The Eternally Apoplectic Erdogan's Unhinged Ire

"We really don’t know what happened. Anything is possible, the militants might have panicked and shot the hostages dead, or they might have died during the aerial bombings."
"But the main point is not who killed them but rather why the Turkish military carried out this operation to bring the hostages back alive in a manner that led to their deaths."

Human Rights Association’s president, Ozturk Turkdogan

 

"If we are together with you [the United States] in NATO, if we are to continue our unity, then you will act sincerely toward us. Then, you will stand with us, not with the terrorists."

"The US statement on the PKK’s execution of Turkish citizens in northern Iraq is ridiculous. They claim they do not support the PKK, but they certainly do."

If you want to continue our alliance globally and within NATO, then you must stop siding with terrorists."  

"We kept trying to figure out how we can rescue our brothers from the hands of the terrorists. We tried very hard, but we failed." 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

 

"If the reports of the death of Turkish civilians at the hands of the PKK, a designated terrorist organization, are confirmed, we condemn this action in the strongest possible terms."

"The secretary expressed condolences for the deaths and affirmed our view that PKK terrorists bear responsibility." 

United States State Department

 

The funeral of three Turkish military personnel killed in action at the Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque in Ankara on 12 February 2021 (AFP)

 

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a guerrilla militia which established itself in the 1980s to represent the heritage rights of the tens of millions of Kurds, the world's largest minority ethnic group without an established homeland of their own. Their native territory was divided between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey when two world powers, Britain and France, occupied that vast area during World War I after the dissolution of Ottoman Turkey the deposed hegemonic power. 

Although Kurds were promised in the boundaries of the Middle East territories their claim would be honoured, it was not.

 

Ever since, ethnic Kurds have dreamed bitterly of the betrayal and have agitated for their own recognized sovereign homeland reflecting their historical presence in the geography. Any attempt made to achieve sovereignty earned them physical violence to tamp down their enthusiasm for leaving their state of enforced occupation under which their 'separatist' notions were regarded as criminal, leaving them to live as a people under merciless disciplinary duress.

 

Iraqi Kurds fear Turkey's drones in PKK mtn.war

A state of being that brings to mind China's crushing of Tibet and Xinjiang and its aspirations toward absorbing Taiwan and shutting down democracy in Hong Kong. Recep Tayyip Erdogan rails against the very concept of a Kurdish nation desirous of and deserving of recognition of their authenticity as the original territorial indigenous peoples. He sneers at the very concept of Jews returning to their ancestral geography from a forced historical diaspora, championing Arab migrants who began to populate Jewish Palestine in search of economic and settler opportunities. The Turks themselves were migrants into the Mesopotamian plain and the mountainous regions beyond, the historical Kurdish homeland.

 

Kurds living in south-eastern Turkey have had their villages bombed on the pretense that they harbour members of the PKK. The PKK expanded their presence into Iraq as an operational base, with the Turkish military following them, accusing another Iraqi Kurdish group, the YPG of being their allies. Among the various Kurdish groups there are manifestly different attitudes toward occupation with some choosing diplomacy others violence to achieve eventual aims of freedom from persecution and occupation.

 

The hunted PKK have taken Turkish members of the military captive from time to time to use as leverage in prisoner exchanges. A group of such Turkish hostages were being kept in Kurdistan, a mountainous area of northern Iraq bordering Turkey, in a cave in the Gara region. There, the Kurdistan YPG the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, are accused by Erdogan of aiding and abetting the PKK, calling them both terrorist groups. The Turkish military under Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, despite knowing that Turkish hostages were being held there, bombed the area repeatedly in a four-day operation.

 

And after heavily bombing the Gara area for days, the Turkish forces entered the cave complex on day four to discover, they claim, the corpses of thirteen Turks, most members of the Turkish military, several Turkish diplomats and three of them civilians. The PKK had made a public statement on February 11 that Turkish war planes were hitting the camp directly where the hostages were being held. It was this known fact that the U.S. State Department referred to when they originally voiced skepticism over Turkey's claim the PKK had shot the hostages dead.

 

The large number of Kurds in Turkey have elected their own to parliament, the largest Kurdish-sympathizing parliamentary group called the HDP had called upon Ankara to negotiate with the PKK for release of the hostages. They had themselves in the past acted in that same role to negotiate for the release of prisoners. President Erdogan spits rage at the very thought of negotiating with "terrorists" though it had bargained with the Islamic State for release of 49 hostages when the Turkish Consulate had been overrun. Turkey freed a number of IS prisoners in exchange for Turkish hostages.

 

This time Turkey chose to arrest hundreds of people it has identified as linked to the PKK, a revenge move against the killing of the 13 hostages, ostensibly. Likelier, the Turkish military bombing of the area around the cave complex led to the deaths of the hostages, which Turkey pretends to hold the PKK responsible for; the event giving Erdogan the opportunity to arrest and imprison those he considers his enemies. Among them hundreds of members of the HDP. Fully 718 people were detained in 40 cities across Turkey, accused of links to the PKK.

One HDP member of Parliament stated that roughly 150 members of his party were detained overnight. City and district heads belonging to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) (Democratic Party of the People} supporting Turkey's minorities were also arrested. President Erdogan uses arrest and incarceration as a control mechanism of those Turks who oppose his Islamist agenda and his oppressive authority. Any he believes support the Gulenist movement after an aborted coup in 2016 languish in prison.

These included high-ranking members of the military, journalists, teachers, lawyers in their thousands as well as police and members of the judiciary. Erdogan had a bitter dispute with the United States when he insisted that Fethullah Gulen -- a popular and respected imam, once an ally, more latterly a political adversary with a huge following in Turkey, living in self-exile in the United States but remaining hugely influential in Turkey and whom Erdogan blames for the attempted coup -- be extradited to Turkey to stand trial on charges of treason, a 'terrorist' meriting the death penalty.

Ibrahim Kalin

@ikalin1

PKK executes 13 civilian captives in a cave in #Gara, Iraq. It attacks Turkish & Iraqi security forces & civilians. It continues its terrorist attacks in northern Syria. The world is silent. This silence is a shameful act of complicity. But we will not remain silent.

1:28 AM · Feb 14, 2021

 

 

 

The Eternally Apoplectic Erdogan's Unhinged Ire

"We really don’t know what happened. Anything is possible, the militants might have panicked and shot the hostages dead, or they might have died during the aerial bombings."
"But the main point is not who killed them but rather why the Turkish military carried out this operation to bring the hostages back alive in a manner that led to their deaths."

Human Rights Association’s president, Ozturk Turkdogan

 

"If we are together with you [the United States] in NATO, if we are to continue our unity, then you will act sincerely toward us. Then, you will stand with us, not with the terrorists."

"The US statement on the PKK’s execution of Turkish citizens in northern Iraq is ridiculous. They claim they do not support the PKK, but they certainly do."

If you want to continue our alliance globally and within NATO, then you must stop siding with terrorists."  

"We kept trying to figure out how we can rescue our brothers from the hands of the terrorists. We tried very hard, but we failed." 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

 

"If the reports of the death of Turkish civilians at the hands of the PKK, a designated terrorist organization, are confirmed, we condemn this action in the strongest possible terms."

"The secretary expressed condolences for the deaths and affirmed our view that PKK terrorists bear responsibility."

United States State Department

The funeral of three Turkish military personnel killed in action at the Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque in Ankara on 12 February 2021 (AFP)

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a guerrilla militia which established itself in the 1980s to represent the heritage rights of the tens of millions of Kurds, the world's largest minority ethnic group without an established homeland of their own. Their native territory was divided between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey when two world powers, Britain and France, occupied that vast area during World War I after the dissolution of Ottoman Turkey the deposed hegemonic power. Although Kurds were promised in the boundaries of the Middle East territories their claim would be honoured, it was not.

Ever since, ethnic Kurds have dreamed bitterly of the betrayal and have agitated for their own recognized sovereign homeland reflecting their historical presence in the geography. Any attempt made to achieve sovereignty earned them physical violence to tamp down their enthusiasm for leaving their state of enforced occupation under which their 'separatist' notions were regarded as criminal, leaving them to live as a people under merciless disciplinary duress.

Iraqi Kurds fear Turkey's drones in PKK mtn.war

A state of being that brings to mind China's crushing of Tibet and Xinjiang and its aspirations toward absorbing Taiwan and shutting down democracy in Hong Kong. Recep Tayyip Erdogan rails against the very concept of a Kurdish nation desirous of and deserving of recognition of their authenticity as the original territorial indigenous peoples.

He sneers at the very concept of Jews returning to their ancestral geography from a forced historical diaspora, championing Arab migrants who began to populate Jewish Palestine in search of economic and settler opportunities. The Turks themselves were migrants into the Mesopotamian plain and the mountainous regions beyond, the historical Kurdish homeland.

Kurds living in south-eastern Turkey have had their villages bombed on the pretense that they harbour members of the PKK. The PKK expanded their presence into Iraq as an operational base, with the Turkish military following them, accusing another Iraqi Kurdish group, the YPG of being their allies. Among the various Kurdish groups there are manifestly different attitudes toward occupation with some choosing diplomacy others violence to achieve eventual aims of freedom from persecution and occupation.

The hunted PKK have taken Turkish members of the military captive from time to time to use as leverage in prisoner exchanges. A group of such Turkish hostages were being kept in Kurdistan, a mountainous area of northern Iraq bordering Turkey, in a cave in the Gara region. There, the Kurdistan YPG the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, are accused by Erdogan of aiding and abetting the PKK, calling them both terrorist groups. The Turkish military under Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, despite knowing that Turkish hostages were being held there, bombed the area repeatedly in a four-day operation.

And after heavily bombing the Gara area for days, the Turkish forces entered the cave complex on day four to discover, they claim, the corpses of thirteen Turks, most members of the Turkish military, several Turkish diplomats and three of them civilians. The PKK had made a public statement on February 11 that Turkish war planes were hitting the camp directly where the hostages were being held.

It was this known fact that the U.S. State Department referred to when they originally voiced skepticism over Turkey's claim the PKK had shot the hostages dead.

The large number of Kurds in Turkey have elected their own to parliament, the largest Kurdish-sympathizing parliamentary group called the HDP had called upon Ankara to negotiate with the PKK for release of the hostages. They had themselves in the past acted in that same role to negotiate for the release of prisoners. President Erdogan spits rage at the very thought of negotiating with "terrorists" though it had bargained with the Islamic State for release of 49 hostages when the Turkish Consulate had been overrun. Turkey freed a number of IS prisoners in exchange for Turkish hostages.

This time Turkey chose to arrest hundreds of people it has identified as linked to the PKK, a revenge move against the killing of the 13 hostages, ostensibly. Likelier, the Turkish military bombing of the area around the cave complex led to the deaths of the hostages, which Turkey pretends to hold the PKK responsible for; the event giving Erdogan the opportunity to arrest and imprison those he considers his enemies. Among them hundreds of members of the HDP. Fully 718 people were detained in 40 cities across Turkey, accused of links to the PKK.

One HDP member of Parliament stated that roughly 150 members of his party were detained overnight. City and district heads belonging to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) (Democratic Party of the People} supporting Turkey's minorities were also arrested. President Erdogan uses arrest and incarceration as a control mechanism of those Turks who oppose his Islamist agenda and his oppressive authority. Any he believes support the Gulenist movement after an aborted coup in 2016 languish in prison.

These included high-ranking members of the military, journalists, teachers, lawyers in their thousands as well as police and members of the judiciary. Erdogan had a bitter dispute with the United States when he insisted that Fethullah Gulen -- a popular and respected imam, once an ally, more latterly a political adversary with a huge following in Turkey, living in self-exile in the United States but remaining hugely influential in Turkey and whom Erdogan blames for the attempted coup -- be extradited to Turkey to stand trial on charges of treason, a 'terrorist' meriting the death penalty.

Ibrahim Kalin

@ikalin1

PKK executes 13 civilian captives in a cave in #Gara, Iraq. It attacks Turkish & Iraqi security forces & civilians. It continues its terrorist attacks in northern Syria. The world is silent. This silence is a shameful act of complicity. But we will not remain silent.

1:28 AM · Feb 14, 2021

A Virtually Impossible Challenge...

"Given the numbers, the Kurdish authorities and International Committee of the Red Cross are just overwhelmed in terms of registering and finding out who is coming."
"Our top priority at the present moment is to identify the unaccompanied children, to notify the governments that we have found children without parents, and to see whether somewhere from China to Argentina there is family of unaccompanied children to which we can send the kids back."
"We have seen in those camps there are not only families of foreign fighters but we see also victims of Islamic State aggressions in the past."
"We found Yazidi women who have been abducted by Islamic State into Baghouz, who have been enslaved in Baghouz, who managed to get out [of Baghouz]. Because they can't prove who they are they are basically put in detention-like facility in camps."
"[The ICRC's first priority is the return of unaccompanied children] and second we try to see whether women with their children who wish to return can be returned."
"We are just looking at a pretty stark picture of a highly complex situation in which we see that nobody is particularly interested to put structures, processes in place, to deal with the issue beyond emergency assistance."
"The big issue" is to find a system to deal with the different categories of people and identify who's a victim, who's been involved in criminal activity, who remains highly radicalized — and then determine what to do with them."
"Even for me, it was quite an experience to talk to those women who are extremely radical in their approach and think Islamic State will be back, and it's just a temporary displacement. They think nothing bad has happened."  
Peter Maurer, president, International Committee of the Red Cross

The ICRC calls the situation at al-Hol a 'humanitarian emergency.' (Issam Abdallah/Reuters)

"I don't want to raise my kids in a society [Germany] that's totally corrupt, where every sin is promoted."
"The afterlife is forever."
German ISIL 'wife'

"Our brothers are everywhere, in Germany, in Russia, in America -- we believe that al-Dawla al-Islamia [the Arabic name of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] will come back."
Chechen woman, 22, Islamic State wife

"Nothing has changed."
"The children are innocent, but when they end up in the camp, they will learn what their parents teach."
Mohammed Bashir,  camp administrator, Al Hol Camp, Syria

Trinidadian Galion Su, 45, is hoping she will be able to leave the camp so she can locate her teen-age son. They were brought to Syria in 2014 by her husband, but was soon afterward divorced. That led her to 'marry' four men, each on the condition she would be permitted to keep her son with her. Then Islamic State jihadists wanted to force him to become a fighter. She camouflaged him as a girl, and they fled but were arrested by Kurdish forces. "I just want to be normal and go back to a normal society", she said.

A woman from the Netherlands left, to go abroad to Syria with the express purpose of joining the Islamic State. There she married one of their fighters. When he was killed, she married another. Before the second was killed, she became pregnant. As the Islamic State collapsed, she gave herself up to the YPG, ending up in the Al Hol tent camp, there joining the human tide of the former Islamic State caliphate.

Al Hol Camp is surrounded by chain link fencing with armed guards on duty. Originally the tent camp held around 9,000 people in detention, back in December. When the final territory of the Islamic State fell, the population of the camp increased to over 72,000. It is now held to be the temporary home of 100,000 people, a high percentage of children, some unaccompanied. The original problem was how to counter and defeat the expansionary, deadly plans of Islamic State.

Now the concern is a totally humanitarian issue, what to do with the tens of thousands of 'leftovers' from the camp, the woman who had joined ISIl, and their offspring, now that the terrorist network has been deprived of its territorial caliphate. In the foreigners' area of the camp, thousands of women speak in English, Russian, French, Chinese and other languages. Women with babies, with toddlers, with older children who were indoctrinated into the Islamic State ideology even at their young and impressionable age.

It is their impressionability, along with their current condition and ongoing exposure to the venomous ideology of the terrorist jihadist movement that concerns humanitarian agencies. There are three detention camps the Kurdish-led administration operates in northeastern Syria; Al Hol is the largest. There are tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis and according to Redur Xelil with the Syrian Democratic Forces, there are 12,000 foreign women and children, aside from the over 8,000 ISIL fighters in prisons.

Most countries have no wish to welcome the caliphate's former residents back in their home countries, while France, Russia and Chechnya have accepted some of their citizens for return. Local concern in Syria is that without international support the Islamic State could reform and once again launch its civilizational assault of Islamist terror. Of the children at Al Hol, many witnessed their father's deaths; violence was commonly witnessed by them, some of the children taught to commit it themselves.

As far as camp officials are concerned, their hands, attention, time and resources are spent with providing tents, food and medical attention to the residents. There is no energy left to be concerned about offering schooling for the children. The issue of dealing with people suffering psychological afflictions given what their experiences have been -- sought or dealt out -- is beyond their capacity to respond to.

The camp was initially built to house about 5,000 people. There are now as many as 100,000 there. (Issam Abdallah/Reuters)

Calling Erdogan's Bluff in Afrin

"As observers of Erdogan’s war on the Kurds know, the current attack on Afrin is to be put into the context of Turkey’s longstanding racist hostility towards any prospect of Kurdish self-determination, including democratic rights within existing states. By labelling any attempt at self-determination as ‘separatism’ and ‘terrorism’, Turkey tries to legitimize its war crimes in the eyes of the international community."
"Ever since the peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) ceased in the summer of 2015, and especially after an attempted coup attempt in July 2016, several massacres on Kurdish civilians have been committed by the state, while tens of thousands of people were arrested, and even more assaulted, sacked, injured or displaced."
New Internationalist In Afrin, northern Syria, Kurds protest Turkey's invasion as YPG (People's Protection Unit) members look on, 24 January 2018. Source: Kurdish Struggle, CC

Robert Fisk of The Independent, Great Britain, writes disparagingly of Afrin's untouched status; that despite the news coming out of the region of Turkey's assault on the YPG and stated determination to wrest Afrin from Kurdish hands, he could see first-hand no indication of any conflict other than in surrounding towns, that all seems normal and calm, commercial establishments open for business and no perturbations to be seen anywhere. There is a discreet presence of Russian soldiers which tends to give the impression of a loose solidarity with the Kurds.

Fisk, an opinionated and fussily critical journalist at the best of times, seems to take a sneering position at anything that belies his impressions. As a nit-picker, he had to point out in his latest entry in his rag that he had to repeatedly correct Kurdish pronunciation of Erdogan's name, impressing on them that the 'r' is pronounced as 'w', as though that salient fact would be of any great moment to a people fearing the loss of their established autonomy in a geographic area in which they can measure Kurdish heritage by millennia.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels entitled to invade areas on the border with Syria, considering them to be Turkish in character and historical precedence and thus on the wrong side of the border. Aside from which he has an overweening sense of paranoia at the presence and autonomous territorial control of the YPG whose connection with the Turkish PKK he points out is injurious to Turkey given the Kurdish aspiration of achieving sovereign status on their own historical geography, absorbed by Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Erdogan's fascist hatred for the Kurdish propensity to claim what is historically and morally theirs, restively agitating for the world to finally recognize the injustice done the Kurds when the dominating custodians of the region, colonialist Britain and France were casually marking up borders for posterity, ignoring natural ethnic, tribal and religious minority groups and forcing uneasy pluralism on a population that historically saw no need to acknowledge the other, each living in their geographies, has been brought to a head.

Under Kurdish control, minorities generally were able to live in peace, unlike the kind of persistent persecution suffered by Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Jews and Druze among others living under Muslim majority domination. During the invasion and caliphate establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, minorities fled for protection from the invaded areas to find haven within wider, autonomously-regulated Kurdish areas.

Kurdish YPG fighter. Source: Kurdish Struggle, CC

Erdogan's purpose in the Afrin area and beyond is to establish a greater presence of Turkmens and Sunni Syrians on the border area between Turkey and Syria to counteract the link between the YPG and the PKK, sundering their alliance and giving 'protection' to Turkey, and just incidentally in the process enabling Turkey to target the fighting Kurds and demoralize their citizenry with the prospect of an invading Turkey. Because Turkey is a member of NATO, Erdogan has become almost exempt from scrutiny in his ambition.

That Turkey remains a member of NATO is one of those realpolitik mysteries. Ankara's realliance with Moscow has shifted his membership even further outside the Western alliance, yet it remains impervious to hard scrutiny. Lip service is paid by Europe and the United States to the plight of the Kurds under Turkish attack. Discreet messages, mild in language beseech Erdogan to refrain from full-out attack. In fact, Fisk did get one thing right; Turkey with its massive military could, if Erdogan willed it so, make quick work of Afrin if it dispatched sufficient numbers and weaponry to confront the YPG with.

Turkey's arrogance in warning the U.S. that it expects the White House to withdraw from ongoing training of the Kurds, to stop arming them and to recall all the weapons it has thus far supplied the YPG with, along with Turkey's intention to extend its invasion to areas like Manbij where American troops are established, calls for a more vigorous response from the Trump administration than merely responding that it has taken note of Turkish demands.

Kurdish YPG fighter, 19 January 2018. Source: Kurdish Struggle, CC