Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) talks to Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, September 2019. Turkish ministry of defence /Twitter/@tcsavunma.jpg
Dr. Mohammed M.A. Ahmed | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
Erdogan’s jihadist bearded comrades (Mujahideen of Faylaq al-Majd) recently mutilated the body of a brave Kurdish woman fighter (Aziza Jalal) and trampled on her body while shouting Allahu Akbar (God is Great).1 The display of another photo of a captured Kurdish woman fighter on October 22, surrounded by a bunch of Erdogan’s rebel comrades, sent a very dark image of Turkey’s disrespect for prisoners of war.
The photo showed a pro-Turkish rebel commander smilingly taking a selfie with a scared Kurdish woman prisoner standing on his right side.2 These events reminded the author of these lines of an incident during 1990s, when a bunch of Turkish soldiers proudly displayed the severed heads of allegedly PKK fighters along a highway in the Kurdish region of Turkey (northern Kurdistan).
The former United Nations prosecutor and U.N. investigator Carla del Ponte stated in an interview published on October 26, 2019, “Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan should be investigated and indicted for war crimes over his country’s military offensive in Syria.”3 She alleged, “Turkey’s intervention (Kurdish region of Syria/Rojava) had broken international law and had reignited the conflict in Syria.”4 She added, “For Erdogan to be able to invade Syrian territory to destroy the Kurds is unbelievable. An investigation should be opened into him and he should be charged with war crimes. He should not be allowed to get away with this scot-free. Erdogan has the (Syrian) refugees as a bargaining chip.”5
Cicek Kobane, a member of the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) was captured alive by Turkish-backed Syrian Islamist militias, shown in this image grabbed from a video published on Telegram channels linked to the militia, October 2019.
By October 24, 2019 some 300,000 Kurds had escaped their homes, fearing that the Turkish military might punish them for being merely Kurds. Otherwise why should Erdogan threaten Syrian Kurds by crushing their skulls unless they move away from their ancestral land, located on the Syrian-Turkish border? These people had never challenged Turkey or posed a threat to its security.
After committing all sorts of atrocities in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters that Turkey was now “ready to cooperate with NATO allies in turning northeastern Syria into a safe and hospitable environment where the refugees may voluntarily return.”6 After committing so many atrocities in Rojava [Rojawa], Turkey was now playing nice with the West, by inviting them to become partners in its war crimes against the Kurds and make them pay for ethnically cleansing the Kurdish region and settling Arab refugees from other parts in their place.
Western powers are responsible for the predicament of the stateless Kurds, whose lands they divided between themselves for short-term geo-political and economic gains following WW1. The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement rendered the Kurds stateless and powerless in the face of a new set of occupation forces, including Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Ira.
Turkish soldiers pose for photos with body of Kurdish female PKK guerilla after been naked, 1980s-90s. Photo: Ekurd/Archive
The 29-member NATO states held a two-day meeting in Brussels on October 24, 2019 to discuss, among other issues, Turkey’s incursion into the Kurdish region of Syria (Rojava). Unfortunately, NATO bowed down to Turkey’s blackmail that it would inundate Europe with Syrian refugees unless they recognized Turkey’s occupation of Syrian Kurdistan was legitimate, People’s Protection Units (YPG) were terrorists.
Furthermore, the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg overstated the strategic value of Turkey for Europe. One wonders, what kind of an ally Turkey is, when it openly takes sides with their historical enemy (Russia), blackmails and trashes western democratic values. While the West mistakenly thinks that Erdogan is just a temporary ruler and would soon be replaced by another more moderate politician, this author thinks otherwise. With his deep-rooted Muslim Brotherhood organization, Erdogan was able to defeat his opponents in the 2016 uprising and has since established a strong foundation for a fundamentalist Islamic state in Turkey, hating everything about the West. The West would likely face a greater threat from Turkey’s bullying and blackmailing tactics.
Contrary to Turkey’s expectations of damaging Kurdish image through negative campaigns, the Kurds have recently gained greater respect and recognition from the international community for standing up to bullies and liberating one third of Syrian territories from the Islamic State. While the Kurds were fighting ISIS, Turkey was protecting diverse jihadist groups in Idlib from al-Assad forces, backed by Russia and Iran. It is time for Erdogan to stop its media and military campaign against Kurdish political organizations, which are seeking their legitimate civil and political rights.
It is un-statesmanlike for Erdogan to tell reporters that he prefers ISIS to the Kurds as neighbors.
The emergence of the Kurdistan Workers Party in 1974 was in response to Turkey’s repression and anti-Kurd policy, which has intensified in recently. Now, Erdogan is threatening to crush the heads of those Kurds who challenge Turkey’s occupation of Rojava. Mr. Erdogan, Turkey’s occupation of Rojava and Northern Kurdistan are the ugliest form of occupation in the 21st century.
It is time for the West, which rendered the Kurds stateless following WW1, to correct the wrongs they did to the Kurds by protecting them from the occupiers of their land. Turkey has become an existential threat not only to the Kurds, but also to the stability of the Middle East and the European continent.
It must be remembered that it was an unacceptable act of the U.S. President Donald Trump to barter the lives and freedoms of thousands of Syrian Kurds a criminal like Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi. Perhaps, this transaction helped rescue Erdogan from political humiliation at me for failing to achieve his original mission in Syria, that is to oust al-Assad from power. As for Trump the transaction might help him a few points in his reelection campaign. As far the Kurds are concerned, this was a real bad transaction, because they were turned into a thing rather humans.
By cowing to Erdogan’s bullying, the US and Europe are turning their backs on their own democratic, social and political values and principles. While President Trump’s announcement of October 27, 2019 that US troops have finally gunned down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi might have generated some cheers, ISIS seemed to be hunting down their enemies throughout the region.7
Having established some 12 monitoring outposts around Idlib, Erdogan’s proxies must have known Baghdadi’s movements and domicile for sometime. But he delivered Baghdadi to Trump only after the latter gave him a green light to invade Rojava. The carpetbagger Erdogan seemed to have come ahead of Trump in this exchange. While Erdogan failed to achieve his primary goal of ousting Assad from power, nonetheless, he was able to achieve his secondary goal of massacring Kurds. Otherwise, Trump wouldn’t have invited Erdogan to the White House on November 13, 2019