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MIDDLE EAST INDEXSUBSECTIONSISRAEL | IRAQ Communitas Main IndexISRAEL
LAND TO THE FARMERS...
BEWARE - WOUNDED LION! After having exhausted all possible delaying tactics, Prime Minister Netanyahu had no choice but to carry out the first installment of the obligations which he took in the Wye River Memorandum, and hand over a sizable slice of the northern West Bank - an area where tens of thousands of Palestinians live in thirty-four towns and villages. Until last Thursday, the Israeli army was able to enter these villages at any time, day or night, imposing curfews, knock on the door and arrest whoever they wanted. As of Friday morning, such a visitation by the Israeli military would be an act of war. Yet the whole area remains an enclave, surrounded on all sides by still-occupied territory... MORE.. The Other Israel 21st November 1998 ISRAEL - BAD POLITICS On 30th July 1997 a bomb, in the market at Mahane Yehonda in Jerusalem, killed 16. Relations between the Israelis and Palestinians, already strained, were once again replaced on the ground by hard lines and, as is always the case, the negotiations, which were in any case frozen, found themselves tied to the question of dealing with terrorism which, in turn, justifies itself in relation to the stalemate in the negotiations.... MORE.. Freedom January 1998
IRAQ
IRAQ - THE DIRTY WATER CHAIN
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IS IT A CRIME TO BE A KURD?Without going any further and without getting off subject we must say that the whole question goes well beyond the simple one of Abdullah Öcalan . We are not trying to decide if he is a 'freedom fighter' or a 'criminal with blood on his hands', nor indeed are we concerned with whatever ideology he professes, but rather we are asking for how much longer being a Kurd in Turkey will lead to prison or death. The Kurdish people are caught between feudal structures of exploitation and the Turkish denial of their existence. We do not support the PKK but rather we are trying to draw attention to the crimes of the Turkish regime against the Kurdish people in the same way that we drew attention, too late, of similar crimes committed by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. We also want to say that it isn't nationalism which leads to freedom but rather social struggle. This is the case not only for Kurdistan but also for Tibet, Kabyle, the South American Indians, East Timor and so many others. ETHNOCIDE If, by chance, you were to consult a Turkish population census you would find no reference to Kurds. However, you know that there are between 10 and 15 million of them. If you also know that Kurdistan is a largely mountainous country you will quickly understand who the 10 million 'mountain Turks' are. In effect the construction of modern day Turkey has been achieved by the pure and simple negation of the Kurds and in more general terms all that isn't Turk: the massacre of a million Armenians, the forced exile of more that a million Greeks... The master builder of this ultra nationalist and also (and this is important to understand the Western position) secular policy was Mustapha Kemal, nicknamed Ataturk (the Father of Turkey). His ideology has been that of all Turkish administrations since independence in 1923. It was inaugurated with speed and violence. Since 1924 the Kurdish language has been forbidden both in the school and in the street. Dress customs have been submitted to legal control, Kurdish songs have been banned apart from during a five hour period on wedding days. The Turkish state has embarked on a policy of enforced acculturation with a mixture of brainwashing and almost constant repression. It has also enforced population displacements and the setting up of Turkish colonies on the most fertile lands. It uses collaborators who it pays to denounce any sign of subversion and leans on a medieval aristocracy of large landowners who, in order to conserve their privileges, are prepared to kow tow to any authority. In exchange the Turkish regime allows these traditional Kurdish elites to rise to all levels of power (the former Prime Minister in the 1980s, Ozal, was of Kurdish origin) provided they abandon any reference to their roots. This Turkish will to eradicate all reference to the existence of the Kurds, their collective identity, makes Turkish policy on this front a veritable ethnocide. We must not sit on the fence here: the Kurdish majority have national demands which are not simply cultural and which could make anarchists shiver. Our analysis (which we believe to be correct whilst recognising the limits of our understanding of the problem) remains difficult to explain to a people who are finding their very existence denied by a state and who are finding that it is only via nationalist organisations that they can reassert their identity. Let us not be too quick to judge. We have no lessons to hand out but nor are we complaisant faced with a PKK which would certainly persecute us as anarchists if we were Kurds. FROM THE GAP TO MOSSAD What role can the Israeli secret service, Mossad, have in all of this? The Kurds have accused them of helping the Turkish secret services in the abduction of Abdullah Öcalan which is probably true. We can reflect that Turkey and Israel are the two main, trustworthy allies of the US in the region and that their shared hostility towards their Arab neighbours should bring them together. This is also probably true but it is insufficient as an explanation. The real reason, almost certainly, is water. Israel needs it just as much as oil. Now Turkey controls the biggest source in the region and this is none other than the Kurdish mountain region. The two big rivers in the region, the Tigris and the Euphrates, which irrigate both Syria and Iraq, start there and are fed almost totally within the region. Thus the Turks have launched out on a policy of building a huge dam system in the region which has been baptised the GAP. It is the real stuff of Turkish development crossing six departments and combining hydroelectricity, industrialisation, land irrigation and transport development. The first aim was to settle the Kurds in the region because their migration from this poverty stricken region towards the more affluent Western cities was concerning the authorities. The second aim was to set up an El Dorado for Istanbul and Ankara's capitalists alongside the local Kurdish lords whose support the government needed to undermine the popular revolt. This wish to pacify (in the same way France pacified Algeria) is made clear by the reinforcement of the administrative structure, with the setting up of two new departments and the only centralised police service in the whole of Turkey. In addition the GAP plays a powerful role in Turkish foreign policy. It literally allows her to cut off Iraq and Syria's water supply. This threat (which could easily lead to war) has led to an agreement signed in 1987 between Turkey and Syria which, in exchange for ceasing to give protection to the Kurds of the PKK, would guarantee 500 m/s of water from the Euphrates. And Israel? She makes up the last piece in the jigsaw and is keen to cash in on Turkey's offer to sell her water, carried like oil by an underwater pipeline baptised by the Turks the 'Pipeline of Peace'. From there to imagine that Israel gives aid in the war against the PKK becomes a step it seems reasonable to take. The overrunning of the Israeli embassy in Frankfurt which the unarmed Kurds intended to occupy peacefully, seems to be the final signature on a treaty we might name 'blood for water'. THE NEXT STAGE IN THE STRUGGLE? The official media seem almost surprised that when Öcalan was seized that there should be such a violent reaction from the Kurdish diaspora. We must say that the determination of the PKK militants sometimes turns to fanaticism as, for example, when they burn themselves alive. We imagine ourselves having stepped back 20 years back to the Iranian revolution when the cult of the martyr contributed to the fall of the Shah. The differences are however marked and lead to the conclusion that an Iranian scenario is not on the cards. Firstly (it would seem) it is outside the country that the reactions seem most strong. In addition the weight of Shiite Islam and the cult of the martyr isn't there. Finally the repressive nature of the Turkish military machine seems to be stable. We are left thinking that the PKK is in a bad position. The Ankara regime has effectively won a battle and seems intent to continue with its policy of terror until all opposition has been overcome. The regime accuses Öcalan of being responsible for 30,000 deaths in the war he has waged with the PKK. The inflation of this figure in the days to come will unfortunately reveal that it is rather the Turkish state which is responsible not only for these deaths but also for the very existence of the PKK with its questionable practices and ideology. Can other forces, closer to those we could subscribe to, emerge in Kurdistan? This is the question. Franck Gombaud - groupe Sabate Le Monde Libertaire 3rd March 1999 |