Never in world history has a people handed itself over to its colonizer in the way the Northern Kurds are doing today. Especially after years of fighting and resistance, after losing thousands of people for this cause, and after managing to establish an organization that set out with the aim of leading its people toward the creation of a country...
Yes, today the Kurds, through the PKK—which they created with their own strength—and its leader Abdullah Öcalan, are seeking to integrate voluntarily into the Turkish state that has massacred them for centuries. Of course, not all Kurds in the North accept this. However, most of those who remained within the Apoist school of thought, who grew up in that environment and developed their Kurdish consciousness through its discourse, now believe in this fairy tale and this lie.
After Abdullah Öcalan had been held captive by the Turkish state for twenty-seven years, the fascist and occupying Turkish state took action when it saw that dangerous conditions were emerging for it on the ground following the weakening of the strong Kurdish authority in Syria and the collapse of the Assad regime.
First, through ISIS militants whom it directed and commanded, it intimidated the Kurds of Rojava and condemned them to the lie of “integration into Syria.” At the same time, through Devlet Bahçeli—the bloody and murderous hand of the Turkish state—it attempted to persuade the Northern Kurds to remain silent under the roof of its own parliament.
In doing so, it used two principal instruments: one was Abdullah Öcalan, whom it had held captive for years; the other was the politicians of the DEM Party, which claims to be a Kurdish political party but had been reshaped after all of its powerful politicians were imprisoned.
Both of these elements had been kept ready for years as parts of a plan designed by the MİT, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization. They were brought forward at the moment when Erdoğan and the murderous tradition of the Turkish state needed them most, and a narrative was created in which the Kurds would voluntarily assimilate themselves.
Yet throughout history, the Kurds have never chosen voluntary assimilation and integration—not in Rojhilat, not in Başûr, not in Rojava, and not in Bakur. They have risen up repeatedly and paid heavy prices for their freedom, their language and their culture.
Now, however, under the instructions of a captive leader, they have first been made to lay down their weapons, then to dissolve their organization, and finally to submit to Erdoğan under the roof of parliament.
This is a disgrace.
It is a great disgrace for the Kurds to accept the discourse of the Turkish state as though it were the personal thinking of an imprisoned founding leader; to sacrifice Kurdishness to Turkishness; and to surrender their language, culture, way of life and right to freedom into the hands of their murderers.
The following questions immediately come to mind:
Was this why you were tortured?
Was this why you endured exile?
Was this why your children were hanged before your eyes?
Was this why you were forced to eat excrement?
You were prevented from speaking your own language with your children. Your villages were burned and bombed. You were raped. Your children’s legs were torn apart. Your children were killed by armored vehicles while they were playing in the street.
If you were eventually going to deny your language and hand over your culture so easily, why was all this suffering endured?
In 1923, you could simply have said, “We are all Turks!”
Why did you sacrifice thousands of your young people for the Kurdish language and for Kurdistan?
Why did you not dedicate your existence to Turkish existence from the very beginning?
Why did you refuse to accept it, and why did you rebel when Turkishness was imposed on your children every day?
If you were ultimately going to accept it, if you were going to hand over your existence and Kurdistan to the Turkish state in a single session, then why were there so many objections, so many declarations and so much resistance?
Today, Kurdistan and Kurdishness have been turned into toys in the hands of two of the Turkish state’s most bloodstained leaders.
You have accepted as “the will of the people” an Öcalan who has been held captive and imprisoned for years, whose images of washing clothes in prison were released from that remote island prison solely to humiliate him. Have you sacrificed Kurdistan while expecting honor from the rotten, undemocratic, feudal and dictatorial leadership of the PKK?
Let us assume that all of this was accepted by politicians, cowards and incompetent people, and that they placed themselves at the service of the Turkish state.
But what about you, the Kurdish people?
Kurdish mothers!
Kurdish youth!
Will you leave Kurdistan, Kurdishness, the Kurdish language and Kurdish culture in the hands of these traitors who are handing you over to your enemy?