Campaign of Lies

From the day of its founding on October 29, 1923, the Turkish Republic has developed a system of unbearable coercion and cruelty. It has sought to hide this from people by means of the oriental art of disguise and two-facedness. The Turkish Republic has reached a present level of tyranny which is a thousand times worse than the Ottoman autocracy.

Since the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1946, there is not a single villager - either girl or woman, either Kurd, Turk, or whatever - who has not felt the whip of the gendarmerie. Just like a hurricane which destroys everything in its path, the violence of the republican government sweeps across Anatolia. How could Turkey's population in the 1970s endure so much cruelty, torture, poverty, and hunger? It's a miracle, that's for sure.

It's no small matter that a nation on the edge of Europe could establish such an oppressive regime. The Turkish state achieved this. But its citizens must pay a high price for this - they lose their human rights.

Are our people innocent in all of this? Of course not. But how should the people, under the terrible rule of the republic, still have the strength to resist after thousands of years of being oppressed and kicked and tormented, thousand of years with one war merging into the next war? We cannot forget that there have been hundreds of Kuyucu Murat Paschas (Ottoman leader who massacred rebels in the Taurus Mountains and tossed their bodies into streams; died 1611) have marched across Anatolia, each of them ten times worse than Gengis Khan.

In 1946, Turkey adopted a multi-party system, and in 1950, the Democratic Party replaced the tyrannical Republican Peoples Party as the governing force. It was a true miracle, that a people who have been whipped and deprived of their rights could achieve such a thing.

The founders of the Democratic Party came from the leading ranks of the Republican Peoples Party. For them, democracy was a black curtain to hide behind. By means of this democracy, Turkey could become a member of the Council of Europe and NATO. Has Europe been deceived by these lies? Not at all. But our contemporaries in the West, who weren't exactly that democratic either, needed allies to stand against the Soviet Union - and so they cast a hungry eye upon Turkey.

But then something unexpected happened: Whereas the Turkish people, made lame by decades of oppression, remained silent, the Kurdish people began to resist, even if timidly and afraid. Because it was the Kurdish people that were most oppressed by this authoritarian rule, they were starving, living in poverty, and subject to ethnic massacres; their language was banned by law, people denied their identity, they were called things like "mountain Turks", and they were dispersed throughout all regions of Anatolia every 10 or 15 years.

With the increasing resistance of the Kurdish people, which eventually became an armed confrontation, the machinery of oppression began to show its true face. First, the Turkish people were told lies and a massive propaganda campaign was launched. Because without the unquestionable loyalty of the Turkish people, the Kurdish people's resistance could never be broken.

A campaign of lies began: The Kurds want to divide the country and form their own independent Kurdish state, according to the refined emotional appeals. And then there were such exaggerated accounts of horrible attacks by Kurds on Turkish soldiers that everyone was led to believe that every Turk had better kill the first Kurd they could get their hands on.

Luckily, Kurds and Turks have known each other so well for centuries that all attempts by the state to incite a bloody ethnic war between the two groups have failed.

Every second word out of the mouths of President Demirel and other government officials is: "We will not give up one pebble, not one handful of dirt from our land!" But who asked for a pebble? And who wanted to have a handful of dirt? As far as I know, only very few Kurds in our country have ever expressed a desire for an independent state. But wouldn't it be their right if they did desire such a thing? Because all human rights declarations clearly state that all peoples have a right to self-determination.

The dirtiest war imaginable is taking place in Turkey at the moment. Even the strength of the best writers is not enough to depict it.

In order to quickly suppress the uprising, the Turkish Republic created a "system of village guards". This is similar to the civilian units which the US army set up in Vietnam. A militia of 50,000 security forces is in action, as well as a special unit of 12,000 men. In addition to these, the state has deployed 300,000 soldiers against the Kurds. No one knows what else will be mobilized. But the worst are the counter-guerrillas who take orders from the Turkish security forces.

In the mountains, the guerrillas and the village guards began killing each other. The guerrillas attacked the village guards in their homes and killed their wives and children. And the village guards attacked the "patriotic" guerrillas and killed their entire families. If the guerrilla attacked, they accused the state of acts of murder; if the state attacked, they blamed the guerrilla.

Then a general appeared and said: "If you will allow me, I will leave no stone unturned in eastern Anatolia, no head on the trunk. Chief of Staff Dogan Gures exclaimed: "To catch the fish you must dry up the sea." And Prime Minister Tansu Ciller screamed to the parliament: "This shall be ended!" This didn't even bother the Germans, who were the best informed about the true meaning of these words.

Now the war began with all its might. Previously the Turkish army had still used harmless means, they degraded their Kurdish brothers by making prisoners eat human feces. The Council of Europe criticized Turkey for this "excrement torture" by ordering that the victims be paid 500,000 French francs in compensation. Turkey is billions of dollars in debt. It only needs to increase this debt and then the entire Kurdish and Turkish population will be subjected to "excrement torture".

The Turkish Republic began to force all Kurds between the ages of 7 and 70 to become village guards. Anyone who refused was tortured; those people who were especially resistant were arrested and killed. The murders by the counter-guerrilla began. Some people say 1,800, others say 1,200 Kurds were murdered. Then Kurdish villages were burned, as many as 2,000 went up in flames.

Incredible massacres and tortures began in this total war. The Turkish Republic dried out the sea as best they could. In Vietnam, the US army had also "dried out" the country and destroyed all the cultivatable land.

There are rumours that the fighting has made 2.5 million, or perhaps 3 million people refugees in southern Anatolia. The true number could be higher. Because the population of Diyarbakir, which used to be 450,000, has jumped to 1.5 million. That's anofficial figure. Then there are the refugees in other cities; they are homeless and starving. The Turkish Republic is following the traditions of Kuyucu Murat Pascha.

But there's one thing that all the previous blood-suckers did not do: They never burned down the forests, into which the guerrilla and others had fled.

It's amazing what our press reports about such events. It's not our country's soldiers who are setting fire to the villages and forests, as the head of our government said, with the flag in one hand and the Koran in the other, dismissing all questions. What about the helicopters? The PKK must have brought them in from Armenia or Afghanistan. They are the ones burning the cities and villages.

Dersim is burning, the woods around Kutudersei are in flames - and that's supposed to be the work of the PKK. After all, didn't they burn more than 80 Kurds during the Kurdish New Year's festival, Newroz? And Sirnak and Lice and the other cities, wasn't it the PKK that set them on fire? And the 36 writers and artists in Sivas?

Enough already! Anyone who says that the candle of the liar cannot light up the darkness, despite what the proverb says, has no clue about reality in this world.

I cannot get around telling the story of the prefect of Gaziantep. This man hears that the woods in his region are on fire. He goes there immediately and sees that the entire forest has been destroyed, but with a happy side-effect: 11 guerrilla fighters were killed by the flames.

According to press reports, 12 million hectares of forests have burned in Turkey in the last 10 years, 10 million of those in eastern Anatolia alone. It is amazing that a state would burn its own forests, just because guerrillas can hide in them.

When the guerrilla announced a ceasefire to last for several months, Ankara did not react. Then, at some point, 33 unarmed soldiers were found dead on a country road. Some people say the PKK killed these soldiers, other doubt this. In any case, it marked the end of the unilateral ceasefire.

Now the war is being waged with full force. This war involves not only the guerrilla and the army but also the village guards and the special units as well. The government has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, who now must wander around half-dead from hunger and misery, with no roof or tent above their heads. Ankara has unleashed a population flood and has effectively declared war on the unarmed Kurdish people.

People of eastern Anatolian heritage formed a political party and elected 20 MPs. This party was banned. They formed a new party, which was also banned. 8 of the MPs were charged, threatened with the death penalty, and finally sentenced to long prison terms. And now democratic Europe is starting to wake up - a little bit.

This terrible war cannot go on any longer. Economically, Turkey is finished, the population impoverished. In 1994, more than 12 billion German marks were spent on the war in eastern Anatolia. This figure was quoted by a government minister. The foreign and budget deficits are growing and growing; if this war continues, Turkey will be faced with the greatest catastrophe of its history.

All wars, whether in Rwanda, Bosnia, or Afghanistan, wear down humanity; they degenerate more and more, they become more inhumane with every battle, every massacre, every danger of starvation.

From the day of its founding, the Turkish Republic should have guaranteed basic rights to the Kurds, the same rights which the Turkish people enjoy. At the threshold of the 21st century, no one can deny any people, any ethnic group their human rights. Not just Turkey, no state has to power to do this. In the end, it was the force of the people which drove the Americans out of Vietnam, the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and which brought about a miracle in South Africa.

The Turkish Republic must not be allowed to carry this war into the 21st century. The conscience of humanity will help the people of Turkey to end this inhumane war. And especially the people who live in the countries which supply weapons to the Turkish state can be helpful in this. But those of us in Turkey should always remember that the path to democracy can only be travelled over a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.

The fact that the leaders, since the founding of the republic, have tried to kill the language and culture of the Kurdish people - even if they've since eased these restrictions under pressure - is a crime against humanity. And in the 21st century, crimes against humanity will one day be brought to light and judged. But this won't be a normal trial, however, because the country's very honour and humanity will be at issue.

Yasar Kemal

Prepared and sent to Soc.Culture.Kurdish by

Arm The Spirit

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F O L K E T  I  B I L D / K U L T U R F R O N T  9-10/95

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