Kurdish rebels are ready to return to NorthernKurdistan from Southern Kurdistan, unless Ankara resuscitates their peace process soon. Accusing Turkey of waging a proxy war against Kurds in Syria by backing Islamist rebels fighting them in the north, Cemil Bayik declares PKK has the right to retaliate.
Bayik, the group's most senior figure at liberty, speaks at a small, heavily guarded house in the Qandil Mountain range in Southern Kurdistan, a badge featuring jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan pinned to a pocket on his guerilla uniform.
Bayik points out that while his side has abided by the ceasefire, Turkey had simply moved the frontline in its fight against Kurds to Syria, where civil war has raged for more than two years.
Ankara and influential Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen are recruiting and training Islamist bandit groups to fight Kurds in Syria on their behalf. At a time when the Turkish government is helping the bandit groups and is waging a war on the people of West Kurdistan, it is the right of the Kurdish people to bring the fight to Turkey. If the Turkish government wants to insist on fighting, North Kurdistan is the field of war.
Some Kurds from Syria who had previously fought with the PKK in Turkey had returned home of their own volition, and young Kurds in Turkey increasingly felt compelled to go to Syria and fight there.
On the road twisting steeply up into the Qandil mountains, PKK fighters with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders wave trucks and cars through checkpoints that demarcate their territory from the rest of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The rebel-controlled enclave sits uneasily within Iraqi Kurdistan, a quasi-state rich in hydrocarbons which has recently cultivated close ties with energy-hungry Turkey.
PKK has nothing against Iraqi Kurdistan developing good relations with Ankara, as long as they were based on equality, freedom, and democracy. Turkey used to fight with South Kurdistan on the field, but now they want to win the war from inside the castle.
Turkey got Patriot missiles from NATO, pretending defense against Syria, but the real purpose is the war against Kurdistan. Turks and Kurds lock horns over Northern Kurdistan. Kurdistan will eventually become an independent nation. Kurdish people are definitely a nation deserving of a sovereign homeland out of the territories where Kurdish people form a majority. Currently, these territories lie in northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey, and northeastern Syria.
Twenty million Kurds live in Northern Kurdistan occupied by Turkey, ten million in Eastern Kurdistan occupied by Iran, seven million in Southern Kurdistan occupied by Iraq, and three million in Western Kurdistan occupied by Syria. The wish of forty million Kurds cannot be ignored by civil society. Support an independent Kurdistan now. Viva Kurdistan!
Six thousand people, mostly women and children, were killed when Iraqi jets dropped poison gas on Halabja. Many others died later of cancer and other illnesses, and the legacy of chemical contamination persists. The attack on Halabja on 16 March 1988 was the most notorious act of chemical warfare in modern times. The contamination passed into the soil, the water, and the gene pool, with abnormal numbers of children born with genetic malformations. The two men directly responsible, Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, Chemical Ali, were hanged in 2006 and 2010.
The atrocity at Halabja scarred the collective memory of Kurds and hardened their determination to run their own affairs. The Kurdish army is fighting for an autonomous Kurdistan. Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of Kurds, was betrayed by the government of Greece, and Ocalan was captured in Kenya in 1999, while being transferred from the Greek embassy to the airport of Nairobi, in a coordinated operation of the intelligence services of Turkey, USA, and Israel. Ocalan is imprisoned on Imrali island in the Marmara Sea south of Istanbul.
Disappearances and extrajudicial executions have emerged as new and disturbing patterns of human rights violations by the Turkish state. Turkey is also using chemical and biological weapons against the Kurdish army and indignants.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), fights to liberate Northern Kurdistan, which forms the south-eastern part of Turkey. It is dominated by high peaks rising to over 3,700 meters and arid mountain plateaux, forming part of the arc of the Taurus Mountains. The occupation of Northern Kurdistan is opposed by all Kurds, and has resulted in a long-running separatist conflict in which fifty thousand lives have been lost.
Northern Kurdistan saw several major Kurdish rebellions. These were forcefully put down by the Turkish authorities and the region was declared a closed military area. The use of Kurdish language was outlawed, the words Kurds and Kurdistan were erased from dictionaries and history books, and the Kurds were only referred to as Mountain Turks!
As Syria's crisis deepens, Western Kurdistan occupied by Syria, is now liberated. Syrian Kurdish groups have formed a de facto state in the north of Syria. The Kurdish army took control of several provinces near Turkey's border. Kurdish flags and posters of Ocalan fly from buildings in Western Kurdistan towns. Davutoglu threatens the new state of Western Kurdistan: We will not allow the formation of a terrorist structuring near our border. We reserve every right. No matter what it is, we would consider it a matter of national security and take every measure.
Erdogan accuses Assad of allowing the Kurdish army a free hand in the north of Syria and warned Ankara would not hesitate to strike. Recent developments have come as an unpleasant surprise to Turcokleptocrats. When Syrian Kurds distanced themselves from the Assad regime, Turkey welcomed this development. But Ankara did not expect Syrian Kurds would soon unite around the Kurdish army.
Turkey has been fighting against the Kurdish army since 1984, and the conflict has so far claimed fifty thousand lives. The Kurdish army has been effectively using its bases in the mountainous region of Southern Kurdistan. With its growing influence and strength in Syria's Kurdish populated regions, the Kurdish army has now liberated Western Kurdistan.
The recent developments have sparked stronger demands by Turkish Kurds from Ankara and further increased tension in Northern Kurdistan, occupied by Turkey. Turkish MP Baydemir points out the only way ahead is the creation of autonomous Kurdistan regions in Turkey, Syria and Iran, just as the one in Iraq. Now we got the new state of Western Kurdistan. There must be an abolition of borders among the regions of Kurdistan, the creation of a customs union, and a new political partnership with the occupying countries.
For years, Turkey's Kurds are deprived of their basic political and cultural rights. As concerns grow in Turkey about the new state of Western Kurdistan, the Turkish military has stepped up its deployment on the border. The president of Southern Kurdistan, Massud Barzani, cannot be hoodwinked by Erdogan. Turkey is trying to convince Barzani to betray his people! This is mission impossible.
Erdogan wants to overthrow Assad, but he expects that the mosaic of Syrian society, its ethnic make-up, will remain stable. When you shake the kaleidoscope, you cannot be certain where the pieces will fall down. Erdogan cannot have his cake and eat it too when it comes to toppling Assad and maintaining regional stability. With the growing hostility between Ankara and Damascus and the fact that the Turkish and Syrian authorities have lost control of large parts of the border with Turkey, the Kurdish army can operate in Northern Kurdistan.
Threatening Syria with reprisals will only fuel the independence of Kurdistan, just as cracking down on Kurdish resistance does not change the fact that now we have two autonomous areas on the Turkish border, Southern Kurdistan and Western Kurdistan. Lebanonization of Syria leads to liberation of Kurdistan. But Erdogan wants to have it both ways. He wants to see the implosion of the Syrian regime, but he doesn’t want to see the liberation of Kurdistan. For Turks, this logical contradiction is coming home to haunt them.
Government is the #1 enemy of the people and the source of all major problems of humanity. Anarchy is the best political system. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com, @Venitis
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