COMMENT: Not crazy, courageous

By Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

The fact that the people in Balochistan and Kurdistan are increasingly willing to sacrifice shows that they have lost all hope of achieving their rights within the existing systems. The fact that the immeasurable brutality of the state has not dampened their spirit of resistance proves freedom cannot be suppressed by repression

The name Leyla Zana does not have a familiar ring, simply because the problems of this brave Kurd lady do not concern a vast majority on the planet. Symbolising Kurd resistance to assimilation into Turkish identity, Leyla has suffered for resisting the same. While serving a 15-year sentence, she was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but the Committee gives it to warmongers like Obama, preferring to maintain the monolithic status quo.

Though the Kurds face immense problems inIran,Iraq,Syriaand Turkey, here a brief glimpse of Kurd tribulations in Turkeyis given. The first modern Kurdish nationalist movement demanding political autonomy and a Kurdistan state from the Turkish and Persian authorities emerged in 1880 with an uprising led by Sheik Ubeydullah, chief of the powerful Shemdinan family, which was suppressed and he with other notables exiled to Istanbul.

The Kurd demand for independence had always been a thorn in the side of Turkey, therefore during World War I opportunity arose anew for the Young Turks to eliminate the Kurdish identity by deporting and displacing them from their ancestral land. Massive population resettlement was a key component of the Turkification policy. Though partially implemented, some 700,000 Kurds were forcibly removed and approximately 350,000 perished. During 1937-1938, approximately 50,000-70,000 Alevi Kurds were killed and thousands displaced.

A similar policy continued after the 1960 coup. The State Planning Organisation report, ‘The principles of the state’s development plan for the east and southeast’, proposed defusing separatism by demographic changes, i.e. ethnic cleansing under the garb of resettlement. Innumerable Kurdish villages in Turkey have been virtually wiped off the map and millions have suffered.

Leyla, born in 1961 near Hazro, was married to cousin Mehdi Zana at the age of 14. Mehdi, a Kurdish activist, was elected mayor of Diyarbakirin 1978, but was jailed and brutally tortured following the 1980 military coup.

Mrs Zana became a leading campaigner for Kurdish prisoners and was the first elected Kurdish woman MP in 1991. She caused an uproar in the Turkish parliament during the swearing-in ceremony in 1994 by saying in Kurdish, “I take this oath for the brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples.” It is a crime to speak Kurdish in parliament.

The Turkish parliament, lifting the immunity of Zana and her five Kurdish DEP colleagues in March 1994, jailed them for 15 years. In 2001 the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Turkey but to no avail; however, in June 2004, the High Court of Appeals after a retrial released Zana and others who had spent 10 years in jail.

In the recent June 2011 elections, Leyla Zana contested and won along with 35 members of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party as independents, circumventing the Turkish law entitling seats in parliament only to parties winning ten percent of the votes.

Though a passionate advocate of peace in the Kurdish region, she, like all the candidates backed by the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), makes no attempt to distance herself from the armed and banned insurgent movement, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its leader Abdullah  Öcalan, which since its establishment in 1984 has been fighting the Turkish state that still denies the constitutional existence of the Kurds, to establish a Kurdish state.Turkey refuses to recognise its 20 million Kurdish population as a distinct minority. European Union prodding has secured some cultural rights but the Kurds remain dissatisfied.

She faces a new trial and imprisonment again because at a May 24, 2011meeting she had fearlessly said, “This process [the BDP’s struggle] aims to allow us to elect our own district governor and governor. This process aims to see our leader [Öcalan] among us. It aims to see our guerrillas [members of the PKK] among us. We want to have a share in the administration of the country. If they [the state] accept this, we are willing to live together. If they do not, we are ready to do this on our own. Öcalan will be among his people [the Kurds] one day and serve as their teacher. I believe these days are close. This government will either extend a hand of peace to Öcalan or we as the Kurdish people will reject everything of this system.” Leyla then called on the villagers to cast a vote “for Kurdistan, for peace and for guerrillas”. A brave woman she!

The Baloch here have suffered repression, discrimination and displacement since 1947. Repeated attempts at demographic changes either by creating zones like Gwadar or encouraging Afghan refugee and other provinces’ population influx have so far been thwarted by the Baloch; demographic changes would doom them. Wilful economic deprivation too, forcing people to migrate, is a demography-changing tool.

Balach Khan Marri, a symbol of Baloch defiance, elected to the 2002 Balochistan Assembly, refused to take oath in Urdu and took the same in Balochi, pledging loyalty to Balochistan instead of Pakistan, which created an uproar. Intractable intransigence and intolerance displayed by the Pakistani state forced him to give up a life of comfort to struggle for Baloch rights and in his death he deservedly became the stuff of legends.

People like Balach and Leyla, willing to sacrifice for their cause, are often challenged regarding the wisdom of their actions and the benefits accrued thus and urged to seek compromise with the status quo. The fact that the people in Balochistan and Kurdistanare increasingly willing to sacrifice shows that they have lost all hope of achieving their rights within the existing systems. The fact that the immeasurable brutality of the state has not dampened their spirit of resistance proves freedom cannot be suppressed by repression. The youth are giving up careers and lives to pursue a life of dignity.

Leyla Zana, in an interview with BBC’s Jonathan Head recently, allegorically explained the changes in attitudes of the oppressed. Asked if she ever felt bitter, she said no, that is unhealthy. But she warned of the growing radicalisation of younger Kurds. She told the story of a Kurdish man who recently went to negotiate the release of his 12-year-old son from police custody. The moment they stepped outside, the boy started throwing stones back at the police station. “Are you crazy?” his father asked him. “Do you want to go back inside?” No, said his son, he was not crazy, but unlike his father, neither was he afraid. Those who demand and fight for their rights are not crazy but courageous.

The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the early 1970s. He can be contacted at mmatalpur@gmail.com