Foreword
Noam Chomsky
This Foreword is edited from a keynote speech delivered by Professor Noam Chomsky on behalf of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, on 9 December 2002. Already when this talk was being delivered, the drums of war were being heard everywhere as the Bush administration and its allies prepared to launch war against Iraq. Kurds throughout the regions feared they would lose what autonomy they had achieved in Iraqi Kurdistan since the establishment of the ‘safe haven’. The speech provides the reader with the context not just to the Kurdish question in Turkey, but also to the Iraq invasion which began three months later
With the political leadership in Washington, and their London affi liate, declaring in every possible way their determination to go to war in Iraq – and crucially, without delay – the future for the people of the region is highly uncertain, and ominous as well. No one can predict the consequences of war: not the CIA, not Donald Rumsfeld, no one, and prospects include outcomes that are far from pleasant. These include, for Iraq, the dire warnings of humanitarian and medical organizations; and for the world beyond, the grim predictions of US and other intelligence agencies that an attack might stimulate terror for deterrence or revenge
These are among the many reasons why the threat or use of violence always carries a heavy burden of proof; very powerful arguments are needed for it, and no argument at all is needed against it. That holds for international affairs just as it does for personal relations or any other human interaction. I will not try to review the arguments offered for the resort to violence in this case, apart from joining in the extreme skepticism, to put it politely, that reigns outside of narrow though infl uential sectors in Washington and London
Very narrow sectors. The academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, international relations specialist Stephen Walt, speaks for many analysts in the mainstream when he observes that ‘there is no evidence to suggest that Iraq is becoming signifi cantly more dangerous’ or that deterrence is not a feasible option, and that x ‘the timing [of the war plans] is being driven primarily by domestic politics.’ He adds further that we should disregard the ‘small but well-placed group of neo-conservative offi cials and commentators’ who are passionately dedicated to war, and we should instead be ‘pursuing a more evenhanded policy in the Middle East in general.’ Here he presumably has in mind particularly US–Israel–Palestine relations. In this domain, US government policy continues to stand in opposition to regional and world opinion, and to a large majority of domestic opinion, as studies regularly demonstrate.1 Even the most hardline military and strategic analysts, like Anthony Cordesman, are warning the administration not to heed ‘neo-conservative and Israeli fantasies about going on to region-wide confl icts or triggering broader overthrows of regimes,’ and other plans of the ‘sillier armchair strategists and more vocally irresponsible hardliners.’ Cordesman is presumably referring to high civilian offi cials in the Pentagon who were writing position papers for the far-right Binyamin Netanyahu in the 1990s, and are circulating ideas about extending the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan to parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, establishing Jordan as Palestine with the obvious consequences for Palestinians, and going on with ambitious plans as far as China.2 One of the best current sources is the Israeli press, particularly informative now because of the close relations between Washington hawks and extremist sectors in Israel. One prominent Israeli strategic analyst, Ehud Sprintzak, returned recently from a meeting with highranking civilians at the Pentagon and described them to the Israeli press as ‘a revolutionary group, with a totally different approach to the Arab world and the threats coming from it. One can summarize their approach in one sentence: they think that the Arab world is a world of retards who only understand the language of force’3 – an understatement, as one can see by their reaction when German or Canadian leaders violate the rules by paying some attention to the will of their own populations
It is hard to rank the likely victims in terms of imminent threats, and pointless to try, but there can be little doubt that the Kurdish populations are among them, and once again face dangerous times
Those concerns hold for Kurds everywhere, including the 4 million Kurds of northern Iraq, who for the moment have achieved unusual progress in the northern enclaves under the uneasy alliance of Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Anders Lustgarten may prove to be right in his warning that in the long run ‘none stand to lose Foreword xi xii The Kurds in Turkey more than the occupants of Iraqi Kurdistan,’ and that ‘any successor to Saddam will see the Kurdish threat to Baghdad in the same light’ (citing Kurdish historian David McDowell).4 If the worst can be averted – and there is always a lot that we can do about that – then there are some real signs of hope: some external, others within. And in both domains, again, we can do a lot to nourish these hopes
It is obvious beyond any need for comment that the rich and powerful countries, primarily the US and Britain, will have an enormous infl uence on future developments, as they have had in the past, decisively in the Middle East for a century. And in free societies, where fear of repression is slight, that means that popular forces and independent organizations can have a decisive infl uence
For that reason alone it is a real privilege to be able to participate in the tenth anniversary celebration of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, which has compiled a stellar record in promoting and signifi cantly advancing the cause of human rights in this tortured part of the world
In the coming years, its tasks will be even greater, and concerns reach well beyond the Kurds, severe as their problems are. We need not rehearse the reasons why Britain and later the US have been determined to control the Gulf region. It suffi ces to recall the observation of the State Department in 1945 that the resources of Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf more generally, are a ‘stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.’ It was taken for granted that the US must control these resources. France was unceremoniously expelled by legal chicanery, and Britain reduced over the years to a ‘junior partner,’ as the Foreign Offi ce recognized early on. Control over these resources yields ‘wealth beyond the dreams of avarice,’ as one standard history of the energy system puts it; the wealth recycles to the US and British economies particularly, along many avenues, not just oil company profi ts
‘Strategic power’ translates into a lever of world domination. All of this was understood clearly by those who planned the post-war world, with much care and thought. According to current intelligence projections, Gulf energy resources are expected to become even more signifi cant in the years ahead;5 and, correspondingly, so do the stupendous source of strategic power and the great material prize
Note that the issue has not been access by the US itself, but control, a crucial distinction, often overlooked. When President Eisenhower warned in 1958 that ‘to lose [Jordan to Nasserite indigenous nationalist pressures] would be even worse than the loss of China, because of the strategic position and resources of the Middle East,’6 he did not have in mind US access to those resources, which did not become even a marginal issue for many years, but rather control. And that remains true for the indefi nite future
The resources are, of course, a wasting asset. If the wealth beyond the dreams of avarice fl ows to the West and the pockets of corrupt and brutal leaders, not to internal development, then many tens of millions of people face a fate too awful to contemplate as the resources decline with nothing to replace them. Twenty-fi ve years ago a well-known international economist warned that if the wealth of the oil states is not invested for industrial development, the Arab world may not survive long into the twenty-fi rst century. It ‘is the region with the fewest resources in water and cultivable land’ and was even then incapable of feeding its rapidly growing population
The Arab world and Africa generally, are ‘heading for tragedy,’ he wrote, and even Saudi Arabia ‘will cease to exist,’ unless resources are directed constructively to internal needs.7 No rational investment policy has been pursued, and the abominable social organization of the region has seen little progress in the years since, while economic conditions are in many ways far worse. That is all apart from the possible consequences of the wars planned by the ‘revolutionary group of sillier neocon armchair strategists.’ Analysts who are taken more seriously – not merely because of the power they wield – hold that the rich industrial countries have a ‘right of access’ (as they call it), which outweighs the rights of those who happen to inhabit the coveted lands. These are concepts with deep roots in Western intellectual and legal culture. On such grounds, they urge that Middle East oil ‘could be internationalized, not on behalf of a few oil companies, but for the benefi t of the rest of mankind’; I am quoting the respected specialists Walter Laqueur and Robert Tucker, who speak within a noble tradition. This concern for the benefi t of the rest of mankind has not yet been extended to the natural conclusion that the industrial and agricultural resources of the West should be internationalized for the common good, but that’s traditional too. Those who might be misled into such strange paths can be returned to good form by another well-established doctrine: the distinction explained by the distinguished political philosopher Irving Kristol between ‘signifi cant’ and ‘insignifi cant nations.’ The latter, ‘like insignifi cant people, can quickly experience delusions of signifi cance,’ he explained, and these delusions must be driven Foreword xiii xiv The Kurds in Turkey from their deformed minds by force. ‘In truth, the days of “gunboat diplomacy” are never over,’ he continued. ‘Gunboats are as necessary for international order as police cars are for domestic order.’ Anyone with a good English education should be able to come up with worthy antecedents, including the most distinguished and honored fi gures
And it should come as little surprise that traditional doctrines are continually resurrected, adapted to new contingencies.8 Regrettably, the insignifi cant nations lack the insight to appreciate these subtleties, and continue to lapse into delusions of signifi cance
They never seem to comprehend why the wasting wealth of their region must fl ow in abundance to others, not to them, laying the basis for a viable existence for their descendants. Hence the constant need for force under one or another guise, which it is the historical task of intellectuals to provide
Serious planners, however, have understood the basic issues well enough. George Bush is not the fi rst president to ask ‘Why do they hate us,’ and his predecessors knew well that the answer is not ‘because we are so good.’ A more serious answer was given by the National Security Council in 1958, a crucial year in Middle East affairs, when President Eisenhower was voicing his concern over ‘the campaign of hatred against us’ in the Arab world, ‘not by the governments but by the people,’ who are ‘on Nasser’s side,’ supporting independent secular nationalism. The reasons for the ‘campaign of hatred’ were outlined by the National Security Council: In the eyes of the majority of Arabs the United States appears to be opposed to the realization of the goals of Arab nationalism. They believe that the United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East oil by supporting the status quo and opposing political or economic progress
Furthermore, the perception is accurate: ‘our economic and cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to close U.S. relations with elements in the Arab world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of relations with the West and the status quo in their countries’ – that is, with harsh and oppressive regimes that block democracy and development.9 In brief, the situation is much as it is elsewhere, notably Latin America, where the record is long and rich, and very revealing for those who hope to understand something about the world. In the last few years a wave of democratization in Latin America has inspired much enthusiasm among Western commentators – but not Latin Americans, as polls indicate, registering steady decline in faith in democracy, or to be more accurate, in the form of democracy that has been instituted. The standard scholarly source outlines the basic reasons. The author, Thomas Carothers, explains that the US indeed supported democracy, but of a special kind: only when it retains ‘the basic order of quite undemocratic societies’ and avoids ‘populistbased change’ that might risk ‘upsetting established economic and political orders and heading off in a leftist direction.’ Washington can ‘adopt prodemocracy policies as a means of relieving pressure for more radical change, but inevitably sought only limited, topdown forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied.’ Carothers writes with an insider’s perspective, having served in State Department ‘democracy enhancement’ programs
He reluctantly approves of the anti-democratic policies he outlines, since he can see no alternative. Allowing insignifi cant people a role in shaping their affairs is evidently not an option. It is, in fact, too extreme a conception even to be rejected.10 These problems are very much alive in the Islamic world as well
Asia correspondent Ahmed Rashid reports that in Pakistan, ‘there is growing anger that US support is allowing Musharraf’s military regime to delay the promise of democracy.’ Musharraf is ‘my kind of man,’ US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin declared, ‘very direct, genuine, and extremely personally honest’ – rather like Suharto, whose record compares well with Saddam Hussein’s, and accordingly remained ‘our kind of guy’ as the Clinton administration described him; he was greatly praised as well by Paul Wolfowitz, now a leading Pentagon hawk, when he was Ambassador to Indonesia in the Reagan years, at a time when Saddam was also ‘our kind of guy.’ A well-known Egyptian academic told the BBC that Arab and Islamic people were opposed to the US because it has ‘supported every possible anti-democratic government in the Arab-Islamic world. When we hear American offi cials speaking of freedom, democracy and such values, they make terms like these sound obscene.’ An Egyptian writer adds that ‘Living in a country with an atrocious human rights record that also happens to be strategically vital to US interests is an illuminating lesson in moral hypocrisy and political double standards.’ Terrorism, he said, is ‘a reaction to the injustice in the region’s domestic politics, infl icted in large part by the US.’ The director of the terrorism program at the New York Council on Foreign Relations agreed that ‘Backing Foreword xv xvi The Kurds in Turkey repressive regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia is certainly a leading cause of anti-Americanism in the Arab world,’ but warned that ‘in both cases the likely alternatives are even nastier’.11 There is a long and illuminating history of the problems in supporting democratic forms while ensuring that they lead to preferred outcomes. And it doesn’t win many friends
The fundamental issues that troubled Eisenhower and his staff are very much alive, even among elites closely integrated into the Western-run version of ‘globalization.’ By now the sources of the ‘campaign of hatred’ are compounded with specifi c concerns having to do, particularly, with the fate of Palestinians, and of Iraqi civilians under the murderous sanctions regime. It arouses little concern among Western humanists if the ‘economic sanctions [imposed by the US–UK, though conveniently attributed by propaganda systems to the UN] may well have been a necessary [sic] cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history,’12 in the hundreds of thousands according to conservative estimates. But not everyone seems to rise to the level of Western sensibilities on these matters
And of course it is not true that ‘they hate us,’ apart from fringe elements that would have little signifi cance were it not for the resonance of their words even in sectors that despise and fear them
Rather, they hate US government policies. Some fi nd that distinction diffi cult to grasp, refl exively identifying state policy with the country, its people, and its culture. The cultural deformity is familiar in the offi cial rhetoric of totalitarian states and military dictatorships
People with some commitment to freedom and democracy dismiss such attitudes with contempt: it would only arouse ridicule in Rome or Milan if a critic of Berlusconi’s policies were condemned as ‘anti-Italian,’ though I suppose it would have passed in Mussolini’s day – as in Anglo-American intellectual discourse today, which regularly invokes the concepts ‘anti-American’ or ‘hating America’ to protect state policy from critical scrutiny, a fact that may have some interest
Discarding ideological fanaticism, the reality is an ominous mix
Every serious commentator emphasizes that ‘Unless the social, political, and economic conditions that spawned Al Qaeda and other associated groups are addressed, the United States and its allies in Western Europe and elsewhere will continue to be targeted by Islamist terrorists,’ and for every two who are killed fi ve more are recruited.13 Returning to reasons for hope, among them is the work of external actors like the KHRP, the Bar Association, and others, many of them outgrowths of the general improvement in the level of civilization in the West that has its roots in the ferment of the 1960s. One indication that is highly relevant today is the protest against the coming war, which has no precedent in the history of Europe or the US, to my knowledge. Comparisons are often drawn to Vietnam, but that is a fundamental misunderstanding, and a revealing one. We have just passed the 40th anniversary of the public announcement that the Kennedy administration was sending the US Air Force to bomb South Vietnam, also initiating plans to drive millions of people into concentration camps along with chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops. There was no pretext of ‘defense,’ except in the sense of offi cial rhetoric: defense against the ‘internal aggression’ of the Vietnamese in Vietnam (UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson; in reality, as he presumably understood, the internal aggression of South Vietnamese in South Vietnam), and their ‘assault from the inside’ (President Kennedy). Protest was non-existent. It did not reach any meaningful level for several years, by which time hundreds of thousands of foreign troops were rampaging in the country, denselypopulated areas were being demolished by saturation bombing, and the aggression had spread to the rest of Indochina. Today, in dramatic contrast to the 1960s, there is large-scale, committed, and principled popular protest all over the US, elsewhere much more so, before the war has been launched, except very partially. That refl ects a steady increase over these years in unwillingness to tolerate aggression and atrocities, one of many such changes
Polls reveal more support for the planned war in the US than elsewhere, but without further investigation, we do not know what these numbers mean. It can hardly escape notice that although Saddam is reviled almost everywhere, he is feared outside Iraq only by Americans, who are subjected to a drumbeat of propaganda warning that if we do not stop him today he will destroy us tomorrow. The device is second nature to the Washington leadership, mostly recycled Reaganites who employed it effectively to sustain support for their terrorist wars during the fi rst phase of the ‘war on terror’ they declared on gaining offi ce in 1981. A serious measure of support for war would extricate this factor. The residue would give a more realistic and meaningful measure of support for the resort to violence
Other reasons for hope are internal to the societies where severe repression and violence reign. I have been greatly privileged to catch Foreword xvii xviii The Kurds in Turkey a glimpse in Turkey, in Istanbul and Diyarbakir, the capital of the Kurdish southeast. Much to my surprise, I came back from Turkey feeling far more optimistic than when I went. It was truly inspiring to witness fi rst-hand the courage and dedication of the leading artists, writers, academics, journalists, publishers and others who carry on the daily struggle for freedom of speech and human rights, not just with statements but also with regular civil disobedience, facing penalties that can be severe. Some have spent a good part of their lives in Turkish prisons because of their insistence on recording the true history of the miserably-oppressed Kurdish population: sociologist Ismail Besikci, to mention one notorious case, re-arrested ten years ago for publishing a book on state terror in Turkey, having already spent 15 years in prison. He also refused a $10,000 prize from the US Fund for Free Expression in protest against Washington’s strong support for Turkish repression, which is virtually unknown in the US, in accord with the standard principle that one’s own crimes must be effaced
Unlike Dr Besikci, the fi rst Kurdish woman elected to Turkey’s Parliament, Leyla Zana, did not refuse the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought six years ago. As she wrote when she received it, ‘the jailers who lock my body behind the thick walls of an Ankara prison do not have the power to prevent my spirit from travelling freely.’ She is still serving a 15-year sentence for having worn traditional Kurdish colors and for her crimes when she took her oath of offi ce in 1991, reading it in Turkish as required but then adding in Kurdish: ‘I shall struggle so that the Kurdish and Turkish people can live peacefully together in a democratic framework.’ Just last week, Amnesty International renewed its appeal to the Turkish authorities to release her. As in the case of other courageous and prominent dissidents in Western domains, including those who were brutally murdered by state terrorist forces armed and trained by Washington, her name is virtually unknown in the United States. There is a chance that laws just passed may fi nally end her torment, again something we can do a lot about.14 A current case that tells us a good deal about ourselves is that of Dr Haluk Gerger. Instead of describing it, I will quote some excerpts from an open letter to the US Ambassador by Sanar Yurdatapan, the Turkish musician and writer who is the spokesperson for the Initiative for Freedom of Expression and a leading fi gure in the civil disobedience actions: I am writing to express my deep dismay at the manner in which the US Immigration Service treated former prisoner of opinion Dr Haluk Gerger. It is very galling for those who are struggling to establish freedom of expression in Turkey to see the United States, constitutionally committed to free speech, behave in such a peremptory manner to an individual who has sacrifi ced his academic position and even his own liberty because he was not afraid to speak out. In the 1995 State Department Report on Human Rights Practices, the imprisonment of Haluk Gerger was shown as an example of Turkey’s lack of respect for civil liberties
His treatment as persona non grata in 2002 makes us wonder if the United States is now endorsing the Turkish state’s restrictions on freedom of expression
On October 1st, Gerger and his wife fl ew to the USA. At New York airport he was stopped and told that his visa, issued in 1999 for 10 yrs, had been cancelled by the State Department. US offi cers immediately sent back the couple to Munich after having shot his photos and taken fi ngerprints
Gerger is among a number of social scientists in Turkey who have been prosecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression. A former assistant professor at the University of Ankara, Dr Gerger is a well-known intellectual and a respected writer on nuclear weapons and strategy. He was educated at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, Stockholm University in Sweden, and Herford College in Oxford, England
Following the 1980 military coup, Dr Gerger was one of the authors of the ‘Intellectuals’ Petition’ criticizing the military’s actions, which was addressed to the head of the military junta. A military court acquitted Dr Gerger of any charges related to the petition; however, he was among hundreds of professors fi red when the university system was restructured in 1982
A founding member of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, Dr Gerger is an ardent defender of Kurdish rights. He has written extensively on the issue and has criticized governmental policies
He has likened the Turkish government’s treatment of the Kurds to Serbia’s ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia. He has been imprisoned and heavily fi ned by Turkish courts for writing letters and articles expressing his political opinions
Upon his release from prison, the American Association for the Advancement of Science honored Dr Gerger during its Foreword xix xx The Kurds in Turkey 1996 Annual Meeting in recognition of the contribution he has made, through both action and example, to the promotion and protection of human rights in Turkey. At this meeting, Dr Gerger spoke passionately about the violence and human rights violations occurring in the southeast of Turkey. He urged scientists to ‘exert pressure on both the government of the United States and Turkey on behalf of peace, freedom, and respect for human rights,’ and added that, ‘these are all values very much relevant to, or rather, preconditions for scientifi c endeavor.’ Same year, Dr Gerger was also one of the recipients of the Hellman/Hammett grants awarded by Human Rights Watch to writers around the world whose books have been banned or who have been exiled, imprisoned, tortured, or harassed because of their work
In return for these contributions, he is refused entry to the United States by Colin Powell’s State Department, regarded as a dangerous terrorist, not welcomed as a ‘man of peace’ like Ariel Sharon or a forward-looking democrat like Islam Karimov or Pervez Musharraf
Yurdatapan was then on his way to the US to receive an award from Human Rights Watch, and though this appeal was ignored, he did receive some attention. The New York Times ran a semi-jocular article on a joint book of an atheist, Yurdatapan, and a well-known Islamist writer, co-authored as a call for tolerance and free speech.15 The article did mention that Yurdatapan had protested ‘the long war (now subsided) with Kurdish militants,’ an oblique reference to the unmentionable fact that the Clinton administration provided 80 per cent of the arms for some of the worst atrocities of the grisly 1990s, driving millions from the devastated countryside with tens of thousands killed and every imaginable form of brutal torture.16 The fl ow of arms was so great that Turkey became the leading recipient of US arms, apart from Israel-Egypt, a separate category
In the year 1997 alone, US arms shipments to Turkey exceeded the combined total for the entire Cold War period up to the onset of the Turkish campaign of state terror – or to keep to convention, Turkish counter-terror, the approved term for the terror that we carry out against them, close to a historical universal as far as I know, including the worst mass murderers
Turkey is highly praised for its success in such counter-terror. In the State Department Year 2000 Annual Report, Turkey was singled out for its ‘positive experiences’ in combating terror, along with Algeria and Spain, worthy colleagues. This was reported without comment in a front-page story in the New York Times by its specialist on terrorism
In a leading journal of international affairs, US Ambassador Robert Pearson reports that the US ‘could have no better friend and ally than Turkey’ in its efforts ‘to eliminate terrorism’ worldwide, thanks to the ‘capabilities of its armed forces’ demonstrated in its ‘anti-terror campaign’ in the Kurdish southeast. A Brookings Institution study explains that Turkey ‘has become a pivotal ally in Washington’s new battle against terrorism,’ particularly well-positioned to help because ‘Turkey has itself struggled with terrorist violence for the better part of the last two decades,’ just as Milosevic did in Kosovo – though the comparison is perhaps unfair, since the US–Turkish record is more atrocious than the charges against Milosevic in the indictment concerning Kosovo, certainly before the NATO bombing.17 Thanks to these achievements, Ambassador Pearson added, it ‘came as no surprise’ that Turkey eagerly joined the ‘war on terror’ declared by George W. Bush. The Turkish Prime Minister expressed his thanks to the US for being the only country willing to lend the needed support for the terrible atrocities of the Clinton years – still continuing, though on a lesser scale now that the ‘counter-terror’ has succeeded. As a reward for these achievements, Washington funded Turkey to provide ground forces for fi ghting ‘the war on terror’ in Kabul. It passed without notice that protection against terror was provided on the ground by a leading practitioner of terror, funded by the only country in the world to have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism, as well as by the UN Security Council in two vetoed resolutions, all down the memory hole along with the reasons and the terrible aftermath
There is nothing in the least unusual about these practices, so well documented and so important that they would be common knowledge to every child in a society that valued its freedom
Back to Turkey, and some personal impressions, which I bring up with diffi dence, for what they may be worth. There seems to be a good deal of public support for the people who are carrying out the struggle for free speech and human rights, and who should inspire not only great respect but also humility among their Western colleagues. No less inspiring was what I saw on a visit to Diyarbakir, where many of those driven from the countryside live in caves in the outer walls of the city and in its slums, still barred from return to their villages despite programs that have been offi cially announced but not implemented, as Human Rights Watch documented in detail in Foreword xxi xxii The Kurds in Turkey a report a few weeks ago, describing this refusal as perhaps the most serious of the current human rights violations in Turkey. Conditions seemed to me even worse for the unknown numbers trying to survive in condemned buildings in miserable slums of Istanbul, where large families are crammed into a room, young children are virtually imprisoned unable to venture into the grim alleyways outside while older brothers and sisters work in illegal factories to help keep the family alive. The record of abuses continues day after day, and could be brought to an end with public support in the West
The courage of the people is beyond my ability to describe, from children in the streets wearing Kurdish colors – a serious offense, for which punishment of the families could be severe – to a large and enthusiastic public meeting I attended in Diyarbakir. At the end, several students came forward and in front of TV and police cameras, presented me with a Kurdish–English dictionary. That was an act of considerable bravery, and a precious gift; right at that time students and their parents were being interrogated, reportedly tortured, and facing imprisonment for submitting legal petitions requesting the right to have elective courses in their native language. On the front page of the dictionary they wrote the following words: Do you know the pain of not seeing our dreams in our mother tongue. We would like to see our dreams in our mother tongue
And we gave 1600 applications to see our dreams in our mother tongue. And we are being judged ‘human interference’ in order to see our dreams in Kurdish. And we are being arrested to see our dreams in Kurdish. Our main goal is to shout our language that has lost its voice for ages
Denial of even these minimal rights is cruel beyond words. They have the support of many brave and honorable people in Turkey, facing prison or worse. They ask only that we offer them every form of assistance within our reach, and do what we can to help them achieve their worthy and justifi ed aims – which means, in particular, putting an end to our critically important contribution to the repression and violence to which they are subjected
There have been effects of internal struggle and outside pressure
In August 2002, the Turkish Parliament passed new laws that have a good deal of promise. The new government last week extended them in ways that could prove important. Recent KHRP newsletters include reports by delegations of the KHRP, and the Bar of England and Wales, outlining both the promise and the barriers to its realization, and calling on us to support the people of Turkey in overcoming the repressive acts of the Turkish state. The current record is mixed
There is general agreement that day-to-day repression has been mitigated. On the other hand, the report released by the respected Izmir Bar Association, on Human Rights Day, records increases in human rights violations (as throughout the world, under the pretext of combating terrorism), including hundreds of credible reports of torture, thousands of trials for ‘thought crimes,’ a continuation of the ‘situation of emergency rules’ despite the formal lifting of the rules, the bars against return to the villages, and other serious abuses
The Publishers Union of Turkey reported a ‘rising trend’ of banning of books and accusations against authors and publishers, as well as music and other publications. Kurds and Kurdish issues remain the primary targets, but not the only ones; even a dictionary about women’s slang was banned, also a grammar and dictionary of a local Greek dialect. The Rights Association has reported continuing abuses, increasing in some signifi cant categories.18 The European Union has posed human rights conditions for Turkish application for membership. The conditions are justifi ed, but there are suspicions, justifi ed as well, that elements within the EU may seek to raise the bars continually because of unwillingness to tolerate Turkish membership in the European club, matters that should not be ignored within Europe
A great many people in Turkey heed Leyla Zana’s call ‘to struggle so that the Kurdish and Turkish people can live peacefully together in a democratic framework.’ They need our support, and with it, there might even come a day when Turkey will be the ‘homeland for Turks and Kurds’ – the phrase used by Atatürk’s lieutenant and eventual successor at the founding of the Turkish state 80 years ago.19 I mentioned that in 1997, when Turkey was the leading recipient of US arms, the fl ow exceeded the combined total for the entire Cold War period up to the onset of the campaign of state terror – as it is properly called not only by scholars like Ismail Besikci in the book for which he was again imprisoned, but even by a former Turkish Minister for Human Rights. 1997 was an important year for the human rights movements in other ways as well. It was the year when the world’s leading newspaper informed its readers that US foreign policy had entered a ‘noble phase,’ with a ‘saintly glow.’ It was also the year when US military aid to Colombia skyrocketed, Foreword xxiii xxiv The Kurds in Turkey increasing from $50 million to $290 million by 1999, then doubling by 2001 and still increasing.20 In 1999, Turkey relinquished to Colombia its place as leading recipient of US arms. The reason is not hard to discern: Turkish state terror had by then succeeded, Colombia’s still had not. Through the 1990s, Colombia had by far the worst human rights record in the Western hemisphere, and was by far the leading recipient of US arms and military training, a correlation that is well-established and would be of no slight concern if it were known outside of scholarship and dissident circles
Since terror is high on the international agenda, quite rightly, it may be useful to look briefl y at the country that replaced Turkey in 1999 as lead recipient of US arms. State terror in Colombia has a long history, but took a more dangerous form in 1962, when the Kennedy administration shifted the mission of the Latin American military from ‘hemispheric defense’ – a holdover from the Second World War – to ‘internal security,’ meaning a war against their own populations, a decision with fateful consequences throughout the hemisphere
As part of the new programs, a mission was sent to Colombia led by Special Forces General Yarborough, which recommended ‘paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known Communist proponents,’ the latter, a term with a familiar meaning in Latin America. These actions, including paramilitary terror, ‘should be backed by the United States,’ the mission advised. One of the leading fi gures in Colombia’s impressive human rights movement wrote 30 years later that the US initiatives ‘transformed our regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades, accepting the new strategy of the death squads,’ ushering in ‘what is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine,’ not defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game [with] the right to combat the internal enemy, as set forth in the Brazilian doctrine, the Argentine doctrine, the Uruguayan doctrine, and the Colombian doctrine: it is the right to fi ght and to exterminate social workers, trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment, and who are assumed to be communist extremists.21 This is not the place to review the horrendous aftermath, which should again be well-known, at least among those who hope to understand their own responsibilities as citizens of the worlddominant powers. Though what happened is largely kept under wraps in respectable circles, it is understood by those more closely involved – for example, by the famous School of the Americas, which trains Latin American military offi cers, and takes pride in the fact that the US army helped to ‘defeat liberation theology.’22 The Latin American Church became an enemy when it committed a grave sin: it renounced its traditional mission of serving the rich in favor of the new ‘preferential option for the poor,’ and was punished accordingly, particularly during the fi rst phase of the ‘war on terror’ conducted by many of those at the helm today in Washington, always with the loyal support of their British ‘junior partner.’ Though bin Laden would dearly love to create a ‘clash of civilizations’ between the US and the Islamic world, the truth is different: like its predecessors in world domination, Washington is quite ecumenical in its choice of targets of state-directed international terrorism, as well as its allies in the cause
Like many other current centers of turmoil and state terror, Turkey among them, Colombia is part of an important oil-producing region, and in fact is a signifi cant producer itself: much the same is true of Chechnya, Western China, Aceh in western Indonesia, and other places where September 11 was used as a pretext to intensify state terror on the assumption, quickly verifi ed, that authorization would be granted by Washington. Human rights organizations and the State Department agree that the overwhelming majority of atrocities in Colombia have been attributable to the military and paramilitaries, who are so closely linked to the military that Human Rights Watch calls them the ‘sixth division’ of the Colombian army, alongside the offi cial fi ve. The military–paramilitary proportion of attributable atrocities (about 3:4) has been stable over recent years, but the share of the paramilitaries is increasing as atrocities are privatized in accord with good neoliberal practice, familiar elsewhere as well: Indonesia in East Timor, Turkey in the southeast, Serbia in the former Yugoslavia, and many other places. There is a corresponding privatization of international atrocities. The chemical warfare (‘fumigation’) programs that are a core part of the Clinton–Bush ‘Plan Colombia’ are being taken over by ‘private’ companies like Dyncorps, consisting of US military offi cers under contract by the Pentagon; again, a pattern that is worldwide
A few months ago, in the southern Colombian province that had the distinction of compiling the worst human rights record in the Foreword xxv xxvi The Kurds in Turkey country in 2001, I listened to many hours of testimonials of peasants who had been driven from their lands by chemical warfare. They were among those who had organized a ‘social bloc’ that succeeded in electing their own governor, Floro Tunubalá, a thoughtful, articulate, proud indigenous man. His election, reminiscent of Haiti a decade earlier, was a shock to the elites that had run the place forever, a refl ection of the success of local organizing among the popular sectors
He has described the success of the social bloc in winning ‘economic and territorial rights, and social rights in the areas of education and health.’ That ‘attracted the attention of the paramilitaries,’ who do not tolerate such deviation from the traditional structures of power they protect, and US chemical warfare, under the pretext of a drug war that few knowledgeable analysts take seriously – and that would be scandalous if the pretexts were true. For the peasants – campesinos, indigenous, Afro-Colombian – the ‘drug war’ means that their farms and lives are ruined, their animals killed, their children often sick and dying. They are left destitute, with little hope, and will join the millions of ‘displaced people.’ The displaced population in Colombia is one of the largest in the world, comparable in scale to the victims of US-backed Turkish ‘counter-terror’ against the Kurds: about 2.7 million according to the most recent report of the major Colombian human rights organization. The numbers are increasing at 1,000 a day along with other atrocities, among them, continued killing of trade unionists at the rate of one every other day; for years, more than half of those recorded worldwide are in Colombia. More can be expected with the planned increase of US military aid just announced by Secretary Powell, if history is any guide.23 The crop destruction programs are functioning as another stage in the historical process of driving poor peasants from the land, thereby opening up rich resources to strip mining, mineral extraction, hydroelectric projects for investors and privileged sectors, and other forms of exploitation by foreign capital. They will probably lay the basis for agroexport controlled by multinationals using laboratoryproduced seed once the biodiversity is destroyed, and along with it, the rich but very fragile tradition of peasant agriculture, developed over many centuries of careful work and experimentation, handed down usually from mother to daughter, and easy to destroy in a single generation in a peasant society. The pleas for alternative strategies of agricultural production by the governors of the targeted southern provinces, the Church, and the peasant organizations do not fi t the aims of the Colombian elite and Washington’s ‘Plan Colombia,’ hence receive only the most marginal support
I bring up Colombia alongside of Turkey in part for personal reasons, having recently visited the scenes of some of the worst contemporary atrocities, so memories are vivid, but also because the Colombian state and narrow privileged elites have been vying for the lead in receiving US military aid and training, and consistent with historical patterns, are leading human rights violators and central components of long-term strategies of world domination now taking new forms. But it is all too easy to add further examples
It is perhaps the most elementary of moral truisms that we are primarily responsible for the anticipated consequences of our own actions, or inaction. It is easy, and sometimes gratifying, to wring our hands over the crimes of others, about which we can often do little. Looking in the mirror is vastly more important, not merely to preserve elementary integrity, but far more signifi cant, because of what we can then do, if we wish, to help people who are struggling so courageously for elementary rights.
