Nicholas Birch: How war on the Kurds put guns in the wrong hands
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Independent Minds
For Mazhar Bagli, a sociologist who specialises in Kurdish tribes, the wedding-day massacre in Bilge is a sign of how traditional structures have been dangerously unbalanced by a separatist war. Look closely at the details of the 1990s feud that pitted the two branches of the Celebi family against each other, and you begin to understand what he means.
Family tensions began at the height of the war, which erupted in 1984 when the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up arms against the state, with the aim of obtaining their own homeland. Ankara began drafting thousands of local Kurds into militias, known as the Village Guards, in the hope that they would help state security forces fight the rebels. Villagers didn't often have much of a choice: either you join up, or you leave your homes, the state told them.
One branch of the Celebi family joined up eagerly, not so much out of a sense of patriotism, rather in the knowledge that the guns and ammunition on offer from the state would give it the upper hand over its rivals. Members of the other branch were reportedly more unwilling to register for duty, but they followed suit shortly afterwards, so as not to be left behind. For a decade or more, the two families, armed to the teeth, put on a show of unity, going out together on operations against the PKK. But when unhappiness about Cemil Celebi's choice of a groom for his daughter relit old enmities, they were more than ready to act.
There are tens of thousands of state-sponsored village guards throughout Turkey's south-east. Human rights groups have long criticised the premise of creating peace and order by pumping weapons into the region.
Mr Bagli said Turkey's government must respond to Monday's bloodbath by opening an investigation into a system that permits men armed with nothing more than a primary school certificate and an oath of loyalty to tout Kalashnikovs at will. Rustem Erkan, another sociologist, said the Bilge massacre had left the whole country with blood on its hands. "I didn't think this could possibly happen in Turkey. It is as though Turkey has become Iraq."
Disbanding the militias will not that easy, especially with local economies falling on hard times. Five years ago, there were 70,000 village militiamen; since then, up to 27,000 newcomers have joined the ranks. "There are entire villages in the south-east where being a village guard is the only way of subsistence," Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based analyst, told Reuters. And the system has naturally attracted those with less than perfect motives. A 1995 Turkish parliamentary report described it as an "investment in social discord", and confirmed militia involvement in extortion, property theft and evictions. There may, however, be some hope of change. In March, prosecutors arrested a militia chief believed to have avenged the murder of his brother and father by ordering a killing spree in the town of Cizre – a sign, at least, of a some willingness to bring some of the worst criminals to justice.
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Comments
Ocalan was not only himself a MIT asset but was surrounded by MIT agents, including even his father-in-law, within the ethnic supremacist terrorist organization that he formed after his release from jail. The organization had no real name but was simply knows as the "Apoists." Its goal was to eliminate - as in exterminate - leftist and Kurdish nationalist movements, which Apo and his gunmen, loaned to him by Kurdish sheik Ahmet Turk, current head of the pro-PKK DTP party, loaned him. The Apoists were brutally efficient and succeeded in killing every last one of their Kurdish rivals, as well as a good number of Marxist revolutionaries, and scores of Sheik Ahmet Turk's feudal rivals.
After the 1980 coup, when Ocalan sensed that he had outlived his usefulness for the MIT and the military, he switched sides and went to work for Hafez Assad of Syria, joining the host of terrorist organizations that the Syrian dictator used to intimidate, destabilize, and pressure his neighbors.
After Turkish tanks finally rolled up to the Syrian border and Assad was forced to give up Ocalan and expel the PKK, the US provided the terrorists with a new lease of life by invading Iraq with the help of the Iraqi Kurds and then providing the PKK with a safe haven, arms, and training. The Yanks hoped to use the PKK to force Turkey, which blocked the northern prong of the US invasion, to toe the line, as well as to attack Iran. They went so far as to actually arrest and "bag" Turkish troops - i.e. their NATO alllies - in order to please the Kurds. The Kurdish warlord Barzani was also eager to use the PKK to force Turkey to recognize his de facto Kurdish state.
During its entire history, the PKK was never a "separatist" organization. Neither Hafez Assad, its first patron, nor Barzani, its current host, would tolerate a PKK-ruled state in their back yard. The PKK today emphatically denies that it seeks independence, claiming to be fighting for "true democracy" in Turkey.
Whatever they call themselves - PKK, Village Guards, or tribesmen - history has shown that the feudal Kurdish tribes inhabiting the mountains of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, never do themselves or their neighbors any good with their guns.
This recent wedding massacre, where village guards of the Celebi clan slaughtered 44 people with assault rifles and grenades, including 33 people of their own clan, is emphatically NOT a blood feud. People do not wipe out their own clan in a blood feud. DOH! The aim is to kill the other side. Moreover, the blood feud is 20 years old. If you go back that far every Kurdish clan has had a blood feud with every other one.
In Turkey, such massacres of entire families are typically crimes of passion. With 1 out of every 4 Turks now armed and dangerous, crimes of passion by jilted or cuckolded males have become increasingly commonplace. In the current case, locals said that one of the village guards who carried out the massacre wanted to marry the bride himself. The young thugs, accustomed to getting anything they wanted with their government-issue guns and uniforms, simply went berserk, as most Turkish men tend to do in similar circumstances, when the girl whom one of their mates had his eye on went to the other clan.
The article is correct in pointing out Turkey's failure in tackling the self-inflicted "investment in social discord" that are the Village Guards, which constitute a major stumbling-block for any hope that Turkey may still have of joining the EU. However the social anomie that leads to such carnages of passion in Turkey goes beyond the Village Guards and redressing it depends on Turkey's ability to confront the widespread mistreatment of women and out-of-control gun ownership.
Nicholas's article however, points to the truth of the of the village guard system and how it can place unbelievable pressures on these men who, as Nicholas rightly says, 'permits men armed with nothing more than a primary school certificate to tout Kalashnikovs' which is putting it kindly. These men who the Turkish army 'employ' are the ignorant, socially excluded, unintelligent of the Kurdish population. They are seen as traitors by the Kurdish people. But still they are victims of this war that Turkey has been conducting against the Kurds since it's inception.
It is also symptomatic of the very dangerous situation that Turkey finds itself in regards the Kurdish Question too.
Since the historical election victory by the Kurdish party, DTP, the Turkish state has massively increased its suppression of the Kurdish Freedom Movment, both of Kurdish activists and militarily in the Qandil Mountains.
Village Guards have been complaining of the extra stress being placed upon them to take part in these operations.
The PKK had called a ceasefire to let the democratic process take its course and create opportunities to find a peaceful and political solution to the Kurdish Question but the Turkish side are taking it as an opportunity to increase it's repression.
This operation in Mardin also has other sides to it.
There have been claims that this could of been a black operations action by the Turkish army looking to place blame on the PKK during its ceasefire. (This is a classice Turkish provocation) It is claimed that it was only because there were survivors that could testify that it went wrong. Apparently, witness's went to the local Army station that was not far away but the army would not come. Read: http://rasti.blogspot.com
If you want to know more about the Kurdish Freedom Struggle please read my blog at:
http://hevallo.blogspot.com
My point is no tribal Kurds, and indeed no tribal anything - Pashtuns, Tajiks, Chechens, whatever - should be permitted to form private armies. There can be no private armies or citizens' militias or "liberation armies" within a democratic republic, which Turkey is, and a damn sight more so than some Western nations I might name who deceive their public to wage illegal wars and stage fake terror scares to set up police states.
Of course you would prefer the Kurds not to fight back but they did. The PKK, the Kurdish Freedom Fighters halted the assimilation policies in their tracks and brought back pride and honour to the Kurds.
Now it is the Turks who need honour. Having been guilty of the most murderous and vile repression of the Kurdish population they could redeem their honour by finally admitting defeat and coming to the negotiation table to agree an honourable peace.
But do you want peace with the Kurds?
http://rastibini.blogspot.com/2009/05/f
Sabah Yassin
stop this lies please! Tureky is a nation of conspiracy theories. I am not bothered to read the rest of your commen apart from the first line, for it shows that you are just another fascist nationalist Turk that would do anything including the biggest lies in the history of Humanity!
We Kurds do want our homland, that is right, its every single Kurds drea, The PKK has said that they want a Kurdish homland for the past 24 years, 20 million Kurds in Turkey say that we want our rights and lands but you nationalist Turks keep misleading the world. The Turkish republic has murdered
40 000 Kurds (counted for) in the last 24 years, these people all dead for freedom and you killed them. enough is enough with your turkish fascism! We wanr freedom,we want our land back. We want a nation state. Thanks.
Your,
Great Kurdistan.