Vahap Coşkun
The Turkish original of this article was published as Hendeğin sanal savunucuları on 16th December 2015.
When curfew was lifted for seventeen hours in Diyarbakır’s Sur district, the destruction became visible in all its horror. Fallen houses, streets left with nothing standing, deep cracks in the ground, neighborhoods no-one can enter, mosques, old khans, schools, public baths burnt down to ashes… And worse yet, all the lost lives.
This picture isn’t limited to Sur. In Cizre, Nusaybin, Silvan, Lice and elsewhere, again and again it is the same images, the same heartbreaking scenes. Those who can, hit the road with whatever meager belongings they have been able to grab. Everyone is trying to escape with their lives from this hell. News agencies keep posting emigration scenes. While the instigator may change, forced migration falls to the Kurds. In the 1990s they were fleeing state repression; now they are fleeing the PKK’s ditches and self-government.
The refugees now number in the hundreds of thousands. The economy has collapsed. This is how Alican Ebedinoğlu, President of the Diyarbakır Shopkeepers’ and Artisans Union, summarizes the situation: “In Sur, 311 shops have lowered their shutters permanently. 14 hotels have closed down due to the fighting. The tourist sector is virtually dead. 3000 people have lost their jobs. One bank has pulled out of Diyarbakır while many others have closed down their branch offices. In the region as a whole, 10,000 businesses have closed down, and unemployment has increased by 50 percent. The ditches have had a negative impact on life, and have not elicited any support from the people. Our shopkeepers keep coming to us to express their reaction to the ditches. Due to the curfews and the fighting, shopkeepers are unable to pay their cheques or loans…”
Those who are riding piggy-back on the Kurds
Wherever you look, you see colossal destruction. A huge mistake is being made. It is crystal clear that what is being done is not to the benefit of Kurds. Yet some keep stubbornly defending the ditches. I am not talking about the staunch PKK militants. There are two other groups that keep upholding the ditches whose attitude must be scrutinised.
One group consists of those who don’t want to get off the Kurds’ backs. They want all their fights to be fought by the Kurds. They appear to be strong friends of the Kurds as they keep egging on the PKK from a safe distance. They don’t intend to take any risks themselves while they don’t hesitate to push the Kurds into the fire. They can fiercely argue for violence to be brought to a head — as long as it doesn’t touch them. In their safe environments, their warm cafés and tables, they keep praising violence, harping on its creativity and the greatness of the values it gives rise to. They want PKK to adopt an even more fiercely warlike stance.
Well-heeled Kurds with nothing to worry about
The other group consists of some well-heeled Kurds with, if I may be excused the phrase, nothing to worry about. I know some of them quite well. They are quite affluent. If things should really get out of hand over here, it would take them only a minute to flee to western Turkey. They have all the options; their homes are ready and waiting. They live in magnificent houses that seem to have come out of tv soap operas. Their children go to the best schools. They are not forced to give up their lifestyles or personal pleasures.
Surely, neither of these warmongering groups would like to have ditches dug in front of their homes. Just as they wouldn’t envisage a ditch-digging future for their children. Or to send them to do their turn standing guard at the ditches with guns in their hands.
But at the same time, they keep speaking blood-thirsty words. They have become keyboard guerrillas on the social media. They are braver than all in virtual space. They sing praises to the ditches; they declaim heroic speeches over the blood, pain and death of others; in this way they polish their own personal image. Not content with all this, they even stoop to informing the PKK about those who are critical of this total loss of reason.
You have to give them their due; some are very successful indeed. But this cannot cover up the fact that they have dispensed with all ethics.