds because the PKK exists. The PKK exists because Turkey bombs the Kurds.”
In the last few days, young people from Southern Kurdistan have started hashtag campaigns on Twitter, which made it to the worldwide list of trending topics and drew attention to the Turkish air raids on Kurds and Kurdistan. Despite all the manipulations of the Turkish state, which pursues a genocidal occupation policy against Kurds, the heads are clear in all four parts of Kurdistan. The clarity deepens parallel to every new Turkish attack on Bashur. Erdogan even threatened to censor social networks because of the campaigns conducted against the attacks in Kurdistan.
For this reason, the result from Turkey’s perspective is the opposite. For a while it assumed that attacks on civilians would channel the anger of the population against the PKK, while the anger of the people in Bashur, especially the youth, is increasingly directed at Turkey itself. At the moment this anger is prevented from spreading in the streets. After the massacre in Sheladize, the population there wanted to march to the Turkish military base, but was prevented from doing so by the security forces with violence. Likewise, people who wanted to protest in front of the Turkish consulate in Hewlêr (Erbil) after the air attack on Kunamasi were arrested yet before the action.
In southern Kurdistan, there is a growing awareness that Turkey is not only concerned about the PKK but that parts of Southern and Western Kurdistan should be occupied according to its nationalist ideology. This can be seen in the protests against the current attacks. Keywan Kawa, victim of the air raid on Kunamasi, has spoken to the press as follows: “If we civilians are not the target of the Turkish state, why did they attack only after the PJAK guerrillas approached us? Who is the terrorist? Am I a terrorist or is it the ones who turned my life into a tragedy with this air raid?”
On February 28, 1986, the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated in an armed attack while walking home from a movie theater with his wife. A witchhunt was launched against the Kurds, who were blamed for the death of the only socialist and democratic leader in Europe that supported the Kurds having the right to obtain their rights like the rest of the world. Of course, in doing so Olof aroused the displeasure of many European Nations, as well as the United States of America.
For over 30 years since the attack, Sweden, the United States, Turkey and other countries constantly fed the conspiracy that the Prime Minister was killed by the PKK, even though he was an ally to the Kurdish struggle and advocated for the rights of Kurdish people. The Turkish media went so far as to report the murder before its occurrence in its hunger to criminalise the PKK.
34 years later, on June 10th, 2020, the Chairman of the Investigation Committee into Palme’s murder, Christer Peterson, and Committee member Hans Malender held a press conference to announce the results of the investigations into the case. Peterson announced that the murderer is a member of the Right-Wing party called Stig Begstrom, and that the lawsuit was closed because the perpetrator was dead (the perpretarrator had died a decade ago at the time of the press conference).
This opened the way for the Turkish fascist state to escalate and legitimize its attacks against the Kurdish people. The Kurds were also criminalized, charged and subjected to genocidal attacks. This crime constituted an argument for escalating the attacks against the Kurds in Germany, France and other European Nations. Consequently, the PKK was classified as a terrorist organization, encouraging the Turkish state to start emptying the Kurdish villages openly, and escalating John Do crimes, committing massacres in Cizir, Sur, and Nusaybin, as well as massacring Fidan Doğan, Sakine Cansız and Leyla Şaylemezc in Paris in 2013. Thousands of Kurds in Europe were subjected to investigation and arrest and were fined as they were deprived of citizenship and residence rights. They were deported to the torturing hands of the Turkish state, all of which began with the killing of Olof Palme.
This criminalization and classification of the PKK as a terrorist organization is nothing more than a narrative created by the Turkish fascist state and the European states, with the support and endorsement of the United States. The Kurdish revolution, as well as the party which is the ideological basis of that revolution, are a threat to
the established capitalist order and the movement for an alternative to that system cannot be accepted within these nation states. This escalation of attacks against the Kurdish people has been a real step toward the physical,
political and ideological extermination of the revolutionary mentality that is advancing every day throughout Kurdistan and beyond.
The real terrorists are those who commit genocide, torture political prisoners, murder political opponents, occupy territories, deny rights to exist, etc.
European nations, as well as the United States, do not take a position on the atrocities committed by groups affiliated with the Turkish state that occupy the territories of Afrin and Idlib in Syria. There are countless atrocities committed in these places, among them the abduction of people (especially young women, to serve as sex slaves), murder, torture, and more.
