Category Archives: Kurdistan

No More Erdogan

15 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in Kurdistan, Middle East, Political Analysis

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Why I support the NO vote in the Turkish referendum?

When I was touring Turkey with my family in 1996, I fell in love with the country. I had the feeling that it looks very much like Palestine would have been if it was not torn apart and stepped over by settlers.

Not that everything looked good. There was poverty almost everywhere, and the military presence was thick and frightening. The soldiers would look suspiciously at people in the streets and point their guns as if ready to shoot you. Going to the countryside we noticed that the government seemed absent while people were building mosques everywhere. The country was ripe for the rise of political Islam.

Turkey’s Contradictions

Following Turkish politics over the years was very instructive. Turkey is not just another big country in the Middle East. In the last decades the political developments in the region concentrated around the conflict between the powers of the old order, Imperialism, Zionism and entrenched local elites, and a mass movement mostly under Islamic orientation. In Iran there was a stormy revolution in 1979, followed by war, internal terror and upheavals. In Turkey the Islamists came to power by elections in 2002 as a reformist force. Also, Turkey’s Islam is mostly Sunni and the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the main Islamic party in Turkey, is regarded to be close to the Moslem Brotherhood – the biggest political party (even as it is persecuted in many places) in most Arab countries. So the Turkish experience was regarded as probing one alternative for developments in the wider region.

The AKP election victory in 2002 didn’t mean that the party could really lead the country, as Turkey’s democracy was a very limited and ultimate power laid with the army. Even after AKP was already long time in government there were attempts to “outlaw” it, as was done with a previous democratically elected Islamic government in 1997-98. The struggle about who really governs Turkey continued. By gradually neutralizing the grip of the army over the state, the AKP, led by Erdogan, made an essential service to democracy in Turkey. Only after the failed coup in July 2016 did the elected government achieve effective control over the army.

Many critics of Turkey in the Arab world like to speak about the danger of Erdogan’s attempts to revive the Ottoman Empire, much the same as others speak about the Iranian danger. I tend to be more conservative in my analysis and assume that the main hegemon (politically, militarily and economically) continues to be external imperialism. I look at the rise of local powers more as an opportunity. In its 15 years in government AKP changed the political and economic orientation of Turkey to be less dependent on Western powers and more oriented to its regional neighbours and other third world countries. It seemed to have a very positive effect for Turkey’s development.

The Kurdish Litmus

The most pressing internal contradiction in Turkey is its control over northern Kurdistan. The denial of the Kurdish nationality, language and culture kept alive the experiences of ethnic cleansing against minorities that accompanied the establishment of modern Turkey as a nation-state. The continued military effort to suppress the Kurdish aspirations for freedom and equality gave constant legitimacy to internal oppression and fascist nationalism. It is another example of Marx’s saying that people who oppress other people can’t be free. The position toward the Kurdish question is the most important litmus test for the democratic attitude of any party or government in Turkey.

In his first period in power it seemed that Erdogan is moving toward a more compromising position toward the Kurds. He relieved restrictions over the use of the Kurdish language and opened negotiations with the PKK and its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan. In 2013 they reached an agreement about ceasefire that was supposed to open the way for a peaceful solution.

But recent developments showed that Erdogan is turning Turkey away from the path toward democracy. Naturally it started with changing policy toward Kurdistan. You can set the turning point in the June 7, 2015, general elections. The partial democratization allowed the democratic forces in Turkey, led by Kurdish militants, to create The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and pass the restrictive 10% hurdle for representation in the parliament, gaining 13% of the popular vote. Erdogan’s party used to get much of the Kurdish vote before as the less-anti-Kurdish choice. It lost its majority in parliament and had to choose between forming a coalition government and new elections. It unleashed a wave of oppression in Kurdistan in order to beat its Kurdish opponents on one side and appease Turkish nationalist voters on the other. It won absolute majority in rerun of the elections in November 2015.

After the failed coup, in spite of the wise support of all political parties to the government against the coup plotters, Erdogan used his reasserted legitimacy not only to persecute supporters of the coup but also to raise the general level of political oppression. The main victims were, how not, the Kurds. Many HDP leaders were arrested and any pro-Kurdish political activity can (again) result with charges of terrorism.

On the most important “foreign affairs” front – the civil war in Syria – the choice for Turkey was most blunt. It could give a major boost to democracy in Syria by supporting and helping to unite all democratic forces. Instead the Turkish regimes indulgence with oppressing Kurds in Turkey dictated its enmity to the Kurdish forces and their Arab allies in Rojava, united under the umbrella of The Syrian Democratic Forces. This approach bears much of the responsibility for the resulting disaster in Aleppo and continued weakness of the Syrian opposition.

Western Hypocrisy

One reason why democracy in Turkey is so fragile is the hypocritical preaching by Western imperialists and their Turkish allies. You can start from the latest campaign for the referendum to change Turkey’s constitution, when European “democrats” were hunting Turkish ministers in aeroplanes and trains to prevent them from meeting Turkish voters in their “freedom-of–speech heavens”. I followed the news closely but till now I can’t even imagine on what legal grounds this was done. And you can go back to the root, where the Turkish-NATO army was regularly overthrowing democratically elected governments, razing to the ground hundreds of Kurdish villages and torturing thousands of political prisoners from all backgrounds – supposedly all in the name of freedom and Western values.

In between there is a whole encyclopaedia of double-talk and racist double-standards. Turkey should fight to defend the West against its Middle Eastern brothers but it and its citizens are refused access to the EU because they are too poor, too Islamic and not white enough. Every move by the Turkish regime is met with ridicule and patronizing disdain. Maybe the most hypocritical of all is the way that Humanistic Europe is paying the Turkish government (and Libya and others) to make the crossing of the Mediterranean so deadly for refugees, just because they can’t see the suffering on their own side.

Time to change course

All these contradictions return us to the methodology of political analysis. It is wrong to analyse a party or a regime according to its declared ideology. In every country there are concrete issues and everybody should be judged by their concrete answers and actions.

Some of my most secular friends tell me that they know what is the position of this or that Islamic movement, because they learned Islam and they know what is written in Islam’s holy books on that case. This will never explain why there are so many Islamic currents, with such different positions, some of them even fighting each other.

As much as I can see, the problem with Erdogan his not that Islam is contrary to democracy. The problem with him and his movement is that it started as a popular movement against oppressive regime, but now, after fifteen years in government, it entered a marriage of convenience with Turkish nationalism and the oppressive state apparatus. History can tell about many other movements, from all ideological hues, which went through similar transformations.

Even if Erdogan was a perfect leader, I wouldn’t recommend letting him concentrate more state powers or extend his spell at the head of government. Everybody can learn from this wise old Chinese, Deng Xiao Ping, who showed by personal example that the way to ensure your political agenda even after your death is to relay power in an orderly way to a new generation while you are still at your best.

 

 

 

Democratic Confederalism and the Palestinian Experience

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in Kurdistan, Socialism

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Reading Ocalan in Haifa, Palestine

A demonstrator holds a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan during a gathering to celebrate Newroz in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir in this March 21, 2009 file photo. To match feature TURKEY-OCALAN/ REUTERS/Umit Bektas/Files (TURKEY POLITICS RELIGION SOCIETY)

A demonstrator holds a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan during a gathering to celebrate Newroz in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir in this March 21, 2009 file photo. To match feature TURKEY-OCALAN/ REUTERS/Umit Bektas/Files (TURKEY POLITICS RELIGION SOCIETY)

While in most Arab countries the left is in a prolonged retreat, we see how the Kurdish left succeeded to establish itself as the dominant force between the Kurdish masses in most of Kurdistan, even as it is divided between different nation-states. This makes the study of the Kurdish experience and of the revolutionary theory that inspires it an essential effort for Palestinian and Arab activists looking for new agenda for liberation from Imperialism, Zionism and local tyrannies.

(This article was translated to German and published in “Kurdistan Report”)

Practical and Theoretical base for Democratic Confederalism

Abdullah Ocalan, in his book “Democratic Confederalism”, proposes this bottom-up organization of society based strongly on the Kurdish experience, but also on a wide and deep view of history. He mentions how old Feudal empires strived by allowing a wide range of diverse cultural societies to co-exist and relying on the organization of many aspects of society on the local level.

Out of the specific local conditions that helped the Kurdish society in North Kurdistan to adopt the model of local self-organization through local councils, as mentioned by Ocalan and other writers, we may remember the old social bonds in a mostly-rural population living in harsh conditions, inherent distrust of the ruling state institutes due to its oppressive attempt to mechanically enforce its nation-state concept and, of course, the leading role of the liberation movement in organizing the masses.

The concept of Bottom-Up democracy was adopted in different forms in many revolutionary movements. We may start with the Workers Councils – famous by their Russian name Soviets – that were born in Russia in the 1905 revolution and were developed by the Bolsheviks as the organizing principle of their system of government. These councils lost their real popular base after the first revolutionary period. One of the more known present day experiences of building democracy from its popular base is the “Participative Democracy” that Chavez tried to promote in Venezuela.

While it is not in the scope of this paper to compare the different paradigms of popular democracy, it is important to note that Ocalan, with the proposition of Democratic Confederalism, is suggesting a framework where people’s power may be separated from the state’s power. He even examines an option for long-term coexistence of this “dual rule”.

The concept of Democratic Confederalism is based on the organization of society on the local level to take care for its real needs. It stresses the central role of women liberation in the emancipation of society as a whole and the ecological approach for sustainable economic development. From the local assemblies it forms higher level assemblies for coordination for common goals, while the center of power stays in the lower level.

This is, to some extent, an adaptation of the concept of popular democracy to the special conditions of the Kurdish people. As any suggestion of forming a separate Kurdish state is encountered with utmost rejection and repression, the balance of power on the ground is changing in favor of the local society. This paradigm allows also for uniting the Kurdish people through the organs of Democratic Confederalism without directly challenging the “holy” state borders in the war-prone Middle East.

Similarities and differences of the situation in Palestine

The basics of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts are very different from those of the Kurd’s struggle against their different oppressors. While the Kurds were subject to severe repressive measures, some of them, like the ban of the native language, were not matched by Zionism; Ocalan reminds us that there is a long history of good relations between the Kurdish communities and their various neighbors. Only the creation of the nation-states after the First World War created the basis for the current oppression of the Kurds.

In contrast, Zionism was implanted in Palestine as an external and hostile force, part of the European colonization of subjected countries all over the world. Today, after direct colonialist rule was overthrown all over the world by liberation movements, Israel is the only case of active colonialism still in its expansionist stage: Usurping land from the native population, denying them any civil or national rights, engaging in systematic Ethnic Cleansing both in the 1948 and the 1967 occupied areas. This makes for another basically different characteristic of the conflict: While Ocalan speaks of a nation-state trying to forcefully assimilate local communities, the utmost goal of Zionism remains to drive Palestinians out of their homeland.

The imminent threat of total annihilation of their society forced Palestinians to mobilize on a very high level. From the beginning of the Zionist colonization more than a hundred years ago, Palestinians engage both in mass struggle and in armed resistance. One of the highest points in this struggle was between the years 1936 and 1939, when a general strike of the Palestinian population, against the British occupation and Zionist colonization, continued for a full half-year, paralyzing many sectors of the economy. It was followed by three years of armed insurrection, when most of the rural areas were under control of the guerilla. This period of struggle exposed the different agendas between the popular movement that tried to organized the masses and care for their daily needs and the traditional leadership that tried to limit the struggle and tended to compromise with the British occupation.

The next massive explosion of revolutionary struggle by the Palestinians came after the 1967 defeat of the Arab armies by Israeli aggression. The Palestinians, most of them refugees after the 1948 Nakba, understood that Palestine will not be freed by state warfare and mobilized for revolutionary popular war, based mostly on the dwellers of the refugee camps. This revolutionary war put the Palestinians in conflict with the interests of the local Arab regimes. As a result the Palestinian guerilla was crashed by the Jordanian army in the Black September of 1970, oppressed again in Lebanon in 1976 by local fascists with the help of the Syrian army, and forced to leave Lebanon by the invading Israeli army in 1982.

Later the center of the struggle moved again inside Palestine, with the first (1987-1993) and the second (2000-2005) Intifadas.

In all this period the concentration of all efforts was on the main conflict, initially against the British occupation and the Zionist colonization and later all against Israel as the realization of the colonialist movement. The question of self-organization of the native population was viewed as secondary. This concentration on the struggle over state-power was driven by the constant belief that another military effort could bring about liberation, and that the internal need of the local society would then be handled by the emerging patriotic government.

In the long term, as military victory proved elusive, the weakness of self-organization of the local society is hindering its ability to stand in the face of constant pressure and erosion by the occupying force. On the other hand, even when Palestinians try to concentrate on organizing the local society, this is extremely hard to achieve under the conditions of military occupation, when their economy is both subjected and marginalized by the hegemonic Israeli capitalist economy and any political or trade unionist organization can be suppressed.

With a view to the future, democratic cross-border mass organization, as suggested by Ocalan for uniting the Kurdish people, may also be the best way to re-vitalize the Palestinian liberation movement, whose old institutions were converted to state-like structures without real sovereignty.

Speaking about the longer future of Palestine after the defeat of Zionism and the return of Palestinian refugees, we stand for a single democratic state in all of Palestine. We reject the notion of “bi-national state” that will entrench a dual-rule system that may perpetuate the relics of Zionism. Yet some form of communal democracy can be a practical way to accommodate for the ethnic and cultural diversity of the population.

Some Palestinian experiences with popular democracy

From the time of the 1936-39 strike and insurrection, Palestinians practiced self-organization and self-rule at the midst of an open conflict with murderous enemies. There were new experiences of organization and popular democracy in the refugee camps at the height of Palestinian armed revolution in Jordan and Lebanon. Palestinian in the refugee camps in Lebanon still enjoy some level of self-rule in spite of all the blows that they suffered there.

The first Intifada was basically organized by grass-root local organizations, and a great part of its agenda was to challenge all aspects of the daily rule of the occupation over people’s lives. For some time the occupation simply closed all schools and the popular committees of the intifada organized “popular study” programs.

I want to examine in more details the local experience in the 1948 occupied territories, which is less recognized internationally, where I have personal experience through participation in the struggle over the last 40 years.

Arab Palestinians in the 48 territories were what remained of an annihilate society after the 1948 Nakba, when all cities in the occupied areas and more than 500 villages were ethnically cleansed and destroyed. The counted less than 200,00 after the Nakba but by now count almost one and a half million.

In 1976, after a whole new generation emerged, they organized for the first time to confront a governmental plan of mass land confiscation. In many villages people organized local “land defense” committees. In March 30 1976, “The Land Day”, there was the first general strike since the Nakba. The police and the army attacked the villages and six of the local people were killed. Still “The Land Day” is remembered with pride in the history of the Palestinian people and is celebrated as a national day every year.

Since then the concept of “Popular Committees” as the main organ of mass struggle has become part of the local tradition in many Arab villages and neighborhoods. Typically the “popular committee” is composed of representative of all the political parties as well as of other local bodies and volunteers.

Another local tradition is the “protest tent” that is set up when the struggle in some locality requires constant mobilization. In many cases protest tents are opened on land that is in danger of confiscation or near houses that the authorities plan to destroy. Sometimes the protest tent is becoming the center of political and cultural lives for the population of the specific locality.

There were two experiences of local organization of a different kind oriented to the immediate needs of the population. In the fifties and the sixties of the previous century, just after the Nakba, the communist party was the only remaining active mass organization within the Palestinian Arab population in the 48 occupied territories. It had an important role in the restructuring of society after the trauma of the Nakba on political and cultural level. It also experimented with other shapes of organizations, like organizing collective shops and some productive collectives. In the last two decades “The Islamic Movement” is the most popular political party. One of its slogans is the “self-sustained society”, and it builds a network of charities and local services wherever it has strong influence. Yet both experiences are mostly partisan and didn’t try to organize the population in a democratic framework open for all.

In our local experience, the popular democratic organization is conceived and functioning as a tool in the struggle and rarely is used as an organ of self-government. There are many reasons for that, basically the destruction of the old rural economy, marginalization of the local Palestinian economy in the Israeli capitalist economy and local class contradictions. But there is also lack of serious thinking and experimentation with local organization that could build a stronger local society with more internal solidarity.

Democratic Confederalism and the Arab Spring

When Ocalan first proposed the concept of Democratic Confederalism it was in the context of strong nation-states. The new concept concentrated on defending and strengthening local societies. It allowed for local organization without necessarily challenging the state’s structure.

But, at the same time, Ocalan also analyzed the weaknesses of the whole regional political structure and its inadequacy to the needs of all local nations and communities. His wider vision was of democratic re-orientation for the region as a whole.

The failure of all local state structures could not be demonstrated in a more dramatic and tragic way than the latest developments in the Arab countries, in what started as “The Arab Spring” but is now characterized by a wave of counter-revolutionary oppression.

Since 2011, faced with a wave of mass struggle and the demands for democratic change, the local elites, entrenched at the center of state apparatuses, responded with a combination of state repression and incitement of sectarian and ethnic “Fitna” (a special Arabic word for dangerous civil strife). The erosion of the foundation of the society by these conflicts also created the conditions for the rise of religious extremism and groups that try to take control by terrorizing the population.

With its long tradition of self-organization and self-defense, it is no wonder that the Kurdish population was relatively better placed to confront these harsh new realities. This has much to do with the theory and practice of Democratic Confederalism.

Facing the conversion of the state apparatus into a naked oppressive machine, many sections of the population in the affected Arab countries now engage in heroic experiments of self-organization, self-rule and self-defense. In Libya and Yemen different local militias now hold more power than the state armies. Syria and Iraq are torn apart by civil war. In Egypt the all-powerful state apparatus wages an all-out war against local society, symbolized by imposing the death sentence on hundreds of demonstrations in a single trial and by the most in-human siege of the Palestinian Gaza strip.

The solution should come in the form of new democratic re-organization of society, in the shape of Democratic Confederalism or any similar framework. It should build on the courage and the ability to organize that the masses proved and developed through the years of strife. From necessity it should form a virtue. From confronting the cruelty of the regimes and extremism, it should form the new norms for solidarity and mutual respect between all components of the society, embracing all different cultures, religions and ethnicities.

Related posts in Free Haifa

A lecture about the Kurdish Struggle

On the peace process between Turkey and the Kurds

Report (in Arabic) about a Kurdish-initiated international conference in Hamburg, April 2015

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A Lecture about the Kurdish People and their Struggle for Freedom

17 Monday Jun 2013

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A Lecture about the Kurdish People and their Struggle for Freedom

It is a hot summer on Haifa’s sandy beaches. Unlike the birds that come in the autumn from cold Europe, summer is the visiting season for people. Until recently the visitors were coming almost only from the rich countries, but, as the third world is now rising to the center of the world stage, we have the chance to meet people from many other places. This week, for the first time, we had a visitor from Kurdistan, Ercan Ayboga (*). As we hold a special warm place in our hearts for the Kurdish people as sisters and brothers in struggle, it was a great opportunity to learn more about Kurdistan, its people and their struggle.

With short notice, Herak Haifa called for an open lecture in Haifa AlGhad club, on Monday 10/6/2013. As I was writing the invitation, I had a problem. Should I write that Ercan comes from “Turkish Kurdistan”? It smacks of ownership. I’m always annoyed when I’m introduced as “coming from Israel”. One important thing that I learned in this lecture is to call the part of Kurdistan that is colonialized by Turkey “Northern Kurdistan”, as “Eastern Kurdistan” is held by Iran, the South by Iraq and the West by Syria. I always prefer to look at things through the eyes and the language of the oppressed people, even though the language that connected us in the lecture was English.

The report below is based on Ercan’s lecture but doesn’t claim to reproduce his very words. I also made some quick research and tried to tell a consistent story as much as I could. I hope you will find it informative as well as inspiring.

History

Kurdistan and the Kurdish people have a long history. Much of it is characterize by the Kurds having some level of self rule (or rule by their local feudal lords) – but under the influence of more powerful regional powers. For a long period Kurdistan was in the borderlands between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The Kurdish language is close to Persian but many Kurds were integrated in the Ottoman state to the level that when they felt pressed by emerging Turkish nationalism few of the Kurdish lords called for restoration of the Caliphate.

The beginning of the twentieth century, and especially the new division of the region after the First World War, saw the emergence of new states guided by the principle of Nationalism. The Kurdish national movement was late to come, and confronted the fate of Kurdistan divided between the neighbors.

The establishment of Turkey as a national state, in a region that was mosaic of different ethnicities, religions and nationalities, was especially cruel, forged by genocide and systematic ethnic cleansing. At first the Turkish leadership succeeded to mobilize some Kurdish support against the Christian Armenian and Greek population in the name of Islam, but soon the Kurds encountered the fire of Turkish nationalism turned against them.

Between 1920 and 1938 there were several Kurdish rebellions against the Ottomans and against Turkey. In one rebellion in 1925 we already hear the complaints about the wiping of the name Kurdistan from the maps, about oppression of the Kurdish language and about forced population transfer.

Between 1928 and 1931 an independent Kurdish “Republic of Ararat” existed until it was crashed by the Turkish army. But none of these rebellions succeeded to unite all the Kurds, or even all the Kurds under Turkey’s rule, in a single independence movement. Turkey had a clear military advantage and cruelly crushed each rebellion with severe consequences to the fighters, their political leaders and the civilian population.

In 1937 and 1938, in the oppression of the Dersim rebellion, (Dersim is an area in North West Kurdistan from where our guest Ercan came), about half the regions’ population was wiped out in massacres and almost all the rest was deported by force. Between 1925 and 1965 North Kurdistan under Turkey’s control was declared a military area and foreigners were banned from entering.

After 1938, as the independence movements were crashed, about a third of some 20 million Kurds in North Kurdistan immigrated (most of them since the sixties) to other areas in Turkey and many Kurds succumbed to forced Turkization.

The Modern Freedom Movement

The roots of the current Kurdish freedom movement are in the radicalization of students and other sectors of society in Turkey in the seventies of the previous century. Since then the most influential force in the Kurdish movement is the Kurdish Workers Party – known by its initials as PKK and officially founded in 1978 – and its leader Abdullah Ocalan. For this reason it is important to understand what is special about this organization.

In addition to its leftist ideology, Ercan mentioned two significant factors that played a role: The PKK cadres, though initially students, were drawn mostly from the poor classes and always remained committed to the defense of the poor peasants and workers; In 1980, when there was a military coup in Turkey and many of the activists had to go to exile, the PKK leadership preferred to gather its forces and set its main new bases in the Arab countries of Lebanon and Syria, not going to the comfort of Europe where other left organizations gradually lost their revolutionary perspective.

This helped to forge an alliance and common thinking with the Arab and Palestinian left, most significantly with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In many aspects the Kurdish movement followed the steps of the Palestinian National movement – the adoption of Marxism and the perspective of National liberation as part of a global movement for social liberation; The adoption of armed struggle as a central tactic which came as a response to the military coup and intense repression; Since the beginning of the 90’s there was a new turn toward mass struggle, which, according to Ercan, was influenced by the success of the first Palestinian Intifada.

The PKK was more successful from the Palestinian left in becoming the main force of the Kurdish national movement, maybe because the Kurdish cause seemed to be a lost case and there was less competition and outside meddling. Now the Kurdish national movement, with the PKK at its center, is a school of its own. It is building on the ground and developing theory for a progressive national movement that adjusts to changing circumstances and tries to get the best for its people.

Through 35 years of heroic struggle the Kurds paid a very high price. It is estimated that 3,500 villages and towns were destroyed and millions became refugees. Tens of thousands of martyrs paid with their lives. Today, according to Ercan’s estimation, there are about 10,000 Kurdish political prisoners out of a total of 12,000 political prisoners in Turkey.

In 1998, after pressure and threats of war from Turkey, Syria expelled Ocalan and there was no state that will give him official refuge. In an international man-hunt operation with the help of (or orchestrated by) the Israeli Mossad, Ocalan was arrested in Kenya on February 15, 1999, and handed over to Turkey. In spite of being sentenced to death (later substituted by imprisonment for life) and being held in harsh conditions, most of the time in isolation, he is still the main leader of the Kurdish freedom movement. On March 21, 2013, it was Öcalan which declared the new ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish state, in the framework of new negotiations for a peaceful solution that will protect the rights of the Kurdish people.

Popular Struggle and Popular Democracy

An important achievement of the Kurdish freedom movement is that it is not confined to one region, one organization or one sector of the population. Since the beginning of the nineties the armed struggle is only one tool for the building of an expanding popular base. It begun with mass funerals for martyred freedom fighters, continued with mass demonstrations and clashes with the repressive forces, went on to the organization of legal political parties, the participation in local government, declaration of cease fires and peace initiatives. The celebration of Newroz, the Kurdish New Year, became a yearly major patriotic event with mass participation of hundreds of southlands and sometimes even millions.

One important aspect that distinguishes the PKK and the modern Kurdish freedom movement is the prominent role of women in all aspects of the struggle and on all levels. In a society that is mostly rural and conservative, Kurdish women fight side by side with their male comrades. It is estimated that women are around 30% of the PKK fighters. A similar proportion of women may also be found in the PKK’s leading bodies and in other parties and mass organizations. In 1994, Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish member of the Turkish parliament was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of treason and terrorism after she dared to speak the Kurdish language in parliament.

Popular support and the possibility to legally organize opened new opportunities and fields of action in front of the freedom movement. Ercan expanded his explanation about the establishment of elected local authorities as a field where local people can organize and the movement can prove that it can serve the masses in a good way and to good purpose. It also exposes the movement to the danger of corruption by some of its own local leaders – and tests its ability to fight this corruption. Here the importance of the socially progressive character of the movement and the commitment to the interests of the poor people is essential for success.

He talked about the concept of popular democracy that the movement tries to promote. Elected councils start at grassroots levels. They include direct representatives of the people as well as political parties and civil society. Here again the role of women is essential. The direct involvement of the popular masses in the councils keeps them at tune with the political organizations and keeps the organizations in full awareness of the needs and sentiments of the people. All this is used to look for practical solutions to the issues of economic development, defense of democratic rights, cultural identity and social justice.

With all these achievements, the parties that are identified with the liberation movement receive just about half the popular vote in elections in North Kurdistan. There are still conflicting local identities and interests and scars from the long years of repression and struggle. Some 40% of the Kurdish vote goes to AK, the Islamic party that governs Turkey over the last eleven years. And, as mentioned before, almost half of the Kurds of northern Kurdistan now leave in other regions of Turkey. These facts are taken into account by the freedom movement when it comes to propose a political solution.

New Political Perspective

The PKK went through ideological struggle, trying to adjust its view of the world, its political platform and praxis to the changing world map as well as to local conditions. An attempt to change the orientation of the movement to give up socialism and turn toward the US was rejected. But significant adjustments were made.

Now the main goal of the movement is not separation of North Kurdistan from Turkey but participation in the design of a new decentralized democracy. It could be good for the Kurds, let them control their own affairs, but also for the rest of the people in Turkey.

Around this line the Kurdish parties now try to build new alliances with different progressive and democratic movements and parties in Turkey. For this reason Kurdish activists also participated in the new popular protest movement that was ignited in Istanbul and spread all over Turkey. The connection to the mass movement was all important to them, in spite of the participation of some extreme nationalist and fascists in the movement and the call by some elements for restoration of military rule.

The movement in North Kurdistan has significant influence over the Kurdish people in other regions. In Syria the main Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is associated with the PKK. They regard themselves as part of the Syrian revolution, even though they don’t belong to any of the current leadership coalitions of the Syrian opposition. In South Kurdistan traditional leaderships still play a major role and progressive forces are still small – but in East Kurdistan there are stronger protest movements, based on the youth, which are more radical and democratic.

A similar concept of democratization and de-centralization, people’s power from bottom-up, is also promoted for the larger region. It was conceived as a framework for the solution not only of the Kurdish question but of the needs to get rid of tyranny and find a way for all the diverse religions, national and ethnic groups to live together.

As part of this concept, the Kurdish movement initiated the Mesopotamia Social Forum. They are interested to promote discussion and build cooperation with other movements in the region. Maybe this is what brought Ercan to far-away Haifa.

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(*) Ercan Ayboga (pronounced almost Erjan) is a hydraulic engineer who has lived in Germany and in North-Kurdistan; the latter is his home country. He coordinates on international level the campaign against the destructive Ilisu Dam on the Tigris and is part of the ecologic movement in Kurdistan. Furthermore he is engaged in the Mesopotamian Social Forum (MSF) which brought together in 2009 and 2011 parts of the civil Kurdish and Middle East society. He writes regularly for different Turkish, Kurdish and German newspapers and journals on ecological and political issues.

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Mabrook to our Kurdish and Turkish sisters and brothers for the Ceasefire!

22 Friday Mar 2013

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Mabrook to our Kurdish and Turkish sisters and brothers for the Ceasefire!

It is a rare moment that we, in war torn Palestine, demonstrate to express international solidarity. But when, in 1999, Abdullah Ocalan was expelled from Syria under Turkish pressure and arrested in Kenya, after an international man-hunt in which Israel played important role, we in Abna Al-Balad prepared the hard to make PKK flag, collected our comrades from Haifa and the Galilee and went to demonstrate in front of the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv. The stuff in the embassy was clearly nervous, and you could fill the stinky air of a police state. Embassy staff that finished their daily work would not walk out until we will go away – and we were just a peaceful vigil of a few scores. James Bond types with sunglasses took our images from the windows and the embassy’s roof.

The Kurdish people shared with the Palestinians the fate of a people whose very existence was denied, whose identity and national expression were criminalized and persecuted. Kurds and Palestinians were training and fighting side by side – and the Left PKK was admired by the Palestinian Left.

As the Palestinian struggle was recognized internationally, and led by its right wing leadership to seek a political solution within the imperialist framework, it seemed that the Kurdish struggle was hopeless. The PKK was a leftist organization leading a national liberation war at the time of the collapse of the Socialist block. Turkey was a strong building block of NATO and the winning imperialist alliance and the PKK was denounced by western powers as terrorists. No country in the world was ready to give refuge to Ocalan.

But here came the basic dynamics of class struggle… “A nation cannot become free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations” (Engels, November 1847). The people in Turkey, whether Turks or from other nations, were suffering from the military dictatorship that enslaved Turkey to the interests of the western multinationals and generals. There were many attempts by the people in Turkey to get more freedom and social justice, but they were all brutally suppressed by the army.

When the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, came to power in 2002, it was not clear whether they want or can bring any real change. In ten years in power they changed many things: Turning Turkey from a conveyor of imperialist policies to a local power, developing the local economy, promoting democracy by cutting the straight jacket of army control.

But it was clear that there can’t be real democracy in Turkey without recognition of the Kurdish people and their legitimate rights. And it was clear that there can’t be any progress toward conciliation with the Kurds as long as Turkey is basically controlled by the military establishment, as the war against the Kurds served so well its interest to enslave all the people in Turkey.

In December 2009, the last time that there was some prospect for a breakthrough toward peace between Turkey and the Kurds, the (army controlled) constitutional court in Turkey outlawed the main legal Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP). What enables real progress toward peace now is that the power struggle between Turkey’s democracy, led by the Islamists, and it anti democratic army, was at last clearly won. Many generals are in jail and for the first time Turkey’s prime minister can go to sleep without fear that he will wake up see a coup d’Etat.

There is still a long way to go for the Kurds and for all the people of Turkey to get real freedom and just society – but the hundreds of thousand in Diyarbakir were clearly and justly celebrating to hear Ocalan’s message live and to see PKK flags on Turkish TV. It is a victory won by the sacrifice of tens of thousands of martyrs and immense suffering of the people. It is a victory for all the people in Turkey, for all the Kurds everywhere and for the people of the region and the world.

Now, as the Arab Spring marches on from its initial festive two months to more than two years of prolonged bloody struggles, we have a lot to learn from the Kurdish struggle for liberation and from Turkey’s struggle for democracy. You need a lot of dedication, courage, patience and wisdom to win – but first you should “put your eyes upon the price” and stick to your principles in spite of all the hardships and apparently insurmountable obstacles…

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