The Kurdish issue: Equality and freedom, or getting stuck in the darkness of the Middle Ages?

Although Devlet Bahçeli’s call on October 22, 2024, for “Apo to come and speak in Parliament” has been defined by some circles as a second opening process, the process is actually a new stage in the Greater Middle East Project—which aims to change the borders of 22 countries, including Turkey—and the goal of establishing a Kurdish State.

It is a great deception and a trap to portray this project of imperialism as, “Terror will end in Turkey. Peace will come, democracy will develop, the Kurdish issue will be solved, and everyone will be equal.”

What is the problem defined as the Kurdish Issue? I will write about the details below. To summarize in a single sentence, the Kurdish issue is that a significant portion of the citizens living in the Eastern and Southeastern regions are groaning under the sovereignty of sects, tribes, and landlords. Moreover, the sectarian structure dominant in the East and Southeast has increased its power, spread further, and entrenched itself within the state. Sects, tribes, and concepts like land ownership are feudal structures of the Middle Ages, and this region of Turkey has remained in the Middle Ages while the first quarter of the 21st century is coming to an end.

The responsibility for this lies with the alliance led by landlords and religious figures who opposed Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Enlightenment Revolutions.

The problem in Turkey is not the denial of Kurdish identity, as is claimed.

I must state this from the beginning: Every person’s ethnic origin is their own pride. The fundamental condition of being a democrat is to respect people’s ethnic origins as well as their beliefs (including non-belief).

AN IMPERIALIST CONSTRUCT: MOVING FROM SUB-IDENTITIES TO A DEFINITION OF CITIZENSHIP

The concept of equal citizenship, which sounds pleasant, is an anti-nation-state imperialist concept that attempts to transform the definition of citizenship in Turkey into an ethnic structure.

Every individual has multiple sub-identities. These include the geography they are in, the school they graduated from, the profession they hold, the team they support, their religious identity—which is divided into hundreds of sub-identities from polytheism to monotheism, from defined religions to sects, deism, and atheism—and their ethnic identity…

Above these identities, there is the constitutional citizenship identity as a super-identity. According to Article 66 of the Constitution, the definition is made that "Everyone who is bound to the Turkish State by the bond of citizenship is a Turk." Ethnic and religious identity is not in question here. It defines political citizenship allegiance. One does not say Armenian Frenchman, Arab Frenchman, Italian American, or Indian Englishman. One does not say Catholic German, Muslim German, deist German, or Protestant German. One says French, American, English, or German citizen. Similarly, in our country, one does not say Kurdish Turk, Laz Turk, Circassian Turk, Greek Turk, or Armenian Turk. One says Turkish citizen. In geographies where definitions like Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs are used, blood and tears have not ceased for centuries.

If you attempt to remove the citizenship bond from the super-identity and define it through sub-identities, forget about both the secular state and the unitary state. You will find yourself in chaos. And such identity quests are a regression from the age we live in to the pre-industrial revolution era, to the Middle Ages.

CITIZENSHIP-SUPER IDENTITY-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION-FRENCH REVOLUTION

Changes in social structure, classes, the structures of states, forms of organization, and state-human relations are shaped by changes in the economy and technology.

While the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution transformed dominant monarchical state organizational forms into republics and nation-states, concepts such as fundamental human rights, equality of people, secularism, and democracy also developed in state-citizen relations.

If you now reject super-identities and attempt to define citizenship through sub-identities, you will dismantle that unity and integrity. Today you divide through Kurds, later other ethnic identities enter that division, and then religious identities are included. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Shamans, Deists, Atheists… Later, Muslims divide among themselves as Sunnis and Alevis. Sunnis also divide among themselves into more than a hundred sects.

NOT EQUAL CITIZENSHIP, BUT EQUALITY OF CITIZENS

Our problem is not the issue of equal citizenship, which sounds pleasant but does not intend equality and democracy. Citizens have equal rights before the constitution and laws. The super-identity and secular structure guarantee this.

Our problem is not the definition or construction of equal citizenship based on ethnic or belief identities. What is important is the equality of citizens. The fact that those who govern the state do not heed the constitution and laws is not an identity or belief problem. Today, unfortunately, laws are determined not according to the principle of equality of citizens, but according to the citizens’ relationship with the political power. This problem is a democracy and rule-of-law problem for Turkey. This problem cannot be solved by debating or segregating through sub-identities. The solution is the problem of those who believe in democracy and seek the rule of law, regardless of their ethnic identity or belief.

Why cannot the landlord, tribal, and sectarian system in the Southeast be dismantled? Which imperialist power and ambitions are behind it? Why is imperialism bothering with the Republic of Turkey? Are they unable to digest their defeat in the War of Independence?

What imperialism cannot stomach is not so much that the Turks won a war under the leadership of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha, but that they established a secular and unitary state and, going even further, created a country in a very short time that transformed from a debt-ridden country with no industry and primitive agriculture into one that realized an economic development miracle based on its own resources without being dependent on imperialism.

The Republic of Turkey, with a population that is overwhelmingly Muslim, can serve as an example to the Arab peoples of the Middle East with this success. That is why the secular and unitary structure of the Republic of Turkey must be weakened, and its independent economic model must be placed back into the lap of imperialism. For this reason, since 1925, imperialism has constantly mobilized against the fundamental principles of the Republic, using rebellions, political intrigues, military coups, political Islam, and the separatist Kurdish movement, and at times the army—which pretends to be Kemalist—and other secular-looking elements. What we are experiencing today is no different.

LET US REMEMBER THE ENLIGHTENMENT REVOLUTIONS

Unfortunately, we are a society that has forgotten the founding history of the Republic of Turkey, the War of Independence, its founding philosophy, and Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Enlightenment Revolutions…

The Counter-Revolution dealt a major blow to the Enlightenment Revolutions starting from the second half of the 1940s. This is the root cause of many of the problems experienced today, and it is also the reason why a portion of the population living in the East and Southeast, and predominantly the Kurds, are slaves to the feudal landlord-tribal-sectarian organization of the Middle Ages, let alone entering the 21st century.

Let us briefly look at the goal of Atatürk’s Enlightenment Revolutions.

The Ottoman Empire was founded on a religious-agricultural empire. There are no citizens. There are subjects and the populace of the Sultan. There is no nation, there is the ummah.

With the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, republic and nation-state organizations came to the fore instead of state models based on monarchy and sultanates.

The newly established Turkish state would be a Republic as a requirement of the age. There are no subjects of the Sultan, but free individuals of the nation and the republic. Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the nation, not to a dynasty or a sultan.

The goal is to take the populace, who have not met or become aware of the concepts of free individual, citizenship, and nation, out of this outdated state-society relationship of feudalism and carry them into the 20th century. This must be done through laws, educational breakthroughs, and economic development.

Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the nation, and the majority of the nation (85 percent at that time) is peasant. Then the Peasant must be the Master of the Nation. However, the peasant is landless, the peasant is uneducated, the peasant is a sharecropper for landlords, and the peasant is poor.

To make the peasant the master of the nation, a major educational breakthrough, land-to-the-tiller (land reform), and economic development plans must be made.

Only through education can a nation and free individuals be created from a populace that is a sharecropper, a subject, and a subject of the Sultan.

To this end, work for land reform was started, and Atatürk requested the passage of the Land-to-the-Tiller Law in 4 separate parliamentary speeches. However, the reports requested from the League of Nations (today’s United Nations) of the time pointed out that in countries that implemented land reform, if the peasant was uneducated, supply chains in agriculture would be disrupted and there would be risks of hunger and famine. Therefore, priority was given to the educational breakthrough first. Village Institutes were established in 1940. It was going very well until 1947.

THE GREAT ATTACK OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION

By 1945, the land-to-the-tiller law was sent to parliament. The time was the single-party era, but those who later founded the Democrat Party, as well as those remaining within the CHP, a coalition of landlords, merchants, and former soldiers—some of whom were heroes of the War of Independence but opposed Atatürk’s revolutions—and religious figures, rendered the law useless in 1945. Developments in the Village Institutes were going very well. The alliance of tribal leaders, landlords, and religious figures who blocked land reform in 1945 began to feel seriously uncomfortable with the development and awareness of the peasants. The counter-revolutionary front, which formed an alliance against the Land-to-the-Tiller Law, went into action again. They attacked the Village Institutes, calling them communist nests. They also found support within the CHP. İsmet İnönü could not resist, and in 1947 they ended the function of the Village Institutes and closed them in 1954.

These two major attacks are the biggest move of the Counter-Revolution in Turkey. Subsequently, with the entry into the Marshall Plan starting in 1948, the independent development model based on its own resources in the economy gave way to surrender to US imperialism. And again, with the Marshall Plan, national education also passed under the control of the US with the Fulbright Agreement.

WHEN SECTS AND TRIBES GO TO THE BALLOT BOX…

Today, neither the PKK, which gives speeches on freedom and democracy, nor the DEM party members mention sects, tribes, or land ownership when they talk about the Kurdish issue. They do not speak of the Kurdish people who are the subjects, slaves, and sharecroppers of these. Just remember the voting scenes reflected on television in places where sects and tribes are dominant during election periods. A person belonging to a sect or tribe stamps all the ballots alone and puts them in the ballot box. Then, ballot box officials, who are also affiliated with the sect or tribe, count the votes and keep the minutes. They beat those who object until they are hospitalized. Is this not a democracy issue for the Kurds there? Why does the DEM Party not bring this issue to the agenda?

The problem in Turkey is that citizens in regions where Kurds live densely cannot get out of the sect-tribe-landlord order. The problem is that the Eastern and Southeastern region is still living in a social order before the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, let alone entering the 21st century.

The positions captured by the counter-revolution cannot be underestimated. We must understand Atatürk and Atatürk’s Enlightenment Revolutions well and protect Atatürk’s Principles and Revolutions and the Republic of Turkey.

In this article, I also made quotes from my book, Turkey’s Factory Settings for the 21st Century / Counter-Revolution in the Economy, which I wrote on Atatürk’s Enlightenment Revolutions and the Counter-Revolution. Those interested can obtain it from amazon.com.tr.