Kurtuluş Tayiz
The Turkish original of this article was published as PKK’ya dokunan yanıyor on 30th January 2016.
The Kurdish artist Çiyager (Mehmet Karakuş) did something rather out of the ordinary; he dared to criticize the HDP and the PKK. In an interview with the daily Star’s Kemal Gümüş, he said that after witnessing the terror of the ditches, he regretted having voted for the HDP, adding: “We were fooled; Kurds, wake up.”
Çiyager paid for his bravery by being beaten almost to death as he left his home on 29th January. Heavily wounded as a result of this lynching attempt by a pro-PKK group, the artist had to be hospitalized. Photographs taken at his hospital bed are horrifying; he was almost killed for what he said. And it did not stop with that beating, for an immense defamation campaign was also launched by the PKK and its supporters in the media. They tried to lynch both his body and his identity.
Of course, incidents of violence stemming from the PKK are not really surprising, for those who have been critical of the PKK and the HDP in any way have always been subjected to such attacks. During the October 6-7 incidents, too, we witnessed how the PKK and the HDP were capable of ruthlessly murdering even ordinary people only because they did not side with them. Nevertheless, the intellectual community still continues to defend and protect the PKK and the HDP.
As a result of the PKK’s ditches-and-self-government terror, tens of civilians have died in the region. The PKK has also targeted and killed hundreds of government staff. 200 thousand civilians have abandoned home and hearth to flee PKK/HDP oppression. Despite all these facts, this organization is still able to benefit from a large degree of benevolent protection. In contrast, whoever presumes to touch the PKK is burned immediately. In the recent past, similar evil befell those who turned critical of the parallel state. The Gülen gang’s critics were first defamed through the media, with the parallel police and public prosecutors taking subsequent action to make sure that these would-be critics suffered heavily.
In turn, those who criticize the PKK and the HDP are ending up losing their lives. The PKK is the Southeast’s new JİTEM [the notorious old Gendarmerie Intelligence and Anti-Terrorism unit]; it is they who are now responsible for extra-legal murders or executions by unknown killers. But somehow, the lenience with which they are patronized by the intellectual community keeps growing instead of diminishing. Some prominent newspapers and internet sites of the mainstream media seem to have made it their mission to cover up or find excuses for PKK murders. All their journalistic activity is directed at covering up for the PKK. Simultaneously, most of their writers are preoccupied with forcing the state to sit down and negotiate with the PKK. They keep coming up with examples from England, Spain or the Philippines to trick the state and make further room for PKK terrorism. There can be no doubt whatsoever that there are third parties (regional and international powers) behind all this.
It is difficult to achieve results from the struggle against terror unless those who provide it with protection are exposed. The media and the intellectual community who have been targeting those criticizing the PKK are more to blame than those who actually beat the Kurdish artist almost to death.