|
The US Dilemma: Do we share the burden of
Turks, or support our current ally--the Kurds?
21.4.2007
By Aram Azez |
|
|
|
April
21, 2007
Despite all its negative approaches towards the US
interests in the region, Turkey is still considering
itself an old ally to the US and a member of NATO,
which deserves to receive the same political,
military, and financial support from the US that it
used to prior to the Second Gulf War. However, with
the backstab that the United States experienced by
Turkey when it engaged in the “Freedom Iraq
Oppression,” how much more and for how much longer
should the US take the burden of and old “ally”
when, in stead, it has the essential and loyal
collaboration of the Kurds?
The worst of Turkey’s burdens for the US to share
are: financial, military, and political support to
cover up its unprecedented Kurdish issue, the
Armenian Genocide, the Islamic orientation, the
Cyrus issue, its human rights violations, its
so-called freedom of expression, etc. Most of these
issues are conditions for Turkey’s membership into
the European Union. But Ankara is “allergic” to and
quite sensitive about mentioning any of these
points. In many aspects, however, the US has a
responsibility to press Turkey to obey the criteria
set by the EU; otherwise, the load will not be an
easy one for America to share.
It is a heavy weight on US shoulders to share with
an old ally, which is now a more restrictive and
problematic regime for the World Super Power in the
region than any other country. Recently, the Turkish
government rejected, once again, the requests made
by the US Air Force to conduct training flights in
the Mediterranean Sea air space and overnight
fighter air raids over Turkey. The main backstab by
Turkey; however, was when it declined the US troops
access to their land in the 2003 Iraq War, which is
a clear factor in affecting the strategic
relationship between the two countries.
Moreover, Turkey threatens to invade the Kurdish
region of Iraq every now and then, further
attempting to halt the US efforts in the area.
Meanwhile, Turkey's political and military leaders
are expressing their need for more US military and
financial support to eradicate PKK, Turkey’s Kurdish
rebels. Turkey is asking the US to be reluctant in
supporting the Kurdish objective over an independent
Kurdish state in Iraq’s northern region. The Bush
administration is playing much smarter than Turkey
in this regard. The United States has come to
realize that the Kurdish leaders are their key ally,
and they would not jeopardize this robust
relationship over an old, retired one.
Senator and wife of the former US President Clinton,
has lately realized the significance of this
relationship. "I think we have a vital national
security interest and obligation to try to help the
Kurds manage their various problems in the north so
that one of our allies, Turkey, is not inflamed and
they [the Kurds] are able to continue their
autonomy," she has said.
The only stable region that the US can depend on
where it feels welcomed, at the present time and in
the aftermath of its potential withdrawal from Iraq,
is Kurdistan. US officials have now become well
aware of the Kurdish support for Americans in the
region, and they should respect Kurdish
‘sensitivities.’
Although the US blacklisted PKK, naming it a
“terrorist” organization in the 1990s – to keep
Turkey happy at the time – it is now realizing that
taking action against any Kurdish political party
would mean taking action against the Kurdish nation
as a whole. This is regardless to the part of
Kurdistan for which the party is struggling. If the
Bush administration will take Turkey’s burden at
least in this matter, it should prepare itself to
face other more serious circumstances in the region.
Such a move by the US would be viewed by the Kurds
as another betrayal in a series of betrayals by
America.
In 1975, Iran agreed with former US Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger to close its doors and end its
support to the Kurdish people, leaving them at the
mercy of Saddam Hussein in 1975 – still vivid in the
memories of the Kurdish people. In 1991, under the
rule of George Bush Senior, the US encouraged the
Kurds to rise up against the now obsolete Iraqi
regime, but did not keep its promise, leaving the
Kurds, once again, completely helpless. As a result,
more than one million Kurdish civilians fled to
neighboring Iran and Turkey.
The struggle to survive as a nation is a continuing
theme for the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the
world without a state of their own. The Kurds are
living in the mountainous border regions among
Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They are the second
largest US ally, offering their land to US forces as
a frontier in the 2003 war on the Iraqi regime. The
Kurds have taken an active part in the Iraqi war
from its beginning. They collaborated with the US
despite all fears of more possible chemical attacks
by Iraq – something the Kurds had already
experienced in 1988. Now, instead of another US
betrayal, the Kurds say they deserve full support of
the US for an independent Kurdish state.
Turks’ “Kurd-phobia”
Denying an ancient nation like the Kurdish nation,
with all assimilation and exodus, the eradication
attempts by the Turkish regime reached its climax in
the 1980s. During the 1980 military coup by Turkish
leader and now ex-President Kenan Evren, who once
denied the very existence of Kurds in Turkey, the
Kurds were given the lowest status given to human
beings in the history of mankind. His regime did not
only restrict the use of the Kurdish language; it
also described the Kurdish people, who had lived in
the region for millennia prior to the arrival of the
Turks, as "mountain Turks". He said the name “Kurd”
came from the noise their boots made when walking in
the snow {Kurt.—Kurt}.
Even in the current millennium, Turkey’s worst
nightmare remains to be an independent Kurdistan.
Ankara fears that such a move would bring together
some 40-45 million Kurds, the majority of whom live
within the borders of modern Turkey – in the
country’s southeast boundaries.
Recently, to ease Turkey’s anxiety, President of
Kurdistan Region Massoud Barzani said, “Turkey
should get used to the idea of an independent
Kurdistan.” The independence and statehood for
Kurds, who live in a region that straddles Turkey,
Iraq, Iran and Syria, is a "legitimate and legal
right."
The scenario of an independent Kurdish state will
move a step closer by the end of this year, by which
time Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution must be
implemented. According to the new Iraqi
Constitution, this Article is to reverse the
policies of the “Arabization Campaign” conducted by
Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and 1990s which drove
thousands of Kurds out of their homes and replaced
them with Arabs. After the “normalization” of the
city, a census is to follow, then the referendum
during which the people of the oil-rich city of
Kirkuk will decide whether they want to stay as part
of the Iraqi federal government or to join Iraq's
Kurdistan region. This will be a more painful time
for Turkey.
US officials have been criticized by Turkish
nationalists over the usage of the word “Kurdistan.”
For instance, during his farewell speech in Erbil,
former US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, said,
“There has been too much pain and violence in many
parts of Iraq, but thank God not in Kurdistan.” As
usual, Ankara reacted to his remarks.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also pinched
into the quarrel after the Turkish government took
her to undertaking over the use of the word
“Kurdistan.” Speaking before the Senate
Appropriations Committee last February, Rice
referred to the Kurdish rebels who were “operating
on the border between Turkey and Kurdistan.” Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Rice’s
description of the region “wrong,” adding that
Turkey would pass “necessary messages” to US
authorities.
According to PanArmenian.net, a group of prominent
Armenians and Turks initiated a third-party study in
2002 of the procedures of 1915-1918 when they
equally came up to the International Center for
Transitional Justice (ICTJ). In a comprehensive
report, the New York-based organization fulfilled
that the Armenian massacres included “all of the
elements of the crime of genocide” as distinct by a
1948 United Nations convention. The Armenian
Genocide Resolution (S. Res. 106) calls upon George
W. Bush to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects suitable sympathy and
sensitivity regarding issues related to human
rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide recognized in
the United States evidence relating to the Armenian
Genocide.
U.S. President George W. Bush has also cited the
ICTJ study in his annual messages to the
Armenian-American community. Bush’s most recent
statements called it “a significant contribution
toward deepening our understanding of these events”.
However, both the US defense secretary and US
Secretary of State have sent a letter to senior
members of the US Congress indicating the damage
that Turkish-US ties could suffer if the pending
resolution on Armenian claims of genocide at the
hands of the Ottoman Turks is passed.
“It is no secret that the strategic relationship
between the United States and Turkey has undergone
some turbulence in recent years,” Gates said, in his
first public speech after becoming Secretary of
Defense. It was not by accident that he spoke at a
Turkish-American event, Gates said, adding that
Turkey and the United States should avoid damaging
attitudes, such as the Armenian genocide resolution
pending at the US Congress and the worsening
anti-American stance in Turkey.
Human rights and freedom of expression violations
Despite the escalating pressure by the European
Union on Turkey – an EU-hopeful country – regarding
freedom of expression, in recent years, hundreds of
politicians, writers, journalists and academics have
been prosecuted in Turkey for expressing their
views. Among them were 2006 Nobel Prize winner,
Orhan Pamuk and renowned Turkish novelist Elif
Shafak. According to Turkey’s Article 301,
mentioning the Armenian genocide or raising the
Kurdish issue or praising Kurdish leaders, are
criminal offenses. According to this notorious
Article, criticizing Turkey in any way is considered
“denigrating Turkishness or undermining Turkey’s
national unity.”
A 92-year-old retired Turkish archaeologist, Muazzez
Ilmiye Cig, who is also an expert on the ancient
Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia, has claimed in
one of her books that the headscarf worn by Muslim
women was first used by women in ancient Sumerian
era – for pre-Islamic sexual rites. She went on
trial in Turkey for expressing her views, which the
government considered “insulting Islam.”
In recent years, hundreds of prominent Kurdish
politicians and intellectuals have faced charges for
referring to Abdullah Ocalan as honorific, or simply
for having raised the Kurdish issue. Current Turkish
Prime Minister Erdogan, himself, was accused of
referring to Ocalan as "Sayin" or esteemed in an
interview in 2000. Prosecutors examined recordings
of the comments, but found him not guilty.
On March 6, a Turkish court ordered blocking access
to You Tube because of videos allegedly insulting
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern
Turkish state. Many Kurdish-English websites,
newspapers, and TV channels are also being banned in
Turkey – something that George Bernard Shaw of the
New York Times called “the extreme form of
censorship”.
EU scepticism over an Islamic Turkish government
The skepticism of the European Union towards the
efforts of Turkey's Islamist government to meet the
EU standards has much elevated. Turkey has been at
the center of the altercation between Islamism and
freedom of speech. Scientists say religious Muslims
in the government, that has its roots in political
Islam, are trying to push Turkish education away
from its traditionally secular approach.
Reuters newly noticed: Now here's a hilarious
conundrum for the idiot left that cheers on
reactionary Islamism as heroic anti-imperialism. Are
we supposed to oppose this garbage when conservative
Christians do it in the US, but support it when
conservative Muslims do it in Turkey?
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has met and invited
his Palestinian counterpart Ismail Haniya of the
hardliner Islamist Hamas movement to visit Ankara.
Haniya heads the new Palestinian government that
includes Hamas, which is regarded as a terrorist
group by Israel and the West. Turkey also has strong
relations with Iran, which nowadays is almost an
isolated regime in the international community,
especially in relations with the US and its allies.
Turkish Islamist administration was annoyed by an EU
mug in Brussels last March. The mug was offered to
the French President by German Chancellor Angela
Merkel at the last European Union summit, but
Turkish media said the lid of the mug portrayed the
1799 defeat of Turkish forces by Napoleon in Egypt.
Although Turks are sensitive nationalists in the
matter of their related issues, experts believe that
the recent reaction by Turkish Foreign Minister was
likely religion-related.
Another crucial trouble of Turkey with the EU is
Cyprus. Last December, the EU suspended talks in 8
of the 35 areas because of Ankara's refusal to open
its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus, an EU
member that Turkey does not recognize.
Now, it is still up to the US to decide whether to
share Turkey’s heavy burden, which includes
political, military, and financial assistance to
overcome its ‘Kurd-phobia,’ the Armenian genocide,
the Cyrus issue, the human rights violations,
trouble joining the EU and so forth. Or, to support
its’ new and loyal Kurdish ally in Kurdistan on
which the Americans can depend without facing any
hostilities and where, from the beginning of the
Iraq War up to now – not a single US soldier has
died.
Aram Azez is a Kurdish Political Journalist. He
writes about the Kurdish and Middle East Issues in
both Kurdish and English languages. He is editor-in
chief of printed Kurdish Newspaper, Newand
www.newand.net
opednews com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 