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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 24, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Oppression of small nations
Washington's deceitful treatment of the Kurds
By John Catalinotto
In Bosnia and Kosovo, Washington justified military intervention by claiming to be defending human rights. The U.S. government often claims that the major factor compelling it to intervene, whether alone or as part of a military alliance, is to defend minority peoples from violent attacks.
It would be hard to convince the Kurdish people living within Turkish boundaries that this is Washington's goal. The Kurds are a people with a distinct language and culture who inhabit territory within the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
While U.S. officials have abetted and championed the attacks of Bosnian and Kosovar right-wing forces against the Yugoslav government in the name of self-determination--even unleashing a vicious NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia last spring--they have fully supported the Turkish military regime's assault on the Kurdish people.
This assault has led to the deaths of 37,000 people, most of them Kurds. It includes bombing of hundreds of Kurdish villages and the use of tanks and planes--supplied by the U.S. and German regimes--against civilians as well as guerrillas.
U.S. policy was underlined again with the one-year anniversary of the Turkish regime's seizure of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), now on death row on a prison island in Turkey.
The remaining PKK leaders, who have charged that the U.S., Israel and Greece conspired to turn Ocalan over to Turkey, called for supporters to stay home and keep businesses closed the morning of Feb. 15. "The PKK leadership council has called upon the Kurdish people to protest in a passive way the first anniversary of the international conspiracy to capture chairman Apo [Ocalan],'' a spokesperson for the PKK's political wing told Reuters by telephone.
U.S. officials had admitted in the days after Ocalan's kidnapping that U.S. intelligence agents had helped track him down and facilitated his being turned over to Turkey. They also pressured the Italian government to refuse Ocalan asylum in the fall of 1998.
Kurds make up 20 percent of the 60 million people living within Turkish boundaries. Turkish laws have repressed the Kurdish people's right to speak their own language.
In 1984, the PKK opened up an armed struggle against the Turkish military dictatorship in an attempt to liberate the Kurdish population. Since that time the armed liberation fighters have waged a heroic struggle against difficult odds.
Why Washington demonized
PKK, not TurkeyUnlike the so-called Bosnian government or the KLA in Kosovo, the PKK did not become an agent of the NATO imperialists. It waged a truly independent struggle for liberation from the Turkish state. This is what made Washington declare the PKK an enemy.
The Turkish army decided in the early 1990s to unleash an all-out war against the Kurdish population in order to defeat the PKK's attempt at liberation.
If Turkey had been a foe of Washington instead of a client state, this policy could have easily been the excuse for launching all-out Pentagon bombing raids, economic sanctions, or some combination of the two against Turkey.
Instead the Pentagon has remained one of the main suppliers of weapons to the Turkish military. Its other main supplier is Germany's war industry.
Even now, German arms makers plan to supply the latest tanks to their counterparts in Turkey. This policy has become a major focus of the struggle for the German anti-war movement.
Faced with an ever more difficult military situation, the Ocalan leadership of the PKK attempted at the end of 1998 to open negotiations with the Turkish regime on the basis of winning some form of autonomy for the Kurdish population. It withdrew any demand for independence.
Instead of responding positively to this offer, the Turkish regime kidnapped Ocalan from the Greek Embassy in Kenya, where he had tried to take asylum. It did this with the complete support of the U.S. government, which has a master-client relationship with Greece and Kenya as well as Turkey.
Just this Feb. 9, the PKK leadership said the organization would end the guerrilla struggle and take part in the political struggle within Turkey for Kurdish rights. The Turkish regime made no public response to this offer from the PKK.
It is unclear at this moment if the PKK announcement will lead to any immediate change in the situation. Some within the PKK are critical of this turn.
Osman Ocalan, a PKK commander and brother of Abdullah Ocalan, said the guerrillas would not lay down arms or surrender because Turkey had not responded to the PKK's previous peace overtures.
"They will stay up in the mountains, not to attack, but to defend themselves,'' he said in an interview with Brussels-based Kurdish Medya-TV.
Whatever the next steps in Turkey, it is clear that U.S. policy as well as that of Germany and the other NATO allies has been to back NATO-member Turkey in its most repressive assaults on the Kurdish population.
And it will be up to progressive forces throughout the world to continue to call for the defense of the Kurdish people from further attack by the Turkish regime.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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