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<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>RE: Kurds</TITLE>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2>-----Original
Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> Thiago Oppermann<BR></FONT><BR><FONT
size=2>Why were the PKK up in arms in the first place? Wasn’t there a
fairly solid history of repression? So – couldn’t the government have avoided
a lot of the bloodletting by negotiating , avoiding the nasty factionalisation
that comes with civil war? Or was the PKK simply not in the game for
negotiations? If the PKK demands were reasonable, or if the government could
have undercut their support by easing off on the Kurds, then the
responsibility for 10K government deaths isn’t to be laid only at the PKK’s
feet. Do you think there is a case, even an only partially justified
case, for Kurdish insurrection? Forgive me if I find the example of Kurds
mourning a policeman to be insufficient evidence of non-support for the PKK
and, more broadly, independence.<SPAN class=441382717-23022002><FONT
color=#0000ff> </FONT></SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=441382717-23022002>The
Kurds in the southeast are tribal so when you're talking about Kurdish
demands you're talking about their sheiks' shifting alliances, or those of
supposedly popular leaders like Ocalan, Barzani, or Talabani who are substitute
sheiks. There is no national kurdish consensus as they don't even speak the
same language. The three armed groups are at each others' throats. Their
supposed gripe is that Ataturk promised them independence and then reneged. They
then revolted, and repression followed. Calling Dersim a Kurdish national
uprising is ludicrous. The Turks weren't a nation then, let alone the tribal
Kurds. Their sheiks imagined they could pull of a quick one at a time when the
republic was still weak. Their slogans weren't nationalist; they were accusing
Ataturk of betraying Islam.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN
class=441382717-23022002></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=441382717-23022002>So what
particularly brutal repression have Turkish kurds been subject to before 1984
that made them revolt and yearn for independence? I really can't say, except
that in the second half of the 70's Ocalan was really giving them hell. The
army & police had allowed "liberated areas" to pop up around the
country to give them a pretext for the planned coup, and Ocalan was merrily
terrorizing the southeast, which had become his personal fief. The army was
nowhere to be seen. Nor was any sort of private or public investment, OC, thus
ensuring that the region remained dirt-poor and discontented. Ocalan's "Apoists"
wiped out the rival Rizgari, KUK, and Azadi groups. They didn't stop with
murdering their Kurdish rivals but also attacked non-kurdish
leftists.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
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class=441382717-23022002></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=441382717-23022002>After the
1980 coup, repression hit the areas where the Apoists were active, as it hit
other once "liberated" areas. But most Kurds, living outside of so-called
Kurdistan (or Armenia, to taste) continued life as before. Like other minorities
not covered by the Lausanne treaty, they couldn't set up their own schools but
they had their businesses, their mafias, their politicians, their artists, and
spoke Kurdish any time they wanted to, including in the army. They couldn't
broadcast in Kurdish but they could sell Kurdish music and literature. The same
restrictions applied to everyone else. Some old-timers and Kurdish women kept
under house arrest by their jealous husbands couldn't speak Turkish at all, so
translators would be present in courtrooms and other govt
offices.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN
class=441382717-23022002></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=441382717-23022002>After the
coup Ocalan set up shop in Damascus and the Bekaa, where he trained his army and
began his attacks starting in 1984. Syria was a winner on two counts: It
collected the proceeds of the PKK's drugs operation and used it to shut down
Turkey's GAP project dam construction. There's another pack of lies about Turkey
threatening Iraq and Syria by controlling their water. Iraq has more water than
Turkey and Syria illegally appropriates the entire Orontes river flow, polluting
it in the process. They have never agreed to discuss a fair distribution of the
Tigres and Euphrates waters, always preferring to use the Arab League, the OIC
or the PKK instead.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial><SPAN
class=441382717-23022002> </SPAN><BR>As for Ocalan’s dodgy credentials –
isn’t there even a remote possibility that free Kurdistan in Turkey
could look like the semi-free Kurdistan in Iraq? Those guys in Iraq were even
more sectarian than the PKK before we started funnelling huge wads of cash to
them. The upshot of this is that had the PKK won, perhaps the result
would not be utterly terrible – at least that is not the precedent apparently
set by the semi-free Kurds in Iraq now...<SPAN class=441382717-23022002><FONT
color=#0000ff> </FONT></SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=441382717-23022002>I hope that
the Iraqi Kurds can get a real economy going as opposed to the rentier one of
collecting aid and extorting transit traffic. That would be the key to ending
their tribalism. But there's no guarantee for that as long as the warlords are
in power. I mean look at Iraq, which was a pretty sophisticated place before
Saddam took over. As long as the warlords remain, the Kurds' best hope is
to emigrate, which they continue to do.</SPAN></FONT><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial><SPAN class=441382717-23022002> Turkey would be far better off
giving the Kurds their land and letting their overpopulation and poverty be
Kurdistan's problem. But it would be naive to think that they would stay
quietly behind their borders. Instead yet another mercenary state would
enter the ME, ready to fight or train terrorists for the highest
bidder.</SPAN><BR></FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial>Also, isn’t dismantling, or even
discrediting the PKK a big gamble? Even if it is a pretty perverse Worker’s
Party, doesn’t it at least talk the secularist talk? Won’t destroying them
drive people towards the more millenarian fundamentalists – like pretty much
everywhere else in the middle east? Or am I overestimating the PKK’s
support?<SPAN class=441382717-23022002><FONT
color=#0000ff> </FONT></SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=441382717-23022002>Between the
thuggish PKK and the thuggish fundies, it's not much of a choice. How can the
PKK be a workers' party when there's no working class? What they are is a sort
of Khmer Rouge. And yes, given the level of unemployment and poverty, it's very
likely the southeastern Kurds will keep overpopulating and filling the fundies'
ranks. The only hope would be if the PKK really decommissioned like the IRA.
Then HADEP could maybe become a socialist party, but that's a big if. Populism
is so much more attractive.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><SPAN class=441382717-23022002></SPAN><FONT size=2><SPAN
class=441382717-23022002><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff> </FONT></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial><SPAN
class=441382717-23022002> </SPAN>Another question entirely is why drug
running is so bad – isn’t it at least none of our business if the FARC or PKK
are running drugs? Isn’t this a demand-side problem? They would probably be
selling tulips if they had better terms of trade on those. What do they care
if some kid in London gets addicted to smack?</FONT></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Verdana><SPAN class=441382717-23022002></SPAN><FONT
size=2><FONT face=Arial>T<SPAN class=441382717-23022002>he drugs aren't the
problem, the money is. It corrupts the economy, it corrupts politics, it
finances dictators, etc. If it wasn't illegal, then sure, no problem, but then
we'd see that the army and the PKK were in business together, which wouldn't do,
would it?</SPAN></FONT></FONT><BR><BR><SPAN class=441382717-23022002><FONT
face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><FONT
color=#000000> Hakki</FONT> </FONT></SPAN><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>