Category Archives: Kurdistan

PKK – A Few Impressions and Notes on the Kurdish Struggle for Autonomy and Unification

25 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, International Development, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Middle East, Syria, Turkey

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Kurdish defense elements may represent an amalgam of Kurdish interests largely beneath the authoritarian semi-socialist umbrella of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Conceived in the Far Left zeitgeist of the 1970s, an era saturated in and partially shaped by agent provocateur, disinformation, and money pouring off of Russia’s “Active Measures” programs, the PKK appears to have followed the pattern known to other Soviet-associated “liberation fronts” in relation to ruthless consolidations of power, funding through criminal means, and the launching of violent revolutionary actions against forces impeding organizational ambitions, concepts, and ends.

Be that as it may, the PKK has had also unquestionably repressive or even genocidal foes in the states in which the Kurdish community had been divided and politically diminished in power, but none were perhaps as awful in their intent to destroy Kurdish culture as Turkey (reference, for example: Wikipedia: “Human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey”). In the recruitment of Kurdish forces to fight ISIS, that issue has been well recognized —

In 2013, Erdogan promised to recognize Kurdish identity and language, and increase Kurdish liberties. A truce followed, but hostilities resumed in 2015. Erdogan said he was responding to PKK terrorism. The PKK claimed Erdogan destroyed the ceasefire by building dams and security stations in Kurdish regions. In either case, a war was on. Erdogan attacked with helicopter gunships, artillery and armored divisions, murdering thousands and displacing 335,000 mainly Kurdish citizens. A UN report described destroyed villages as moonscapes.

https://www.newsweek.com/turkeys-erdogan-kurds-opinion-1050039 – 7/31/2018 – Wachtel, Jonathan and Albert Wachtel. “Turkey’s Erdogan Wants to Crush the Kurds and Recreate the Ottoman world | Opinion.” Newsweek, July 31, 2018.

The recruitment of mixed Kurdish forces to fight ISIS necessarily involved diplomatic magic as some best trained and experienced in the business of fighting were to become those fighting Assad’s idea of “The Terrorists” — ISIS.

Here’s a section representing one starting point — the American State Department’s continuing designation of the PKK as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” — and both the required finesse to shift popular impression plus an expression of America’s intent to defend its Kurdish allies (and front line) in the effort to defeat Islamic State —

The Department of State has reviewed and maintained the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), pursuant to Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended (8 U.S.C. § 1189). The PKK was originally designated as an FTO in 1997.

. . . .

Today’s actions notify the U.S. public and the international community that the PKK remains a terrorist organization. In addition to its continued status as an FTO, the PKK has also been designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224 since 2001.

https://www.state.gov/state-department-maintains-foreign-terrorist-organization-fto-designation-of-the-kurdistan-workers-party-pkk/ – 3/1/2019 – U.S. Department of State. “State Department Maintains Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Designation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Media Note, Office of the Spokesperson, March 1, 2019.
Posted to YouTube by R&U Video January 25, 2017.

BackChannels refers often to the “Phantoms of the Soviet”, a mixture of KGB-Era ideas, methods, personalities, and relationships that have for about 26 years outlived the Soviet Union. Wherever cultivated, the same have fairly suspended geopolitical space in the barbarism and political repression best associated with feudal / medieval political absolutism.

The PKK’s role in potential Turkish-Russian escalation should be viewed through the lens of Moscow’s deep historic ties with the group — and with Damascus. In the 1970s, the PKK was established with Soviet support in the Beqa Valley of Syrian-occupied Lebanon. As one of two NATO countries boasting a land border with the Soviet Union, Turkey was considered Moscow’s soft underbelly during the Cold War, providing Washington with numerous assets such as listening bases capable of intercepting communications across the Black Sea. The Russians saw the PKK as a means of undercutting a key U.S. ally.

The PKK also enjoyed support from Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafiz, who cast his regime as the champion of Turkish Kurds despite oppressing Syria’s own Kurdish community. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan lived in Damascus while his group ran training camps in Lebanon and used Syrian territory to attack Turkey.

Moscow’s support for the PKK eventually dissipated with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of pressing political and economic problems at home. Syria ended its own support in 1998, after Ankara threatened Damascus with war for supporting what had become a terribly destructive PKK campaign throughout Turkey. As part of this abrupt shift, Hafiz al-Assad expelled Ocalan.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-pkk-could-spark-turkish-russian-military-escalation – 5/25/2016 – Tabler, Andrew J. and Soner Cagaptay. “The PKK Could Spark Turkish-Russian Military Escalation.” The Washington Institute, May 25, 2016.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) emerged from the radical ferment that swept the Western world in the 1960s. It was founded in 1978 as a Marxist-Leninist organisation infused with Kurdish nationalism and a cult of personality around its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The PKK spent much of this period attacking other Kurdish and left-wing groups, and its own dissidents – hundreds of whom would be killed over the years – in an attempt to monopolise the support base for its ideas.

http://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/3053-PYD-Foreign-Fighter-Project-1.pdf – 2017 – Orton, Kyle. “The Forgotten Foreign Fighters: The PKK in Syria.” PDF. P. 5. The Henry Jackson Society, 2017.

While BackChannels happily and humbly defers to The Henry Jackson Society’s wizard of political science, Kyle Orton, it recognizes inherent value in the Kurdish community as singular among the world’s ethnic and tribal cohorts and with that equally inherent rights to autonomous self-determination and dignity — in defense terms: freedom from cultural and religious persecution.

BackChannels, being neither international organization or potent state, however may best demur to an analyst closer to the issues and altogether more experienced — in this instance, Michael Rubin of The American Enterprise Institute:

More importantly, PKK tactics have changed: There remains low-level military insurgency, but gone are the days when the PKK targets Turkish civilians (alas, the reverse is not true with regard to Turkish forces and Kurdish civilians, as the residents of Cizre, Nusaybin, and Sur can attest). Certainly, breakaway factions of the PKK such as the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) have claimed attacks, but such factionalism is common when former terrorists come in from the cold. That was the case with the “ Real IRA ” which emerged after the IRA entered into a peace process in Northern Ireland.

http://www.aei.org/publication/its-time-to-acknowledge-the-pkks-evolution/ – 1/25/2019 – Rubin, Michael. “It’s time to acknowledge the PKK’s evolution”. American Enterprise Institute (AEI), January 25, 2019.

Has the PKK evolved?

The Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy published this in 2016 on a related organization active in Turkey: https://ctc.usma.edu/the-kurdistan-freedom-falcons-a-profile-of-the-arms-length-proxy-of-the-kurdistan-workers-party/ .

A little more than six months ago, BackChannels published “Moscow as Medusa with All the Snakes Attached” (January 2, 2019), and what it had had in mind was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leveraging of arrangements involving leadership in several EU / NATO states fit for the flattering of an emperor. He had President Erdogan apologizing to him for shooting down two MIGs overflying Turkish air space (and, lo and behold, the “Turkish Stream” energy project got back on its feet) and, later (about now), purchasing Russian air defense technology suited to knocking NATO air power out of the sky . . . .

Elsewhere in EU / NATO, the “New Nationalism” responded to what BackChannels believes to have been manipulated “Islamic Terrorism” and — most certainly forced — mass migration from the Syrian Civil War: Viktor Orban (and family) had their premise for handling Hungary as an increasingly family-based enterprise; in France, Marine Le Pen had a (Moscow-sponsored) mission (she lost her run at the Presidency — and later the “Yellow Vests” appeared); and in the United States, an autocratic and reactionary conservative Donald Trump rose to power above a cloud of innuendos, lies, and improprieties involving foreign interference in the 2016 elections (for an introduction, see the film Active Measures) as well as an assortment of other and frequently sordid business.

So here with the above in mind is reference to “east-west” and “medieval v modern” conflict that continues to validate the idea of the presence of the “Phantoms of the Soviet” and their generally impeding progress toward modern governance in the near and middle east:

The Kurds have historically played an important role in Russian efforts to exert its influence in the Middle East. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used the Kurds to bypass America’s containment strategy in the region.

Shortly after World War II, Moscow supported the creation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan to increase its influence in the region. After the Iranian army crushed the Kurdish forces, the fighters led by Mustafa Barzani took refuge in the Soviet Union.

https://warontherocks.com/2017/12/why-is-turkey-silent-on-russias-cooperation-with-the-syrian-kurds/ – 12/19/2017 – Tol, Gonul. “Why is Turkey Silent on Russia’s Cooperation with the Syrian Kurds?” War on the Rocks, December 19, 2017.

Political analyst Gonul Tol appears in the third video featured in the next section, which presents another set of impressions having to do with the Kurdish struggle for Kurdish autonomy and unification.

Posted to YouTube by i24NEWS English December 26, 2018.
Posted to YouTube by Vox, March 12, 2018.
Posted to YouTube by the Middle East Institute, January 22, 2018.

Related Online

BBC. “Who are Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels?” November 4, 2016.

Cagaptay, Soner. “Syria and Turkey: The PKK Dimension.” The Washington Institute, April 5, 2012.

CNN Library. “Kurdish People Fast Facts”.

Orton, Kyle. “The Forgotten Foreign Fighters: The PKK in Syria.” PDF. The Henry Jackson Society, 2017.

Orton, Kyle. “The PKK Roots of America’s Ally in Syria.” Terrorism Monitor, 17:12, The Jamestown Foundation, June 14, 2019.

Orton, Kyle. “The Problems With the West’s Partners Against the Islamic State.” Kyle Orton’s Blog, May 10, 2017.

Rational Wiki. “Communalism”.

Rubin, Michael. “It’s time to acknowledge the PKK’s evolution”. American Enterprise Institute (AEI), January 25, 2019.

The Kurdish Project (Web Site) | The Kurdish Project (Facebook)

Tol, Gonul. “Why is Turkey Silent on Russia’s Cooperation with the Syrian Kurds?” War on the Rocks, December 19, 2017.

Wikipedia. “Democratic Confederalism”.

–33–

Moscow as Medusa with All the Snakes Attached

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,


“Medieval v Modern”

It’s a trope here on BackChannels, and it has an analog:

“Feudal Political Absolutism v Democratic Checked and Distributed Power”

More state of mind than state, “Kurdistan” has already its “Medieval v Modern” civil separation, and perhaps unwittingly, the Soviet-Era PKK, a NATO and U.S. State Department designated terrorist organization, remains mired in the flipped absolutism of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Another BackChannels trope, this one about Russia: “Two major revolutions in one-hundred years (1917-2017), three forms of government, and not one change in the nation’s affections in relation to ‘paternal authoritarianism'”.

For that last label, “paternal authoritarianism”, credit the late scholar Richard Pipes, but BC will not be looking up the specific source at this time.

The affection for strongmen — and perhaps helplessness before their “politically absolute” organizations — has the medieval world clawing the modern one backward.

Of course, the defectors from medieval worlds, those made refugee by them, those left bereft and without defenses, essentially drain the tapped resources of the same, leaving those worlds to become spiritually hollow, absent of conscience, lacking in their own humanity, and burnt out and purposeless.

Moscow, that “Third Rome”, has deals — call it what it is: “leverage” — with everyone: Assad, Khamenei, Hezbollah — low-hanging fruit: the “Syrian Tragedy”, BackChannel’s term, could not have taken place without Moscow’s endorsement and direct military support in arms and occasional actions (like bombing hospitals); Erdogan: “Turkish Stream” – Big Energy project demanding Ankara’s cooperation with Moscow: France – Marine Le Pen and the Newest Nationalism — but France is more brave in its defense of its still revolutionary democracy — Le Pen lost her bid for the presidency; Germany – energy supply dependence; Hungary – Orban’s bromance and narcissism; USA – only Mueller knows . . .

FTAC: From the BackChannels Reading Page on Facebook, January 2, 2019

The text about to be quoted accompanied as introduction on the BackChannels reading page on Facebook the URL to Roy Gutman’s December 28, 2018 political analysis in The Intercept in which he lays out aspects of character and control by the PKK that had been long supported by Moscow through the end of the Soviet Era and, obviously, 26 years beyond.

The problem BackChannels has seen has been that of Moscow operating the Syrian Theater in a way that perpetuates the existence of ISIS for as long as it remains a politically useful tool against the liberal and open democracies of the west.

In essence, it appears the Soviet methods in power imparted to the PKK during Russia’s Communist Party Era have become ingrained and difficult for western or liberal allies of the Kurds to displace.

In response and with reference to https://theintercept.com/2018/12/28/syria-withdrawal-kurds-pkk/

——

The Phantoms of the Soviet, a government dissolved in bankruptcy more than 26 years ago, continue to haunt or shadow the Kurdish Community in its bid for survival against the emergent Turkish Sultanate, as BackChannels views it, still supported by NATO, and ISIS, which is “handled” by Damascus as flanked by Moscow and Tehran.

In the ganglion of the Syrian Tragedy, too many threads lead back to Moscow — and Moscow has well demonstrated its peculiar absence of conscience in the general support of Assad the Tyrant, its own repeated bombings of Syrian hospitals, and its defense of Iranian advanced missile manufacturing.

Moscow has also partnered with Ankara on the Turkish Stream energy project.

😦

The true battle is one having to do with time: the medieval world of feudal absolute power — the power known to the world’s dictatorships, none of them responsible to either the Earth or Humanity — wishes to overrun the modern one built on the freedom accompanying democratically checked and distributed power.

According to Gutman, the Kurds appear stuck with both old habits of mind and with the organizational habits that have flowed down from the Soviet Era.

Of late, Kurdish representatives online have taken to pairing the United States and NATO with the backing of Turkey, a state no longer even proto-democratic and one long bent on the cultural annihilation of the Kurds. While the rhetoric may be shrugged away, the character of the PKK, well described by Roy Gutman (as cited) but also by Kyle Orton (as referenced below) may not be so easily covered over or glossed.

What portion of the Kurdish People remain behind or with the PKK?

That’s an open question for BackChannels.

Defectors from the conscripted ranks of the organization apparently (so noted by Gutman) have some options within “Kurdistan”, but the impression made by the Soviet affiliate would today repulse all humanity-, freedom-, and peace-loving advocates of influence in western politics who would otherwise more enthusiastically support a true indigenous people’s striving for autonomy and self-determination.

This poster by the young Danish communist Rune Agerhus features three flags, and they are from left to right as follows: Socialist Party of Kurdistan; National Liberation Front of Kurdistan; People’s Liberation Army of Kurdistan. Source for Kurdish flag and pennant identification: https://fotw.info/flags/krd%7Dpkk.html

The flag better known to represent “Kurdistan” in the west (as judged at least by the “Flag of Kurdistan” page on Wikipedia):

During the seven-year course of the KGB Theater’s Production — call it “guided” (most likely) — of “Assad v The Terrorists”, Bashar al-Assad has managed to barrel bomb half his state into rubble and destroy or displace nearly half of his population (as known in 2011). He has won for his efforts the expansion of Russian and Iranian military interests on his formerly sovereign property and through related sadism — reference: Sednaya Prison — lost entirely the respect of the modern world.

As regards Soviet / post-Soviet alignment with Moscow, much less Damascus, the Kurds may not expect to sustain their alignment with the ruthless (who would even provide the useful enemy known as ISIS) while currying the favor of the democratic, humanist, liberal, and deeply socialized west.

Reference

Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine. “Kurdish Repression in Turkey.” June 1982.

Gutman, Roy. “In Syria, U.S.-Backed Kurdish Fighters Face Trump’s Withdrawal — and the Legacy of Their Own Mistakes.” The Intercept, December 28, 2018.

Horvath, Zoltan. “Kurdistan”. CRW Flags, updated June 2, 2018.

Oppenheim, James S. “Reflexive Control Process: “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” -> New Nationalism -> New Feudalism.” BackChannels, March 11, 2017.

Oppenheim, James S. “Syria — Assad — ISIL — Background.” BackChannels, December 9, 2016.

Orton, Kyle. “The Problems With the West’s Partners Against the Islamic State.” Kyle Orton’s Blog, May 10, 2017.

Wikipedia. “Flag of Kurdistan”.

W.W. “Paternalistic policy: Against baby authoritarianism.” The Economist, June 11, 2012.

Yayla, Ahmet S. and Colin P. Clarke. “Turkey’s Double ISIS Standard.” Foreign Policy, April 12, 2018.

Addendum – January 3, 2018+

Szuba, Jared. “‘This is our reward?’: After 4 years fighting ISIS, Syrian Kurds face uncertain future as US pivots to Turkey.” The Defense Post, January 2, 2018.

Syrian Democratic Council.

–33–

Event! “Who Deserves a State? Stories of Jews, Native Americans & Kurds” – Sophia Marjanovic, Anna Langer, Kani Xulam – March 28, 2018, 7-8 p.m., School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Events and Other PSA's, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kurdistan, Middle East, North America, Politics, Syria, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

GWU-180328-digFlyer-NOTJSOs

School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA)
George Washington Univeristy
805 21st Street NW
Room 309
Washington, DC 20052
Phone: 202-994-6227
smpa@gwu.edu

Google Maps

https://www.google.com/maps/place/George+Washington+University+School+of+Media+and+Public+Affairs/@38.9001909,-77.0469929,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x3e32dedd82d144b3!8m2!3d38.8998277!4d-77.0461775

–33–

Will the West Abandon Its Kurdish Allies in the Battle Against ISIS as Well as Their Efforts to Produce a Democratic Modern State?

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Kurdistan, North America, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

America: have you no dreams, faith, ideals, memories, values?

One cannot argue with the Soviet origins of the PKK — nor today it’s probable conflation with “TAK” terrorists operating occasionally in Turkey — and the long-term effects of the Kurdish-Russian relationship that is today being leveraged by a potentially genocidal (proven once — has the world to see it again proven?) Turkish and neo-Islamist authoritarian state.  However, modern Kurdistan and the “Rojava Experiment” with liberal democracy may be more “western” than commonly acknowledged.

Kurdish-PolitParties

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kurdish_organisations

Credit Turkish President Erdogan with Soviet-style defamation when he frames all Kurds as action-producing PKK terrorists.

Credit American Revolutionary memory to with what had to be brought together to overcome an avaricious king and to mark its first steps on the road to becoming not only self-governing but uniquely so as the redoubt of freedom from all political and religious tyrannies.

The Kurdish Community may need to advance its own inter-tribal cooperation and perhaps temper the power of its own autocrats to achieve meaningful, responsible, and responsible authentic democratic governance; however, both Moscow-Damascus and “Moscow-Ankara” would seem to be working to squeeze the community back into political impotence and from there out of existence.

Followers and readers with timely information and insight into the Kurdish community’s political makeup, its arrangements with other powers — including Russia and related energy projects — and its desire for autonomy, dignity, and freedom are welcome to contact the editor through the contact page and form on this blog.

“Kurdish YPG Engages ISIS In / Near Raqqa, Syria”

https://youtu.be/5D0HqXMTE1M?t=2m8s

Posted to YouTube Dec. 18, 2017.

Additional Reference

Adalian, Rouben Paul.  “Turkey, Republic of, and the Armenian Genocide.”  Armenian National Institute, n.d.

Dominique, Callimanopulos.  “Kurdish Represseion in Turkey.”  Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, June 1982:

During Turkey’s war for independence, Turkish leaders, promised Kurds a Turkish-Kurdish federated state in return for their assistance in the war. After independence was achieved, however, they ignored the bargain they had made.

Months after the declaration of a Turkish republic, Ankara, under the pretext of creating an “indivisible nation,” adopted an ideology aimed at eliminating, both physically and culturally, non-Turkish elements within the Republic. These “elements” were primarily Kurdish and Armenian.

Letsch, Constanze.  “In Turkey, Repression of the Kurdish Language Is Back, With No End in Sight.”  The Nation, December 21, 2017:

On the night of December 31, 2016, 94 associations, including the institute, were shut down on allegations of “connections to terrorist organizations.” A month later, the authorities confiscated all documents, course materials, and hardware—computers, two projectors, a TV—as well as the school’s furniture. The institute’s website was taken down. In theory, the institute has the right to appeal the shutdown through a state-appointed commission, but human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International have criticized it as insufficient, as more than 100,000 cases are pending review by just seven commissioners within a two-year deadline.

Ismael, Yousif.  “Once again, Turkey Refuses Solutions in the Syrian Civil War.”  Washington Kurdish Institute, September 21, 2017.

Mohamad, Sinam.  “Once We Beat ISIS, Don’t Abandon Us.”  Op-Ed.  The New York Times, May 11, 2017.

Rice, Bill.  “America Must Live Up to Its Own Values and Support Kurdistan’s Independence.”  Washington Kurdish Institute, September 21, 2017.

Weiss, Stanley.  “It’s Time to Kick Erdogan’s Turkey Out of NATO.”  HuffPost, n.d.

For nearly seven decades, this combination of factors has been the potential Achilles heel of NATO: that one day, its members would be called to defend the actions of a rogue member who no longer shares the values of the alliance but whose behavior puts its “allies” in danger while creating a nightmare scenario for the global order.

After 67 years, that day has arrived: Turkey, which for half a century was a stalwart ally in the Middle East while proving that a Muslim-majority nation could be both secular and democratic, has moved so far away from its NATO allies that it is widely acknowledged to be defiantly supporting the Islamic State in Syria in its war against the West.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

–33–

 

FTAC: FEMEN, Lady Liberty, Modesty, and Civil Disobedience

17 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, France, Free Speech, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Kurdistan, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Inspiration: an image with FEMEN topless, of course, up top and below examples of accomplished female professionals and the charge was that FEMEN were not feminists but the workers were.

I like FEMEN.

The Atlantic ran a Pro-Con set on them in 2013:

Pro: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/topless-jihad-why-femen-is-right/275471/

Con: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/put-your-shirts-back-on-why-femen-is-wrong/275582/

Where women enjoy security beneath the umbrella of reasonable and sound laws, it should not make a difference how one or the other choose to bring attention to political or social issues that concern them.

Free to work; free to bare the breast (at times); free to choose: free.

***

The hidden principle and cultural value behind this discussion is “modesty”. In civil and day-to-day life, most may agree that modesty is a virtue.

Keep your clothes on.

🙂

However, in the liberal western democracies that adjust themselves with thought and thoughtfulness, there’s been ample room for peaceful civil disobedience and protest. It’s in that context that a passionate defense of persons against wrongdoing my be interpreted. Perhaps where attention is needed — perhaps we should discuss FEMEN’s causes more than its methods — attention is gotten.

The Eugene Delacroix painting is famous and here somewhat between camps because she is “Liberty” herself leading the charge against tyranny.

Le 28 Juillet. La Liberté guidant le peuple

Eugene Delacroix, “Le 28 Juillet. La Liberté guidant le peuple.” Source: Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives via artsy.net

–33–

 

Kurdistan: Themes

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

1. Phantoms of the Soviet

Reference Abdullah Ocalan’s vision that misrepresents liberalism and true representative democratic process, which may in turn replicate what the Soviet axis always produced using “sweet words” combined with the rapacious temperament of the politically privileged in an autocratic system: kleptocratic strongmen in palaces and manipulated “masses” around them.

2. Phantoms of the Soviet – PKK

Related to the first point, the PKK set up in the Soviet Era with, apparently, related dogma for intellectual definition, and in that its presence in persons may persist beneath other banners, the same may serve to block western enthusiasm for an independent Kurdistan.  In other words and in relation to the Phantoms of the Soviet (a category referenced frequently on BackChannels in relation to other conflicts), the persistence of PKK ideas and actions, whether vengeful or provocative, cloud western support.  The only answer to that is to reconsider what is advanced in Kurdistan as regards practical ideals and political language (across languages) and adjusting for the distance in intellectual history between states of affairs in 1984 and those of this day.

3. Putin’s Feudal Revanche

Putin’s Russia represents another rapacious autocracy bent on producing conflict worldwide within a global system of feudal absolute power certain to drive wars of all against all.

The Federation represents Russia’s third flip — two revolutions, three governments — within 100 years  of the days of the tsars, and appears now to leverage deals on that basis, e.g., in range of Putin’s sway (and leveraged by the Turkish Stream energy pipeline project, Erdogan has diminished the democracy that initially empowered him and all but returned Turkey to a feudal estate from which he cannot be politically (by mere elections) ejected.

4. Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s Totalitarian Approach to the Creation and Presentation of Conflict

Assad, as flanked by Putin and Khamenei, incubated Kurdistan’s enemy, ISIS.

The intent was to produce a large piece of theater, truly, that would make Assad look good — he envisioned and helped into power the enemy  wanted — while producing a major headache for the west. By remaining somewhat fixed in past arrangements and ideas, the Kurdish community has perhaps been maneuvered into aiding the devil that most seeks to control it (and everyone else).

🙂

Related term of art for look-up: “malignant narcissism“.

Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

5. State of Kurdish Administrative and Constitutional Development

It has been hard to see the coordinating and self-subordinating (“for the greater good”) character of Kurdish leaders to an overarching administrative and democratic (power checking, power displacing, power distributing, and culturally and politically evolving) system. The latent Kurdish state in fact that may be defined by the subordination of officials to greater institutional arrangements may be there, but the western / publishing-in-English journos haven’t laid out relationships, or I’ve missed that coverage, or the same is not wanted.

In deference to Ocalan’s “democratic communalist” vision, there may be little incentive (by way of example too) to bring western commercial elements and associated vulgarity into a culturally independent Kurdistan.  There are many other ways to pursue and sustain both cultural and political evolution and distributed economic development across a new polity (reference authors Brown, McRobie, Schumacher, among others).

Addendum to the Above: Found Posted on YouTube – October 17, 2017

6. Modern Kurdish Defense Considerations Against Adverse Feudal Estates

Much in favor of the defense of Kurdish independence may be the reversion of the Turkish government to feudalism and its history of persecution of the Kurds and others.  Clearly, the Kurdish community needs an effective defense against adverse egomaniac and ill-willed potentates.

7. Armed Proxies of Iranian Fascism

Washington needs to be pressed hard about the powering up and evident fielding of Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militia in the latest suppression of Kurdish independence. At this point, Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s kleptocratic totalitarian ambition should be glaring, and the western public should join the Kurdish community in blocking greater Iranian fascism through armed proxies.

If there’s a secret to peace all around, it may be in the separation of the present western-backed governments from the external meddling of rogue dictatorships that wish to drag the region backward toward feudal barbarism using the most nefarious of political methods to do it. The leaders in that aggression have learned how to make money off the misery of others while they themselves remain remote from the nightmares they have created.

–33–

Kurdish Struggle – Kurdistan v Iran-Aligned Shiite Militia

15 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

The Kurdistan region enjoys autonomy in Iraq, and that has meant running its own airports; borders; maintaining its own Peshmerga security forces; and exporting oil through its own economic management.

Baghdad now wants to use the referendum as an excuse to roll that back.

With the war on the Islamic State seemingly close to an end, Baghdad wants to punish the Kurdish region for seeking independence.

Frantzman, Seth J.  “How Baghdad is Punishing the Kurds Post-Referendum.”  Jerusalem Post, October 4, 2017.

BackChannels has turned up the following themes related to the Kurdish struggle for independence:

  1. Iranian resistance expressed in Iraq via Iran aligned and backed Shiite militia.
  2. Persistence of the Kurdish PKK and a perhaps too robust relationship with a persistently feudal and political absolute, criminal, and totalitarian Russia.
  3. Inability, so far, to attenuate the power of chiefs and produce a disciplined and power balancing democracy.

Reference – Iraq: Iran Aligned Shiite Militia

Note, please, the date year associated with reference.  Whether 2015, earlier, or later, BackChannels’ Kurdish source has cited Iraq’s Iranian-aligned Shiite militia as posting a persistent challenge to the defense of the Kurd’s ancestral land.

Khedery, Ali.  Iran’s Shiite Militias Are Running Amok in Iraq.  Foreign Policy, February 19, 2015.

Washington’s response to the Islamic State’s (IS) advance, however, has been disgraceful: The United States is now acting as the air force, the armory, and the diplomatic cover for Iraqi militias that are committing some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet. These are “allies” that are actually beholden to our strategic foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and which often resort to the same vile tactics as the Islamic State itself.

Vatanka, Alex and Sarkawt Shamsulddin. “Forget ISIS: Shia Militias Are the Real Threat to Kurdistan.” The National Interest, January 7, 2015:

 . . . from the KRG perspective, two Shia militia forces—Asaib Ahl Haq and the Badr militias—are uncontrollable.

Both these militias are backed by Iran, and the their military operations are effectively overseen by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Qods Force, which serves as the external arm of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Rudaw.  “Peshmerga commander warns Shiite militias a threat to Kurds.”  September 8, 2016.  The piece winds around but ends this way:

Hashd al-Shaabi is the defender of “Iraqi sovereignty and its unity,” he declared, and it will not fight any other group except ISIS.

Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite militia forces have clashed several times in Kirkuk’s southern ethnically-mixed city of Khurmatu in recent months. Several people from both sides were killed in the confrontations.

 

Ahmad, Aziz.  “The Defeat of ISIS Must Mean an Independent Kurdistan.”  The New York Times, July 13, 2017.

A century after the breakdown of the Ottoman boundaries, Iraq remains a forced union of peoples whose national aspirations and sense of identity have been suppressed. Members of my family spent decades in exile from successive Iraqi governments that, since the turn of the 20th century, butchered generations of Kurdish men, women and children who struggled to find their place in this artificial state.

Thus there has always been a lingering, unresolved question of identity for the Kurds of Iraq. That identity will finally achieve resolution when the people of Iraqi Kurdistan vote in the referendum. This expression of popular will should not only close a long chapter of grief but also bring new certainty and stability to an increasingly volatile region plagued by sectarian conflict and bloodshed.

Hannah, John.  “The United States Must Prevent Disaster in Kurdistan.”  Foreign Policy, October 2, 2017:

Of special concern was the possibility that Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq could seek to gain political advantage by challenging Kurdish control in the oil-rich, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk and other disputed territories also claimed by the central government in Baghdad.

John Hannah relays a chilling list of actions taken or threatened by Iraq and Turkey in their pique with the Kurdish referendum. He goes on to note the following and then pleads for Washington’s regaining its own initiative in moral courage in partnering with the Kurds and forestalling the escalation of force applied in keeping them captive to forces clearly out of step with Washington’s moral and political missions:

I was taken aback by the intense frustration and anger directed at a critical wartime ally and longtime, loyal U.S. partner whose history of oppression and even genocide at the hands of other nations leaves it with — if nothing else — an almost unimpeachable moral case for self-determination.

Reference – Kurdish PKK

Posted to YouTube August 21, 2017.

Posted to YouTube June 29, 2017.

Backgrounder (January 2, 2014)

(More is in the works).

–33–

Animus Kurdish and Turkish

09 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan, Middle East, Philology, Political Psychology, Religion, Turkey

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

The Kurds have also been persecuted by the Turkish government for decades. Gültan Kışanak and Fırat Anlı, the co-mayors of Diyarbakır, for example, were arrested on October 30, 2016 for “being members of a terrorist organization,” and Turkish authorities then appointed a custodian to run the city. In addition, there are currently 13 Kurdish MPs — including the leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — in Turkish jails.

Bulut, Uzay.  “Turkey’s Mass Persecution of Christians and Kurds in Diyarbakir.” Middle East Forum, September 4, 2017.

*

Turk-TAK-Inci-171009-0717-sc-cap

START UMD.  “Search Results: 42 Incidents” – “TAK, Turkey”.  Global Terrorism Database, October 9, 2017.

While the Kurdish community garners western sympathy in its effort to survive both Arab and Turkish efforts to diminish and eventually destroy its existence, the fight between the two appears often to take place in the shadows and with fathomless ambiguity.

The “TAK” AKA “Kurdistan Freedom Hawks”, appear to operate autonomously from any Kurdish command structure, including the PKK’s, a U.S. Department of State listed terrorist organization.

Of course, one may suppose that for a secret war an intensely secretive military organization — there would seem no other option! — would fit with state adversary whose own aggression and transgressions were apparently masked off from general public view.  Then too, Turkey appears to have chosen to interpret rebel reactions to its own assaults in the most gross terms: in the state’s mind, all of the Kurdish community is PKK (just as all opposition to Assad must be ISIS or “The Terrorists”), and the community needs be sustained  bare for eventual cultural erasure beneath the Turkish banner of Islam.

Related in Wikipedia:

Certain academics[who?] have claimed that successive Turkish governments adopted a sustained genocide program against Kurds, aimed at their assimilation.[35] The genocide hypothesis remains, however, a minority view among historians, and is not endorsed by any nation or major organisation. Desmond Fernandes, a Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University, breaks the policy of the Turkish authorities into the following categories:[36]

  1. Forced assimilation program, which involved, among other things, a ban of the Kurdish language, and the forced relocation of Kurds to non-Kurdish areas of Turkey.

  2. The banning of any organizations opposed to category one.

  3. The violent repression of any Kurdish resistance.

Wikipedia.  “Human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey”.

As if the confusion accompanying a secretive lowest-intensity war between Kurdish rebels and a new autocratic and potentially fanatic Turkish state were not enough for the devil’s amusement, the rebel’s hero Abdullah Öcalan draws from the defunct Soviet perspective for his presentation of democracy as prelude to the popular soft “democratic communalism” that would preserve the Kurdish community and make way for a hypothetical cultural Eden:

That the solution to all national and social problems is linked to the nation-state represents the most tyrannical aspect of modernity. To expect a solution from the tool which is itself the source of problems can only lead to the growth of problems and societal chaos. Capitalism itself is the most crisis-ridden stage of civilisation. The nation-state, as the tool deployed in this crisis-ridden stage, is the most developed organisation of violence in social history.

 Öcalan, Abdullah.  Democratic Nation.  Cologne, Germany: International Initiative, 2016.

The short excerpt from the book may be considered an injustice given the lengthier reflections of the author; however, as well demonstrated in Syria by Moscow-Tehran (with baby Damascus between) if not elsewhere in the post-Soviet sphere of influence, deriding liberalism and the solutions produced by the west to ecological, economic, and humanist interests needs must come first: the conflation of unbridled capitalism with the nation-state is treated as unassailable and the very idea of nation-states (and their boundaries) needs must go.

With that in mind, have a look at where “Assad v The Terrorists” began in 2011 and how the state looks today.

Given the usefulness of what might be a binding ideological cause — and who would not be for Earth and her People? — there would seem in Ocalan’s latest book the persistence of dreadfully romantic ideas already long failed and left behind.

*

For the record, BackChannels may suggest that all successful polities pay mind to cultural, ecological, and social issues within their purview to construct in law and physical fact the distribution of capabilities and responsibilities that may then create healthy and productive regions — ask any urban or rural developer or planner you may know about who builds “infrastructure” and how that gets done, economically, politically, and physically.

Also worth noting of the post-Soviet sphere: the littering of the globe with kleptocratic dictatorships that appear to offer convincing and sweet-sounding programs to their people while in fact exploiting the same in the development of powerful systems of patronage .  

With the Soviet Union dissolved 26 years ago (Dec. 25, 1991), the true hearts of communism have perhaps turned — say as the Communist Party has done with Jacob Zuma in South Africa — to calling out the crooks among their own.

*

Still, must everyone wind up alienated and enslaved by by remote power?

Must all minority cultures — anywhere — assimilate themselves into disappearance becomes of some asshole’s fascist jones for one language, religion, or national purity, or political solidarity within or beyond his own area of influence and zone of control?

We should all hope not!

It would seem most natural for communities and person to seek for themselves good accommodations without reversion to criminal force where opportunity and respect may be considered as given.

🙂

BackChannels does not know how central the PKK, much less mysterious autonomous spin-offs like the TAK, are to Kurdish cultural integrity, but it appreciates for the communities representing the earth’s fewer than 7,000 living languages the idea of ethnolinguistic cultural survival and co-evolution.  From that perspective, the Turkish speakers would be noble to leave the Kurdish speakers with freedom and security on the land across which their language developed — and the Kurds would seem right to push back against the forces of their own cultural annihilation.

Reference

Bulut, Uzay.  “Turkey’s Mass Persecution of Christians and Kurds in Diyarbakir.” Middle East Forum, September 4, 2017.

Since 2015, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been attacking Kurdish-majority areas in the country. … The clashes have taken their toll on Turkey’s Christian population, which is caught in the crossfire. According to a November 2016 report in The Armenian Weekly,

Entire neighborhoods have disappeared, reduced to rubble. The Surp Giragos Church in Diyarbakır has escaped the fighting relatively intact structurally… But the Turkish security forces have used it as an army base, desecrating the church, burning some of the pews as firewood, with garbage and smell of urine everywhere.

Collart, Rebecca.  “Why Turkey Sees the Kurdish People as a Bigger Threat than ISIS.”  Time, July 28, 2015.

Last week, the Turkish government announced it was joining the war against ISIS. Since then it has arrested more than 1,000 people in Turkey and carried out waves of air raids in neighboring Syria and Iraq. But most of those arrests and air strikes, say Kurdish leaders, have hit Kurdish and left wing groups, not ISIS.

Dominique, Callimanopulos.  “Kurdish Repression in Turkey.”  Cultural Survival, 1982.

During Turkey’s war for independence, Turkish leaders, promised Kurds a Turkish-Kurdish federated state in return for their assistance in the war. After independence was achieved, however, they ignored the bargain they had made.

Months after the declaration of a Turkish republic, Ankara, under the pretext of creating an “indivisible nation,” adopted an ideology aimed at eliminating, both physically and culturally, non-Turkish elements within the Republic. These “elements” were primarily Kurdish and Armenian.

A 1924 mandate forbade Kurdish schools, organizations and publications. Even the words “Kurd” and “Kurdistan” were outlawed, making any written or spoken acknowledgement of their existence illegal.

According to Association France-Kurdistan, between 1925 and 1939, 1.5 million Kurds, a third of the population, were deported and massacred.

Human Rights Watch.  “Ocalan Trial Monitor”. n.d. 

There are State Security Courts in eight cities in Turkey, dealing with thousands of cases brought under the Anti-Terror Law. The definition of “terror” contained in this law is so broadly drawn that alongside cases of political arson and murder, a State Security Court may try respected politicians, journalists, human rights campaigners, and schoolchildren. Defendants branded as terrorists by conviction in State Security Courts include Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mayor of Istanbul, currently serving a ten-month sentence for quoting a poem that had been approved by the Ministry of Education but was deemed as provocation to religious hatred by the court, and Yasar Kemal, Turkey’s most prominent novelist, arraigned for writing about the Kurdish minority in a German magazine.

Öcalan, Abdullah.  Democratic Nation.  Cologne, Germany: International Initiative, 2016.

The Kurds, as individuals and as a society, must conceive, internalise and implement the construction of a democratic nation as the synthesis of all expressions of truth and resistance throughout their history, including the most ancient goddess beliefs, Zoroastrianism and Islam. The truths that all the past mythological, religious and philosophical teachings as well as contemporary social sciences have tried to teach and that all resistance wars and rebellions have individually and collectively tried to voice are represented in the mind and body of constructing a democratic nation. It was this reality and its expression as truth that was my point of departure, not only when I re-created myself at times but especially arriving at the present as I tried to re-create myself almost at every instant. In this way, I freely socialised myself, and concretised this as a democratic nation (in a Kurdish context), and presented it as democratic modernity to all humanity, to the oppressed peoples and individuals of the Middle East.

 

The fine voice from the Left would seem laced with the last century’s intellectual poison.

From a different source:

The religion of ancient Persia as founded by Zoroaster; one of the world’s great faiths that bears the closest resemblance to Judaism and Christianity.

Kohler, Kaufmann and A. V. W. Jackson.  “Zoroastrianism”.  Jewish Encyclopedia. n.d.

The tiny world wide communities of Zoroastrians are no doubt pleased to get any mention in Cif belief – even if it is only to provide alphabetical balance to a list starting with the Bahá’ís. Even those who take a close interest in the more exotic or esoteric of religions tend to have a vague grasp on what the followers of the ancient Persian (or maybe Bactrian) prophet, Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) – born around 800 BC – actually believed. This is a great pity since even a non-believer must be impressed with the evidence of how the religious ideas first expressed by Zoroaster were fundamental in shaping what emerged as Judaism after the 5th century BC and thus deeply influenced the other Abrahamic religions – Christianity and Islam.

Palmer, John.  “Zoroaster — forgotten prophet of the one God.”  The Guardian, July 13, 2010.

As conceived or delivered by Muhammad in the 7th Century, Islam may not be said to have been an ancient — much less practiced ancient — belief or belief system. To say or suggest so is to pander to the very egoism of the listener or reader for whom the Qur’an appears to have intended humility before God.

At stake — and so often mentioned in this blog — seems ever a contest between feudal absolute power plus medieval worldviews and modern checked and distributed  power accompanied by extraordinary pluralism and tolerance.

In the end, all of God’s children — our 7,000 living language cultures — are all on one Earth and together visible, all to all and to the All.

Wikipedia.  “Human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey”.

The use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names were banned and the Kurdish-inhabited areas remained under martial law until 1946.[7] In an attempt to deny their existence, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as “Mountain Turks” until 1991.[8][9][10] The words “Kurds”, “Kurdistan”, or “Kurdish” were officially banned by the Turkish government.[11] Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life.[12] Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned.[13] Since lifting of the ban in 1991, the Kurdish population of Turkey has long sought to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction in public schools as well as a subject. Currently, it’s illegal to use the Kurdish language as an instruction language in private and public schools.

–33–