© REUTERS/ Sertac Kayar
There are four reasons for residents of the west of Turkey to be indifferent or even hostile to the state violence against Kurds in the southeast, as described in a fresh column published in Al Monitor.
The first reason is related to suppression of any opposition in the country.
"It is not easy to raise one's voice in Turkey against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government on any issue, especially when it involves the [outlawed in Turkey Kurdistan Workers' Party] PKK. Multiple times peace activists have fallen victim to terrorist attacks and arrests. For example, most recently 15 Dokuz Eylul University students were arrested in Izmir while protesting for peace," Al Monitor explains.
Any enthusiasm in the struggle for peace was thus simply put down by the brute force of the repressive regime - news and gossip about harsh arrests and the murders of activists spread quickly.
The second reason is that Kurds, who don't live in the southeast and don't face everyday violence perpetrated by Ankara's security forces, are highly assimilatedby the Turkish majority.
"Although [the leader of the only pro-Kurdish parliamentary party, HDP, a Kurd himself, Selahattin] Demirtas is calling upon the people in western Turkey to raise their voices, even the majority of Kurds have not shown willingness to take on this call," Al Monitor states.
To a large extent, such a low morale is intertwined with the first reason mentioned - simple fear for the repression machine of Erdogan's Turkey. Even Turks who sympathize with Kurds are afraid to raise their voices.
"State bombing its own cities can be called 1 thing: terror state" Erdogan, 2013
Pic: Kurdish city Amed, 26.12.2015 pic.twitter.com/BRy0F47rPK— Gilgo (@dijraberi) December 26, 2015The third reason for people in western Turkey remaining silent as full-scale civil war in the southeast is getting momentum is the moral dilemma of speaking up while the number of deaths of police and soldiers steadily grows.
"The majority of people in the west do not view the current unrest as nonviolent resistance but as terror attacks. Several towns in the southeast that had a majority of HDP voters in the last elections have declared 'self-rule' and have started digging ditches around their towns. People in the west of Turkey cannot comprehend the meaning of self-governance or the necessity of the trenches, both of which have negative connotations," Al Monitor details.
The last but not the least reason is the lack of trustworthy information. In Turkey, the majority still gets the news from TV, which is predominantly government-controlled. Social media may not serve as a viable alternative due to the abundance of biased and unverifiable information, Al Monitor notes.
Comment: For examples of just how nauseating Turkish media is, check out:
Turkish branch of the CIA Lie Factory: Here's what Turkey's media reports daily about Russia
"For decades there have been several incidents of mass violence without proper public reconciliation," Dilek Gokcin, a film director who closely follows Kurdish matters, told Al-Monitor. "We live in a constant state of denial. So maybe the question 'Why people are silent when there is a war?' is not quite appropriate. There is no war here, the war is in Kurdistan. Ignorance then becomes the ultimate bliss. If you don't know, you cannot be held accountable, so most people have a rational apathy because they are helpless in the face of atrocities."
More than 100,000 people have been displaced due to armed clashes between Turkish security forces and militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the country's majority-Kurdish southeastern regions, Turkey's Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
Severe clashes between Ankara forces and PKK militants have been arising sporadically since a July terror attack in the city of Suruc, which killed over 30 people, most of them Kurds. After Kurds killed two Turkish policemen soon after the attack, Ankara launched a military campaign against the PKK. The clashes intensified earlier this week in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.
in the article above. Create division, sow animosity, evoke fear.
The Boomerang Effect...
By: katesisco
is happening now. The US is keeping the coordinated terrorists out of Iraq and is uprooting the dug-in areas as is Syria with Russia doing the removal of the same, so where are the displaced people going to go?
They are returning to the country that wanted their removal in the first place, Turkey. For all the elaborate constructed scenarios, the only one that matters is that the Kurds were such a thorn in the side of Turkey, the government engineered this terrorist group to seek their own identity outside of Turkey by supporting the idea of their own country and supplying it with weapons and purchasing the stolen oil.
This is exactly what happens in all wars and is exactly what is at the base of all wars. Removing people from ethnic territory as to reduce their demands for recognition and to expand space for the ruling elite. It is ever the same.
This is exactly what the United Nations, NATO, and just about every other humanitarian group established is supposed to prevent. And it goes against the fundamental desires of the rulers of any country that has a fractious sect of the population. Recognition and representation for all sections of the population is the hardest sell for any country and it has traditionally been supported by bribery which works for about 20 years and then everything falls apart.
I would say that democracy--what is sharing power--and capitalism--the exploitation of resources by a select group--are incompatible. The hard sell of the first is merely the cover that enables the second. Ever demonstrated by history.