WarSclerotic

According to Bulut, the establishment of Turkey as a state was based upon the denial of the Kurds identity: “After the state was founded in 1923, the name of the Kurdish land, Kurdistan, the Kurdish language and everything else related to the Kurdish existence was denied. According to the founding ideology of the state, there were no Kurds or Kurdish language. So Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders became a sub-colony without even borders or a name. Kurds have been exposed to numerous massacres and extrajudicial murders for more than 90 years. As a result of these repressive and assimilationist policies, many Kurds have been assimilated into Turkishness but many others have resisted and still demand their national rights.”

Bulut noted that it has been more than 90 years since the establishment of the Turkish Republic but the Kurds within the country are still struggling for political recognition and the Turkish government wants to stop the spread of this desire for national rights at all costs. “The establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq was a huge step in the liberation of Kurdistan,” Bulut noted. “Now Syrian Kurdistan is on the rise; Kurdish male and female defenders there are struggling for their freedom. So Turkey wants to stop this new development. And ISIS is the name of their new plan that they apply to stop the liberation of Kurdistan and to exterminate the Kurds – as much as possible.”

In order to highlight this, Bulut stressed that on July 20th, there was a bomb attack in the Kurdish town of Suruc that killed 32 people during a meeting to discuss reconstruction efforts in Kobane and Turkish fighter jets recently bombed Qandil where the PKK was operating. She also noted that scores of Kurds have been arrested within Turkey this week: “These developments do not signal a positive change in Turkish state policy towards the Kurds.”

In an another instance, Kurds were persecuted by the Turkish state for taking a stand against ISIS: “Esra Yakar, a 5th-year Kurdish student at the Medical School of Dicle University in Diyarbakir, went to the Kurdish province of Kobani a few months ago as a volunteer doctor to help treat Kurds wounded in the fighting with ISIS terrorists. In December 2014, she suffered heavy wounds to her head and right eye during an attack by ISIS. Her referral to a hospital for advanced examination and treatment in Turkey was delayed. In the meantime, she lost her right eye. And while still under medical treatment, she was arrested and jailed in the Sincan prison in Ankara for being a terrorist.”

However, Bulut noted that ISIS terrorists face no such obstacles for receiving medical treatment in Turkey: “Emrah Cakan, a Turkish-born ISIS commander wounded in Syria, got medical treatment at the university hospital in Turkey’s Denizli province in March. As it is evident from this instance and many others, aiding ISIS terrorists while attacking or not helping Kurds has paved the way for the crimes committed by ISIS and other jihadist armies there.”

While the Kurds are being systematically oppressed within Turkey, Bulut noted that Turkey has not only economic relations with jihadist groups but also political relations with them as well: “For Islamic armies to advance and invade places today, they do need fighters as well as logistics and military support. People who believe in Islamic jihad become the fighters – or murderers and rapists – of ISIS and other Islamist armies. But the logistics and military support is mostly provided by the regional states – including Turkey.”

This support is used in order to oppress the Kurds: “ISIS mostly operates in all parts of Kurdistan, threatening the security of all Kurds in the region and even slaughtering or kidnapping and selling them as they did to the Yazidi Kurds in the Shengal region in August 2014. And this seems to be the only concrete outcome of the so-called resolution process in Turkey. No Kurdish rights have been recognized officially and Kurdish massacres are still happening.”

“Subjugating Kurds has been one of the primary policies of Turkey since 1920s,” Bulut emphasized. “A democratic state would choose to grant political and cultural rights to indigenous Kurds but Turkish supremacism, Kurdish-hatred and anti-Kurdish bigotry is so intense in Turkey that Turkey does not seem to aim to achieve real and sustainable peace with the Kurds. And because of that, the Turkish state seems to prefer even a genocidal group like ISIS to the Kurds.”