Yasar Kemal: "Campaign Of Lies"

[ats at etext.org]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at etext.org>
Subject: Yasar Kemal: "Campaign Of Lies"

(Yasar Kemal is the most popular contemporary author in Turkey.
Born in 1923 in Adana, Kemal became famous with his first novel,
published in 1955, entitled "Memed, My Falcon". His works have
been translated into more than 30 languages, with millions of
copies printed. As an active leftist who issued sharp critiques
of social injustice and the abuse of power by government
officials in Ankara, he was imprisoned after the March 1971
military coup. Due to the following critique of Turkey's
oppression of the Kurds, which was printed in issue #2/95 of the
German magazine 'Der Spiegel', Yasar Kemal has been issued a
court summons and faces potential prosecution.)

Increase your cruelty so as to accelerate your decline.
     - Anatolian proverb

Campaign Of Lies

By Yasar Kemal

     Even before it has begun, a century has been given a name:
The 21st century will be the Century of Human Rights. Because in
our own century, not much progress has been made in this area.
Furthermore, at the threshold of the 21st century, many signs
seems to indicate that we have even abandoned our present
standards and are starting to regress.
     From the day of its founding on October 29, 1923, the
Turkish Republic has developed a system of unbearable coercion
and cruelty. It has sought to hide this from people by means of
the oriental art of disguise and two-facedness. The Turkish
Republic has reached a present level of tyranny which is a
thousand times worse than the Ottoman autocracy.
     Since the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1946,
there is not a single villager - either girl or woman, either
Kurd, Turk, or whatever - who has not felt the whip of the
gendarmerie. Just like a hurricane which destroys everything in
its path, the violence of the republican government sweeps across
Anatolia. How could Turkey's population in the 1970s endure so
much cruelty, torture, poverty, and hunger? It's a miracle,
that's for sure.
     It's no small matter that a nation on the edge of Europe
could establish such an oppressive regime. The Turkish state
achieved this. But its citizens must pay a high price for this -
they lose their human rights.
     Are our people innocent in all of this? Of course not. But
how should the people, under the terrible rule of the republic,
still have the strength to resist after thousands of years of
being oppressed and kicked and tormented, thousand of years with
one war merging into the next war? We cannot forget that there
have been hundreds of Kuyucu Murat Paschas (Ottoman leader who
massacred rebels in the Taurus Mountains and tossed their bodies
into streams; died 1611) have marched across Anatolia, each of
them ten times worse than Gengis Khan.
     In 1946, Turkey adopted a multi-party system, and in 1950,
the Democratic Party replaced the tyrannical Republican Peoples
Party as the governing force. It was a true miracle, that a
people who have been whipped and deprived of their rights could
achieve such a thing.
     The founders of the Democratic Party came from the leading
ranks of the Republican Peoples Party. For them, democracy was a
black curtain to hide behind. By means of this democracy, Turkey
could become a member of the Council of Europe and NATO. Has
Europe been deceived by these lies? Not at all. But our
contemporaries in the West, who weren't exactly that democratic
either, needed allies to stand against the Soviet Union - and so
they cast a hungry eye upon Turkey.
     But then something unexpected happened: Whereas the Turkish
people, made lame by decades of oppression, remained silent, the
Kurdish people began to resist, even if timidly and afraid.
Because it was the Kurdish people that were most oppressed by
this authoritarian rule, they were starving, living in poverty,
and subject to ethnic massacres; their language was banned by
law, people denied their identity, they were called things like
"mountain Turks", and they were dispersed throughout all regions
of Anatolia every 10 or 15 years.
     With the increasing resistance of the Kurdish people, which
eventually became an armed confrontation, the machinery of
oppression began to show its true face. First, the Turkish people
were told lies and a massive propaganda campaign was launched.
Because without the unquestionable loyalty of the Turkish people,
the Kurdish people's resistance could never be broken.
     A campaign of lies began: The Kurds want to divide the
country and form their own independent Kurdish state, according
to the refined emotional appeals. And then there were such
exaggerated accounts of horrible attacks by Kurds on Turkish
soldiers that everyone was led to believe that every Turk had
better kill the first Kurd they could get their hands on.
     Luckily, Kurds and Turks have known each other so well for
centuries that all attempts by the state to incite a bloody
ethnic war between the two groups have failed.
     Every second word out of the mouths of President Demirel and
other government officials is: "We will not give up one pebble,
not one handful of dirt from our land!" But who asked for a
pebble? And who wanted to have a handful of dirt? As far as I
know, only very few Kurds in our country have ever expressed a
desire for an independent state. But wouldn't it be their right
if they did desire such a thing? Because all human rights
declarations clearly state that all peoples have a right to self-
determination.
     The dirtiest war imaginable is taking place in Turkey at the
moment. Even the strength of the best writers is not enough to
depict it.
     In order to quickly suppress the uprising, the Turkish
Republic created a "system of village guards". This is similar to
the civilian units which the US army set up in Vietnam. A militia
of 50,000 security forces is in action, as well as a special unit
of 12,000 men. In addition to these, the state has deployed
300,000 soldiers against the Kurds. No one knows what else will
be mobilized. But the worst are the counter-guerrillas who take
orders from the Turkish security forces.
     In the mountains, the guerrillas and the village guards
began killing each other. The guerrillas attacked the village
guards in their homes and killed their wives and children. And
the village guards attacked the "patriotic" guerrillas and killed
their entire families. If the guerrilla attacked, they accused
the state of acts of murder; if the state attacked, they blamed
the guerrilla.
     Then a general appeared and said: "If you will allow me, I
will leave no stone unturned in eastern Anatolia, no head on the
trunk." Chief of Staff Dogan Gures exclaimed: "To catch the fish
you must dry up the sea." And Prime Minister Tansu Ciller
screamed to the parliament: "This shall be ended!" This didn't
even bother the Germans, who were the best informed about the
true meaning of these words.
     Now the war began with all its might. Previously the Turkish
army had still used harmless means, they degraded their Kurdish
brothers by making prisoners eat human feces. The Council of
Europe criticized Turkey for this "excrement torture" by ordering
that the victims be paid 500,000 French francs in compensation.
Turkey is billions of dollars in debt. It only needs to increase
this debt and then the entire Kurdish and Turkish population will
be subjected to "excrement torture".
     The Turkish Republic began to force all Kurds between the
ages of 7 and 70 to become village guards. Anyone who refused was
tortured; those people who were especially resistant were
arrested and killed. The murders by the counter-guerrilla began.
Some people say 1,800, others say 1,200 Kurds were murdered. Then
Kurdish villages were burned, as many as 2,000 went up in flames.
     Incredible massacres and tortures began in this total war.
The Turkish Republic dried out the sea as best they could. In
Vietnam, the US army had also "dried out" the country and
destroyed all the cultivatable land.
     There are rumours that the fighting has made 2.5 million, or
perhaps 3 million people refugees in southern Anatolia. The true
number could be higher. Because the population of Diyarbakir,
which used to be 450,000, has jumped to 1.5 million. That's an
official figure. Then there are the refugees in other cities;
they are homeless and starving. The Turkish Republic is following
the traditions of Kuyucu Murat Pascha.
     But there's one thing that all the previous blood-suckers
did not do: They never burned down the forests, into which the
guerrilla and others had fled.
     It's amazing what our press reports about such events. It's
not our country's soldiers who are setting fire to the villages
and forests, as the head of our government said, with the flag in
one hand and the Koran in the other, dismissing all questions.
What about the helicopters? The PKK must have brought them in
from Armenia or Afghanistan. They are the ones burning the cities
and villages.
     Dersim is burning, the woods around Kutudersei are in flames
- and that's supposed to be the work of the PKK. After all,
didn't they burn more than 80 Kurds during the Kurdish New Year's
festival, Newroz? And Sirnak and Lice and the other cities,
wasn't it the PKK that set them on fire? And the 36 writers and
artists in Sivas?
     Enough already! Anyone who says that the candle of the liar
cannot light up the darkness, despite what the proverb says, has
no clue about reality in this world.
     I cannot get around telling the story of the prefect of
Gaziantep. This man hears that the woods in his region are on
fire. He goes there immediately and sees that the entire forest
has been destroyed, but with a happy side-effect: 11 guerrilla
fighters were killed by the flames.
     According to press reports, 12 million hectares of forests
have burned in Turkey in the last 10 years, 10 million of those
in eastern Anatolia alone. It is amazing that a state would burn
its own forests, just because guerrillas can hide in them.
     When the guerrilla announced a ceasefire to last for several
months, Ankara did not react. Then, at some point, 33 unarmed
soldiers were found dead on a country road. Some people say the
PKK killed these soldiers, other doubt this. In any case, it
marked the end of the unilateral ceasefire.
     Now the war is being waged with full force. This war
involves not only the guerrilla and the army but also the village
guards and the special units as well. The government has driven
hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, who now must
wander around half-dead from hunger and misery, with no roof or
tent above their heads. Ankara has unleashed a population flood
and has effectively declared war on the unarmed Kurdish people.
     People of eastern Anatolian heritage formed a political
party and elected 20 MPs. This party was banned. They formed a
new party, which was also banned. 8 of the MPs were charged,
threatened with the death penalty, and finally sentenced to long
prison terms. And now democratic Europe is starting to wake up -
a little bit.
     This terrible war cannot go on any longer. Economically,
Turkey is finished, the population impoverished. In 1994, more
than 12 billion German marks were spent on the war in eastern
Anatolia. This figure was quoted by a government minister. The
foreign and budget deficits are growing and growing; if this war
continues, Turkey will be faced with the greatest catastrophe of
its history.
     All wars, whether in Rwanda, Bosnia, or Afghanistan, wear
down humanity; they degenerate more and more, they become more
inhumane with every battle, every massacre, every danger of
starvation.
     From the day of its founding, the Turkish Republic should
have guaranteed basic rights to the Kurds, the same rights which
the Turkish people enjoy. At the threshold of the 21st century,
no one can deny any people, any ethnic group their human rights.
Not just Turkey, no state has to power to do this. In the end, it
was the force of the people which drove the Americans out of
Vietnam, the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and which brought about
a miracle in South Africa.
     The Turkish Republic must not be allowed to carry this war
into the 21st century. The conscience of humanity will help the
people of Turkey to end this inhumane war. And especially the
people who live in the countries which supply weapons to the
Turkish state can be helpful in this. But those of us in Turkey
should always remember that the path to democracy can only be
travelled over a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.
     The fact that the leaders, since the founding of the
republic, have tried to kill the language and culture of the
Kurdish people - even if they've since eased these restrictions
under pressure - is a crime against humanity. And in the 21st
century, crimes against humanity will one day be brought to light
and judged. But this won't be a normal trial, however, because
the country's very honour and humanity will be at issue.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arm The Spirit                    E-mail: ats at etext.org
P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A		  
Toronto, Ontario                      
M5W 1P7  Canada

WWW: gopher://locust.cic.net:70/11/Politics/Arm.The.Spirit
FTP: ftp.etext.org --> /pub/Politics/Arm.The.Spirit
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------