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An Open Letter to Leyla Zana
30.6.2012
By Kani Xulam, Washington |
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Kani Xulam, an ethnic Kurd living in America,
founder of the American Kurdish Information Network
(AKIN) Kani is a native of Kurdistan. He has studied
international relations at the University of Toronto
and holds a BA in history from the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
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Read more by the Author
An Open Letter to
Turkey's prominent outspoken Kurdish rights advocate
Leyla Zana
June 30, 2012
Dear Leyla Zana,
You caused quite a stir with your interview in
Hurriyet, a Turkish newspaper, some two weeks ago.
Kurds, Turks and foreigners who know Turkish have
been reading it and commenting to see if it could be
distilled into something called peace. Most Turks
liked what you had to say; many more Kurds were not
impressed. Count me among the latter group as well.
You had coined some memorable lines about the Kurds,
but your choicest words were reserved for the prime
minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Your
saying that you believed in him almost divided
Turkey. What thousands of Kurdish fighters have not
been able to do almost became a fait accompli
because of your statement. That is a lot of power.
I wanted to yell: “You go, girl!”
You said you maintain your hope that the prime
minister of Turkey is capable of addressing the
Kurdish Question. In fact, you made it very clear
that you do not like the classification of the
Kurdish issue as a “question”. The Kurds are not
seeking separation, you noted. Ours is a struggle
for rights, you added.
You did more: you said, “Turks and Kurds are a
family.” To elaborate your point, you said, the
Palestinians and the Israelis are not a family. They
cannot live together, whereas the Kurds and the
Turks would suffer from the pangs of separation if
they ever were torn asunder. It was an “impressive”
performance.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was asked about your interview
in Mexico. Diplomatic protocol does not allow it,
but had it, he would have sent you a thank you note
from the land of Pancho Villa. The man, who wouldn’t
meet Ahmet Turk for years, because he was from the
Kurdish side of the “Turkish” family, said, if Leyla
Zana expresses a wish to see me, I would be happy to
meet with her.
I hope you go see him. Although you don’t need my
advice on how to approach him, I would like to offer
a few of my thoughts for the upcoming Zana-Erdogan
Summit. If you like my musings, use them. But I
don’t want credits—it’s freedom that I’m after.
On rereading your interview, I immediately thought
of Barack Hussein Obama. To be more precise, I
thought of one of his favorite novels, Invisible
Man, by Ralph Ellison. It is a charming book about a
black man’s struggle for visibility in New York.
Because 20 million Kurds remain, officially,
invisible in Turkey, it is a must read for every
patriotic Kurd in the world.
The protagonist is nameless. Mr. Ellison thought his
story encapsulated the plight of all blacks in
America. Time has proven him right: although Mr.
Obama was not yet born at the publication of the
book, he found a part of his voice in it. So did
Malcolm X. So did Dr. King. Fellow Kurds: we are not
the only enslaved people on the face the earth. The
experience of others can be instructive. Order your
own copy of the tome.
The protagonist’s grandfather is a freed slave.
Although emancipation of the blacks became the law
of the land, its implementation took another hundred
years. Blacks like the protagonist’s grandfather
witnessed the dream of freedom turn into a nightmare
with the rise of Ku Klux Klan and the adoption of
Jim Crow laws that made a mockery of the 14th
amendment.
On his deathbed, Mr. Ellison has his freed slave say
the following pithy words to his son with an
admonition that this was to be his legacy: "Son,
after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight.
I never told you, but our life is a war and I have
been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the
enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in
the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the
lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses,
undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and
destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or
bust wide open…Learn it to the young’uns."
The legacy was generalized. Dissimulation became an
art form and generations of African-Americans
engaged in it till the appearance of a convict
called Malcolm X and a cleric called Dr. King.
Today’s Turkey has produced a Kurdish version of
Malcolm X: Abdullah Ocalan—till his imprisonment. It
would be nice if you could become our own Dr. King.
Can you?
I personally don’t know the answer. I will tell you
what I do know. The Turks and the Kurds are not a
family. Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot address the
Kurdish Question, though I give him credit for
clipping the wings of Turkish military. I subscribe
to a German observer’s assessment of him from
memory: “He is the odd rose who has managed to grow
in a swamp.”
But spring is not heralded with the emergence of a
single rose. Already, Erdogan’s authoritarian
tendencies are, alas, getting the best of him. If
you put him under a microscope, you would have a
hard time separating him from the likes of Bashar
Al-Assad or Muammar Qaddafi.
Only yesterday, in historical terms, he used to
vacation with the first and accept awards from the
latter. It is not customary for people in their
fifties to turn on their friends. But in Erdogan’s
case, he seeks glittering gold and absolute
power—not universal principles and timeless freedom.
I guess all I am saying is this: the idea of
“reform” from the top is already obsolescent. And so
is the idea of family dynasties owning countries.
“Opinions are stronger than armies,” said Lord
Palmerston. The Egyptians were lucky to prove it
with 900 losses. In Turkish Kurdistan,www.ekurd.net
we have paid a much greater price. No, we have not
won yet; but in spite of the naysayers, very few are
looking back.
We must look forward with undying hope to Abraham
Lincoln, who knew a thing or two about freedom—as
well as emancipating those who, like the Kurds,
sorely lacked their liberty.
More importantly, Lincoln knew the priceless value
of public sentiment—which is what we Kurds must
cultivate, and indeed must have if we are to ever
gain our freedom.
In 1858, when Lincoln was running for the US Senate
against Stephen A Douglas in Illinois, they held a
series of four famous debates. Slavery was the hot
issue of the day—particularly whether it should be
extended into new territories in America, such as
Kansas and Nebraska.
To put it in proper perspective, this was a year
after the Supreme Court’s famous “Dred Scott”
decision, which held that a slave—even if he went
into a free state—did not become free, and therefore
had no standing to sue in court, as the slave Dred
Scott had done. So Scott was still a slave.
Douglas opposed the Dred Scott decision, arguing
that slavery could be expanded into new territories
or states if the people wanted it. Lincoln opposed
that view, and argued that Douglas was inflaming
public opinion in favor of slavery—and that public
opinion was really the foundation of laws.
Lincoln then cut to the heart of public sentiment’s
tremendous value with this memorable line that all
Kurds should memorize: “Public sentiment is
everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail;
without it, nothing can succeed.”
He then added this towering truism: “Consequently he
who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who
enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes
statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be
executed.”
So we have our work cut out for us: keep an eye on
the Kurdish public opinion, another one on the
Turkish public opinion and keep your ears close to
the drumbeat of world public opinion.
When we are tempted to give up, as some have, we
must remember this: we will not get our freedom if
we depend solely on the permission of others. It is
also good to look back and take a measure of things.
Consider this: we have not achieved our goal with 27
years of armed confrontation. As always, the poets
say it better and as Shakespeare puts it in Julius
Caesar:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
One more thought about your upcoming summit with
Erdogan. If your “yesses” and “grins” and “agree
[him] to death and destruction” and “let [him]
swoller you till [he] vomits or bust wide open…”
don’t work, try a bit of Bismarck. He was the
supreme realist and his observations have stood the
test of time.
When his soldiers surrounded the French army in the
battle of Sedan in 1870, he told the surrendering
French general, “The Germans were a peaceful people
who had been invaded by France on thirty occasions
during the past two centuries—fourteen times between
1785 and 1813.”
After 1870, of course, the Germans did the invading
till 1944. Today, both nations live in peace. Ask
Erdogan, if by molesting the Kurds, he is investing
in a future Kurdish Bismarck.
If he doesn’t know who Bismarck is, educate him. It
might sober him up.
* Kani Xulam is a political activist based in
Washington D.C. He is the founder of the American
Kurdish Information Network (AKIN) www.kurdistan.org.
Kani is a native of Kurdistan. He has studied
international relations at the University of Toronto
and holds a BA in history from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He was recently awarded
an MA by the International Service Program at
American University. At the University of Toronto,
he represented Kurdistan at the Model United
Nations. In 1993, at the urging of Kurdish community
leaders in America, he left his family business in
California to establish the American Kurdish
Information Network in the nation’s capital. He is
the founder of the American Kurdish Information
Network (AKIN)
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