U.S. President Donald Trump (R) meets with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., November 13, 2019. Photo: Reuters
Dr. Mohammed M.A. Ahmed | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
The West, which was responsible for the fragmentation and dispersal of Kurdistan’s 30-40 million people, should exercise avoid becoming a party in Turkey’s crimes against the destruction of the Kurdish people. It should have been abundantly clear to everyone by now that Turkey’s efforts to demonize Kurdish political parties such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), People’s Protection Units (YPG and YPJ), Democratic Union Party (PYD), People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and numerous other Kurdish political parties, are aimed at the destruction of the Kurdish nation, not political parties per se. The core purpose of such parties is the preservation of the Kurdish identity, which Turkey considers a threat to Turkey’s occupation of Kurdistan.
It is time that the West extricates itself from Turkey’s crimes against humanity and try to remedy the harm they caused by leaving millions of Kurds stateless to advance their own short-term interests in the Middle East. They should have sufficient courage to practice the high ethical and moral standards they preach in international annals. It is highly immoral and unethical for the highly developed Western industrial nations to throw the Kurds under the bus after the Kurds defeated ISIS for the West.
The West is undermining its own democratic, social and spiritual values, when it fails to protect the rights of the stateless Syrian Kurds, who continued fighting ISIS even after the US President Donald Trump betrayed them. President Trump conveniently justified his betrayal of Syrian Kurds by simply stating that ‘Kurds are not angels,’ and saying that they have been quarreling with their neighbors for centuries. Trump, who has no knowledge of the Kurdish history, should exercise greater respect for the Kurds, who continue to resist Turkey’s colonization and ethnic cleansing practices. President Trump is emboldening Erdogan against the Kurds, who continue helping him fight ISIS, by stereotyping the Kurds as troublemakers, which is far from the truth.
It was unrealistic for anyone to say that the Kurds joined the US-led coalition in exchange for nothing, as the US president Trump had wrongly assumed. However, since the Kurds do not have their own state, the US did not forge a binding agreement with them. But the Kurds assumed that the West’s high moral and ethical standards would prevent them from throwing them under the bus. Being a businessman himself and US president, Trump must have known that there is nothing out there for free, except seawater. Therefore, it must have been understood that the Kurds would at least need US support until such time as the Syrian conflict was concluded amicably.
In contrast to the loss of two US soldiers, the Kurds and their allies sacrificed more than 11,000 of their fighters in order to cleanse one third of Syrian territories from ISIS control. By withdrawing troops and the provision of air cover prematurely, the US turned the Kurdish area into a killing ground of Turkish soldiers and their jihadist rebel allies, whose primary goal was to alter the demographic features of the Kurdish region.
On November 27, 2019, Human Rights Watch, “Denounced abuses including execution and home confiscations in a Turkish-controlled swathe of Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), northern Syria where Ankara says it wants to resettle Syrian refugees,” [1] mostly Arabs from other parts of Syria in the Kurdish region. Sara Whitson, Middle East director of HRW, stated, “Executing individuals, pillaging property, and blocking displaced people from returning to their homes is damning evidence of why Turkey’s proposed ‘safe zones’ will not be safe.”2
It was shocking to see President Erdogan arrogantly present his occupation and resettlement plan for Rojava to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 2019. It was tragic to see not a single UN Security Council member object to Turkey’s neo- imperialist plan of occupying parts of a neighboring country. It was curious to note that while Turkey was covertly and overtly supporting all sorts of militant Islamic jihadist groups in its own backyard, it condemned the US for lining up with Kurdish freedom fighters (YPG), against ISIS.
One wonders if President Erdogan has ever asked himself why the US or any of its NATO allies did not join Turkey in the fight against ISIS. Perhaps the West did not trust Turkey and was well aware of Turkey’s association with radical Islamic groups and tried to keep their distance from it. Yet, they did not sever ties with Turkey, which they still call a key NATO ally, hoping that Erdogan’s era would soon pass. However, pundits think that even if Erdogan disappears, his associates would pursue his well-established Muslim Brotherhood legacy.
Regrettably, the only option left to the Kurds was to turn to Russian mediation between them and their former tormentors, the al-Assad family, who had slandered and demonized the Kurds for more than half a century. The Russian President Vladimir Putin was no kinder than President Trump to the Syrian Kurds. For its part, Moscow also bartered the Kurds of Afrin in exchange for gaining control of Idlib, which shelters thousands radical Islamist militant groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), al-Qa’ida and others. On a direct assault from Turkey, the Kurds are desperately seeking protection even from devil. Putin told reporters on November 29, 2019, “Kurds have shown their support, kind-heartedness and love towards Russian military police who have been deployed to northern Syria to halt a Turkish offensive against Kurdish fighters.” Mr. Putin, the Kurds are anxiously awaiting for your efforts to stop and reverse the Turkish invasion of the Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).
When Yahya al-Aridi, spokesperson for the Syrian opposition team on the Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC), was asked if it was fair to have only two Kurds among the 50 Arab members on the Commission, he simply responded by stating that they are aware of Kurdish grievances and were committed to protecting the Kurds. One wonders from whom they would protect the Kurds? From themselves! Under pressure from Turkey, the Syrian Arab opposition has denied any meaningful role for the Kurds to play on the Constitutional Committee, tasked to revise the current Syrian constitution. The Kurds have no faith in the opposition’s empty promises, primarily because they are under direct control of their exterminator, Turkey.
In addition to allowing Turkey’s invasion of Rojava (Kurdish region), President Trump rewarded President Erdogan by inviting him to the White House, presumably to drive him away from Russia and prevent him from testing and activating the Russian S-400 missile system he had purchased. Nonetheless, Erdogan went ahead and tested the system as soon as he returned to Ankara from Washington on November 14, 2019. Instead of punishing Turkey, the US succumbed to Turkey’s continued defiance against the West by moving its goalpost. After all this knowledge about Ankara’s mischiefs, the White House fact sheet on November 30, 2019 read, “Turkey’s continues engagement remains essential in ensuring ISIS never allowed to reconstitute. Yet, al-Monitor reported no November 30, 2019, “The Islamic State has (now) selected Turkey as its next base to reorganize, recruit and Plan.” Alas, President Trump does not recognize that Turkey’s foreign policy is rapidly changing in favor of Russia.
Despite all of the sacrifices the Kurds had made on behalf of the West and atrocities committed against them, they continued cooperating with the US, hoping that the West would ultimately respond to their grievances. While the European Union had no problem paying Turkey a ransom to the tune of more than 6 billion Euros in order to check the flow of Syrian refugees to Europe, they failed to prevent Turkey from suppressing the rights of the Kurdish people, who are still fighting ISIS on their behalf. However, a recent report that the US and some other NATO members had resisted Turkish pressure to blacklist the YPG sends a glimmer of hope to the Kurdish people that the West might ultimately turn around and correct the harm they have done to their cause.