Kardo Bokani
The news of Israeli’s raid on the Free Gaza Flotilla carrying pro-Palestinian activists reverberated all around the world and brought international criticism of Israel. Turkey was one of the countries who fiercely lambasted the raid and vowed to reduce economic ties as well as taking the case into International Criminal Court. Turkish premier warned Israelis of losing the best-friend. Turkish Foreign Minster gone even further and claimed that the attack was like 9/11 for Turkey. Although the use of violence in dealing with the activists who sought to break the siege of Gaza is something regrettable, nonetheless Turkey is a member of NATO and its sympathy for the Islamist Militants might run counter to the interests of the rest of NATO members. But Turkish policies has leaned on the Islamic tendencies since the Justice Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 and it seems that Turkey has started to dream of the days that Palestine was under the rule of Ottoman Empire. But how far the Turkish Free Gaza Campaign would go? To what extent the Palestinian people would believe in the support of a country who denies more than 20 million Kurds within its current borders??
Turkey denies an ancient nation such as the Kurds who are credited for the agricultural revolution in the Ancient Mesopotamia. The Kurds played a pioneering role in the domestication of animals and have greatly contributed to the history of the region but Turkey denies them and regards them as “savage Turks”. To what extent the Palestinian people would believe in the support of a State who has employed all the possible and inhumes methods in denying and suppressing the Kurds? Turkey has forbidden the use of Kurdish language in the public and now it wants to liberate Gaza? More than 1,500 Kurdish politicians who were working peacefully to promote Kurdish identity are being arbitrarily arrested with no trail, and now Turkey wants to free Gaza? More than 3,000 Kurdish children are in Turkish jails charged with the fraudulent and groundless accusation of “terrorism” and now Turkey claims to liberate Gaza?? Despite the fact the Kurdish resistance movement declared 6 unilateral ceasefires and called on Ankara to solve the Kurdish question in a peaceful democratic way but Turkey has unwaveringly pursued its old traditional methods of denying the Kurds and now it wants to liberate Gaza? This is a ridiculous claim that must be rejected with the strongest possible manner! Turkey can not deceive the public opinion as easy as it perceives.
David MacDowell (1996) the author of the Modern History of the Kurds tells us that; “the denials of the Kurds in Turkey are common place and the order of the day”. He adds on; “Turkey had unmistakably intended the genocide of the Kurdish people but in practice its intentions were defeated by the sheer size of the task…. policies of deportation, disarmament, and forced settlement of the Kurdish population by the Turkish government resembled the operation against the Armenians in 1915”. What is clear from the passage of MacDowell is that Turkey was intending to add Kurdish genocide to the Armenian genocide of 1915 in which over a million of Armenians were massacred. And in fact, having applied the definition of genocide to the Turkish massacres of the Kurds, I do strongly believe that Turkish military regime has committed and does commit genocide against the Kurds but it has been ignored by the international communities as well as the Western Powers who are only preoccupied with maintaining their political positions and enhancing their economic interests. Many Kurdish people were deported from the fertile part of Kurdistan, known as the Fertile Crescent in the ancient time, to uncultivated Western Anatolia where many perished. This is a shame for a state that has done its utmost to annihilate the Kurds and now seeks to free Gaza, Turkey must see its own Gaza first, or its claim for the freedom of Gaza would come under attacks and turn into mere falsification!
Turkish foreign Minster claims that the Killing of 9 Turks was like 9/11 attack for them. Killing of 9 Turks are seen by the Turkish authorities as worse as the fatal attack on Twin Towers but there is nothing wrong with the killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish people who struggle against the Turkish state terror. In the eyes of Turkish state, there is nothing wrong with Turkish war planes conducting regular bombardments of the Kurdish villages using lethal and chemical materials prohibited by the international laws. In the eyes of Turkish state there is nothing wrong when the Turkish armoured vehicle smashed and killed a 14 year old Kurdish girl, just few days ago, in a peaceful demonstration in the Kurdish city of Silopi, in which tens of Thousands of Kurdish people marched calling for peace. There is nothing wrong with the cultural genocide of the Kurdish people, nothing wrong with all these sufferings and inhume treatments of more than 20 million Kurds within Turkish current borders and at the same time Turkey seeks to liberate Gaza. There is nothing wrong with holding of Kurdish national leader in a solitary confinement for the last 11 years, and now Turkey wants to liberate Gaza. Turkey must see its own Gaza first, or no one would believe in his fraudulent and pretentious claim to free Gaza.
Kardo Bokani
07/06/2010