Kurdistan
Her Biji nishtiman!
posted by Kourosh Abdi @ 6:16 AM
0 comments
Monday, January 26, 2009
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Turkish Brutality towards The Kurds
Kurosh Abdi,
============================
Turky is one of the countries that has a big Kurdish poulation. About one thirds or more of this countriy’s population are Kurds(some 25 millions).But such a big population is even denied its basic rights and 25 million people do not dare speak their mother tongue in public.The Turkish government has continuously oppressed the Kurds and has tried to assimilate them into its own immature ,mean ,and primitive culture,but the Kurds have always been on their guards against this brutal anti-humanistic attempts.The more their language and identity have been denied ,the more they have tried to preserve them,so that all the Turkish brutal measures has resulted in mere abortion.Now that the Turks are seeking membership of the european union ,the EU has pressed them to make reforms in their national policies and take a human stance towards the Kurds.
posted by Kourosh Abdi @ 5:35 PM
0 comments
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Turkey: Behind the EU window dressing
The people of Turkey, aided by a long history of organisation and resistance, fiercely resisted the US invasion of Iraq, successfully blocking many of their government?s attempts to provide support to the invaders. Taylan Bilgic from the foreign news desk of Evrensel, the daily newspaper of the Turkish Party of Labour (EMEP), spoke to Green Left Weekly?s Karen Fletcher at the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference in Sydney at Easter.
The Turkish Party of Labour was established in 1996, following a period from 1989 during which many thousands of workers engaged in mass resistance against the laws of the military junta. The peak of that resistance was the Zonguldak miners? strike and march followed by a massive general strike in 1991. The workers leading that resistance started to talk about the need for an open and legal working-class party.
The party is similar to traditional communist parties ? for example it operates on Leninist democratic centralist principles ? but it also differs in many ways. It does not see itself as the ??vanguard?? of the working class, but as a mass party that is open to all workers and as a school in which workers learn to engage in politics. Workers with only a vague idea of Marxism or socialism can quickly become branch leaders in our party.
More than 60% of our members are workers, as are more than 70% of our branch leaders. Big manufacturing centres are the main areas of activity for our party. In Turkey, wherever there is a strike, wherever there is working-class resistance, our party is always there organising, helping or defending the struggle. We now have a very respected position in the working class, unionised and non-unionised.
Evrensel [a daily newspaper with circulation around 10,000] was founded because the working-class movement needed an open, mass propaganda mechanism. A daily newspaper means that you can rebuild the world every morning. You interpret the world day-by-day from a socialist perspective. This is the opposite of what the bourgeois media must do ? which is to convince the masses that the world will always be the same, nothing will change and nobody can do anything about it. Our newspaper says things can be changed and that we have the power to change them if we organise ourselves.
Evrensel has been publishing for 10 years now. We have been shut down many times and been through many name changes but everyone knows who we are. Our journalists have been imprisoned, tortured and even killed in the course of our struggle to publish
The closures of our newspaper have mainly been related to our support for the Kurdish issue. Our party and our paper put great emphasis on the Kurdish question ? which distinguishes us from other parties on the socialist left in Turkey. Most left parties shy away from this issue because they think that if they open it up too much, the workers will reject them. Turkish workers generally don?t know a lot about the Kurdish issue, and they are bombarded with a lot of chauvinist propaganda. But Evrensel does not shy away. More than 50,000 people have been killed over this issue in the last decade. More than 3000 villages have been burned down. Millions of Kurdish peasants have been driven from their village homes into big cities like Istanbul, with no money and no jobs, and they still live in horrible conditions ? sometimes 10 to 20 people to a room. This is an issue that the working class must solve, because there is no other force that can solve it.
In the Emergency Rule region [11 Kurd-dominated provinces that were placed under martial law from 1987] our newspaper was banned from when it was launched in 1996 until the end of Emergency Rule in 2003. This also happened to the pro-Kurdish newspaper Gundem. They suffered much more than us of course ? they lost 20 people including editors, columnists, journalists and sellers of the newspaper to the police and the military. Many of these crimes have still not been punished. Since Emergency Rule ended ? due to pressure from the European Union and the ceasefire by the Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK] ? we are now able to sell our newspaper in those regions. We now have a page of Kurdish news.
The European Union, when it declares that Turkey is now a country that respects human rights, knows that it is not true. It is trying to deceive the people of Europe and of the world. There have been some changes, for example if you speak Kurdish in the street no-one should harass you now. There are now Kurdish broadcasts on state TV of around one hour per week. These are mainly nature documentaries ? nothing about the real situation for Kurds. The translation is horrible. Kurdish people are not interested in the broadcasts. They still watch a Kurdish satellite station, broadcast from Brussels, or Kurdish broadcasts from Iraq.
Millions of Kurds have been displaced [by the Turkish government] in recent decades. There have been only 20,000 or so returnees. Much of their property has been destroyed and their land taken over by big landlords. So it is not enough just for them to return ? there must be support for reconstruction. There are currently more than 7000 Kurdish political prisoners in Turkish jails, accused of being guerrillas or supporters of the guerrillas. These include the leader of the Kurdish movement, Abdullah Ocalan.
Democratic rights are, in essence, political rights ? not just cultural rights. Where is the right of the Kurds to organise themselves in a political party? The Kurdish party has been closed down many times. It is still illegal for a party to call for Kurdish self-determination. The police forces cannot tolerate Kurdish political action.
The situation for press freedom is getting worse. There is a new criminal code being discussed in parliament that will further enable punishment of the media for what it writes. Individuals, such as the prime minister, will be able to launch lawsuits against newspapers, demanding big sums of money. Our newspaper has been fined 15 billion Turkish lira for a cartoon ? which is a big sum for a newspaper like ours. We do not have that money. Two weeks ago the prime minister launched a suit against a weekly cartoon magazine for 45 billion lira. This is the new democracy.
Our party and our newspaper are against the European Union. We see it as a union of monopolies and big European capital, which is of no use to Turkish, Kurdish or European people. Masses of European people protest every year against the rules imposed on them by Brussels ? such as the Maastricht criteria.
However, this position does not mean that we can?t form political alliances with forces that support Turkish entry into the EU. For example, the pro-Kurdish party, DEHAP, supports the EU, thinking that it will bring greater democracy. We do not agree on that, but we still maintain a strong alliance with it. It?s a tricky question for us because there has been so much propaganda that people now think the EU will mean welfare, higher wages and the right to organise. But in other European countries there has been a decline in all these areas.
When we talk with people we say we know they might support the EU because they expect welfare and democracy from them. We respect these demands but we do not believe that these can be given by the EU ? we have to win them ourselves ? so let?s leave aside the EU question and fight together. In a few years people will see that the EU?s project is to push the whole of Europe back to the condition of the Eastern European countries.
The main focus of our party is the unity of the working class. We turn our face towards ordinary working people ? whatever their political convictions. But this does not mean that we are not interested in building political alliances with other left forces. On the contrary, our party and our newspaper have been supporters of long- and short-term alliances from the beginning. We have had a very successful electoral alliance called the Labour, Democracy and Peace Block, comprising the Party of Labour, DEHAP and another small socialist party, the SDP. These three forces came together and created a bigger impact than they could have achieved individually.
We got around 6.2% of the vote in the national elections, around 2 million votes, but we did not get a seat in the parliament because of the electoral system in Turkey under which you have to get at least 10% to be entitled to one. If we had a bigger coalition ? and we tried hard on that ? we might have got the vote we needed and put some Turkish and Kurdish workers into the parliament.
We also had an anti-war coalition which included many political parties, trade unions and professional organisations and some sincere Islamic organisations. This alliance also continues now.
The problem is to build some long-term alliances. We are pushing for the Labour, Democracy and Peace Block to be a permanent electoral alliance. There are some problems we are encountering in daily work within the alliance, but wherever possible we try to do things together, with their people and our people. This breaks down prejudices and barriers between us. We learn a lot from the Kurdish party, especially from their women?s organisation, which is very strong. They also learn from us some political organising methods. It is a very fruitful alliance but now we need to make it permanent.
From Green Left Weekly, April 27, 2005
The Turkish Party of Labour was established in 1996, following a period from 1989 during which many thousands of workers engaged in mass resistance against the laws of the military junta. The peak of that resistance was the Zonguldak miners? strike and march followed by a massive general strike in 1991. The workers leading that resistance started to talk about the need for an open and legal working-class party.
The party is similar to traditional communist parties ? for example it operates on Leninist democratic centralist principles ? but it also differs in many ways. It does not see itself as the ??vanguard?? of the working class, but as a mass party that is open to all workers and as a school in which workers learn to engage in politics. Workers with only a vague idea of Marxism or socialism can quickly become branch leaders in our party.
More than 60% of our members are workers, as are more than 70% of our branch leaders. Big manufacturing centres are the main areas of activity for our party. In Turkey, wherever there is a strike, wherever there is working-class resistance, our party is always there organising, helping or defending the struggle. We now have a very respected position in the working class, unionised and non-unionised.
Evrensel [a daily newspaper with circulation around 10,000] was founded because the working-class movement needed an open, mass propaganda mechanism. A daily newspaper means that you can rebuild the world every morning. You interpret the world day-by-day from a socialist perspective. This is the opposite of what the bourgeois media must do ? which is to convince the masses that the world will always be the same, nothing will change and nobody can do anything about it. Our newspaper says things can be changed and that we have the power to change them if we organise ourselves.
Evrensel has been publishing for 10 years now. We have been shut down many times and been through many name changes but everyone knows who we are. Our journalists have been imprisoned, tortured and even killed in the course of our struggle to publish
The closures of our newspaper have mainly been related to our support for the Kurdish issue. Our party and our paper put great emphasis on the Kurdish question ? which distinguishes us from other parties on the socialist left in Turkey. Most left parties shy away from this issue because they think that if they open it up too much, the workers will reject them. Turkish workers generally don?t know a lot about the Kurdish issue, and they are bombarded with a lot of chauvinist propaganda. But Evrensel does not shy away. More than 50,000 people have been killed over this issue in the last decade. More than 3000 villages have been burned down. Millions of Kurdish peasants have been driven from their village homes into big cities like Istanbul, with no money and no jobs, and they still live in horrible conditions ? sometimes 10 to 20 people to a room. This is an issue that the working class must solve, because there is no other force that can solve it.
In the Emergency Rule region [11 Kurd-dominated provinces that were placed under martial law from 1987] our newspaper was banned from when it was launched in 1996 until the end of Emergency Rule in 2003. This also happened to the pro-Kurdish newspaper Gundem. They suffered much more than us of course ? they lost 20 people including editors, columnists, journalists and sellers of the newspaper to the police and the military. Many of these crimes have still not been punished. Since Emergency Rule ended ? due to pressure from the European Union and the ceasefire by the Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK] ? we are now able to sell our newspaper in those regions. We now have a page of Kurdish news.
The European Union, when it declares that Turkey is now a country that respects human rights, knows that it is not true. It is trying to deceive the people of Europe and of the world. There have been some changes, for example if you speak Kurdish in the street no-one should harass you now. There are now Kurdish broadcasts on state TV of around one hour per week. These are mainly nature documentaries ? nothing about the real situation for Kurds. The translation is horrible. Kurdish people are not interested in the broadcasts. They still watch a Kurdish satellite station, broadcast from Brussels, or Kurdish broadcasts from Iraq.
Millions of Kurds have been displaced [by the Turkish government] in recent decades. There have been only 20,000 or so returnees. Much of their property has been destroyed and their land taken over by big landlords. So it is not enough just for them to return ? there must be support for reconstruction. There are currently more than 7000 Kurdish political prisoners in Turkish jails, accused of being guerrillas or supporters of the guerrillas. These include the leader of the Kurdish movement, Abdullah Ocalan.
Democratic rights are, in essence, political rights ? not just cultural rights. Where is the right of the Kurds to organise themselves in a political party? The Kurdish party has been closed down many times. It is still illegal for a party to call for Kurdish self-determination. The police forces cannot tolerate Kurdish political action.
The situation for press freedom is getting worse. There is a new criminal code being discussed in parliament that will further enable punishment of the media for what it writes. Individuals, such as the prime minister, will be able to launch lawsuits against newspapers, demanding big sums of money. Our newspaper has been fined 15 billion Turkish lira for a cartoon ? which is a big sum for a newspaper like ours. We do not have that money. Two weeks ago the prime minister launched a suit against a weekly cartoon magazine for 45 billion lira. This is the new democracy.
Our party and our newspaper are against the European Union. We see it as a union of monopolies and big European capital, which is of no use to Turkish, Kurdish or European people. Masses of European people protest every year against the rules imposed on them by Brussels ? such as the Maastricht criteria.
However, this position does not mean that we can?t form political alliances with forces that support Turkish entry into the EU. For example, the pro-Kurdish party, DEHAP, supports the EU, thinking that it will bring greater democracy. We do not agree on that, but we still maintain a strong alliance with it. It?s a tricky question for us because there has been so much propaganda that people now think the EU will mean welfare, higher wages and the right to organise. But in other European countries there has been a decline in all these areas.
When we talk with people we say we know they might support the EU because they expect welfare and democracy from them. We respect these demands but we do not believe that these can be given by the EU ? we have to win them ourselves ? so let?s leave aside the EU question and fight together. In a few years people will see that the EU?s project is to push the whole of Europe back to the condition of the Eastern European countries.
The main focus of our party is the unity of the working class. We turn our face towards ordinary working people ? whatever their political convictions. But this does not mean that we are not interested in building political alliances with other left forces. On the contrary, our party and our newspaper have been supporters of long- and short-term alliances from the beginning. We have had a very successful electoral alliance called the Labour, Democracy and Peace Block, comprising the Party of Labour, DEHAP and another small socialist party, the SDP. These three forces came together and created a bigger impact than they could have achieved individually.
We got around 6.2% of the vote in the national elections, around 2 million votes, but we did not get a seat in the parliament because of the electoral system in Turkey under which you have to get at least 10% to be entitled to one. If we had a bigger coalition ? and we tried hard on that ? we might have got the vote we needed and put some Turkish and Kurdish workers into the parliament.
We also had an anti-war coalition which included many political parties, trade unions and professional organisations and some sincere Islamic organisations. This alliance also continues now.
The problem is to build some long-term alliances. We are pushing for the Labour, Democracy and Peace Block to be a permanent electoral alliance. There are some problems we are encountering in daily work within the alliance, but wherever possible we try to do things together, with their people and our people. This breaks down prejudices and barriers between us. We learn a lot from the Kurdish party, especially from their women?s organisation, which is very strong. They also learn from us some political organising methods. It is a very fruitful alliance but now we need to make it permanent.
From Green Left Weekly, April 27, 2005
posted by Kourosh Abdi @ 3:57 AM
0 comments
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Kirkuk deserves more than hollow promises
13/04/2005 KurdishMedia.com - By Saadulla Abdulla
The ethnic groups in Kirkuk are unhappy about the situation, political and economic, in their city. They engaged in never-ending bickering, groaning and moaning, and accusing each other for the many ills and misfortunes that beset their lives in this historic ancient city.
KurdishMedia.com writer Saadulla Abdulla reports from Kirkuk
After a long and frustrating waiting the people of Kirkuk were pleasantly surprised by strong statements on the future of their city issued by the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, Mas’ud Barzani and the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, Jalal Talabani.
The strongman of the KDP, Mas’ud Barzani, announced that Kirkuk was historically and ethnically a Kurdish city. He demanded the government to recognize the Kurdish identity of the city and called for the city to be incorporated administratively into the federal Kurdish region.
Barzani went a step further and shocked everyone when he issued an unequivocal warning to the Iraqi interim rulers. He threatened he would not hesitate to severe all links with Baghdad and use force to regain the city and bring it back to the Kurdish bosom, should Baghdad choose to ignore his demands. Barzani called Kirkuk “the heart of Kurdistan” and ruled out any compromise over the Kurdish identity of the ancient city.
The PUK strongman, Jalal Talabani, followed suit and drew parallels between Kirkuk and Al-Qudis, saying the city is as important and revered to the Kurds as Al-Qudis to the Arabs. Although the people of Kurdistan did not like the comparison with Al-Qudis, describing it as unfortunate, ill-thought and ill-advised, the statement nevertheless sent a signal to Baghdad to the effect that Talabani, too, was committed to rectify the wrongs committed against the Kurds in Kirkuk.
The people of Kurdistan, in particular the Kurdish community in Kirkuk, were jubilant, joyful and, perhaps for the first time, optimistic about the future of their city.
Sadly, their joy and jubilation were short lived as both Barzani and Talabani later watered down their demand over Kirkuk. They issued new statements limiting their demand to only the full and expedient implementation of the Article 58 of the Iraqi interim constitution, a.k.a. as the State Administration Law.
Talabani, on his part, repeated this in a speech at his inauguration ceremony as the first elected president of Iraq. The sudden shift in policy, though a prominent feature of the Kurdish politics, stunned the entire people of Kurdistan.
The Article 58 is the essence of the Iraqi interim constitution. It condemns the policy of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the former regime against the Kurdish people in many areas, towns and cities. Kirkuk, in particular, bore the brunt of the heinous crimes committed within the frame of the policy, a.k.a. as the policy of Arabization of Kurdistan.
Article 58 unequivocally and specifically calls for the complete reversal of the effects of the ethnic cleansing policy, but it does not deal in any way or manner with the issue of whether Kirkuk is a Kurdish city or not. The scope of the article is very limited and there is no provision in it to say that Kirkuk is Kurdish and that it should be included in the federal Kurdistan region.
The article therefore leaves the major issue of Kirkuk, which has been and still is the main obstacle and between the Kurds and the central government, unresolved. Kurds and successive Iraqi governments tried in the past to reach a deal over the city but all attempts failed miserably, leading on many occasions to renewed fighting between the two sides.
However, the article, if genuinely implemented, will undoubtedly lead to the full normalization of the situation not only in Kirkuk but also in areas that were subjected to the Arabization policy.
It remains to be said that the interim government of the former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi refused to implement the article, despite consistent pressure from the Kurdish leadership duo, Barzani and Talabani.
Why the Kurds watered down and massaged their demands over Kirkuk at this early stage is still unclear. But the answer may lie in the negotiation skill, or lack of it, of the Kurds. “The Kurds are very bad negotiators and their negotiating partners unfortunately know this fact well. All they is to refuse the Kurds demands outright and the Kurds negotiators go back to their hotel and cross out a few points from their demand list”, said a Sulaymaniyah university lecturer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Historically every time the Kurdish leaders engage in negotiations with the central governments of the countries dividing their land, they came out empty handed. The most prominent case is the 1971 negotiation round between the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani and the now deposed dictator Saddam Hussaein. The agreement signed at the end of the negotiations, hailed by many as unique and historic, was in fact a pack of lies that paved the way to a period of unprecedented tragic events in the entire Kurdistan region.
On the ground, Kirkuk is still suffering and bleeding. There are three battles simultaneously raging in and over the ancient city. The political battle between the Kurds and the central government in Baghdad, the intercommunal battle among the ethnic groups in the city, particularly between the Kurds and the Turkomans, and the Kurdish infighting over the control of the city between the two main Kurdish political parties, the KDP and the PUK.
The ethnic composition of the city is one of the main factors in destabilizing the city. The main battle is of course between the Kurds and the Turkomans, both claiming the ownership of the city and accusing each other of resorting to unlawful means to control Kirkuk. The Arab community, very powerful and influential during Saddam area, plays a minor role only in that they sometimes side with the Turkomans in the hope of reducing the increasing military power and political influence of the ever-growing Kurdish community in the city.
The ethnic groups in Kirkuk are unhappy about the situation, political and economic, in their city. They engaged in never-ending bickering, groaning and moaning, and accusing each other for the many ills and misfortunes that beset their lives in this historic ancient city. The Turkomans blame the Kurds who blame the Arabs who blame the Assyrians who blame the Kurds who blame the Kurds who blame the Americans who don’t care. It is chaos in Kirkuk.
I have written extensively about the “unholy rivalry” between the KDP and the PUK; suffice it therefore to say here that the stupid and meaningless Kurdish infighting in Kirkuk is fierce and still ongoing, despite signs of some improvement in the relation between them at the Kurdistan level.
To give the reader a full picture about Kirkuk from a Kurdish point of view, I decided to go out, talk to people and gauge their opinion about the promises made by Talabani and Barzani.
It must be said that the prevalent view here is one of suspicion and mistrust. The majority of the people I spoke expressed doubt about Barzani and Talabani’s statement on the future of their city.
“Our so-called politicians will not hesitate to abandon as to the Iraqi army and the intelligence services again. They will do what suits them and their parties, not what is good for the people”’ said Mam Ali, an elderly man who lost five of his family members during the infamous Anfal campaign in 1988.
I even decided to talk the PUK and KDP sympathizers and activists and found some that agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “To be honest with you KDP leaders don’t always match words with action”, a KDP official criticized his party.
“Mam [honorific] Jalal [Talabani] is dead serious about Kirkuk. Now he president of Iraq he will simply issue an presidential order and incorporate Kirkuk into Kurdistan”, said a confident and very loyal PUK man.
“Barzani and Talabani cannot afford to sell Kirkuk this time. If he decides to do that the people the people of Kurdistan will rise up against them, as they did against Saddam Hussein” said another PUK man in Kirkuk.
“The Kurdish leaders in the past abandoned Kirkuk and sold it to the enemy, there is no reason to believe that they will not do it again”, said a disgruntled pro-KDP teacher from Kirkuk.
The last view summarized the whole debate on the difficult issue of the future of Kirkuk. The question whether the city will remain as part of the central government or be administratively attached to the Kurdistan region remains open. The wheeling and dealing and horse-trading over the city, therefore, is going on.
The ethnic groups in Kirkuk are unhappy about the situation, political and economic, in their city. They engaged in never-ending bickering, groaning and moaning, and accusing each other for the many ills and misfortunes that beset their lives in this historic ancient city.
KurdishMedia.com writer Saadulla Abdulla reports from Kirkuk
After a long and frustrating waiting the people of Kirkuk were pleasantly surprised by strong statements on the future of their city issued by the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, Mas’ud Barzani and the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, Jalal Talabani.
The strongman of the KDP, Mas’ud Barzani, announced that Kirkuk was historically and ethnically a Kurdish city. He demanded the government to recognize the Kurdish identity of the city and called for the city to be incorporated administratively into the federal Kurdish region.
Barzani went a step further and shocked everyone when he issued an unequivocal warning to the Iraqi interim rulers. He threatened he would not hesitate to severe all links with Baghdad and use force to regain the city and bring it back to the Kurdish bosom, should Baghdad choose to ignore his demands. Barzani called Kirkuk “the heart of Kurdistan” and ruled out any compromise over the Kurdish identity of the ancient city.
The PUK strongman, Jalal Talabani, followed suit and drew parallels between Kirkuk and Al-Qudis, saying the city is as important and revered to the Kurds as Al-Qudis to the Arabs. Although the people of Kurdistan did not like the comparison with Al-Qudis, describing it as unfortunate, ill-thought and ill-advised, the statement nevertheless sent a signal to Baghdad to the effect that Talabani, too, was committed to rectify the wrongs committed against the Kurds in Kirkuk.
The people of Kurdistan, in particular the Kurdish community in Kirkuk, were jubilant, joyful and, perhaps for the first time, optimistic about the future of their city.
Sadly, their joy and jubilation were short lived as both Barzani and Talabani later watered down their demand over Kirkuk. They issued new statements limiting their demand to only the full and expedient implementation of the Article 58 of the Iraqi interim constitution, a.k.a. as the State Administration Law.
Talabani, on his part, repeated this in a speech at his inauguration ceremony as the first elected president of Iraq. The sudden shift in policy, though a prominent feature of the Kurdish politics, stunned the entire people of Kurdistan.
The Article 58 is the essence of the Iraqi interim constitution. It condemns the policy of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the former regime against the Kurdish people in many areas, towns and cities. Kirkuk, in particular, bore the brunt of the heinous crimes committed within the frame of the policy, a.k.a. as the policy of Arabization of Kurdistan.
Article 58 unequivocally and specifically calls for the complete reversal of the effects of the ethnic cleansing policy, but it does not deal in any way or manner with the issue of whether Kirkuk is a Kurdish city or not. The scope of the article is very limited and there is no provision in it to say that Kirkuk is Kurdish and that it should be included in the federal Kurdistan region.
The article therefore leaves the major issue of Kirkuk, which has been and still is the main obstacle and between the Kurds and the central government, unresolved. Kurds and successive Iraqi governments tried in the past to reach a deal over the city but all attempts failed miserably, leading on many occasions to renewed fighting between the two sides.
However, the article, if genuinely implemented, will undoubtedly lead to the full normalization of the situation not only in Kirkuk but also in areas that were subjected to the Arabization policy.
It remains to be said that the interim government of the former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi refused to implement the article, despite consistent pressure from the Kurdish leadership duo, Barzani and Talabani.
Why the Kurds watered down and massaged their demands over Kirkuk at this early stage is still unclear. But the answer may lie in the negotiation skill, or lack of it, of the Kurds. “The Kurds are very bad negotiators and their negotiating partners unfortunately know this fact well. All they is to refuse the Kurds demands outright and the Kurds negotiators go back to their hotel and cross out a few points from their demand list”, said a Sulaymaniyah university lecturer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Historically every time the Kurdish leaders engage in negotiations with the central governments of the countries dividing their land, they came out empty handed. The most prominent case is the 1971 negotiation round between the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani and the now deposed dictator Saddam Hussaein. The agreement signed at the end of the negotiations, hailed by many as unique and historic, was in fact a pack of lies that paved the way to a period of unprecedented tragic events in the entire Kurdistan region.
On the ground, Kirkuk is still suffering and bleeding. There are three battles simultaneously raging in and over the ancient city. The political battle between the Kurds and the central government in Baghdad, the intercommunal battle among the ethnic groups in the city, particularly between the Kurds and the Turkomans, and the Kurdish infighting over the control of the city between the two main Kurdish political parties, the KDP and the PUK.
The ethnic composition of the city is one of the main factors in destabilizing the city. The main battle is of course between the Kurds and the Turkomans, both claiming the ownership of the city and accusing each other of resorting to unlawful means to control Kirkuk. The Arab community, very powerful and influential during Saddam area, plays a minor role only in that they sometimes side with the Turkomans in the hope of reducing the increasing military power and political influence of the ever-growing Kurdish community in the city.
The ethnic groups in Kirkuk are unhappy about the situation, political and economic, in their city. They engaged in never-ending bickering, groaning and moaning, and accusing each other for the many ills and misfortunes that beset their lives in this historic ancient city. The Turkomans blame the Kurds who blame the Arabs who blame the Assyrians who blame the Kurds who blame the Kurds who blame the Americans who don’t care. It is chaos in Kirkuk.
I have written extensively about the “unholy rivalry” between the KDP and the PUK; suffice it therefore to say here that the stupid and meaningless Kurdish infighting in Kirkuk is fierce and still ongoing, despite signs of some improvement in the relation between them at the Kurdistan level.
To give the reader a full picture about Kirkuk from a Kurdish point of view, I decided to go out, talk to people and gauge their opinion about the promises made by Talabani and Barzani.
It must be said that the prevalent view here is one of suspicion and mistrust. The majority of the people I spoke expressed doubt about Barzani and Talabani’s statement on the future of their city.
“Our so-called politicians will not hesitate to abandon as to the Iraqi army and the intelligence services again. They will do what suits them and their parties, not what is good for the people”’ said Mam Ali, an elderly man who lost five of his family members during the infamous Anfal campaign in 1988.
I even decided to talk the PUK and KDP sympathizers and activists and found some that agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “To be honest with you KDP leaders don’t always match words with action”, a KDP official criticized his party.
“Mam [honorific] Jalal [Talabani] is dead serious about Kirkuk. Now he president of Iraq he will simply issue an presidential order and incorporate Kirkuk into Kurdistan”, said a confident and very loyal PUK man.
“Barzani and Talabani cannot afford to sell Kirkuk this time. If he decides to do that the people the people of Kurdistan will rise up against them, as they did against Saddam Hussein” said another PUK man in Kirkuk.
“The Kurdish leaders in the past abandoned Kirkuk and sold it to the enemy, there is no reason to believe that they will not do it again”, said a disgruntled pro-KDP teacher from Kirkuk.
The last view summarized the whole debate on the difficult issue of the future of Kirkuk. The question whether the city will remain as part of the central government or be administratively attached to the Kurdistan region remains open. The wheeling and dealing and horse-trading over the city, therefore, is going on.
posted by Kourosh Abdi @ 7:18 AM
0 comments
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Turkey: Hollow promises for Kurds displaced by army
07/03/2005 Human Rights Watch
EU officials visiting Ankara must press Turkey to reinvigorate rights reform
(Ankara, March 7, 2005) — On a key benchmark for European Union membership, the Turkish government has failed to honor pledges to help 378,000 displaced people, mainly Kurds, return home more than a decade after the army forced them from their villages in southeastern Turkey, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
On March 7-8, the European Union’s commissioner for enlargement, Olli Rehn, and a delegation of other high-level EU officials will visit Ankara to discuss Turkey’s membership. The EU officials should press Turkey to take effective steps to facilitate the return of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to southeastern Turkey, where Turkish security forces expelled hundreds of thousands from their villages during an internal armed conflict that raged during the 1980s and 1990s.
The 37-page report, “Still Critical: Prospects in 2005 for Internally Displaced Kurds in Turkey,” details how the Turkish government has failed to implement measures for IDPs the United Nations recommended nearly three years ago. Since the European Union confirmed Turkey’s membership candidacy in December, the Turkish government appears to have shelved plans to enact those measures.
The report also details how Turkey has overstated its progress on internal displacement in reports to the European Commission. Before the European Union announced its decision to open membership talks, the Turkish government sent the European Commission statistics suggesting that the problem was well on its way to a solution—a requirement Turkey must fulfill for full membership. Turkey claimed that a third of the displaced had already returned, but Human Rights Watch revealed that permanent returns in some places were less than a fifth of the government’s estimate.
“When we checked Turkey’s figures on helping the displaced return home, the numbers proved unreliable,” said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “Also, the bare figures don’t convey how, thanks to government inaction, villagers are returning to places that are practically uninhabitable.”
In southeastern Turkey, the government has failed to provide infrastructure such as electricity, telephone lines and schools to returning communities, and has not provided proper assistance with house reconstruction.
“What’s worse, the government’s paramilitary village guards are attacking and killing returnees in some parts of southeastern Turkey,” added Denber.
Numerous intergovernmental bodies, as well as Turkish parliamentary commissions, have condemned the village guard system, which was devised in the 1980s to combat the illegal armed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK, now known as Kongra Gel). More than 58,000 paramilitary village guards remain on the government payroll.
Human Rights Watch said that the government’s paramilitary guards have killed 11 returned villagers in southeastern Turkey in the past three years.
When the United Nations examined the plight of the displaced in Turkey in 2002, it recommended that the government establish a dedicated IDP unit, develop a partnership with the international community for the resolution of IDP problems, and provide compensation for the damages arising from the displacement. Nearly three years later, the Turkish government has established no joint projects with intergovernmental organizations, and there is still no central governmental office responsible for IDPs. Last year, the Turkish parliament passed a compensation law, but no payments have yet been made.
It is now 18 years since Human Rights Watch warned of the impending program of village destruction in a 1987 report during the conflict in southeastern Turkey. The Turkish army duly carried out its campaign with considerable violence, torturing, “disappearing” and extrajudicially executing villagers in the process. Human Rights Watch has since repeatedly criticized the Turkish government’s empty gestures in its return programs, issuing further reports in 1995 and 2002.
“The Turkish state tried to cover up what it did, and now it’s subjecting the displaced to years of delay,” said Denber. “When EU officials arrive in Ankara, they need to put the problem of the displaced at the top of their agenda.”
Human Rights Watch called on the European Union to press the Turkish government to move ahead by immediately approving an IDP project submitted last year by the United Nations Development Program. In addition, Ankara needs to establish an agency for IDPs that will take effective measures.
Since the European Union accepted Turkey’s membership candidacy in 1999, human rights reform has been a stop-start process in the country. Turkey still has much to do on the protection of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, language rights and protection against torture.
“The predicament of the displaced is the most pressing concern, but the Turkish government has lost focus on its reform task as a whole,” Denber noted. “Last week we had three delegates observing trials of Ragip Zarakolu and Fikret Baskaya, a publisher and a professor threatened with imprisonment for expressing their nonviolent opinions.”
Preventing torture is another area where the Turkish government seems to have run out of energy. Turkey has made substantial improvement in recent years, but in order to combat persistent incidents of torture and ill-treatment, the European Union recommended in October 2004 that the Turkish government establish independent monitoring of detention facilities. Five months later, Turkey has still not implemented independent monitoring, even though the necessary legal mechanisms are already in place.
In 2000, the European Union presented Turkey with a list of benchmarks—known as the Accession Partnership—that Turkey had to meet to become a full member. This was revised in 2003, and will be revised again later this year.
Human Rights Watch
EU officials visiting Ankara must press Turkey to reinvigorate rights reform
(Ankara, March 7, 2005) — On a key benchmark for European Union membership, the Turkish government has failed to honor pledges to help 378,000 displaced people, mainly Kurds, return home more than a decade after the army forced them from their villages in southeastern Turkey, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
On March 7-8, the European Union’s commissioner for enlargement, Olli Rehn, and a delegation of other high-level EU officials will visit Ankara to discuss Turkey’s membership. The EU officials should press Turkey to take effective steps to facilitate the return of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to southeastern Turkey, where Turkish security forces expelled hundreds of thousands from their villages during an internal armed conflict that raged during the 1980s and 1990s.
The 37-page report, “Still Critical: Prospects in 2005 for Internally Displaced Kurds in Turkey,” details how the Turkish government has failed to implement measures for IDPs the United Nations recommended nearly three years ago. Since the European Union confirmed Turkey’s membership candidacy in December, the Turkish government appears to have shelved plans to enact those measures.
The report also details how Turkey has overstated its progress on internal displacement in reports to the European Commission. Before the European Union announced its decision to open membership talks, the Turkish government sent the European Commission statistics suggesting that the problem was well on its way to a solution—a requirement Turkey must fulfill for full membership. Turkey claimed that a third of the displaced had already returned, but Human Rights Watch revealed that permanent returns in some places were less than a fifth of the government’s estimate.
“When we checked Turkey’s figures on helping the displaced return home, the numbers proved unreliable,” said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “Also, the bare figures don’t convey how, thanks to government inaction, villagers are returning to places that are practically uninhabitable.”
In southeastern Turkey, the government has failed to provide infrastructure such as electricity, telephone lines and schools to returning communities, and has not provided proper assistance with house reconstruction.
“What’s worse, the government’s paramilitary village guards are attacking and killing returnees in some parts of southeastern Turkey,” added Denber.
Numerous intergovernmental bodies, as well as Turkish parliamentary commissions, have condemned the village guard system, which was devised in the 1980s to combat the illegal armed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK, now known as Kongra Gel). More than 58,000 paramilitary village guards remain on the government payroll.
Human Rights Watch said that the government’s paramilitary guards have killed 11 returned villagers in southeastern Turkey in the past three years.
When the United Nations examined the plight of the displaced in Turkey in 2002, it recommended that the government establish a dedicated IDP unit, develop a partnership with the international community for the resolution of IDP problems, and provide compensation for the damages arising from the displacement. Nearly three years later, the Turkish government has established no joint projects with intergovernmental organizations, and there is still no central governmental office responsible for IDPs. Last year, the Turkish parliament passed a compensation law, but no payments have yet been made.
It is now 18 years since Human Rights Watch warned of the impending program of village destruction in a 1987 report during the conflict in southeastern Turkey. The Turkish army duly carried out its campaign with considerable violence, torturing, “disappearing” and extrajudicially executing villagers in the process. Human Rights Watch has since repeatedly criticized the Turkish government’s empty gestures in its return programs, issuing further reports in 1995 and 2002.
“The Turkish state tried to cover up what it did, and now it’s subjecting the displaced to years of delay,” said Denber. “When EU officials arrive in Ankara, they need to put the problem of the displaced at the top of their agenda.”
Human Rights Watch called on the European Union to press the Turkish government to move ahead by immediately approving an IDP project submitted last year by the United Nations Development Program. In addition, Ankara needs to establish an agency for IDPs that will take effective measures.
Since the European Union accepted Turkey’s membership candidacy in 1999, human rights reform has been a stop-start process in the country. Turkey still has much to do on the protection of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, language rights and protection against torture.
“The predicament of the displaced is the most pressing concern, but the Turkish government has lost focus on its reform task as a whole,” Denber noted. “Last week we had three delegates observing trials of Ragip Zarakolu and Fikret Baskaya, a publisher and a professor threatened with imprisonment for expressing their nonviolent opinions.”
Preventing torture is another area where the Turkish government seems to have run out of energy. Turkey has made substantial improvement in recent years, but in order to combat persistent incidents of torture and ill-treatment, the European Union recommended in October 2004 that the Turkish government establish independent monitoring of detention facilities. Five months later, Turkey has still not implemented independent monitoring, even though the necessary legal mechanisms are already in place.
In 2000, the European Union presented Turkey with a list of benchmarks—known as the Accession Partnership—that Turkey had to meet to become a full member. This was revised in 2003, and will be revised again later this year.
Human Rights Watch
posted by Kourosh Abdi @ 5:56 AM
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