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Small people in a big world

Written by Owei Lakemfa   

Friday, 11 April 2008

The international community accepts or rejects genocide depending on the perpetrators.

The world condemned Hitlerite Germany for trying to exterminate the Jews and the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia for turning the country into “Killing fields”. But humanity is silent in Turkey’s determination to wipe out the Kurds.

Weekly, Turkey sends tens of Kurds to early graves either within the country or neighbouring Iraq. On a monthly basis, it crosses into Iraq using F16s and making no difference between civilians and fighters.

With each invasion of its territory, the Iraqi puppet regime first issues a statement condemning the invasion as “unacceptable” and a violation of its sovereignty.

Then it follows with an appeal for Turkish withdrawal and when the Turks withdraw, it talks about “good relations between two neighbouring countries.”

The “Coalition of the Willing” which occupies Iraq would normally support Turkey but would urge it to make its murderous invasions “very short”.

The chief protector of Iraq is the US. Its statements usually by Defense Secretary Robert Gates or spokesperson, Dana Perino is “We support Turkey, and we support Iraq” How do you support the murderer and the victim? 

Usually the extermination of the Kurds does not make headlines until particularly murderous incursions have been made.

The Kurds are a non-Arab people living within a contiguous territory, the Kurdistan which is a 74,000 sq plateau in South West Asia. With a 20m population, they dwarf newly emergent countries like Kosovo.

With human backing, a dog would easily kill a monkey; with Western backing, a tiny Kosovo snatched independence from the jaws of a big Serbia.

But the problem of the Kurds is that they have no Western backers, no Chinese, American, Japanese of Russian diplomat making declarations on their behalf. No voice in the United Nations calling for caution or protection of the civilian populace. The Kurds are simply a small people being trampled in a big World.

But why would the US which egged on the Kurds into a suicidal insurgency for a separate region against Saddam Hussein, be the same country arming and teaching the Turks on how to eliminate the same Kurds fighting for survival?

The answer is simple; Saddam was an enemy, so anything to destabilize him was proper while Turkey is an ally in the war against terrorism especially in Afghanistan. 

So while the Kurds who fought for autonomy in Iraq were patriotic heroes, Kurds doing the same in Turkey are “terrorists”. The Kurds are the sacrificial lamb the Western powers offer to appease the Turkish gods.

The Kurds are a long suffering people. Conquered by the Arabs in the 7th Century, they were re-colonized by the Seljuk Turks four centuries later. 

The Mongols occupied Kurdistan for three centuries from the 13th Century only for the people to be conquered again, and brought under the Safavid and Ottoman Empires.

The Kurds were a nomadic people contented with moving their sheep and goats on their ancestral lands. But their current enslavement and balkanization came with the break up of the Ottoman Empire. Under the 1920 Treaty of Serves, three countries, Iraq, Syria and Kuwait were created while the fourth country, Kurdistan was to emerge three years later.

This was internationally agreed, but unfortunately, Kemal Ataturk overthrew the Turkish monarchy and in the name of a Greater Turkey, rejected the Treaty which gave the Kurds independence.

Opportunistic regimes in Iraq and Iran also decided to join in denying the Kurds their independence.
So a people with a contiguous territory, same language and culture were split into five different countries where they are minorities.

The Kurds are forced into North East Iraq where they constitute 23 per cent of that country’s population, into Eastern Turkey as a fifth for the population, into Iran where they are 10 percent and in North East Syria and Armenia.

The countries that have been most vicious to the Kurds in contemporary times are Iraq and Turkey. After tearing up the Treaty of Kurdish independence, the Turks decided to purge the Kurds of their Kurdishness. First it refused to recognize them as Kurds; rather it officially redesignated them

“Mountain Turks”. It then outlawed the Kurdish language, refused to recognize them as a minority group and even outlawed the wearing of Kurdish traditional dresses.

Like normal human beings, the Kurds have never accepted their fate; they have fought continuously for freedom.

They rose against the Iranians from 1919-1922. In 1946, the Kurds established a separate state, the Republic of Mohabad before they were crushed by the Iranian monarchy.

They carried out uprisings in Iraq for ten years from 1922, for sixteen years from 1958 and intermittently from 1984 until the fall of Saddam.

The Kurds revolted in Syria in 1937, and in Turkey, first in 1944, then 1978 and from 1984 till date.
The most sustained struggle for independence in contemporary times is one being waged by the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK. It was established in 1978 by Abdullah Ocalan and began armed struggle six years later.

In November 1993, Germany and France baptized PKK as a “terrorist” organization while Syria in 1998 expelled Ocalan. He had to move through various countries before being abducted in Nairobi, Kenya and taken to Turkey.

Although some Kurdish leaders like Massoud Barzari in Iraq now want some autonomy within the five countries they are split, most Kurds want an independent homeland for the 20 million Kurds where they can live in peace, develop their culture, language and decide their future.  This is why the PKK is very popular.

It is for this reason, Kurds across the globe would assist the PKK even if it means being massacred as the Turks are doing to them in Turkey and Iraq. But the world cannot be a safe place until small people like the Kurds are free to determine their own fate.