Must they sacrifice
themselves on the altar of anti-imperialist solidarity? While the
sovereign states around them are gradually sinking into a new barbarism, Kurds
are the only glimmer of hope
Well over a hundred years ago,
Karl May wrote a bestseller, Through Wild Kurdistan, about the
adventures of a German hero, Kara Ben Nemsi. This immensely popular book
established the perception of Kurdistan in central Europe: a place of brutal
tribal warfare, naïve honesty and sense of honour, but also superstition,
betrayal, and permanent cruel warfare. It was almost a caricature of the
barbaric Other in European civilization.
If we look at today’s Kurds,
we cannot but be surprised by the contrast to this cliché – in Turkey, where I
know the situation relatively well, I have noticed that the Kurdish minority is
the most modern and secular part of society, at a distance from every religious
fundamentalism, with developed feminism, etc. (Let me just mention a detail
that I learned in Istanbul: restaurants owned by Kurds have no tolerance for
any sign of superstition…)
The stable genius (Trump’s
self-designation) justified his recent betrayal of Kurds (he effectively
condoned the Turkish attack on the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria) by noting
that “Kurds are no angels”. Of course, since, for him, the only angels in that
region are Israel (especially on the West Bank) and Saudi Arabia (especially in
Yemen). However, in some senses, the Kurds ARE the only angels in that part of
the world.
The fate of the Kurds makes
them the exemplary victim of the geopolitical colonial games: spread along the
borderline of four neighboring states (Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran), their (more
than deserved) full autonomy was in nobody’s interest, and they paid the full
price for it.
Do we still remember Saddam’s
mass bombing and gas-poisoning of Kurds in the north of Iraq in the late 1980s?
More recently, for years, Turkey has played a well-planned military-political
game, officially fighting Isis but effectively bombing Kurds who are really
fighting Isis.
In the last decades, the
ability of the Kurds to organize their communal life was tested in almost ideal
experimental conditions: the moment they were given a space to breathe freely
outside the conflicts of the states around them, they surprised the world.
After Saddam’s fall the
Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq develop into the only safe part of Iraq with
well-functioning institutions and even regular flights to Europe. In northern
Syria, the Kurdish enclave centered in Rojava was a unique place in today’s
geopolitical mess: when Kurds were given a respite from their big neighbors who
otherwise threatened them all the time, they quickly built a society that one
cannot but designate as an actually-existing and well-functioning utopia.
From my own professional
interest, I noticed the thriving intellectual community in Rojava where they
repeatedly invited me to give lectures – these plans were brutally interrupted
by military tensions in the area.
But what especially saddened
me was the reaction of some of my “Leftist” colleagues who were bothered by the
fact that Kurds also had to rely on the US military protection.
What should they have done,
caught in the tensions between Turkey, Syrian civil war, the Iraqi mess and
Iran? Did they have any other choice? Should they sacrifice themselves on the
altar of anti-imperialist solidarity?
This “Leftist” critical
distance was no less disgusting than the same distance towards Macedonia. A
couple of months ago, the discussion was around how to resolve the problem of
the name “Macedonia”.
The solution proposed was to
change the name to “North Macedonia,” but this was instantly attacked by radicals
in both countries. Greek opponents insisted that “Macedonia” is an old Greek
name, and Macedonian opponents felt humiliated by being reduced to a “Northern”
province since they are the only people who call themselves
“Macedonians.”
Imperfect as it was, this
solution offered a glimpse of an end to a long and meaningless struggle with a
reasonable compromise. But it was caught in another “contradiction”: the
struggle between big powers (the US and EU on the one side, Russia on the
other).
The West put pressure on both
sides to accept the compromise so that Macedonia could quickly join the EU and
NATO, while, for exactly the same reason (seeing in it the danger of its loss
of influence in the Balkans), Russia opposed it, supporting rabid conservative
nationalist forces in both countries.
So which side should we take
here? I think we should decidedly take the side of the compromise, for the
simple reason that it is the only realist solution to the problem – Russia
opposed it simply because of its geopolitical interests, without offering
another solution, so supporting Russia here would have meant sacrificing the
reasonable solution of the singular problem of Macedonian and Greek relations
to international geopolitical interests. (Now that France has vetoed the
fast-track inclusion of North Macedonia into the EU, will they be responsible
for an unpredictable catastrophe in that part of Balkans?) Will the Kurds be
dealt the same blow from our anti-imperialist “Leftists”?
That’s why it is our duty to
fully support the resistance of the Kurds to the Turkish invasion, and to
rigorously denounce the dirty games Western powers play with them.
While the sovereign states
around them are gradually sinking into a new barbarism, Kurds are the only
glimmer of hope. And it’s not only about Kurds that this struggle is fought,
it’s about ourselves, it’s about what kind of global new order is emerging.
If Kurds will be abandoned, it
will be a new order in which there will be no place for the most precious part
of the European legacy of emancipation. If Europe turns its eyes away from the
Kurds, it will betray itself. The Europe which betrays Kurds will be the true
Europastan!
