Category Archives: Independence

நன்றி & முழுவதும் படிக்க: எகனாமிஸ்ட் புத்தக விமர்சனம்

PKK: who are these indomitable fighters and what is their true goal?

Aliza Marcus, an American journalist who was put on trial in Turkey for her reporting on the Turkish army’s abuses against ordinary Kurds, charts the origins and evolution of the movement. Her scholarly, gripping account is based on interviews with, and the unpublished diaries of, former PKK militants.

With Syria’s blessing, the PKK sent its men and women into Lebanon’s Bekaa valley for training by Palestinian militants.

The group’s fortunes were even harder hit by the capture in 1999 of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, by Turkish secret agents in Nairobi. His subsequent recanting—he called the rebellion “a mistake” and offered to “serve the Turkish state”—is well documented. But little is known about Mr Ocalan’s personal life and Ms Marcus helps to lift the veil shrouding a leader who used to shuttle between villas in Damascus and Aleppo while his fighters roughed it in the mountains. Deserters and dissidents would be summarily executed. Indeed Mr Ocalan did not hesitate to order the deaths of women and children if they were related to members of a stateemployed Kurdish militia that fought alongside the Turkish army.

it is plain that his leadership has become increasingly symbolic and that a new generation of hardliners is gaining the upper hand.

What is missing from Ms Marcus’s excellent reporting is the growing appeal of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) party to Turkish Kurds. A mixture of social-welfare schemes and Islamic piety helped AK to trounce the biggest pro-PKK party in many of its former strongholds at the general election last July.

புத்தகத்தின் முன்னுரையில் இருந்து:

The small group of armed men and women grew into a tightly organized guerrilla force of some 15,000, with a 50,000-plus civilian militia in Turkey and tens of thousands of active backers in Europe. The war inside Turkey would leave close to 40,000 dead, result in human rights abuses on both sides, and draw in neighboring states Iran, Iraq, and Syria, which all sought to use the PKK for their own purposes.

The rebels had many reasons for returning to battle: it was a response to Ankara’s political inaction; it was a way to ensure that the PKK remained relevant and in control; and finally, there was Iraq to consider…the independent state that Kurds in Iraq, like many of those in Turkey, had long hoped for. And the PKK, once viewed as the dominant Kurdish group in the region, suddenly was afraid of slipping behind.

Turkey, where Kurds number some 15 million, making up about 20 percent of Turkey’s 70 million population.

The Kurds are the world’s largest stateless people.

The main reason was that when Kurds weren’t being killed by the thousands—as happened in Halabja—the West didn’t care. The Kurdish conflict seemed as remote as the region where they lived, a treacherous terrain intersected by the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And the Kurds themselves were difficult to understand. Divided by borders, dialects, tribal loyalties, and blood feuds, it was easy to dismiss their uprisings as the machinations of gun-toting brigands suspicious of the central authority.