By Dr Aland Mizell:

With the PKK–Turkish government peace process once more sadly hanging by a thread, the Turkish media and especially the Gülenist media have already launched a pre–emptive blame game. We already know for a fact that Gülen and his followers never wanted the Turkish government to talk to the PKK or to listen to what the Kurds would request in order to end the struggle. Gülen and his followers believe the only way to solve the Kurdish problem is to convert and assimilate them into their religious belief and thus their way of life. Steve Biko, the late Black activist in the South African anti-apartheid movement, once said, “The most important weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” His insight tells us the power a dominant and oppressive society has when the oppressed buy into the prevailing ideology and hand over their minds to the oppressors.

Today Gülenists have successfully accomplished this in terms of stealing the minds of the Kurds’ future generation in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) region. The education of these future minds now lies in the hands of Gülenists. Significantly, Gülenists are teaching their version of history, religion, culture, and education as a form of social control over an oppressed Kurdish culture during the process of assimilation. In one of his daily speeches published on herkul.org, Gülen said that he wants people to cut his head into two-pieces, rather than have Turkey divided. Mr. Gülen and his followers do not want Kurds to be free unless this suppressed minority believes his way of life and his worldview. The international community needs to understand that his contagious rejectionism is the main obstacle to the Kurdish peace process.

There simply cannot be an honest discussion about the PKK-Turkish government peace process without acknowledging the toxicity of the Gülenists and some other Turkish nationalists’ blind hatred toward the Kurds who refuse to give up their Kurdish identity and who refuse to live the dominant group’s way of life. We all know that the history of the peace process has proved that Gülen’s Islamic nationalism is unwilling to compromise in a way that both sides must undertake for peace to be achieved. If the international community and Turkey want peace with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), they need to tell the Gülenist Islamic nationalists and the Turkish people who think like Gülen that there are no shortcuts to peace and no instant solutions. The Turkish government should stop looking for excuses to avoid negotiations and instead implement the demands of the Kurdish people. Gülen and his fanatics should know that nothing can be resolved without direct talks between the parties and compromises from both sides.

The only true resolution for the Kurdish conflict is a negotiated resolution. The only path to peace with the PKK is a negotiated path, not the one Gülen wanted in calling for the government to kill PKK guerrillas. Instead of putting blame on the PKK, if they are sincere about achieving peace, they should ask the government what it contributed to the peace process. Did the government release any illegally detained Kurdish activists, journalists, academics or politicians? Did Turkey reduce the electoral threshold? Did Turkey change the constitution and accept the most common demand of the right to use Kurdish as an official language in government, in offices, and in schools? Did Turkey take the PKK off its terrorist list? Did Turkey change its anti-terrorist law? Where does Gülen stand on Kurds in Syria?

We all know that the Kurds have many enemies for a myriad of reasons, and they have had them for a long time. We also know that the Kurds have the misfortune of living on land that is occupied by oppressed regimes, specifically, lands ruled by four repressive countries: Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. However, among the obstacles to Kurdish independence, a substantial one has been the Kurds themselves. For the first time in Kurdish history, they have a significant opportunity to be self-ruled, to be united, and to draft a strategy with a grand conference, but political ideologies and divisions among the different Kurdish groups, and of course regional players, have blocked a Pan Kurdish conference from occurring.

The Pan-Kurdish conference was initially to take place in Erbil on August 20, 2013, but was postponed until September 20th. The Kurds are in dispute over representation in the organizing committee. While on the one hand Kurdish groups are deeply divided, on the other hand, the oppressive regimes are at work to make sure the conference will not threaten their national interests. The Pan-Kurdish conference is significant because it is first time in history representatives of all the Kurds have agreed to gather in one hall to discuss the Kurdish situation in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, and especially to address what is going on in the Middle East. But for some reason the conference continues to get postponed. Why?

The main goal of the conference is to unite Kurds at a time when they are more divided over petty power struggles, such as who should control Syrian Kurdish territories. Iran is killing Kurds but supporting the PKK and using it for its national interest, Turkey is supporting the El Nusra group to kill Syrian Kurds and to support the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq, so some Kurdish leaders are again in bed with an enemy who is against other Kurds instead of helping one another and being united. The PKK accused Barzani of closing the KDP’s border with Syria and instead working with Turkey. The KDP is accusing the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Kurdish nationalists in Northern Syria, of building a dictatorship in Syria by unilaterally controlling the Kurdish area and not cooperating with other Kurdish parties that have close ties with the KDP. For example, among the Kurds of Rojava, Syria, the PYD, who are pro-PKK, have been accused of kidnapping Kurdish politicians who criticize them. There is nothing wrong with the PYD claiming power in Syria, but other Kurds should support it and unify rather than acquiescing to their joint enemies’ strategy of fracturing Kurds and thus their united power.

Why should Kurds maintain divisions? The reason that Turkey is not happy is because the PYD is the only serious party in Rojava, and since only division serves the self-interest of Kurdish enemies, this concentration of power disturbs Turkey. It is a shame for Kurdish leaders of the PKK and the KDP not to be united, no matter what they believe ideologically and philosophically; rather they should be tolerant of each other’s ideology, while their enemy is doing all it can domestically and internationally to pressure Kurds not to have their autonomous region in Syria. Instead of building allies internationally and recruiting advocates globally to help them gain freedom from oppressive regimes, they accuse each other and thereby oppress each other.

Kurds should stop blaming outsiders for not having their own independence and instead should take responsibility themselves because it is the largest minority in the world that does not have self-rule and that is because of its biggest enemy–disunity. Today Kurds have one last chance to be free from the oppressive regimes but, without Kurdish unity, there will never be a Kurdistan. Right now history is repeating itself. The turmoil in the new greater Middle East projects and the pressure from repressive regimes, such as Turkey, has kept the Kurds divided into hostile and mutually suspicious groups. First, Turkey made the KRG government and the Iraqi government enemies by using the Sunni religion card, thus making the KRG more dependent on Turkey. Reports sound like Barzani lives in Ankara and supports fundamentalists fighting Kurds in Syria, because Turkey is openly telling Kurds in Syria that it will not let them have their own freedom and that it wants them to continue to suffer. Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan repeats often and loudly, “We will not make the same mistake that happened in Iraq,” meaning that the KRG achieved an autonomous region. For Erdogan, allowing the Kurds to have the freedom of self-rule is a mistake. Why do Kurdish leaders fail to understand these motives?

Secondly, the reason Turkey wants to have peace with the PKK is because Turkey did not want to open another front with the PKK, and also, after Assad’s regime is gone, Turkey will have influence on the new government of Syria and will oppress more Kurds. Therefore, the goal of Turkey is to cut the PKK’s support of the Syrian Kurds, so that Turkey later can attack the PKK and again divide and rule. Then, after the war on Syria and when Assad is gone, Turkey will have war with the PKK and its people while supporting Syrian opposition groups. Turkey, as well as other superpowers, over and over uses the Kurds to further its own ends.

Thirdly, if Kurdistan does not have autonomy in Syria, there will not be a greater Kurdistan. Rojava is important for greater Kurdistan.

Kurdish leaders should ask themselves what has prevented them from achieving their goal? What kind of political status do the Kurds seek? Only Kurds and their leaders can answer the two questions. The Kurds have long been the object of imperial and superpowers’ interests that only stand for the Kurds internationally when their own interests have been in jeopardy. The Kurdish struggle is a modern tragedy, a drama from the theater of cruelty and injustice, a play involving the Kurds’ shifting alliances that have done them more harm than good. Kurds do not have permanent allies in the region, but have only themselves, a fact they must recognize.

The Middle East is burning and Kurdistan is burning. Therefore, first, Kurds should unite and put aside their ideological differences to be free from the oppressed regimes and super powers. In spite of the PKK declaring a peace process, Gülen and his media continue to call the PKK a terror group and those who support the PKK terrorists. The international community completely ignores the fact that hatred plays a significant role in perpetuating the conflict. Thus, secondly, Kurds should press harder to have the PKK removed from the terrorist list because the Kurdish issue is not a terrorist one; it is a social, political, and economical issue. The international community and the US should reward the PKK by striking the PKK from the terrorist list for its willingness to negotiate with the Turkish government. There is no higher obstacle to peace than hatred. Without Islamic nationalist hatred on any side, there is always a chance to reach an agreement through compromise. But with the Islamic nationalistic hatred in the mind of one side, how could any agreement hold?

Unfortunately, the Gülenists’ Islamic nationalism is much more extremist than the electorate who voted for the AKP party. Erdogan is hardly the sole obstacle to the peace process because at least he wants to make progress, but Gülen still holds, nurtures, and teaches hatred toward the PKK and toward those who support Kurdish nationalism. How can the Kurdish people be expected to trust any future agreement with the Turkish government when the government itself is not adhering to it? How can the Kurdish people rely on the international community if it lends its support to the Gülenists’ Islamic nationalism in their illegitimate speeches concerning the Kurdish peace process?

The Kurds should unite to pour water on the burning Middle East, quenching the fire, instead of enflaming their own conflagration by fighting each other. They should end all forms of media campaigns against each other. Kurds should rebuild a government of national unity agreed upon by all the political groups representing the Kurdish people. Kurds should end all forms of security coordination with their enemies. Kurds should educate their children, not in the Turkish missionaries’ brand of religion as it teaches them an inaccurate and biased history.

On the blood of so many Kurdish martyrs, on the bereavement of orphans and widows, on the thousands of prisoners in Turkish jails, and on all Kurds in the Middle East and in the Diaspora, I call upon all the Kurdish factions to unite under the banner of Kurdish people, in order to reform the political system in Kurdistan, based on the interests and aspirations of the Kurdish people in the homeland and outside of the homeland. The current changes taking place in the Middle East and specifically the violence emanating from the siege against the Kurdish people in Syrian Rojava require all Kurds to stand as one against the brutal oppression and injustice.

If Kurds do not unite as one now, when will they? If they do not take this opportunity, when will they have another opening? The Kurdish people inside and outside of Kurdistan have always heard that Kurds and Turks are brothers and that they all are Muslims. Also they know Kurds are being oppressed by the Muslims countries. Peaceful actions would solve the Kurdish problem and restore the Kurdish land, but for more than three decades, Kurds remain under brutal, unjust, and oppressive regimes that steal land, perpetrate injustice, and prevent the well-being of Kurds, tragically killing and kidnapping Kurdish fathers, sons, and even women and children, while the international community claims democracy and human rights are watching and hearing; yet, it does nothing. Kurds must agree; it is necessary that Kurds unite for all Kurdish people everywhere. Wherever there is a Kurd, it should be Kurdistan. Kurds should be strong, should let their unity be their strong suit, and should unanimously agree on a unified leadership that can lead Kurds to freedom with all honor, pride, and dignity. Let unity of the Kurds be the nightmare for those who oppress them.

Dr. Aland Mizell is with the University of Mindanao School of Social Science, President of the MCI and a regular contributor to The Kurdistan Tribune, Kurdishaspect.com, Mindanao Times and Kurdish Media.You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com