Supporting Kurdish independence

[kirkuki]

Kurdish leaders at the front of the demo

 

[kirkuki]

[JURIST] The UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) [official website] criticized Turkey on Thursday for prosecuting activists under the country's vague counterterrorism law. The UNHRC alleged that Turkey has gone against international law standards by denying due process rights under its 1991 Anti-Terrorism Law [Reuters report]. UN rights experts allege that Turkey has been prosecuting activists, lawyers and journalists, holding them without cause and blocking access to a lawyer for pre-trial proceedings. There are currently nearly 100 journalists in Turkish prison, in addition to thousands of lawyers, activists, politicians and military officials. These prisoners are held in prison mainly on charges for plotting against the government or supporting Kurdish militants. The UN urged Turkey to modify its laws to ensure that they are compatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. There is growing concern that Turkey is turning to authoritarian rule.

Turkey has recently faced criticism for its human rights record. Last month the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled [JURIST report] in X. v. Turkey that a gay man was detained in violation of Articles 3 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In July a Turkish court ordered [JURIST report] the release of 16 individuals detained on accusations of having links to Kurdish militants. Also in July the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Francois Crepeau called on the government of Turkey and authorities in the EU to respect the rights of migrants [JURIST report] in the continent. In June the Turkish ruling party planned to abolish the special courts [JURIST report] used in coup and terrorism trials. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) plans to present a reform package including the proposed abolition of special courts to the country's parliament before the recess.

JURIST - Paper Chase: UN rights committee criticizes Turkish counterterrorism laws

 

[kirkuki]

Kurdistan opposition (Kurdistan Islamic Union , the Islamic group, the Change Movement , Future Party) demanded the presidency of parliament to initiate the next meeting to be held this week to talk about the events of the north and west of Kurdistan, while a deputy describing silence from the Government of the Region shame about what is happening events in Syria and Turkey.

For his part, MP for the Change Movement (Abdullah Mullah Nuri) in an interview with reporters, said that "the silence of the parliament and the government and the presidency of the region is stigma toward sit-in of Kurds in Turkey, stressing at the same time that their silence does not serve the Kurdish issue".

Kurdistan Region... Opposition demands parliament session of the events of the north and west of Kurdistan

 

[ima]

[JURIST] The UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) [official website] criticized Turkey on Thursday for prosecuting activists under the country's vague counterterrorism law. The UNHRC alleged that Turkey has gone against international law standards by denying due process rights under its 1991 Anti-Terrorism Law [Reuters report]. UN rights experts allege that Turkey has been prosecuting activists, lawyers and journalists, holding them without cause and blocking access to a lawyer for pre-trial proceedings. There are currently nearly 100 journalists in Turkish prison, in addition to thousands of lawyers, activists, politicians and military officials. These prisoners are held in prison mainly on charges for plotting against the government or supporting Kurdish militants. The UN urged Turkey to modify its laws to ensure that they are compatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. There is growing concern that Turkey is turning to authoritarian rule.

Turkey has recently faced criticism for its human rights record. Last month the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled [JURIST report] in X. v. Turkey that a gay man was detained in violation of Articles 3 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In July a Turkish court ordered [JURIST report] the release of 16 individuals detained on accusations of having links to Kurdish militants. Also in July the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Francois Crepeau called on the government of Turkey and authorities in the EU to respect the rights of migrants [JURIST report] in the continent. In June the Turkish ruling party planned to abolish the special courts [JURIST report] used in coup and terrorism trials. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) plans to present a reform package including the proposed abolition of special courts to the country's parliament before the recess.

JURIST - Paper Chase: UN rights committee criticizes Turkish counterterrorism laws

Give me a break, as if a muslim CheeseKurdistan wouldn't beat, whip and stone gays and lesbians. kirk, if you want to generate sympathy for your cause, don't be an idiot.

 

[ima]

Kurdish leaders at the front of the demo

You need better looking women.

 

[ima]

No my dear troll, it got occupied. You know it's kinda hard to put up against 4 occupying states and most of the world. And why are you so glad for goats? Perhaps they make you horny, is that it? Well, go to Turkey, syria, Iraq or Iran, i'm sure you'll find tons of goats to f*ck you

So then it was the CheeseKurds own fault for losing your country. Anyways, you live in a western country and can't even be bothered to live in CheeseKurdistan, which makes you just another muslim faker who uses toilet paper instead of rocks to wipe your ass like your prophet described..

What the hell is ChesseKurdistan? My homeland is Kurdistan Also knows as Media and Hurria.

You never answered my question: Why should palestinians have independence if kurds can't? I'm waiting for your answer.

I never said that you Cheeseheads couldn't have your own country, I said you can have northern Iraq, as much of Syria as you want, then, when you secure a piece of Iran, we can talk Turkey. But you need a better name than CheeseKurdistan, and you need an original flag.

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

So then it was the CheeseKurds own fault for losing your country. Anyways, you live in a western country and can't even be bothered to live in CheeseKurdistan, which makes you just another muslim faker who uses toilet paper instead of rocks to wipe your ass like your prophet described..

What the hell is ChesseKurdistan? My homeland is Kurdistan Also knows as Media and Hurria.

You never answered my question: Why should palestinians have independence if kurds can't? I'm waiting for your answer.

I never said that you Cheeseheads couldn't have your own country, I said you can have northern Iraq, as much of Syria as you want, then, when you secure a piece of Iran, we can talk Turkey. But you need a better name than CheeseKurdistan, and you need an original flag.

This is our ancestral land, and we won't give up an inch: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRTJyEqBKCI&feature=plcp]Kurdish Median Empire and Crushing Evil Assyria - YouTube[/ame]
And this video shows what belongs to us, and why it ended up like that

 

[kirkuki]

Kurdish mother sprayed with tear-gas by Turkish police while protesting against Turkish state brutality.

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Abdulhakim Bashaar, secretary of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria (KDP-S), released a statement last week that said his party had united with the Kurdish Unity Party and Freedom Party in Kobane.

The move followed an incident where the People’s Defence Units (YPG) – an extension of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) -- told nine Kurdish parties in Kobane not to raise the Syrian independence flag. This led to tensions, with the Kurdish National Council (KNC) accusing the PYD of imposing its will.

Recently, fighting broke out between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and combatants of the PYD in the Ashrafiyeh district of Aleppo and rural areas of the province. Dozens were killed and hundreds of Kurds were kidnapped – and later released -- by the FSA.

The fight not only led to tensions between the Syrian opposition and the PYD, but also between the PYD and the other Kurdish parties united in the KNC, who signed an agreement in July 2012 to jointly administer the Kurdish areas of Syria.

According to YPG spokesperson Sipan Hamou, who spoke with Al Kurdiya News, nine Kurdish parties were told to lower the Syrian independence flag in order to “not provoke the public” in light of the events in Ashrafiyeh. The PYD sees the flag as representing the FSA.

The YPG said the removal was not forced, but other Kurdish parties do not agree. After the incident, the KDP-S moved 150 armed men to protect its offices, according to Kurdish news site Welati.

Moreover, local KNC representatives in Efrin and Aleppo suspended their membership in the unity agreement, and the KDP-S withdrew from the agreement, accusing the PYD of kidnapping Bahzad Dorsin, a member of its political bureau.

After the incidents in Kobane, the KNC held a demonstration on Tuesday against the actions of the PYD, calling for Kurdish unity instead of “Kurdish-Kurdish conflict.”

Heyam Aqil, the London representative of the KDP-S, told Rudaw that the party united with the others in order to lead the political movement in Kobane. “It’s a step that will lead to further unity between the three parties and a strategic need at this stage,” she said.

Aqil added that Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan region, always “encouraged unity.”

Despite the fact that the parties all belong to the KNC, they still follow different political strategies and do not agree on all points.

Thomas McGee, an independent expert on Syrian Kurds, told Rudaw that Barzani pressed the three parties to work together and promised them more support in meetings in June in Erbil.

“The three have been trying to get together for a long time and it was mentioned that Barzani had promised to open a TV channel for them if they could coordinate.”

The Syrian opposition has Orient TV, broadcast from the United Arab Emirates, and the PYD has the support of Ronahi TV. Both channels were launched after the revolution in 2011. The parties in the KNC do not have their own channel yet.

This Friday, demonstrations that call for an end to the strife between the FSA and Kurds, and also between Kurds and Kurds, are expected, according to a statement from the Kurdish Youth Movement.

 

[kirkuki]

today turkish ugly flag burnt in souths(iraqi) kurdistan cities of Erbil and Sulaimani in solidarity with hunger strikes of Kurdish politicians in turkish jails..

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

today turkish ugly flag burnt in souths(iraqi) kurdistan cities of Erbil and Sulaimani in solidarity with hunger strikes of Kurdish politicians in turkish jails..

That barbaric flag should'nt even exist on the face of the earth, millions of innocent people have been killed under it.

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmffgIqlAYA]"The Three Terrors" - YouTube[/ame]

 

[ima]

What the hell is ChesseKurdistan? My homeland is Kurdistan Also knows as Media and Hurria.

You never answered my question: Why should palestinians have independence if kurds can't? I'm waiting for your answer.

I never said that you Cheeseheads couldn't have your own country, I said you can have northern Iraq, as much of Syria as you want, then, when you secure a piece of Iran, we can talk Turkey. But you need a better name than CheeseKurdistan, and you need an original flag.

This is our ancestral land, and we won't give up an inch:
And this video shows what belongs to us, and why it ended up like that

I don't watch videos. But the part that's REALLY REALLY funny is that "we won't give up an inch". You've already given 100% of your land to 4 countries!!!!

 

[Synthaholic]

The Face Of Evil:

 

[High_Gravity]

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

haters gonna hate (Ima)

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

The Face Of Evil:

Alright mr. Mongol (Turk)

Did you like ''The three terrors''?

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

I never said that you Cheeseheads couldn't have your own country, I said you can have northern Iraq, as much of Syria as you want, then, when you secure a piece of Iran, we can talk Turkey. But you need a better name than CheeseKurdistan, and you need an original flag.

This is our ancestral land, and we won't give up an inch:
And this video shows what belongs to us, and why it ended up like that

I don't watch videos. But the part that's REALLY REALLY funny is that "we won't give up an inch". You've already given 100% of your land to 4 countries!!!!

If you have a low number of IQ then please stay away from forums like this. Giving up is accepting defeat, we have'nt given up mr. Turk, or whatever you are.

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

By ÖMER TAŞPINAR

“The real fear is not that Syria is dividing. It's that the Kurds are uniting,” Aliza Marcus -- the author of the best book published so far on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), “Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence” -- argues in a recent article about Kurds in the Middle East. There are approximately 35 million Kurds in the Middle East. Although exact numbers are often disputed it is widely accepted that at least half of the total Kurdish population -- about 15 to 20 million -- live in Turkey. The Palestinians may be the most often proclaimed “nation without a state.” The Kurds, on the other hand, who outnumber the Palestinians by a factor of five, are the most populous such nation in the Middle East.

The concept of a nation-state is of course a Western invention, with relatively recent roots in the 18th and 19th centuries. France, with its famous revolution in 1789, is often considered the textbook example of this European trajectory for nation-state formation. If France is par-excellence the most illustrative European example of a strong nation-state, there is little doubt that the France of the Muslim world is Turkey. The Kemalist revolution modeled itself after the French Republic's anti-clerical laicism and assimilative nationalism. Although France is today far more advanced than Turkey in terms of its democratic evolution, an aversion to religiosity, minority rights, multiculturalism and federalism became common characteristics of both France and Turkey.

The Kurdish challenge to the Kemalist project traumatized Turkey from the early days and continues to do so today. From the Sheik Said uprising in 1925 to the PKK's current struggle for self-rule, the Kurdish question remains the Achilles heel of the Turkish nation-state. Assimilation was probably an easier proposition in the 19th and early 20th century. It became increasingly difficult to assimilate a minority with growing ethnic and political consciousness in the last few decades.

Today, Turks are facing an increasingly nationalist Kurdish generation with growing expectations and aspirations. And Turks know the power of nationalism. They lost their empire because of nationalist minorities determined to establish their own nation-states. Ethnic demands for self-determination, supported by President Woodrow Wilson in the United States, became the nightmare of the crumbling imperial center. It is therefore not surprising that today Ankara is equally alarmed about prospects of Kurdish nationalism and a greater Kurdistan emerging in the region. It is very likely that in the wake of the dissolution of the Assad regime a semi-autonomous Kurdish regional government will be formed in northern Syria. With the presence of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, a newly formed Kurdish region in Syria, and Iran's own Kurdish region, soon Turkey will see nothing but Kurdish entities at its southern borders.

As Aliza Marcus argues in the foreign policy journal The National Interest: “Ankara, for one, has long worried that what happens to Kurdish minorities in Iraq, Syria or Iran would strengthen Turkish Kurdish separatists or legitimize international calls for Turkey to grant Kurds national rights. Turkey is right to be concerned. After Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003, the creation of a Kurdish federation in northern Iraq reinvigorated nationalist demands by Turkish Kurds, who demanded no less for themselves. (These demands were one reason why in 2005 the PKK abandoned the cease-fire it had called after PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured and imprisoned by Turkey in 1999.) If Syrian Kurds win autonomy, Turkey's reasons for denying its Kurdish minority the same will sound specious. After all, it's hard to keep claiming that Kurds don't know what they want -- or don't really want what they say -- if almost one-half of the region's Kurds govern themselves.”

It is time for Turkey to realize that the Arab Spring at its core is a movement for democratic self determination. Such sweeping change in the region was bound to have a major impact on Kurdish demands for self-determination. The emergence of an independent greater Kurdistan is the dream of millions of nationalist Kurds. The only hope for stemming this growing tide in Turkey is to co-opt the Kurds in the framework of federalism and autonomy. This may be a bridge too far for a country that constantly fears dismemberment due to its vivid memories of Ottoman disintegration. Turkey has already given up strict assimilation. But it has yet to adopt genuine multiculturalism. Nothing less than serious steps towards democratization, multiculturalism and federalism will co-opt the Kurdish tide.

 

[Kurdistani4ever]

By Stanley A. Weiss

WASHINGTON -- Had the course of history taken a modest swerve, the United States and Kurdistan might have celebrated their independence on the very same day. It was July 4, 1187 -- 825 years ago -- that Saladin, Islam's greatest ruler, defeated 20,000 outmatched Crusaders at the bloody Battle of Hattin. The victory ultimately delivered Jerusalem into the hands of Saladin, the crown jewel of an Islamic caliphate stretching from the shores of Tunis through Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus.

If the Kurds' most famous son had bothered to identify himself as such, it may well have been the beginning of a Kurdish empire to rival the Ottomans or the Persians. But Saladin fought for God and not for country, leaving his hapless compatriots at the mercy of Ottoman chieftains, British cartographers and malevolent Arab strongmen.

Today, the 25 million Kurds clustered at the contiguous corners of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria are the largest ethnic group on earth without a formal homeland. As the U.S. abandons Iraq to its own devices and Iran rattles uranium sabers, as Turkey cracks down on its Kurds and Saladin's Damascus descends into the unrestrained slaughter of Bashar Assad's, the millennium-long dream of an independent Kurdistan could be the answer to this unfolding Middle Eastern nightmare.

As with many conflicts in the region, the Kurdish dilemma has its roots in the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Guaranteed self-determination by the Allied powers, the Kurds signed the 1920 Treaty of Sévres, only to watch the Europeans stand passively by as the Ottoman army officer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk cobbled together a country of his own, forming what is now Turkey out of the Kurds' promised land. In the years since, the Kurds have been massacred by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, gassed by Saddam Hussein and forgotten by the rest of the world. In Syria, their language is banned; in Turkey, a Member of Parliament with the temerity to pledge an oath "to the Turkish and Kurdish peoples" was released from a decade in jail -- only to be re-sentenced this year.

With the Assad regime now crumbling, tensions between the Kurdish minority and their many tormentors, always tragic, are becoming a major geopolitical threat. Desperate to crush the Syrian revolution in its infancy, Assad has transferred troops away from the Kurdish provinces to the north, leaving a power vacuum into which two Kurdish political parties have stepped. If Assad falls, Syria will splinter into religiously or ethnically homogenous mini-states, one of which will almost certainly be under Kurdish control. Coupled with the recent emergence of a relatively independent Kurdish region in Iraq, this would create something of a league of semi-autonomous Kurdish states between the northeast regions of Syria and Iraq.

This combustible state of affairs greatly alarms Turkey, which has waged a bloody, three-decade civil war against its 14 million Kurds, claiming 40,000 lives. Although it has supported regime change in Syria, the Turkish government has "an almost pathological fear" of a greater Kurdistan, and can be expected to strenuously resist any attempt at Kurdish unification. Turkish tanks now patrol the shared border with Syria, intent on preventing any activity from spilling over into its borders.



Should that powder keg ignite, Turkey -- a NATO ally -- could very well drag the U.S. into a cross-border shooting war with Syria, with Russia quite possibly propping up its Syrian proxy. Meanwhile Iran, boasting an infamously brutal history with its own Kurds, remains a regional wildcard spinning nuclear centrifuges as fast as possible.

The dispossessed have become dangerously destabilizing. The overlooked can no longer be overlooked. And what was once a Middle Eastern flashpoint may yet become a safety valve for spiking regional tensions.

It will not be easy, but the uncertainty and plasticity in the region today offers an opportunity to secure a Kurdish homeland and remedy the capricious map-making of the early 20th century. Iraq is threatening to split into the pre-Iraq Sunni, Shia and Kurdish divisions of the Ottoman Empire, with the Kurds semi-independent and the Iran-allied Shiites ruling the Sunnis. Iran's economy is in free-fall. Syria will soon have no central control and no choice. And while no country is eager to surrender a fifth of its population, Turkey would do well to get ahead of this issue -- ending the vicious, ongoing war with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), saving countless lives and positioning themselves to reap the benefits of a long-term strategic alliance to counterbalance Iranian influence. Not to mention, membership in the European Union will forever be out of reach for a Turkey at war with itself.

For proof of what's possible, look no further than Iraqi Kurdistan, a pro-American, pro-Israel and semi-autonomous parliamentary democracy most Americans have never heard of. Nurtured by an American no-fly zone in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was established under the Iraqi Constitution in 2005, a stunning testament to the success of Muslim representative government. Of more than 4,800 American soldiers killed in the brutal battles for Iraq, not a single one has lost their life -- and no foreigner has been kidnapped -- within the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan. Boasting two international airports, a booming oil industry and a dawning respect for the rights of women, this 15,000 square-mile territory of nearly four million Kurds is the one part of President George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" that was actually accomplished.

Building on this unanticipated success, the U.S. should rethink its previous opposition to an independent greater Kurdistan and recognize that the advantages of a friendly, democratic and strategically-positioned ally far outweigh the outdated assumption that the Kurds' national liberation would result in regional conflagration. At this point, inaction is far more likely to provoke continued regional conflict. Whether that means calling for U.S.-brokered talks with Turkey or a temporary UN peacekeeping force, sanctions or scaled up foreign investment, the U.S. should make every effort to incentivize the consolidation and emergence of a single, stable, secure Kurdish homeland.

After a thousand years of turning a thousand blind eyes, the world can't keep kicking the Kurdish can down the road. Somewhere along that bloodstained road to Damascus, the region needs to experience this epiphany -- and soon. The first major protests in Syria began outside the Ummayad Mosque, Islam's fourth-holiest site and the location of Saladin's tomb. Saladin's descendants, it seems, are on the march once more. These Kurds want to be heard. Will the U.S. - - and the world -- listen?

Stanley A. Weiss is Founding Chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington. The views expressed are his own.