GUNAYSU: YES, PEACE, BUT BETWEEN WHOM, FOR WHAT, AND IN WHAT CONTEXT?
By Ayse Gunaysu
May 8, 2013
The Armenian Weekly April 2013 Magazine
Is it true? Are things really changing in Turkey, the land of
genocides, pogroms, repression, and a prolonged war for the past 30
years with its own Kurdish citizens? Is the war that has claimed more
than 40,000 lives–mostly Kurdish–in Turkish Kurdistan really coming
to an end? Is this nightmare, which has played out not only in the
mountains but also in cities and towns, almost over, allowing for a
normal life–a life that children and adults under 30 have never known?
A Kurdish flag during the Newroz celebrations this year. (Photo
by Gulisor Akkum) These were the questions crucial not only for
the Kurdish people’s future in Turkey, but also for everyone who
demanded real democracy, the full observance of human rights, equality,
justice–in short, a better life to live. For us, the success of the
Kurds’ struggle meant the opening of the road that would lead us all
to a more promising future.
But now, everything seems blurred and vague. It is as if we are walking
on a tightrope and, at any moment, we can fall into a bottomless
abyss. PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s recent statements during the
negotiations and, ultimately, his letter read out loud during the
Newroz celebrations were a disappointment for many.
During the civil war, Newroz meant the violent intervention of security
forces, sometimes with firearms, sometimes with tear gas and water
cannons, causing deaths and injuries. It was a time of military raids
in towns and rural villages, a time when villagers were arrested
en masse and taken away, when civilians were killed during military
operations. Kurdish human rights fighters, lawyers, and journalists
were kidnapped and found dead by the roadside, and sometimes not found
at all. During these years, more than 3,000 villages were evacuated
and burned down. More than 3 million Kurds had to leave their homes
and migrate to nearby towns and cities, totally helpless, jobless,
unable to earn a living. Forests were set on fire by the soldiers. The
whole landscape turned into a desert–a bare land with ghostly images
of destroyed villages, with the remains of houses blackened by fire.
Newroz, in those years, was invariably associated with brutality and
loss of human lives. It was during the Newroz celebrations of 1992
that nearly 140 civilians were killed and hundreds of others injured
following then attack of the security forces on demonstrators, and
the subsequent operations–accompanied by bombings–carried out in
the province of Å~^ırnak and its district Cizre. Those nightmarish
“celebrations” were followed by a large wave of Kurdish immigration
to nearby cities.
Hopes for peace
This year’s Newroz celebrations were held in dramatically different
circumstances. The so-called “Peace
Process” had started; negotiations with Ocalan, who had been isolated
in prison for 14 years, were ongoing. Deputies of the Peace and
Democracy Party (BDP) visited him twice. Letters between Ocalan and
the PKK headquarters in Qandil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, were exchanged.
The celebrations everywhere, both in a number of western provinces,
including Istanbul, and in the Kurdish provinces, particularly
in Diyarbakir, were spectacular. It was for the first time a real
celebration with enthusiastic festivities. Hundreds of thousands
of people came together, with women dressed in bright colors, and
children dancing and singing joyously.
All were waiting for Ocalan’s letter to be read out loud in Kurdish
and Turkish. He would make his final statement, the outcome of his
“peace” talks with government authorities, in his cell.
In addition to the Kurds, and since the defeat of the Turkish left by
military rule in 1980, veteran socialists and communists, and others
who stood for democracy, human rights, and freedom, had all set their
hopes on the Kurds’ struggle against the establishment in Turkey. It
was because the Kurdish political movement had done something that the
Turkish left had always dreamed of, but never achieved, during its long
years of struggle. The Kurdish political movement had mobilized masses
of ordinary people, both in rural and urban areas, and integrated
them into the struggle. It was this struggle that made it possible
for the forces of democracy in Turkey to make progress–no matter
how modest–in freedom of speech. It was not a coincidence that the
Armenian Genocide started to be discussed in Turkey during the years
of the Kurdish insurgency–an insurgency that could not be defeated
in 30 years by the Turkish Armed Forces, Europe’s biggest and the
world’s 8th biggest army, second only to that of the U.S. in NATO.
Ocalan calls for withdrawal
When Ocalan’s letter was read in Diyarbakir–before an audience
of hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million–declaring a
cease-fire and instructing PKK guerrillas to withdraw beyond the
borders, it was clear Ocalan was aware of the criticism against
his statements in the minutes of his meeting BDP deputies during the
“peace” process leaked to the press which resonated an overt antagonism
towards non-Muslim peoples of Asia Minor. So he was careful to include
Armenians and other peoples making up the Anatolian population in
the scope of his endeavor to bring peace to the country.
In the aforementioned meeting with the BDP deputies, Ocalan had,
for instance, referred to the “Armenian lobby” as a force that,
historically, has never wanted peace in Anatolia. “The Armenian lobby
is powerful. They want to dominate the agenda of 2015,” he had said.
The Kurds were marginalized during the creation of the Turkish
Republic as a consequence of the efforts of the “Israeli lobby, the
Armenians, and the Greeks, who had decided that their success would
depend on marginalizing the Kurds,” he continued. “This is an ongoing,
thousand-year tradition.” He had added, “After the Islamization of
Anatolia, there has been Christian anger that has lasted a thousand
years. Greeks, Armenians, and Jews claim rights to Anatolia. They
don’t want to give up their gains under the pretext of secularism
and nationalism.”
Despite some references to Armenians and other non-Muslims, Ocalan’s
Newroz letter–full of enthusiastic rhetoric about peace, fraternity,
the peaceful coexistence of peoples of different beliefs and ethnicity,
and a new era of peace–was no consolation to those of us who demand
real justice in this country.
Muslim brotherhood brings chilling memories to mind
The most alarming aspect of the letter was its emphasis on Islamic
brotherhood, a brotherhood that saw the death, agony, plunder, and
annihilation of the Christian children of Asia Minor. His reference
to the Turks’ and Kurds’ “historical agreement of fraternity and
solidarity under the flag of Islam” sounded like an ominous prophecy.
His praise of the so-called “Liberation War” of Turkey, which was, in
fact, the continuation of the genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and
Anatolian Greeks, was a perfect echo of the Turkish official mindset.
“During World War I, Turkish and Kurdish soldiers fell together
as martyrs in the Dardanelles. They fought together in Turkey’s
Independence War, and together opened the 1920 National Assembly. What
our mutual past shows is the mutual necessity of forming our future
together. The spirit of the 1920 National Assembly enlightens the
upcoming era,” he said. What he doesn’t mention is that the spirit
of 1920 was a genocidal spirit that was determined to complete the
annihilation process of Christians and also to repress Kurdish national
identity with bloodshed.
The result is that now, people in Turkey who stand for human rights,
democracy, and peace are forced to choose between one of two evils:
Either be presented as one who does not want peace, or support
something that may be reconciliation between Kurds and Turks but not
real peace for all in Turkey.
Is Ocalan a true respresentative?
I know and respect millions of Kurdish people’s devotion to their
leader Ocalan. But I also know that Ocalan and the politically
conscious Kurdish people, as well as some sections of Kurdish political
movement are not one and the same. There is the Kurdish political
movement, with its political party, its armed units in the mountains,
and the millions who protest courageously at the risk of being shot;
and there is Ocalan, who has been confined to a solitary cell for 14
years, disconnected from realities on the ground.
After all, it is the Kurdish people who lost family members in unsolved
murders; who cried after their children joined the guerrilla movement,
and were later found dead, half burnt, with their eyes scratched out;
and who stood totally armless against tanks and panzers in revolt
against repression. And it is the guerrilla fighters who put their
lives at risk for so many years in the mountains.
Karayılan, one of the chief commanders of the PKK, in an interview
with the journalist Hasan Cemal, repeatedly confirmed that while they
are loyal to their leader, they had some reservations: “There will
be no withdrawal without the state doing its share.”
“Mid-level command elements especially have some concerns; we have
to persuade them.”
“Yesterday I talked with 250 mid-level people. They say, ‘We came
here to wage war, and we’ve been here for 10 years. We’ve come to
the point of accomplishing a result, then you ask us to stop.'”
“At this point, leader Apo [Ocalan] should get involved in the
persuasion process, and for this reason direct contact between Ocalan
and the Qandil headquarters should be established.”
Karayılan’s criticism of the BDP co-chair, Selahattin DemirtaÅ~_,
was very unusual. DemirtaÅ~_ had recently said that 99 percent of the
armed campaign of the PKK was over, and that the resolution of the
remaining one percent was up to the government. “This is a shallow
approach by the BDP,” commented Karayılan. “This shows that they
cannot comprehend the retreat process in depth. Complete finalization
of the armed campaign is not such a simple issue.”
Kurds: both perpetrators and victims
Now the crucial point: Many local Kurds in Western Armenia, not only
the chieftains but also ordinary villagers, were, alongside with the
Turks and other Muslim peoples, the perpetrators of the genocide of the
Armenians and Assyrians. They were not only “tools” that were “used”
by the Progress and Union Committee (CUP), as some of the Kurdish
political leaders have put it; in many places and in many instances,
they were quite conscious of what they were doing. They were not the
decision-makers but the implementers, unaware that soon they would
fall victim to, and be forced to revolt against, their accomplices in
the genocide–the successors of the same ruling power they cooperated
with in exterminating their Christian neighbors.
The history of the Turkish Republic is the history of Kurdish
uprisings and their violent repression through bloodshed. The last
uprising, which was the longest, was not based purely on nationalistic
aspirations, but involved leftist, even Marxist, elements, with much
emphasis on freedom, equality, and human rights, not only for Kurds but
for all in Turkey. And it was the first and longest-lasting radical
opposition movement in the history of the Republic, and was not only
able to undermine at least the ideological and moral supremacy of the
establishment, but also to challenge with some success the “invincible”
domestic image of the Turkish military.
Those in the Turkish media, then, who criticized Abdullah Ocalan’s
statements, both in the meeting minutes and his letter of cease-fire,
were calling on the Kurdish opposition to not enter into a deceitful
truce with this system of annihilation and denial.
Can they also be peacemakers?
Of course, the responsibility rests on the shoulders of the Kurdish
oppositionists to lead the way for the acknowledgment of the Kurdish
people’s complicity in the genocide of the Christian peoples of
Anatolia–the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks–and take steps toward
the restitution of the immense losses they suffered.
Without fulfilling this responsibility, the Kurdish side of the
conflict cannot possibly pave the way for, and urge the Turkish
state to agree to, a real peace–the ultimate sovereignty of justice
throughout the country.
The Kurds are both perpetrators and victims, the victim of their own
comrade-in-arms during the genocide. In order to be the peacemakers
now, they must refuse Ocalan’s offer of a so-called “peace” between
Turks and Kurds based on the common denominator of Islamic brotherhood,
the driving force behind the genocide.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/05/08/gunaysu-yes-peace-but-between-whom-for-what-and-in-what-context/