Hurriyet, Turkey
July 21 2013
The Rojava, the PYD, and the state’s ‘chronic Kurdish allergy’
by Cengiz Candar
[Translated from Turkish]
Who has contributed more to Kurdish music than [Armenian-origin
folksinger] Aram Tigran[yan], I wonder? It is true that he was born in
Al-Qamishli, the biggest Kurdish town in Syria, in 1934, but he was
the child of a family from Diyarbakir that had fled the genocide in
1915 and migrated to there. During his life, he put out 11 albums. He
sang 230 songs in Kurmanji, 150 in Arabic, and 10 in Assyrian
(Aramaic). He was a true child of Mesopotamia. His origins were as a
Diyarbakir Armenian and a Syrian Kurd. He was an immortal figure in
the Kurdish culture of Turkey.
Why, when he died in 2009, the state did not permit him to be buried
in Diyarbakir, is incomprehensible. But even if he has no grave in
Diyarbakir, he today has a statue in Silvan.
[Armenian-origin folksinger] Karapete Xaco[yan] was born in a village
of Batman at the very beginning of the 1900s. In 1915, thanks to
someone who spared his life, he found himself as a child in
Al-Qamishli. He lived in Syria until 1946, and afterwards, until his
death in 2005, in Yerevan. He worked on the Kurdish radio station. He
was a great voice and collector of dengbej [traditional Kurdish bard]
music. The overwhelming majority of Kurds consider him to be a Kurd.
[Kurdish rock singer] Ciwan Haco is known directly as a Syrian Kurd.
He was born in Al-Qamishli in 1957. He is an extraordinarily popular
voice in Kurdish rock music. He has come to Turkey numerous times, and
the earth virtually shook in the Kurdish regions. He is a Kurd, a
citizen of Syria, born in Al-Qamishli, but his roots are in Mardin. He
is the child of a Kurdish family that had fled following the Shaykh
Said rebellion. After all, where is Al-Qamishli? It is just next door
to the Nusaybin district of Mardin province. Between them is a
railroad invented as the border line between Turkey and Syria by the
French following the First World War.
The same railroad separates Karkamis from Jarablus, the Mursitpinar
border gate of Suruc from Kobani [Ayn al-Arab], Akcakale from Til
Abyad, and Ceylanpinar from Serekaniye [Ra’s al-Ayn]. Amudah is
visible from Mardin. Whether Derbesiye [Al-Darbasiyah] is closer to
Kiziltepe or to Senyurt is debatable. Just a short distance from Cizre
is Derik [Al-Malikiyah].
There is a border formed by a railroad, and there are two countries
given two different names, but it is the same people living on both
sides of the border. For this reason, the language of the Kurds living
along the border in Turkey does not refer to Syria, nor does that of
the Kurds in Syria refer to Turkey. They speak of the other side
either as “bin xat” [Kurdish: “below the line”] or as “ser xat”
[“above the line”]. “Below the line” or “above the line.” The “line”
is the railroad line. The situation that [poet] Ahmet Arif described
in Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim [“Fetters Worn Out by Longing”],
saying “we never became reconciled to passports,” was in terms of
“below and above the line.”
So now, when a “Kurdish flag” has been seen on a macaroni processing
plant in Serekaniye, just a stone’s throw from Ceylanpinar, what is
all this commotion?
Why does the Prime Ministerial Adviser and Ankara Parliamentary Deputy
[Yalcin Akdogan] (who has, in general, spent a major portion of his
political career in making statements threatening the Kurds)
immediately feel the need to leap to his pen and make a statement that
“the PYD [Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party] is playing with
fire”?
According to Yalcin Akdogan, “the developments on the Syrian border
have gradually begun to constitute a different national security
problem for Turkey,” and Turkey cannot simply ignore this situation.
What would it supposedly do? That, he does not say. But the language
is very openly the “language of threat.” Directed against whom?
Against the Syrian Kurds, naturally. Against the Syrian Kurds, who
have their roots in Turkey. Let no one say “no, not against them, but
against the PYD.” In the environment of violence in Syria, is there
any other “representative” authority other than the PYD (or the
Kurdish High Council, which it dominates) that protects the Kurds and
provides “self-administration” in the Kurdish towns?
He also declares Turkey’s “principle” with regard to Syria: “Turkey
defends the rights of all the groups in Syria, including the Kurds.
Movements that disregard the other groups and seek to establish
domination over them destroy this basis of rights.”
Very nice. Well, then, when “Salafist-Islamist” forces like Al-Nusrah,
which is a derivative of Al-Qa’idah, or the Liwa al-Faruq, or the
Ahrar al-Sham, attacked Serekaniye on numerous occasions since last
year, did Yalcin Akdogan make statements expressing such concerns even
once?
He did not. The issue, it is plainly clear, pertains to the Kurds’
establishing administrations in the Kurdish regions.
Also, why did Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, when the PYD
administration was established in Kobani on 19 July last year, rush
off to Arbil a week after the agreement signed among the Syrian Kurds
in Arbil under the aegis of [Iraqi Kurdistan Regional President]
Mas’ud Barzani, and even though he met with various Kurdish
personalities in Arbil, why did he refuse to meet with PYD
[Co-]Chairman Salih Muslim?
Why does the same Ahmet Davutoglu, on the first anniversary of the
“Rojava [Kurdish for “west”, referring to West, i.e., Syrian,
Kurdistan] Revolution,” ring the alarm bells now that the Al-Nusrah
forces have been expelled from Serekaniye (Ra’s al-Ayn] and feel the
need to speak as follows?:
“Henceforth, the most efficacious methods will be taken against every
sort of threat to our border security, no matter from what group or
with what rationale it might come, and there will be immediate
responsea¦ Indeed, there is an extremely fractious and high-tension
state of war in Syria. The effort to create any new fait accompli or
de facto situation would increase this fragility, and would cause even
more negative consequences to come about.”
Sentences that, on paper, appear quite true. Well, then, why was the
same sensitivity never evidenced or expressed when Islamist armed
organizations of the Al-Qa’idah type, such as Al-Nusrah, seized some
border points in “the north of Syria”?
PYD Co-chairman Salih Muslim, in the interview published in
yesterday’s Taraf, after telling [journalist] Amberin Zaman that
“there is no impression that Turkey is currently supporting
Al-Nusrah,” said the following:
“But some border crossings are still under their control. Such as the
Akcakale and Karkamis border gates. Turkey is happy with this.”
If this is the case, and if when the Syrian Kurds hoist a flag in a
border town that belongs to them, even though we have not heard any
“declaration of dissatisfaction” on this issue from any official
spokesman, we try to get all of Turkey up in arms, and as if that were
not enough the UN Security Council as well, then it means the Turkish
state’s “Kurdish allergy” continues.
The following, from a statement to ANF [Firat News Agency] by KCK
[Assembly of Communities of Kurdistan] Executive Council member Sahin
Cilo on the occasion of the “19 July Revolution,” drew my attention:
“It is a question of an administration that has been forming for the
past year in the Rojava, and this can be assessed as the most
democratic administration in the Middle East. This system and
administration have succeeded in protecting the Rojava as the safest
area in the region. With destruction taking place in Syria, there is a
secure environment here. This, in and of itself, constitutes a model
for the peoples of Syria. But the regional and international forces
are implementing their policies of slander against this, and at the
same time are engaging in attacks against it.”
The same situation, and the exact same process, also obtained starting
in the 1990s and during the first 9 years of the 2000s in “the north
of Iraq,” that is, South Kurdistan. Now, the behaviour shown during
that period towards the Iraqi Kurds is being shown towards the
“Rojava”, that is, the “West.”
As a strange twist of fate, the Iraqi Kurds are these days Ankara’s
closest friends. And the Syrian Kurds as well – which in comparison to
the Iraqi Kurds are more intimately connected to the Kurds of Turkey –
will in the future be such close friends as well.
Let us not forget that the PYD and the Kurdish political movement in
Turkey (the PKK [Kurdistan People’s Congress, KGK] and the BDP [Peace
and Democracy Party]) are like two sides of the same coin. When BDP
mayors are seen as normal in various sections of Turkey, there should
be nothing in Syrian Kurdish towns’ coming under the administration of
the PYD that would upset Turkey.
Moreover, for Ankara to have positive and confident relations with the
PYD would be one of the greatest guarantees of Turkey’s “Peace and
Solution Process” reaching its goal.
[Translated from Turkish]