The Kurdish People Will Not Accept Humiliation And Deceit!

Recently the joint chairman of the HDP (People’s Democracy Party), Selahattin Demirtas, made a media statement that on the one hand contained a threat to the government, on the other it threatened the Kurdish people… But at the same time it amounted to a confession of the truth.

Before discussing Demirtas’s statement let us quote a lengthy extract from it:

„Statements of the kind that ‘yes, the (solution) process is continuing or must continue’ have almost become a serious criticism of those who make such statements. Because our base, our masses have lost faith in the process. On the one hand, we are struggling with those who are against the process and who call for an end to it, but we are also starting to get criticism from our own base in addition to opponents of the process when we endeavour to continue it. Our problem and our effort is to be helpful to Mr Ocalan, while he wants to continue the talks. Mr Ocalan is the chief negotiator of this process and is the leader of this movement. He himself wants peace to be implemented. For this reason, statements like ‘the process is finished, the process does not mean anything, let’s not continue the process, what is the point of it?’ do not cause problems for the government but rather for Mr Ocalan. It is necessary for us to draw attention to negative expressions coming from components of the Kurdish movement. Mr Ocalan is not made stronger by continual statements saying that the process is pointless.

It is not from the people generally but from our organisational structures that we sometimes receive serious criticism. This is sometimes reflected in serious criticism of our delegation coming from our organisational structures. These are written or drafted and to tell the truth, they put us in difficulties. As politicians our duty is not to end the process, our work is about protecting the process even if it only dangles by a single cotton thread. Our work is about establishing peace, to open channels for a solution. If we are being criticised for this, we meet the criticism with respect but we think it is unjust.“

With these statements Demirtas is on the one hand threatening the AKP… We are trying hard, but look, we cannot restrain our masses – this is what he is trying to say. The Kobane actions of October 6-8 and what was said about them set this out more clearly:

„Certainly the October 6-8 resistance is a just and legitimate resistance. For this reason it did not hesitate. The people intervened. It was certainly not our call alone that made the people pour out into the streets. The people did that because in their psychology they sensed their own legitimacy. The HDP call perhaps boosted it.“

If the process is to continue, we cannot keep our masses under control in this way – Demirtas is saying, do not waste any more time. He is threatening the government by holding it responsible for the process being dragged out.

But Demirtas is not confining his threats to the government. He is warning the Kurdish people, particularly his own masses, by threatening them with Ocalan.

„Mr Ocalan is the chief negotiator of this process and is the leader of this movement. He himself wants peace to be implemented. For this reason, statements like ‘the process is finished, the process does not mean anything, let’s not continue the process, what is the point of it?’ do not cause problems for the government but rather for Mr Ocalan. It is necessary for us to draw attention to negative expressions coming from components of the Kurdish movement.“

‘Calm down, do not say a contrary word, keep calm and do not oppose the process’, by saying that it is Ocalan who is continuing the process Demirtas is trying to impede the reactions of the people and use Ocalan’s moral influence over the masses to silence them.

But the strange aspect to this is that it is not just the HDP and the PKK that is using Ocalan as a threat. The AKP government is also using him as a threat against the HDP and the PKK and issuing warnings to them… Look at how (Turkish deputy prime minister) Bulent Arinc does it…

„You think you are putting the government in a difficult position. Because you say that the government has made promises. But no, we say, ‘let us work as an institution on these matters.’

Secondly it was not even a demand of Ocalan’s, we as a government have not been holding talks with him, it is MIT (Translator’s note: National Intelligence Organisation, the civilian security service of Turkey) that is conducting the talks. Do you not realise that by putting forward matters that Ocalan is not, you are placing him in a difficult position? Who do you have as a spokesperson if you put Ocalan in an impossible position?“

It is a crime to put Ocalan in a difficult position and to put the government in a difficult position is a separate crime!

Look at the speech, look at the manner of it! It is left to the AKP to save face for Ocalan… As though it were not the AKP that locked Ocalan in an isolation cell and subjected him to unheard of insults over a period of years. Now it says, do not utter disrespectful things, as though it sought to save Ocalan’s face.

Certainly it is not esteem for Ocalan that is their concern. What matters to them is to disarm the PKK and achieve its surrender.

It is also clearly the case that Ocalan has a principal role in bringing this about. This is seen both in the way that he was deployed to tone down popular reactions on October 6-8 over Kobane, as well as in dealing with every stumbling block in what is said to be the „solution process“. When the state wishes Ocalan is brought in whenever necessary to make statements that remove obstacles to the health of the process and to intervene in the face of popular reactions. To the point that the AKP has used Ocalan as a threat to both the PKK and the masses. So sometimes it seems as if they are supporting him by saying not to „damage his esteem“, while at other times they threaten him openly, saying he will be eliminated.

For both sides Ocalan is a means of making threats, for the reality of the process is that it is a means of achieving surrender.

This is the most important aspect of the statement by Demirtas: in reality, as the process has unfolded the Kurdish people and the PKK’s base have lost more faith in it with every day that passes. Most recently their reactions led them to pour out into the streets over Kobane. This is also why the HDP’s hands and feet are tied. So the situation developed where „they put the government in a difficult position“ when the people poured out into the streets to demand a reckoning. The AKP attacked with total fury, killing more than 40 people, while the HDP resorted to routine statements about provocations. It did not even show solidarity at the funerals of the more than 40 Kurdish people killed, so why should the Kurdish people left in the lurch believe in it? Do you believe in the „solution process“ when people are murdered and it is the murderers who are making savage use of it, while the HDP minces it words, is worried about protecting itself and draws a very broad line separating itself from the resisting Kurdish people? What kind of process is it where we are both killed and then held to be guilty? What kind of process it when we have to go out onto the streets to win our rights and poverty is on the increase every day?

What kind of process is it in which Kurds who supposedly now have language rights have the schools they want to register closed down, even when they pay for them with their own money?And wht kind of solution is it when those who on the surface accept Kurdish identity then say „one state, one nation“ and ruthlessly attack us and continue to kill us?

Yes, how can the Kurdish people accept such a solution process? How can you continue to believe in it?

There is certainly a limit to the extent that the people can be tricked and deceived. How can you believe in a process that exhausts the hopes and humiliates Kurdish people who have resisted and fought up to yesterday, have given tens of thousands of martyrs and bear the memories and the hopes of those martyrs?

They do not believe in it and pour out into the streets for their rights, despite all the conciliatory attempts of the HDP, its calls for restraint and its efforts to raise hopes through deceit. The exhaustion of their hopes and the erosion of their faith will certainly push the Kurdish people to search in new directions and they will demand a reckoning from those who trade in false hopes. The process is not one about „negotiation“, it is about total surrender, disarming, and the Kurdish people also see this and are starting to assimilate it into their own experience of life. The people know that a process entirely steered by the AKP is not going to lead to national rights. The people know that in the mines, the fields, the workplaces, there is slavery. They know of the humiliation, hunger and poverty of those forced to emigrate to the western provinces. And knowing all this, they know who is responsible for it and who is in league with them and are starting to look, to search, to discuss, ask questions and make enquiries…

It is this situation that is frightenng the conciliationist HDP. It is this fear that makes them invite the AKP to take precautions and to warn them.

But this is the inescapable fate of those who surrender. They will be dragged along by those they surrender to. For this reason the AKP is continuing to gradually undermine the hopes of the Kurdish people while controlling the entire process, dragging them along to surrender and piling on the pressure in order to drain them of strength… Besides Arinc’s threats that „we know all about you“, (Prime Minister) Davutoglu also says the following to the HDP in his efforts to drag them along:

„If you are serious about the solution process, you owe a debt to this nation for the events of October 6-8. Do not again tell the children of this nation to go out into the streets. Do not make calls for violence. If you are serious about the solution process, do not again invite the people to commit violence in this land.“

He is saying, we have killed you and we also want you to apologise! Because he sees the process as one of making the opposing force surrender its will and to be able to direct the process in the way he himself sees fit. He can be brazen enough to demand an apology because he is aware that they lacked the willpower to do more than criticise the people, and otherwise kept quiet and did not make a sound when over 40 people were killed.

Right in the middle of this battle of words we read these comments by KCK management council member and HSM (People’s Defence Centre) HQ commander Murat Karayilan:

„The Road Map tells us how to go down a road. The AKP road map does not contain a solution. The AKP wants the PKK to commit ‘harakiri’. They want this from us but it is impossible.“

But what is it that is impossible? Was it not suicide from the very moment the process started? Yes, the truth is also what Karayilan said – the AKP wants ‘harakiri’ – it wants your suicide. The process of surrender is your own. Has Karayilan only just discovered this? Certainlynot. It was like this from the very beginning of the process… Even reading what we wrote as this process began is enough to show how it has developed. Was Karayilan living in space when all this was seen and explained? No, he was aware of it yet the process continued. And they are part of the process. Despite the resistance the Kurdish people have developed, despite the massacres and the attacks, despite the humiliation of the Kurdish people and their values, is Karayilan only just now realising that the process is about destroying none other than themselves?

This is neither a new development nor one that Karayilan is unaware of. He is aware of every development. But despite this, the efforts to deceive the Kurdish people with a surrender process called a „solution process“ are continuing. The latest arguments are only about gaining positions of relative strength. Those who make such reckonings are not an alternative for the Kurdish people.As a result of the surrender process, the right of the Kurdish people to resistance is to be taken away and their hopes destroyed in a process that is about nothing other than slavery.

1 – With every passing day, the Kurdish people see that the „solution process“ is about surrender, and is not about the interests of the Kurdish people. The HDP uses this as a vehicle for making threats, but it is also a confession of the truth.

2 – Both the HDP and the AKP use Ocalan as a threat. The AKP use him to push the HDP into a corner while the HDP use him to silence the people and persuade them to surrender.

3 – The Kurdish people see that the surrender process is not in their interests and are gradually reacting against it. The reactions are directed at the HDP and despite the HDP and the PKK these reactions are taking on an anti-state form.

4 – The AKP try to control the people’s reactions by means of Ocalan, the HDP and the PKK, and continue to both rebuke the Kurdish national movement as a whole and to drag it along into their policy of wearing down and attrition. Those like Karayilan who say ‘they want us to commit harakiri’ are actually telling the essential truth. Yes, this is entirely what the process is about and you are supposed to be satisfied with it. It is petit bourgeois Kurdish nationalism that makes such conditions possible.

5 – It is nothing other than much more resistance and warfare that will frustrate the surrender process. It is the Kurdish people who ultimately will frustrate the surrender process. Sooner or later the Kurdish people will summon the will for this. The Kurdish people will not indefinitely accept being humiliated and deceived!