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Small people in a big world
11.4.2008
Written by Owei Lakemfa |
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April 11, 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,www.ekurd.net
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.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
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