Ayesha Kazmi,
2011 marked the shift many Middle East observers had been anticipating.
Since their formation, nations stretching between the Maghreb and beyond the
Levant have endured decades of authoritarian rule. Mohamed Bouazizi¹s self
immolation within the last year in Tunisia was the ground breaking spark
producing an unprecedented defiance to the status quo and has since made
revolutionary language requisite to discourse all over the Muslim world a
much needed air of refreshing change.
As protesters demanded fair elections, freedom of speech and expression, and
an end to emergency laws, police brutality, and corruption, the world
watched the Arab Spring unfold with exhilaration as the Middle East began
the process of reinventing itself. Irrespective of the incompleteness of the
Egyptian revolution, the fall of Hosni Mubarak¹s regime has symbolised a
transformation for Egyptian self determination, and with it an opportunity
for the Egyptian people to demand accountability from their Israeli
neighbours with regards to Palestine.
While subsequent revolutions have provided a necessary breach to inspect the
crises plaguing the Muslim World, critically bringing the Palestinian
question to the forefront, there remains a harrowing gap in the conversation
with regards to the Kurdish question.
Almost 100 years since the failure of the Treaty of Sevres to allocate a
Kurdistan for the Kurdish peoples, the absolute silence from the world,
particularly the Muslim world, with regards to the treatment of ethnic Kurds
in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and, most notably, Turkey, is bewildering.
Since, 30 million Kurds in the Kurdish region of the Middle East have been
subjected to invasive military incursions and restrictions assaulting basic
rights of movement due to international borders between the Turkish, Syrian,
Iraqi and Iranian states, speaking their native language, and even
expressing their culture. Kurdish activists, academics, and journalists are
frequently imprisoned, tortured or killed.
Most repressive toward its Kurdish population is Turkey where the largest
region of Kurdistan lies, approximately 15 million Kurds reside, and yet the
constitution makes no recognition nor provides any protection to this rather
substantial minority. Instead, Kurds have been turned into second class
citizens barred from using their own language and suffering discrimination
of the worst kind in the public space and complete economic
disenfranchisement, resulting in criminalisation of the worst kind equating
resistance with terrorism. Under the guise of this terrorism threat, the
Turkish state has built up an extensive military complex with an arsenal
that includes F-16 jets and its most recent addition, predator drones.
In a public meeting hosted by Hywel Williams MP at the British Parliament in
London, the co-chair of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP),
Selahattin Demirtash, clarified that the standpoint of the Turkish/EU/US
designated terrorist organisation, Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), is that
violence is unlikely to resolve the Kurdish question. Demirtash further
elucidated Kurdish demands stating that the Turkish state must recognise the
Kurdish identity by also legalising the use of the language, provide
Turkey¹s Kurds the right to democratic autonomy in the Kurdish regions
including the right to politically organise. These are hardly revolutionary
demands.
Audience members of Kurdish origin expressed frustration over attempts to
lobby the British Parliament and the failure of MPs to take up the cause.
Others criticised Recep Tayyip Erdogan¹s Islamic reform government alleging
it was as nationalistic and authoritarian as previous secular governments.
Certainly within the Muslim world, Erdogan¹s government has been received as
the moderate peace negotiator given its recent shifting relationship with
Israel, its position on Gaza, and Ankara¹s criticisms of Syria¹s brutal
crackdown on recent democratic protests. Yet the Muslim world¹s virtual
non-recognition of the Kurdish crisis is remarkably incongruous with its
persistent position on the deadly nature of western military expansion in
the region particularly with regards to Palestine.
Given Muslim concern for Muslim life, also taking into account that Kurds
make up a significant part of the Sunni majority in the Muslim world, why is
it that certain victims of military aggression in the Middle East are more
noteworthy than others? The Muslim world¹s non-recognition of the Kurdish
crisis is tinged with a dark underbelly of criminalisation that has bred an
exceptional hostility consenting to the systemic racism and violence
targeting of ethnic Kurds most recently in the Roboski massacre when the
Turkish Air Force flew F-16¹s into a Kurdish village and killed 35,
including children as young as 12.
Perhaps Noam Chomsky¹s analysis of worthy versus unworthy victims elucidates
it best. ³A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in
enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater
severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy,² states Chomsky.
In this case, the existential threat posed by western expansion, including
Zionism, into the Muslim world, and the victims that western military
incursions produce, are the worthy victims, whereas Kurds, who are the
victims at the hands of their very own people, will be treated as unworthy.
Full scale acceptance by the Muslim world of the brutality aimed at Kurds is
disquieting. Given that the four main states that house the Middle East¹s
Kurdish population are also the very states that explicitly reject Zionist
expansionism and Israeli treatment of Palestinians is even more baffling.
The Middle East is in the midst of a brand new era in which their crises are
propelling their way to the surface. Let us hope for a real genuine
revolution for all peoples in which the will, self determination, and
democratic representation for all is given equal priority and an even more
equal fight.
Ayesha Kazmi is a specialist in UK anti-terrorism policy at London-based Cageprisoners. She has written for The Guardian and for the American Civil Liberties Union Privacy Matters site. She blogs at AmericanPaki. Follow her on Twitter @AyeshaKazmi.