BEHDÎNAN – PKK Executive Committee member Duran Kalkan pointed out the importance of the struggle for mentality in an article for the website PKK-Online, saying: “It is imperative to put the revolution of mentality at the forefront of everything that To treat personality revolution on this basis, to base the revolutionary struggle against genocide on the revolution of mentality, to develop all processes of party organization, dissemination and guerrilla on the basis of the revolution of mentality.”
The first part of the translation of Duran Kalkan’s article reads as follows:
The Chairman says: “To open a society to exploitation, one must deprive it of politics and morals”.The main way to deprive them of politics and morals is to destroy the mentality. The core of the destruction of society by capitalist modernity is the destruction of mentality. The essence of cultural genocide is also the destruction of mentality. Cultural genocide is no different. Therefore, in order to oppose the cultural genocide, in order to be able to fight it, it is possible first of all to overcome the destruction of mentality, to fight against the destruction of mentality, to create one’s own mentality. In order to wage war, make politics, form an organization, engage in education, it is first necessary to build a mentality. For this reason, the development of mentality is at the beginning of every development.
This is not the case: people created material developments and then realized what they had done. The step of doing something new and the understanding are intertwined, together, in parallel. The Chairman says: “The moment man picked up the stick, he had the thought of what it meant”. A development of thought had begun. Therefore, human beings as a species are distinguished from other species by their ability to think. Therefore, the power of thought differs from other species, as does the construction of mentality. If he does not have his own mentality construction, he does not exist as a human being. In this context, mentality formation must be emphasized.
Real socialism did not form society, it did not endow people with a socialist mentality. With economic reductionism and laws, they said, “We develop communalism” and got people to engage in economic production and sharing, but people didn’t understand what they were doing and why they were doing it and as the real socialism collapsed, nobody claimed it.
As soon as it came to power, the Kemalist movement put an emphasis on education and established schools everywhere. They labeled all educational institutions outside the state as the biggest reactionaries and violently repressed them. They banned madrasas (religious schools) and educational institutions. Now they spend most of their budget on education. They do this because they love humans so much, no, she does it to create a human system that serves them. In this way they create people who are open to all kinds of exploitation, who are totally enslaved and dependent on the state. The way there leads through the development of a mentality. That’s why they opened so many schools. Nothing else works in Kurdistan, the only thing that works are schools.
Everything was forbidden before 1960, but after the 1960s, Kurdish children began to be admitted to universities. The Kurds did not attend the schools that existed during the Ottoman period. The Turkish Republic tied everything to the school to create a mentality. Crèches and kindergartens are opened before the schools. If the state loves children very much, it loves women very much, no, it does this in order to give the children a mentality according to its own standards before they have learned anything. She does this to free women from children, to let them work and to exploit them.
Initially, the chairman viewed this situation as “intellectual colonialism”. The chairman calls this “mind-destroying” . In that sense it is very important to break the mentality. Language studies are carried out, but language studies that are not based on mentality are unsuccessful, they have no meaning. Therefore, it is necessary to have a good understanding of the cultural and mental genocide.
Why is cultural genocide so effective? It is obvious that it is happening because it is destroying the mentality of society. A certain pressure is exerted on the village, people rush to the metropolis, to the center of the enemy. They put pressure on them and put them in schools. No matter what the Turkish Republic does in Kurdistan, if nobody had emigrated, colonialism would not have taken hold and Kurdish society would not have become like this. If no family had sent their children to Turkish schools, the Turkish state would not have been able to commit such genocide. Why do people leave their country so easily? Why do people throw their children into the arms of power that threatens to destroy it? This situation is due to a mental breakdown. Desperation comes from lack of organization and powerlessness. Fainting is also a consequence of thoughtlessness, the collapse of mentality. They don’t give their rights to themselves, but to their opponents. They don’t see their own interests and their future, they see the interests of the enemy. The chairman said that“the worst way that a human species can be treated is to render it incapable of thinking and planning for its own future” . The chairman described this as the worst form of cultural genocide. This is also a spiritual genocide.
You can’t say: “The world is already becoming a village, there are so many interdependencies, integration is taking place, let’s integrate too!” Because the world does not accept the Kurd, they say: “You can only be a slave”. One cannot have a free and equal relationship with others without being oneself. National freedom is a must to join them and form a democratic nation. This is based on a free mentality and the power of thought. Therefore, this power of thinking must be well developed. Behind the failures in practice, behind the attitudes that are narrowed in style and tactics, that are blocked, that cannot be creative, that make mistakes that cannot show any will, behind all these attitudes lies the destruction of the mentality and the destruction of thought. We see this as the best approach. We have to learn from that and make the change and correction from here.
The party became such an organization through education. If the guerrillas can reach such a level that they can fight on the line of the Fedaî, it means that the Fedaî is first developed in the mentality, it is based on the building of the mentality. This is achieved through education. The fact that the guerrilla can fight self-sacrificingly at this level shows the importance and role of mindset education.
Rêber APO said: “Whoever is not with us in heart and mind cannot trade with us”. The practice of those whose mentality and emotions do not agree with the Party is not that of the Party either, it does not serve the Party. No matter how much he works, what mentality he belongs to, his feelings, his mentality and his actions only serve that mentality. Therefore, in order to serve the Party, proper and sufficient mentality and thinking power are required. You have to understand, know and believe what you are doing. The enemy is smashing the social fabric, building schools and doing everything to destroy them so that he can open society to genocide. Therefore, problems of mentality are essential.
Proper becoming a party means joining the Chairman on the level of unity of spirit. This is achieved through the unity of mentality and the development of mentality. This cannot be realized with material means. The way to become a party on the line of the chairman, to establish complete unity and integrity, is to understand the chairman correctly and to adhere to him correctly. This is only possible if one has the mental strength to understand the Chairman correctly.
If we approach the Party organization in this way, if everyone strives in this way, then there will be strong unity, integrity and development, and things will be done right and successfully. The approach to chairing is proper understanding and successful implementation. This must be done in a form that leads the leader to victory and develops creative practice, organization and action for him. This is the right militancy, this is the right Welatparêzî.
THE LEVEL THAT THE STATE HAS REACHED WITH THE NATIONAL STATE IS THE LEVEL OF SPECIAL WAR
The level that the state has reached with the nation-state is the level of special warfare, indeed a level of genocide and social destruction. It’s not just about sovereignty and exploitation, but about a genocide of society that goes beyond that. This is developed through the domination of the entire society by the nation-state. This is achieved by structuring and dominating people’s mentality and emotions through the media and art. So the destruction of society is not only through material means, oppression, exploitation and hunger. It also develops in the world of spirit, feelings and thoughts. It also takes place in the material and metaphysical sphere. A new state of slavery has emerged who is totally state-oriented and state-related, unable to think outside the state and worship the state. The problem of the state, the problem of power, is a problem that has grown to this extent today. For a while they ostensibly arose with the claim of solving problems, they should better organize the development, production and distribution of the surplus product, but by force and cunning they divided it up in their own system and extorted it from society as a tax , established their own system and have become a source of trouble. In this way, they got to a point where instead of solving the problems, they magnified and amplified them. The nation-state, on the other hand, has raised this to the level of destroying society and has become the fundamental problem.
Rêber APO said very clearly that “neither nature nor the nature of society can endure this state system”. That point has now been reached. Because of this, nature is constantly abused and slavery is preached to society. By destroying society through massacres, oppression and exploitation by the media, and by breaking up organizations, everything related to society is being destroyed. (…) If society is consumed in this way, on what basis will the state exist, it cannot exist and in that case it develops its own destruction. The essence of the state today is the same as it was at the beginning, but its scope and methods have changed greatly, it dominates society and it is necessary to see the expanded state of the problem in this way.
With capitalist modernity, with the nation-state, the problems have become much larger and more generalized, yes, they have gone beyond a social problem and have reached a level that is breaking up society, destroying it and dealing with the completion and 24-hour clock destroying society. This is a very dangerous situation. There is no other way to understand the state. There are many aspects that the nation-state invented for its own survival. These too must be uncovered. They identify the state with the homeland, they identify the state with the nation, they identify it with language, identity and history. A society is not defined by its name, but by the name of the state. They say ‘United Nations’ but in reality there is no such thing as ‘United Nations’, it is states. We see that very well in the war we are waging. There is no Turkish state, it is the Anatolian branch of the state system organized by the United Nations. They keep her alive at this level.
Sequel to follow…
