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Tales and tools, By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
19.12.2005
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That day I went just to
have fish and chips in a shop in Tooting. Inside the
shop there was a very large framed photograph of
Kamal Ataturk in military uniform. An English client
asked about the picture. The kebabmen, obviously
Turks, started to talk with a very broken English
but inflated Turkish pride and excitement about this
great leader of their people. Kamal Ataturk built a
new nation for the Turks from the ashes of 1.5
million mass-eliminated Armenians and the occupation
of their land and the massacre and subjugation of
Kurds and the occupation of north Kurdistan. And
here in London the Turkish kababchi is using even
his kebab shops to maintain and promote his
nationalism through the awesome posture of his
historical leader embodied in his portrait.
But it is not only the Turk in the kebab shop in
London, or the Turks everywhere who talk about Kamal
Ataturk with respect and reverence. Many people in
the world do, especially Westerners. I do not want
to discuss the right and wrong of this attitude. My
point is this: Kamal Ataturk is revered because he
was victorious. He was determined to keep and
rebuild a nation he called Turk, and a country he
called Turkey, by sheer strength of will and brutal
determination to crush and victimise others,
including a whole ethnic community, in the process.
Yet Kamal Ataturk remains a symbol of pride and
embodiment of power for Turkish people and a
historical figure to be respected by the whole
world. Western historians usually consider his
Turkey as a model of modern Westernised secular and
democratic bridge with Islam!!
What would have happened if Kamal Ataturk had
compromised, appeased, given in or been defeated: He
would have become a pre-Hitler Hitler. This is the
awful irony of history.
My point is that history is the story of victors and
achievers. You are not a leader if you cannot
achieve anything for your own nation. Can you
imagine Ataturk defending the rights of all ethnic
groups, peoples and minorities in Lusanne and giving
away all what the Turks already had in order to
appease others or to make himself popular to the
British and the Europeans or to find opportunities
to be recognised as a leader and president of a
country called Armanistan or Kurdistan or whatever
entity the others decided for him?!!!
My point is not that it is wrong or undesirable to
defend the rights of others, to compromise, to
achieve whatever you can achieve through fair and
just methods and mechanisms. My point is that
leaders do not represent themselves and their whims
and externalised egos. They represent a cause of a
nation, its identity, history, culture and future.
The strength, respect and historical position of a
leader come from his distinctive identity,
commitment to the cause of his or her people and
refusing to compromise or to sell himself and his
nation for posts and accumulation of illegitimate
wealth.
But leaders who are immersed in corruption and
criminality and lack credibility, integrity and
intellectual ability cannot become historical
leaders. They are given a position of power not
because of who they are but because of what they
are, in other words because they are lackeys. And
lackeys are not even instrumental. They are just
tools.
The dictionary definition of a tool is “an object
designed to do a particular kind of work.” Objects
are not subjects. They are functions, filling a
space of need to achieve a result wanted by the tool
user. But the tools by definition are only of
temporary usefulness: either the tool user no longer
needs the tool after performing “the particular kind
of work” and then throws it away or puts it aside.
Or the tool itself through over-use loses its edge
and usability and thus has to retreat and retire.
Tools cannot speak to history but they echo the
words, needs and desires of masters, any masters.
They are not even historical tales, just forgotten
tools.
www.kurdistanreferendum.org
Related links:
Armenian Genocide by Turkish Muslims against
Christians
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