NO UGLY NEGOTIATION OVER KURDISTAN!

The USA and Turkey are carrying out ugly negotiations not just over Iraq’s crisis but also the destiny and future of the Kurdish nation.

Apart from Turkey receiving money for letting its own territory be used by USA for opening up its Northern Frontier with Iraq, Turkey is also preparing to occupy South Kurdistan, where it already has some army presence.

On this subject the latest news shows that Turkey and the USA are at the final stages of negotiations, it is understood that USA has approved Turkey’s plans for Southern Kurdistan (also known as ‘Northern Iraq’). Now they are trying to reach an agreement over the amount of money Turkey will receive.

Under this plan, more than 50,000 Turkish soldiers will be sent to Southern Kurdistan, which means and a new buffer zone will be established in the area to include the province of Mosul. The Turkish army will also surrender large Kurdish cities like Hevler and Suleymaniye.

This is a very dangerous situation for our South Kurdistan nation, who have suffered many years of Saddam’s tyranny, genocide and exile. For the past ten years - under the protection of the UN - the Kurdish nation has been working towards living in freedom. Now they have come face to face with the threat of a more oppressive, racist, militarist invasion by the Turkish regime.

Turkey’s regime, which does not recognize any rights of the 20 million Kurds within its own borders, has waged years of continuous dirty war in the northern part of our country, and who has systemically driven the population out of parts of our native land. The same regime is now trying to do the same in South Kurdistan under the dark clouds of war created by the Gulf crisis.

This is a plan that ignores International Law; it is ugly, oppressive and will end in bloodshed.

Iraq’s Kurdish and Arabic population has suffered in the hands of the war-loving, merciless brutal Saddam dictatorship. In the past Saddam exiled, massacred even used chemical weapons against our nation. We believe that these weapons of mass destruction are still hidden in the hands of Saddam.

Today, the Iraqi opposition, which is made up of both Arabs and Kurds, wants the demolition of Saddam’s dictatorship, and for it to be replaced by a federal democratic regime and Iraq to be freed from weapons of mass destruction.  We, the Socialist Party of Kurdistan supporting the Iraqi opposition’s struggle and their requests, want the United Nation and the European Union to support the Iraqi nations legal rights to opposition.

The USA’s operation against Iraq with the support of UK and Turkey is mounted in the name of the ‘war on terror’. But instead of rescuing these people from Saddam’s dictatorship and helping to become a democratic nation, it has turned into the USA’s efforts in its own interests and to gain Iraq’s natural resources.

The Turkish state openly seeks to take our South Kurdish nation hostage and deny them their rights and freedom. If they are provided the opportunity they will force the Kurds from their land into exile. The Kurdish people’s desire for freedom has became such a cause of   paranoia for Turkish state that the Turkish state behaves unreasonably. The recent AKP government has become a servant to the dirty and anti-Kurdish policies.

The torturing, racist, militarist and aggressive Turkish regime is ten times more dangerous to its people and neighbours than Saddam’s regime.

For all these reasons we would like to bring to the attention of the public the latest developments and the negotiations between Turkey and the USA over Iraq and Southern Kurdistan.

We demand that America and England as member of the UN Security Councils obeys international laws and UN’s resolutions.

The negotiation with Turkey over South Kurdistan is much more cruel, illegal and unethical.

At the end of the First World War our country was divided once again, our freedom was prevented. Now, the ‘Kurdish spring’ is faced with the threat of being turned into deep winter.

We as the Socialist Party of Kurdistan strongly protest against this aggressive behaviour. We call upon the Kurdish people to join together and ask the peace-loving and democratic forces within Turkey to stand against these dirty plans.

The international public should not allow this barbarism.  Our South Kurdistan nation has been governing itself in its own region with its own elected parliament and government since the 1991 Gulf War.  Despite all the problems they face, it has been democratic island in the region. Turkey has no right of intervention to South Kurdistan.

Self-determination is the right of Kurdish nation.

USA should end the dirty ugly negotiation with Turkey.

The international public, UN and European Union should not just sit back and watch.

NATO should not support these dirty plans of Turkey. Turkey is not under threat; she herself is a threat to her neighbours.

Turkey must be told to stop this aggression!

Kemal Burkay
Secretary General

19.02.2003