Kurds are paying a heavy price for being in the way of Erdogan trying to establish the long gone Ottoman empire

Entire Kurdish region in Turkey is under military, police and special forces attack. Assisting the Turkish state forces, dressed as police officers are the Syrian ISIS jihadist terrorists taking revenge from the Kurds for all the land and towns Kurds captured back from the ISIS goons. However, nobody would know this in the country if they were following the mainstream media.

Kurds are paying a heavy price for being in the way of Erdogan trying to establish the long gone Ottoman empire. Erdogan, the Turkish president, dreams of reestablishing the Islamic empire by taking advantage of the chaos the region is experiencing. US and NATO supported Turkey has been a very active player together with Israel, Saudi Arabia and other reactionary forces to destabilize Syria, hoping to break off a piece of the pie once the Middle East country is broken down. Kurds are situated between Syria and Turkey becoming a force blocking Erdogan’s grand dream.

There are three more serious reasons the Kurdish towns are under Turkish assault. Most important being the minority ethnic population constituting around 25% of the population in Turkey. They have been under oppressive conditions since the establishments of “modern” Turkey with no right to speak their language, expressing any cultural identity, or even identifying themselves as Kurds. Being progressive and more democratic due to the nationalist, ethnic and racist oppression of the Turkish military regime does not score positive points under a dictatorial Turkish regime either. One more reason is the most recent election results where the pro-Kurdish party HDP was able to pass the 10% threshold taking a large chunk of votes the ruling AKP claimed was theirs. However, one more and most recent reason for the Turkish oppression on the Kurdish towns seems to be the smokescreen it would provide in the face of embarrassing failures Turkey is going through in its policies against Syria. Every step Turkey has taken in the Syria conflict has exploded on its face creating huge doubts on its ability to even see couple of steps ahead before it does anything. Turkey is in dire need of distractions, especially the nationalistic type, for its population to focus rather than the daily failures of its rulers.

Town after town in Kurdistan became the subject of open military and police attacks of the Turkish government. Turkish government does not have to give any reasons for the attacks, but when it does, it claims the security issues. And how does security become an issue? Simple. Kurdish residents’ move to have democracy. In order to have a say in the way their lives or how they are governed, Kurds initiated a “self-rule” program where the residents, rather than the central government appointed governors call the shots in the towns and villages where the Kurds are in the majority. With the self-rule program comes appointing a woman as a co-mayor of each and every town participating in this broader democratic movement.

Transparency becomes central in this type of self-governance, something that is not in the “modern” Turkish state tradition. For this reason alone, Kurds become the target of the Turkish governments that have no tolerance to any kind of alternative to a strict, central, hegemonic, military dictatorial rule imbedded in the Turkish state DNA.

However, as time passed from bombing the Kurdish towns and villages, from mass executions in town squares as the newly formed republic repeatedly executed in the initial days of the country, Kurds changed as well.

Instead of only being massacred with guns in their hands or being hung in town squares, they adopted alternative resistance methods to combat the daily state raids into their lives. Securing their backs on their armed resistance organization, the most recent popular resistance themes display themselves as the “trench wars” as it is called on the streets, a reference to the “war of trenches” from the days of Muhammed. This “trench wars” is waged when the residents and the youth dig trenches in their streets to prevent the Turkish and the jihadist Syrian forces from raiding their homes in the early hours of the morning with heavy machine gun fire from the police vehicles.

Other ingenious methods of self-defense are closing the streets with hanging blankets and bed sheets, preventing Turkish assassins situated on roof tops from gunning down the civilian residents and also placing mannequins on the streets which Turkish forces confuse for real residents and shoot down.

However, the most effective resistance to fascism has become a mass opposition to oppression. Wherever the police and military curfew is imposed against the democratic self-rule in the Kurdish towns people have joined forces and have taken it to the streets to collectively protest the fascist oppression. Although this sometimes causes Turkey to extend the curfew duration, the mass resistance on the streets has proven to raise the consciousness of the residents and also raise the level of opposition and organization against the military forces.

The most recent proof of this was experienced in the town of Derik in the Mardin province. Keeping the residents of this town under curfew for more than 8 days, Turkey aimed at punishing the Kurds to submission. People, as in other towns, rushed to the streets in protest every time curfew was lifted for people to get supplies, enforcing the resistance against the oppressors.

The last demonstration was staged when the curfew was lifted yesterday in the town of Derik. However, seeing the resolve of the town residents, Turkish state had to take a step back and declared they were lifting the curfew for good.

The dead body of Momi Beseren, an 87 year old woman killed by the Turkish forces, was finally taken to the hospital morgue and procedures for the funeral were started. Turkish police did not allow the wounded to be taken to the hospitals during the curfew and the elderly woman’s body was left unattended for three days.

Sendika.Org News (Mehmet Bayram)