The current prime minister of Turkey, Erdogan, has
assiduously defended bombing the Kurdish people in Syria by roiling reality on
the ground with the guise of fighting against ISIS. However, it is clear today
that Erdogan’s administration’s foreign policy is more about destabilizing and destroying
any possibility of a Kurdish state in the Middle East than fighting ISIS. Since
ISIS has effectively made Iraq a failed state, the Kirkuk region is now
historically at its closest to forming an independent state, with Kurdish
people’s continuous penchant for independence (voting 99% for an independent
state in the 2005 Iraqi referendum). However, the possibility of an independent
state will not be relinquished without an armed struggle. With 15 million Kurds in Turkey, the Kurdish
vote was an oscillating factor in the last Turkish election that gave a stronger
Kurdish foothold in the Turkish multi-party government: significantly reducing Erdogan’s
Islamic party’s control of the Kurdish region.
The Kurdish people’s struggle for independence in Iraq is
economically palpable. Although
currently an inchoate economy, with the new oil export negotiations with the
now failed state of Iraq (which was forced to concede due to its internal
conflict with ISIS), it is able to independently produce close to 1 million
barrels of oil a day (by 2017). Further, with burgeoning infrastructure
(including a freshly built airport), media, telecommunication, and security
(well-defended against ISIS and other Islamist groups), the Kurdish region of
Iraq has a possibility for an untrammelled location for capital investment.
The creation of a “buffer zone” in Syria is an invidious act
by Erdogan’s administration and NATO to divide the Kurdish region and to
bombard the Peshmerga (“those ready to die”) forces. The media justification
that Turkey is protecting its border against ISIS is simply international
propaganda. For the last year, the world
media has been continuously punctuated by the bold actions of the Peshmerga (especially
the armed women) against ISIS: the only armed group that has so far been successful
in fighting against the teeming ISIS forces in the region. Today Turkey is
attempting to inculcate the world that the actions of the Kurds are deleterious
to its security and grouping them with ISIS as terrorists: however the world
media, and especially the Turkish civilian population in the region, know well
that there is not a modicum of truth in this.
The policy of divide and control is not a remedial solution
for Erdogan’s Islamic party. This attack on the Kurdish forces will only unite
the Kurdish regions (that have some distinct cultural similarities and
differences) under a nationalist ideology. This “buffer zone” and bombardment of
the Kurdish people has already, and will further, awaken the large population
of Kurds that are omnipresent in Middle East as well as in Europe. In Turkey
itself it is fuelling a further devolution of power to the Kurdish regions, and
will burnish the Kurdish people’s anger towards the Erdogan government. The
Kurdish people’s solidarity that has fermented through years of suppression by
Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian and Turkish states cannot be circumvented through the
guise of “fighting terrorism”.
The fulcrum of the struggle for independence is without a
doubt on the side of the Kurdish people. Despite the strong nationalism that is
omnipresent in the Kurdish population, and without the guarantee that the
current Kurdish “leaders” may become the Kurdish people’s new oppressors, the
nascent growth of the grassroots workers’ movement and workers’ power (through
the creation of local communes) in the Kurdish region is simply undeniable.
The Turkish government’s profligate use of its resources
that has been accumulated since its economic growth (partly due to the last
world economic crisis in 2008) is now being used coercively in war against the
Kurds. However, in the awakening of the juggernaut Kurdish solidarity both
internal and abroad, and the general public support for the Kurdish people and
the Peshmerga fighters, it is going to be costly war both economically and
politically for the Erdogan’s Islamic party.
Further, in this war waged on the Kurds, the Kurdish people’s
most effective weapon abroad will be to pressure the Erdogan regime with the
use of social media (which is tantamount to bullets in war) to debase the
narrative of “fighting terrorism” and to restore and underscore the reality of
this war: a war waged against the Kurds in the Middle East.
Chia Barsen
www.chiabarsen.com
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