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Turkish Justice: Gulen’s Recent Response
to Uludere Massacre
16.1.2012
By Dr. Aland Mizell
— ekurd.net
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Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish preacher,
author, educator, and Sufi Muslim scholar living in
self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania (USA). He is the
founder and leader of the Gülen movement.
January 16, 2012
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is
enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any
one class is made to feel that society is an
organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade
them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
― Frederick Douglass, American slave, abolitionist,
and author
Almost two weeks ago, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK)
killed 35
Kurdish civilians from Uludere village in an
operation along the Iraqi border. The official
statement argues that these 35 villagers were killed
because the military thought they were terrorists.
The military knows everything about the smuggling
business. It appears that the military has all the
information on who crosses the Iraqi border and when
they return. If they knew that information, why did
the military think they were members of the Kurdish
Workers’ Party (PKK) as they alleged? Who massacred
35 Kurdish young people and why? This massacre shows
one more time that military action is not the
solution for the Kurdish problem. When is the Prime
Minister going to apologize to the victims’ families
and to the Kurdish people? When is the Prime
Minister going to acknowledge that military action
is not the solution? When will the Prime Minister
stop blaming the Kurds all the time and treat them
with respect? Power gives choices. It is fair to say
that trust for Gülen and for the Justice and
Development Party (AKP) among the Kurds is
diminishing and even among the Turks because trust
correlates with how they use the power they have. In
the past, people, like myself, believed that Gulen
and his followers represented the truth. Now many
people who know Gulen’s movement raise questions
about their motive and especially the reason that so
many people who do not agree with them end up in
jail. Today Gulenists’ image abroad and in Turkey is
slowly becoming shadier, mainly because of lack of
transparency, accountability, human rights, freedom
of expression, and the like.
For me the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression by
the Turkish Armed Forces and cruelty by the bad
people but the silence of the good people, of the
international community, of the United State, of the
European Union and even of the Barzani and Talabani
leaders not pressuring Erdogan and Gulenists enough
to stop their aggressive campaign against the
Kurdish people. The Turkish media lost its
credibility, because not until after two days were
they able to report the massacre; the first massacre
news came out via twitter and Kurdish Roj TV and was
broadcast from the Netherlands. Parenthetically, for
a long time Turkey has tried to pressure the Danish
government to close Roj TV because of its defending
Kurdish rights and being the only Kurdish voice. It
is a shame for the Netherlands to close the Kurdish
Roj TV because,www.ekurd.net
according to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion
and expression; this includes freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any media
regardless of frontiers. The media has the decisive
role of distributing information and framing events,
which are subsequently interpreted by the audience.
The Turkish media’s content has never been
objective; there is always one view that dominates
the others. Since many Turkish media organizations
do most of their reporting from outside the Kurdish
region, there is a belief within the Kurdish
territories that the media’s agenda is being
dominated by the view from the government and
Gulenists. Deceptively showing the Peace and
Democracy Party (BDP) as merely a terrorist group
yet failing to apply the same standard when it comes
to describing the Turkish actions is typical for the
Mainstream media and shows the lack of journalistic
investigation and in-depth reporting in the news
stories. Today the international community remains
mute against the Turkish government’s dismissive
attitude. This recent disaster was one in which the
most advanced aircraft killed innocent Kurdish
civilians. Clearly, no matter what the Kurdish
people do, they will be killed.
If you don’t stand against oppression, you stand for
it. It does not matter whether it was deliberate or
accidental; the result is the same --35 innocent
Kurdish civilian lives have been lost, and this can
be perfectly identified as an act of the state
killing its citizens. This clearly shows that the
military is not the way to solve the Kurds’ problems
but that the way to solve Kurdish problems is the
negotiation table with the PKK and the BDP as guests
at the table, so that the ruling power must listen
to what the Kurds want. The reason the Kurdish
people continue to be massacred is because the
Turkish government has wrongly defined the Kurdish
problem as a security matter rather than a social,
political and economical one. The Turkish government
must resurrect its conscience and offer an official
apology.
The Turks also claim that the Kurds hate the Turks.
They claim that Kurds are angry at the Prime
Minister and angry at the governor who thanked the
Turkish military for the operation. Who would not be
angry if your own government killed its citizen and
did not care, but instead after 20 hours went on TV
to make a statement about the issue? Who would not
be angry when one Turk gets killed the
administration flies the flag of Turkey at half
mast, but when 35 Kurds get killed, people crazily
celebrate the new year while the Kurds are mourning?
The Turks and Gulenists are accusing Kurds of
dividing Turkey but do not realize that they are
guilty of that charge; instead they think that
everybody is blind like them --blind that they
divide all others into camps. Recently Gülen issued
a message incorrectly charging that the Kurds
declared war on them and that because of their
organization’s ethics, they will not tolerate this
behavior. I am wondering what kind of ethics they
are talking about. Is it ethical to kill citizens?
Is it ethical to be silent against wrongdoers? Is it
ethical to kill anyone you see on the grounds that
you perceive them as terrorists? Where is justice in
the Islamic sense of justice that says if there are
9 guilty in a boat and only one is innocent, that
boat cannot be destroyed nor be sunk because one
person is innocent? Is it ethical or justified in
using any available means or method to achieve a
goal, because they believe their end will result in
good for the whole? Is it moral? In 1993, when
Serbians were killing Bosnians during the New Year,
Gulen and his follower were crying, and Gülen
ordered the Zaman to give full coverage, saying
“Bosnia weeps blood, so we cannot celebrate the New
Year, we cannot have fun.” Did Gulen and Gulenists
news media do the same thing when the Kurds were
massacred by the Turkish military? We hear a
resounding “No.” Instead, Gülen accused the PKK of
perpetrating the massacre. Instead Turkish police
increased raids on Kurdish house and offices,
instead Prime Minister Erdogan congratulate Turkish
general for doing their job. Kurds must embrace
their pain and burn it as fuel for their journey
against cruelty and oppression. Blaming others is a
way of avoiding the need to accept one’s own
responsibility. The blame game continues as Turks
have blamed one group after another group for all
their problems. This kind of war will provoke more
Kurdish citizens and lead them to the edge of an
uprising. Young people keep dying, so that the
problems keep becoming more complicated and the
Kurdish civilians’ trust for the Turkish government
is withering.
In a speech broadcast on the website Herkul.org,
Gülen expressed that the PKK distorted his previous
speech about measures that should be taken for the
Turkish army to kill all the PKK bandit group, but
he failed to express his grief for the innocent
Kurdish civilians and failed to express the view
that the Prime Minister of Turkey and the Turkish
army should apologize. The Islamic regime’s
treatment of the Kurds will not be any different
from previous regimes’ treatment of them. Under the
previous regimes Kurds did not have problems as long
as they denied that they were Kurds, and Gülen has
factored the same formula under the current Islamic
regime. As long as you do not say, “I am a Kurd,”
you are welcomed with no problems. Today in Turkey
the Kurdish Parliamentarians, the BDP members, were
democratically elected by the Kurdish people and
given a victory, but the Muslim administration is
not happy and is using intimidation to attack every
front, such as putting Kurds in jail one by one,
charging them in court, financially and spiritually
harassing them, as well as trying to lower their
morale, so that they will give up. They are using
many kinds of tactics to justify not just the end,
but also their means. The real plan for Gulenists
and the Turkish government is to replace the BDP
with Kemal Burkay, a Kurdish writer and the founder
and former Secretary General of the Kurdish
Socialist Party, who fled Turkey in 1980. He
received asylum in Sweden, where he has been living
since. They want to replace the BDP with him and
want him to establish a new Kurdish Party that will
agree with the Gulenists and the AKP. That is why
right now Turkey is using the Union of Kurdistan
Communities (KCK) as an excuse to close down the BDP.
This is the kind of “Justice” and “Peace” that the
ruling Turkish government seeks to accomplish. Kurds
should demand a thorough investigation in full view
of the world’s eyes.
Dr. Aland Mizell is with the University of
Mindanao School of Social Science, President of the
MCI and a regular contributor to the Kurdish Media.
You may reach the author via email at:
aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2012 ekurd.net
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