Huseyin Baybasin, Rotterdam prison, 2017. Photo: Twitter/@TruthHitsEvery1
Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
“If you tell Erdo?an to clean up the left overs of ISIS it is just like telling Hitler to clean up the left overs of the Nazis…”
Q. Do you think the PYD is at all responsible for provoking the Turkish invasions of Kurdish areas of Syria through flaunting Öcalan’s message and erecting giant images of him in areas where they took control from ISIS?
A. I don’t believe the PYD can be held accountable for provoking the Turkish state as Turkey has no need of ‘provocation’ and uses such things as an excuse; Turkey is always looking for excuses to crush the Kurdish people’s ambitions to take care of their own needs. The PYD has also protected other minorities from ISIS in the areas they took over, including Arabs and Christians, and have organised and guided administration for all in these areas.
Most of us will be questioning why the PYD and the YPG forces are using Abdullah Öcalan’s portrait and name and I think the forces in Rojava must co-operate with the USA and every group active there has to be in a position for their voice to be heard and have a right to form political parties.
If they use Öcalan’s’s ideology and respect him, they can use his picture and ideology in order to coordinate the freedom movement, but Kurds must focus on independence and on unity and be lead by Kurdish people. This is the time for change because we are very clear that Syria, Iran, Iraq and especially Turkey, is promoting a fascist ideology combing Islam with fascism and are also causing harm and destruction to Muslim people.
We see what Turkey is doing but the civilised world is just going round and round in circles and when the US President says ISIS is finished, well the real leader of ISIS, Erdo?an is still there!
If you tell Erdo?an to clean up the left overs of ISIS it is just like telling Hitler to clean up the left overs of the Nazis. You cannot be thinking normally and not see this as a world leader.
Close your eyes and ears and this policy can only bring destruction to the whole world.
In practical terms, the US must remain in power for the sake of world protection. China mainly interested in business. Russia’s Putin is acting no differently to Erdo?an and they get on so well acting jointly in Syria but the way they are acting is not akin to the way Erdo?an is acting with NATO and the EU. Putin – whatever is in his head – is cooperating with Erdo?an but Erdo?an is only using Russia as it doesn’t fit with his ideology. The civilised world should stop playing the game. World leaders should focus on the safety and security of people.
ISIS was removed from direct power with the help of the USA and other partners. The PYD created a generally workable solution in the area for everyone. This never happened in any area under the control of the Kurds of Iraq or any other regime, but do those that re critical of the PYD’s regime have any better alternative? They should talk with one another, and if Christians, Arabs and Turkmen are happy in that system it would be odd for Kurds not to be happy. The KDP of Iraq are also looking to Turkey and doing what Turkey tells them to do. We have to face facts.
Q. Have Erdo?an ’s goals changed since eying an opportunity for a Sunni caliphate since Syria became drawn into the Arab Spring revolution from March 2011 onwards?
A. I don’t think Erdo?an has changed his strategy – I think he is part of the wider Muslim Brotherhood and that the revolution was really no Arab ‘Spring’ at all – in Erdo?an’s head the driving vision is that of Islamicisation and there is no real difference when it comes down to it between ISIS, Al Nusra or the others.1
I could not see this right at the beginning as Erdo?an claimed to have changed but at that time we could not what was he going to do. I had even spoken with some of his people about potential changes to the Kurdish policy, but, in fact, from 2008 onwards, Erdo?an showed his true colours and that he had just been playing a game all along.
Q. Do you think Erdo?an is genuinely pious and a true ‘believer’?
A. I think Erdo?an aims to make the whole world Muslim and he believes he will go to heaven. Once he got a hold on power he became an ‘Islamist Hitler’ – power changes this kind of person. Anyone who believes religion will change the world has to have a very weak character and is in need of psychiatric help.
Q. What do you think is likely to happen when Erdo?an goes, as one day he must? Is the damage done to secularism in Turkey irreparable?
A. The damage can be repaired if the USA, UN, EU, and NATO allies coordinate better and set the line for Turkey not to act solely in its own interests but for the greater global interest. Israel is a good example of a member state being coerced to obey the rule of law and being sanctioned when it doesn’t.
If the International Community pay attention and take proper measures the damage can be repaired but if they behave as irresponsibly as in the past, like Russia that behaved just as it best suits themselves, then the destruction will be even worse than now.2
Q. What is in it for former Prime Minister, Tansu Çiller, said to be one of Erdo?an ’s advisers?
A. The Turkish leaders, past and present, all have the same mind set and believe in Pan -Turkish power, Turkish strength and Islam. They don’t know the difference.
I knew Çiller and her husband Özer very well. She was working closely with Fethullah Gülen when she was in office as Prime Minister. She was meeting him in her office and this was broadcast on Turkish State Television. She was reading verses from the Koran and saying Islam should be the basis of power. She even met Qaddafi when Libya was under sanctions and she had to drive from Tunisia to Libya to meet him and she said he was a great leader and she was trying to gain people’s sympathy. The Turkish leaders have all been immoral like this and have double standards.3 Çiller was charged with corruption but instead of justice being done politics were set above the law and she got to keep her ill gotten wealth, just the same as Demirel did.
A case was also brought against Çiller and her bodyguards for their involvement in drug trafficking. ZDF contacted me about it to ask if I had any information on it. I gave interviews at the time on Med TV, State TV, Turkish mainstream media and Evrensel effectively ran stories on it. This enraged Çiller and her husband Özer who took it very personally against me because of what I brought out against them. They were after every influential Kurdish opponent. Özer was working inside the Dutch Consulate in Istanbul to find a way to silence me by fabricating evidence to use in a court of law in Holland, which was completely illegal. This is what they succeeded in doing. The proof is in my file open to anyone to see. He even tasked someone with killing me but the person concerned tipped me off. They offered him money and a place in the party and also quashing a case against him. He refused so they tried other means and I am still held hostage in Holland because of their intrigues. Proof was given to the Dutch parliament, prosecutor’s office, the court, the police and they are still keeping silent and not doing anything about it. They didn’t even react to it. Nor did the ECHR – they serve the political elite and not the rule of law.4
Misnamed “Free Syrian Army”
The main policy thrust of Turkey and its leaders has been to use Ottoman ideology so as to gain fundamentalist Islamist support for an Islamic Turkey to become a world power under the Islamic flag.
With this objective in their sights they created the Free Syrian Army and directly aided and empowered the rise of ISIS.
Erdogan has been trying to manipulate the US leadership and outside world and to blackmail the EU over refugee issues which they are responsible for creating. It is Turkey that is forcing people out of Syria and moving in their own Salafists and displacing people from the East of Turkey to move them to the Aegean coast and then organise them to go on to Greece. They then threaten the EU that they will send over even more refugees. Erdo?an himself announced it.
Europe gave six billion euros to Erdo?an and with that money he reorganised terror groups Liwa al-Tawhid, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam linked with the former al-Nusra Front and ISIS. He has organised them under the FSA. Some fighters changed allegiance from al-Nusra to ISIS. They have been recycled back through Turkey.5
Look at the UN report and at what former US Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, Brett McGurk told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour concerning ISIS in mid January this year. He said, the Turkish border is controlled by Syrian Al Qaeda near Idlib – the Al Nusra group, among other claims .6
If the EU and the civilised world want to play the game, then destruction will ensue through the EU’s carelessness. ISIS has sold Yazidi Kurdish girls as sex slaves, raped them, impregnated them, and brainwashed teenagers in Western countries to join them and participate in suicide bombings, massacres, the destruction of towns, villages, the destruction of UNESCO world heritage sites like Nimrud in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, the destruction of ancient mosques and monuments and ruin of towns and cities. They kill those that follow other religions; throw people from rooftops on allegations of being gay; burn people alive like the Jordanian pilot – a Muslim; they murder other Muslims for being less extreme. So, how can such people be ‘rehabilitated’, repatriated, allowed back into civilised society when they firmly and blindly believe that their actions are sanctioned under Sharia law?
Erdogan wants to create a ‘security corridor’ in Kurdish territory and annihilate the Kurds. As all means justify the ends, deploying ISIS members and sending them into Afrin in the name of AFAD, pretending to deliver aid to refugees in the camps 7 while re-populating the area with Islamic extremists, is just one example.
BBC Persian correspondent, Jiyar Gol, said in a recent interview with the BBC World Service that he had been observing such conduct on the part of the Turkish government and its military in Syria over the past two years. The town of Manbij was strategically important to Erdogan’s Islamicisation drive as it is not Kurdish. Here he could concentrate and organise Islamic extremist militants, circulate them through the Kurdish-held areas to bring terror and force the Kurdish people to flee, altering Kurdish demographics 8 – a policy pursued within Turkey in the 1990s in the destruction and forced migration of Kurds from more than 3000 villages, aimed at destroying support for the PKK. In Syria, altering the demographics is aimed at destroying support for the YPG.
Erdo?an has been abusing NATO to implement this Islamicisation policy. 9
All this information has been available to the USA, UN, NATO and EU forces. Now the three tyrants – Erdogan, Putin and Rouhani, – seem to be being given a free hand to map out the future for Syrian territory according to their respective interests. The Telegraph newspaper asked how this can possibly work.
A great concentration of jihadist groups is still present in Idlib, including the renamed former Nusra Front. Erdogan’s policy is to see the defeated ISIS and other jihadist fighters gather there unharmed to continue their work.
A recent meeting was hosted on 14 February 2019 by Putin in Sochi in Russia’s Black Sea region. Putin was reported to have told Erdogan he had “no right to create a “safe zone” inside Syria unless it sought and received the consent of President Bashar al-Assad, signaling tensions as a three-way summit on the Syrian conflict began…” 10
Putin knows more than anyone how Erdo?an has organised and financed ISIS and sent them across the Turkish border into Syria and Iraq. Erdo?an also bought their petrol to finance them. This is no secret. But the civilised world is not looking at it.
Let me read out a piece from an article for you: On 16 September 2016, journalist, Nafeez Ahmed, “published an exclusive investigation into Turkish state-sponsorship of jihadist groups in Syria, including the Islamic State (ISIS): ‘Whistleblower exposes how NATO’s leading ally is arming and funding ISIS 11.’…The story is based largely on interviews with a top Turkish police whistleblower, Ahmet Yayla?—?former Chief of Counterterrorism in the Turkish National Police?—?but includes analysis of other public record sources and documents…
Halis Bayancuk (right), the emir of ISIS in Turkey and son of Haci Bayancuk, a founding member of the Turkish Hizbullah (Hezbollah) is pictured here during an arrest by Turkish police. He is not handcuffed. Ahmet Yayla explains that under Erdogan, ISIS operatives have such free reign they are never handcuffed by Turkish police if they are arrested, 2015. Photo: hurriyet.com.tr 12
Nafeez Ahmed also explained how there is a “direct line of descent between TH (Turkish Hezbollah), al-Qaeda and ISIS…Halis Bayancuk, whose nom de guerre is Abu Hanzala, is the emir of ISIS in Turkey. Previously, Turkey’s state-run national public broadcaster, TRT, identified Bayancuk as the head of al-Qaeda’s Turkey branch. But Bayancuk is also the son of Haci Bayancuk, one of the founding members of TH”.
Nafeez Ahmet emphasized that: “If Yayla’s claims are correct, then the current head of Turkey’s powerful MIT under Erdogan is a member of the al-Qaeda affiliated Turkish Hizbullah, responsible for terrorist murders of leftwing dissidents in the 1990s.”
Nafeez Ahmet also observed – as we have been doing – that “NATO, it seems, has no interest in investigating the systematic sponsorship of ISIS from within the very heart of the alliance.”13 He received formal threats thereafter. 14
Even when Erdo?an passes on, other war criminals like him will still be there. This policy has to be stopped. The extremists that justify mass murder and the execution of Christians, Yazidis, non-Sunni Muslims and other targets continue to recruit fresh blood. A survey carried out in Turkey in 2015 indicated that 21% of the Turkish population did not consider ISIS to be a terrorist organisation and 8.9% believed the group is actually a country or state.15 Probably, that number is even higher now.
Q. And in the short term? What solutions exist to protect Kurdish people?
A. Many would not agree with captured PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan’s, ideology but no alternatives were provided by the EU or anyone else, so now he is held prisoner and has no freedom to say anything nor even to talk with his lawyers or family. Turkey is claiming he is saying things when we don’t know if what they circulate is true.
Öcalan’s family cannot visit him properly in accordance with EU rules to which Turkish is signatory. They do not accord Öcalan the rights to which he is entitled, so because he doesn’t have free access to the outside world we don’t know his real circumstances and it is not ethical to criticise him when we know that he is in a very difficult situation. People should do everything possible to help him, but Kurdish people also need to organise themselves.
The Kurds need to unify and align with the US, the EU, and with Israel to see that the United States of Kurdistan be established. These players also have to help to bring about a solution for the Palestinian problem.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, the KDP and PUK should finally unify their respective peshmerga forces and stop being used as pawns by Turkey and Iran. Both countries should be compelled to get out of Kurdish land. Lacking a state of their own, the Kurds have been left without protection for the past century. Unless they have a state, this persecution will continue.
Cooperation with neighbours is important but these countries need to change their rule of law and not rely on Islamic law dating from the 7th century – that doesn’t fit with today’s needs. No human being can tell me it is OK to bury human beings in the ground up to their necks and kill them with stones; to behead journalists, teachers, doctors and other professionals and burn people alive. This is mentally indefensible and is a deep sickness. It is what Sharia law is all about.
If the outside world and UN member states insist that the countries and groups behind this barbarity have to respect basic human rights and Sharia is violating basic human rights and is against the law of the UN, then it should not be allowed to rule any nation state any more than the Old testament or the Torah. Nation states are not being ruled according to the Bible and should not be ruled according to the Koran. No country should be ruled by Sharia law – not Iran, and not Turkey – but Erdo?an is putting his fingers up to everyone saying “Rabia is our guiding power and Islam is the rule the law.”
What is the difference between Erdo?an and Bin Laden and Al-Baghdadi and the countries ruled by Sharia law? What is ‘moderate Islam’?
Don’t fool yourself – it does not exist! Anyone says ‘they are moderate’ – really, there is no ‘moderate’ Islam. You believe in the Koran or you don’t, but Sharia law should not be allowed to rule any country or to be imposed upon any other country.
Civilised nations have made use of civil law and should be open and flexible to change, but religion is fixed.
The United States of Kurdistan (USK) must be realised 16 to stop all these excuses and help to prevent the further expansion of the Islamicisation policy. People must have the right to worship and follow their own religion but Sharia law should not be allowed to control the state. People adhering to any belief can have the right to worship accordingly and be protected but not to use their religion so as to impose their religion on others.
The US has enjoyed a successful partnership with Kurdish forces in Syria. This good relationship must continue. A year ago, the US military warned the Kurdish forces against pursuing relations with Russia and Assad saying that they could not work with them if they were also seeking relations with the enemy. So what are they to do now?
The Kurdish forces were the only group present that did not run away from the mediaeval slaughterers flying the banners of ISIS but checked their advance with their own blood. The PYD and its fighting battalions, the YPG and women’s group, the YPJ that were supported until now by the US and the Coalition, single-handedly stopped ISIS from sustaining their grip on Syria – a fact Erdo?an detests. Potentially abandoned by an inconsistent, US leader, these Kurds are still facing ISIS fighters that are being recycled in Turkish military uniform.
Photo: Reuters/Twitter/@Gargame34330169
Thousands of ISIS (and other jihadist) militants remain at large – they have not been imprisoned and many were just trucked into Idlib; they have not been prosecuted and are free to continue their radicalisation drive in parallel to Erdogan’s Islamicisation objectives. A large majority of these criminals are directly responsible for the merciless execution of innocent civilians and the rape and brutalisation of women and girls sold like potatoes in the market and shared about among ISIS commanders. What of the fate of the hordes of unfortunate children born from this terrible union?
NATO, the EU, and the various European institutions in which Turkey enjoys membership, must hold Erdo?an accountable for helping Jihadist groups carry out these crimes, including sanctioned underly q and Palmyra in Syriass.rrible union?e to be processed. Protests ensued across the country.cldued nd are conthose from ISIS now dressed in Turkish uniform.
Why should Turkey be permitted to continue to retain one foot in NATO while the other supports Islamic terrorism? Numerous photographs provide proof of Turkish fighters from ISIS 17 that have gone on to impose the Turkish language on their captives 18 and of fighters that have changed sides going from al-Nusra to ISIS and still being recycled through the Turkish army. Turkish has been used as a primary recruitment language, including to recruit Turkish women jihadists. 19 Many have been captured in Iraq and Syria.
Afrin was peaceful: Erdogan had no justification to invade, installing jihadist forces with the army, unleashing terror on the Kurdish population there – it was one of the most stable areas of Syria – an historic Kurdish enclave in a sea of Arabs. But this is not an ethnic conflict – Kurds and Arabs have been working together in the Democratic Syrian Forces and are continuing to do so with Coalition support, sorting out the problem of jihadist women and their children, including the orphans brought into Al Hol camp. Now they have the task of detaining and providing sustenance to the IS remnants fleeing from Al-Baghouz in Deir ez-Zor governorate close to the frontier of Syria and Iraq. The Coalition forces must fulfil their obligations.
Putin and Erdo?an are destroying NATO and what are you going to replace it with – a renamed Free Syrian Army and re-energised Islamic State?
For his leading role in war crimes, Erdo?an should be made to stand trial in the Hague. Others have stood trial there for far less.