வியாழன், 10 மார்ச், 2016

West endorses regional allies as State violence against Kurds escalates

West endorses regional allies as State violence against Kurds escalates

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 March 2016, 00:06 GMT]
As the Kurds are at the eye of the storm unravelling in the geo-political dynamics of world and regional establishments in Turkey and Syria, Eezham Tamils need to display solidarity with the Kurdish struggles for sovereignty and self-governance transcending the narratives of the US-ISIS paradigm. The US and NATO alliance are endorsing their traditional strategic partners, the States of Turkey and Saudi-Arabia, as the regional hegemons of the Middle-East assert their geo-political and strategic ambitions in the region. Becoming evident with the course of the crisis in Syria is the hegemons predilection at one hand towards dismantling Kurdish self-governance and the politico-military powers represented by the PKK and PYD and on the other efforts to topple the Assad regime and by extension weakening the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance in the region.

Imperialist interests and exploitative logic seems be the undercurrent of the geo-political dynamics of the current world order which tends to be moulded and managed by certain world and regional establishments. Such geo-politics and international savoir faire have proven to be the driving force enhancing the genocidal solutions pursued by states like Turkey and Sri Lanka aiming at subjugating Tamil and Kurdish sovereignty, self-determination and national resistance through annihilating the foundations of their national existence and debasing the root of their collective political power.

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Geopolitics and international diplomacy of hegemons

The Kurdish people’s history with nation-states, world and regional hegemons and the matrix of military, economic and strategic interests which weaves together the international community of established states, is intersected with and hence resembles the trajectory of geopolitical injustices inflicted upon Eezham Tamils.

The current dominant political and economic order of the international community of states is of such a nature that the collective lives and sovereignty of the worlds oppressed nations and peoples is subordinated or sacrificed on the altar of international diplomacy to serve the interests of oppressor states or external powers.

The Kurds who have been fighting the fascism of ISIS on ground since 2012 as well battling Islamists supported by Ankara and Riyadh such as Al-Nusra Front and Al-Sham the latter ironically backed by the West, are now being openly betrayed by the western establishments and the international community of established nation-states.

Furthermore, the exclusion of the Kurds from the recent U.S sponsored UN mediated talks on Syria in Geneva, reflected the geo-political considerations behind the U.S, NATO and E.U approach, endorsing the Turkish state and the AKP government. These developments occurs as Ankara are intensifying their six-month genocidal violence against Kurds through systematic persecution, assassinations, massacres and by attempting a military siege and occupation of Kurdish cities, towns and villages throughout North Kurdistan (Bakur) or South-East Turkey.

The PYD and Kurdish leaders have condemned the decision by the UN, and supporters took to the streets of Qamishli city in endorsement of the Rojava Kurdish movement as reported by ARANews. The city is located in the self-governing Jazira Canton, the largest of three cantons making up the PYD and its allied self-ruled government of Rojava.

Similarly Turkey has since 13th February begun a large scale military bombardment against the PYD’s armed wing, the YPG (People’s Protection Units) positions in Azaz in North Syria alongside striking Syrian government positions in the region.

France has demanded Turkey to halt its actions against Kurds alongside demanding cessation of Russian airstrikes and Syrian government offensives against the western backed rebels of the ‘Syrian opposition’. Other EU countries are maintaining a silence regarding the violence against Kurds while US and EU provided weaponry are used by the Turkish forces in conducting military operations and atrocities against Kurds throughout North Kurdistan.

Moreover reports from Kurdish and international sources, elucidate the influx of Islamists and supplies through Turkey into Northern Syria and Rojava with the intention to reinforce the fight against the YPG who have made significant advances in Aleppo, a essential stronghold of West, Gulf State and Turkey backed opposition against Assad.

The strategic Azaz airport was in early February controlled by Saudi and Turkey backed Al-Nusra Front, Al-Sham and Turkistan Islamic Party, before being taken by Kurdish forces supported by Russian airstrikes.

On 15th February, the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu demanded the retreat of Kurdish forces from Azaz and the Kurdish areas bordering Turkey, and threatened them with references to 2007- 2008 Turkish military incursion and bombings of the Qandil Mountains in Northern Iraq against PKK held territories. He told Reuters while on his plane to Ukraine:

“we will strike the PYD like we did Qandil…YPG elements were forced away from around Azaz. If they approach again they will see the harshest reaction. We will not allow Azaz to fall”. ( RT)


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Intensifying the war against Kurds

The ongoing military campaigns of the Turkish state have since August 2015 been targeting the Kurdish civilian populations and settlements throughout Northern Kurdistan and have claimed the lives of hundreds of Kurdish civilians. There has also systematically been declared curfews and conducted besiegement of Kurdish towns and settlements, while efforts are taken by the state to maintain a media-blackout and blockade of medical and humanitarian aid.

Ongoing since January, the Kurdish inhabitants of Şırnak province’s Cizre district and town have been subjected to various systematically executed atrocities by the Turkish state and its security forces. Kurdish civilians’ alleged by Turkey to be PKK operatives, and denied medical aid and evacuation due to the Turkish siege of the city, were massacred while being trapped inside several basements in Cizre. From 8th of February onwards, Kurdish politicians and civilians have recovered 145 bodies that they themselves brought to various towns for autopsy purposes.

The Crisis Desk established by the Democratic Regions’ Party (DBP), Mesopotamia Association for Assistance and Solidarity for Families with Lost Relatives (MEYA-DER) and Mesopotamia Lawyers' Association (MHD) held a press conference to inform the world about the atrocities being unfolded in Cizre.

MEYA-DER Co-President Ayse Dicle, reported that the Mardin region Chief Public Prosecutor Office was trying to bury the bodies before an autopsy to cover up the crimes of the Turkish state. He furthered that family members of the massacred are not able to give DNA samples needed due to ongoing State of emergency in Cizre and warned that the AKP government will face the consequences from the people for the massacres they have committed and urged the people to protest.

The relentless Turkish military campaign against the Kurds, with evident genocidal intentions, have contrary to Ankara’s ambitions further consolidated the spirit of resistance among the Kurds of Bakur in defence of their right to self-protection and governance against fascism and genocide.

In the Sur district in the Diyarbakir province of the Kurdish homeland, the Kurdish resistance has been maintained despite Turkish military operations for over two months, residents also told the Turkish alternative paper Özgür Gündem, that they hold the EU and US responsible for arming the Turkish state. One of the residents told the reporter:

“this war will end and these places will still belong to us. Tanks are passing up and down these streets when it should be children. The United States and the countries of the European Union which talk about human rights have transformed the living spaces of these children into war zones.”


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The global dimensions of persecution of Kurdish and Tamil struggle

On the 7th of January, ahead of the three years anniversary of the assassination of three Kurdish female activists in Paris, including the co-founder of the PKK, by Turkish intelligence service (MIT), three female Kurdish Political activists were similarly assassinated in Istanbul. Their assassination, like those in Paris, enraged the Kurdish national consciousness and prompted further protests from Kurdish civilians in Turkish cities, as well as the PKK vowed revenge.

The Kurdish revolutionary women fighters and activist have been central in the Kurdish revolutions which have sprouted in the Middle-East, from North, to East, West and South Kurdistan. The practiced gender equality and other progressive aspects of radical thought integral to the struggle of Kurdish revolutionary movements, and similarly promoted by the LTTE and others in the revolutionary national liberation struggle for Tamil Eelam, challenges not only the multifaceted oppression of the state but also that of patriarchal oppression in both respective regions.

For these reasons, Kurdish women are particularly targeted in the fascist Turkish violence against the Kurds. Similar logic lies behind the Sri Lankan state’s structural genocide against Eezham Tamils which have particularised violence against Eezham Tamil women.

As with Turkish efforts to contain or weaken the Kurdish political mobilization and engagement in the diaspora raises the suspicion of sinister contact with host government in Europe towards such effect, so have Eezham Tamils been witnessing similar processes.

External backers of the ‘Sri Lankan’ State were taking measures against the LTTE and its diaspora networks during the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) period, leading to the EU ban on the movement as well as the systematic arrest of key activists in the period leading up to the genocide at Mui’l’li-vaaykkaal and continued to be perpetuated in its aftermath.

Following such trends, and paralleling the execution of senior Kurdish activists in Paris, was the assassination of a leading Tamil diaspora based LTTE activist on the 8th of November 2012 in Paris. In the aftermath of both assassinations in Paris, Tamils and Kurds were involved in collective display of protest and solidarity.

Along a similar spirit, the Kurds and Tamils should work towards sustaining joint efforts in building political resistance against geopolitical injustices and imperialist processes perpetuating both people’s national oppression and attempting the containment of their political struggles. Both Kurds and Tamils should also cooperate in advocating the democratic, secular and emancipatory aspirations of our people and in standing in solidarity with other oppressed of the world.

Likewise both peoples struggle should advocate the progressive thoughts inherent in their political struggle for equal rights, egalitarian culture and people-centred sovereignty towards creating a more equal and just order for the bereaved sections of humanity.

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The geo-political storm

The regime change paradigm in Syria and to counter the influence of Russia and Iran is evident in U.S. interests aligning with that of Turkey and Saudi in order to maintain them as allied regional hegemons at all cost in Middle-East. Turkey in particular is utilizing such conditions towards pushing up its agenda of reversing Kurdish gains in Northern Syria(West-Kurdistan) and weakening the Kurdish political resistance in South-East Turkey (North-Kurdistan), within its larger strategic partnerships. With the U.S – EU alliance’s tensions with Russia and its allies are reaching cold-war period levels; the West depends on its decade’s old strategy of beefing up the Turkish state to serve as a buffer against Russia as well as to counter their sphere of influence in the region.

Amidst the callous nature of the geo political games being played, the lives of the various people of Syria and that of the Kurds of the region are attempted to be rendered into calculations amendable and at the mercy of the dynamics of rivalry between world and regional hegemons.

Turkey’s bombing of Northern Syria, and Saudi-Arabia hosting an unprecedented military exercise in the region all the while warning with ground invasion to topple the Assad regime and Moscow’s response to its ‘American friends and its Arab partners’ whether or not they want permanent war, has raised also worries of an looming world war.

Saudi Arabia recently invited over 20 states to be part of an 18-day military exercise named ‘Thunder of the North, including their Gulf-Arab allies, and others such as Egypt, Sudan, Chad and Pakistan. Saudi state news agency reported that over 350 000 troops, 2 540 war planes, 20 000 Tanks and 460 helicopters will take part in the military exercises.

This combined with Turkish officials warning of sending troops to Syria, implies that in a scenario of them entering Syria, Ankara will try to use ground forces to enhance the now ongoing attacks on the Kurdish resistances in Syria. However, the Syrian government response to Saudi and Turkish aggression was expressed by Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, who told the following to reporters during a press meet in Damascus on the 2nd February as reported by TelesurTv:

Any ground troops who would “attack or violate” Syria’s sovereignty would return to their countries in a “wooden coffin. Let no one think they can attack Syria or violate its sovereignty because I assure you any aggressor will return to their country in a wooden coffin, whether they be Saudis or Turks. Any ground intervention on Syrian territory without government authorization would amount to an aggression that must be resisted.” (TelesurTV)


United States’ secretary of State John Kerry has meanwhile endorsed and welcomed Turkish and Saudi promises to send ground troops to Syria, while promising support to its Eastern European allies amongst other concerning the conflict in Ukraine and Russia.

Related Articles:
23.01.16   Tamils and World War III


External Links:
The Washington Post: Turkey pledges to send ground forces to fight the Islamic State in Syria
The Rojava Report: Turkish State Kills Close To 200 Civilians Over Past 6 Months
RT: Turkey ‘won’t let’ Azaz, Syria, fall to Kurdish militia, shells YPG targets for 3rd day
The Rojava Report: American Tanks Will Leave Diyarbakir
teleSUR: Turkey Strikes Assad Forces Inside Syria
AraNews: Syria Kurds condemn exclusion from Geneva talks
KURDISHQUESTION: CIZRE BASEMENT MASSACRE DEATH TOLL REACHES 145
teleSUR: UAE Says Its Ready to Fight IS Group on the Ground in Syria
teleSUR: Syria Says Saudi, Turkey Troops Would Return Home in 'Coffins'
teleSUR: 20 States Join Massive Military Exercise in Saudi Arabia


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