Recently, the Kurdish PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was arrested in Italy and
deported to Turkey for trial. Europe-wide protests followed. The Kurdish population
has traditionally lived in southwestern Turkey, northern Iraq, northern Syria and
northwestern Iran, and at 30 million, comprises the largest stateless sthnic group in
the world. The PKK began its struggle nonviolently, and began violent resistance
after being targeted by the governments controlling their traditional territory.
Other leaders who began nonviolent struggle and subsequently resorted to violent
uprising for possession of their own state include Menachem Begin, Nelson Mandela and
Yassar Arafat. In another 10 years, had he not been captured, Ocalan may have been
able to reach a position in the statehood struggle resembling Arafat's, with a likely
disintegration of Iraq following the eventual end of Saddam Hussein's rule ceding them
the north and Iran the Shi'ia south. However, with the example of Nel!
!
son Mandela before them, it is all but certain that Turkey will execute Abdullah
Ocalan, to forestall any possibility of a repetition. The US might be quite willing
for such a resolution, considering the diplomatic and domestic difficulties which it
found itself having to negotiate concommitant with the ascendancy of the other
mentioned leaders and the desire to avoid such problems in the future; however, if
such is the case, it is an immoral policy, for the Kurcish people deserve their own
state no less than the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Zulus and the Xhosas.
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
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