What is happening in Western Turkey?

After a long time, I think it is time for starting again. Sorry for the long time that I was absent, I had a lot of things that needed urgent care, that is why I could not post, but now I am settled once again I can start writing regularly again.

For the people who is reading this blog, I am sure that you are following what is going on in Turkey and Kurdistan. As recent as two days ago PKK attacked Belezê garrison and killed 15 soldiers, there are a lot of wounded soldiers too, and 9 PKK guerillas died in this clash as well. You already know that there have been and there are many cases of lynchings against the Kurds, in the Western parts of Turkey where a big population of the Kurds live. Most of the Kurds who live in those cities, excluding the Kurds of Anatolia that mainly live in Konya-Ankara region who have been living there for over centuries now, were the people whose villages were burnt down and were forced to leave their homes, villages, properties, loved ones behind and start a new and very hard life in these prejudiced and almost fascist cities of the Western Turkey.

I personally think that the true nature of the Turkish fascism/racism is coming out with these lynchings of the Kurds that by now have become almost normal and accepted events/incidents in the Western cities of Turkey.

I have translated an article that was written by Rasim Ozan Kutahyali and published by Taraf daily newspaper. Here is the link to the Turkish version of it. I dont feel like adding anything; this person I think draws a very through picture of what is happening in Turkey. I wil try to translate the following article asap and publish it here as well. Here goes the article:

"Are We Going Towards a Civil War?

The Ayvalik/Altinova incident is very important…

You might have read from the newspapers, A Turkish youngster parks his car in front of a Kurdish Shopkeeper, listening to the national anthem/songs… After this the Kurdish shopkeeper drives his car through this youngster and his family’s place at full speed… Two brothers are lying in blood on the ground and die… The rest is obvious…

A complete indignation… According to the eyewitnesses tens of thousands of people gather together… “Altinova is ours, and will remain ours”, “We don’t want the Kurds here”, “Kurds out, out!” are the cheers that they scream while attacking at the workplaces and houses of the Kurds… Attempts to burn down the houses and cars that belong to the Kurds… Turkish flags everywhere and a complete amuck state… The Kurds leave the town for a time… With the timely intervention of the security forces the de facto confrontation is prevented… the rage is still in the air…

Ethnic tautness is not an exception.

I don’t think that the terrifying situation above, the societal psychology is an exception… This is not an exceptional incident that is caused by provocation… At this point in this country there are certain places where situation is very suitable for an ethnic provocation…

Lets first all accept this fact… The Kurdish Problems is going beyond being a political problem, and unfortunately it is becoming a societal problem…

This problem existed only as a problem between the government and the Kurdish people… Turkish government mentality always denied the existence of the Kurds along with very strict security measures… Every Kurd was a potential criminal in the eyes of the government…

This immoral policy brought the Kurds closer to the PKK… As the DTP politicians say PKK did not create this problem, but PKK is a result of this problem…

But this confrontation between the government and the Kurds did not have an equal correspondence in the society… There was not a serious problem between the Turks and the Kurds… There was not a relationship of hundreds of years f distrust between them… With the saying that is used so often, they had given daughters (in-law) to each other for centuries… Both peoples had a common cultural ground and a common spiritual language…

As a result of the forced immigration that was implemented upon the Kurds by the government, many Kurdish families settled in the rich South and West parts of the country… They started a life struggle there… While there were clashes in the eastern part of the country, there was not a problem between the Kurdish people who migrated to west and south and the Turkish people living in these places… One could expect exclusionist acts from the powerful Turkish people while the government is fighting the Kurds… It did not happen, because the Kurdo-phobia that existed in the government, did not exist among the Turkish people in essence… the Turks did not have such a mental inheritance from their families…

As the years passed by this started to change… the struggle to gain from the economic pie turned into an ethnic translation over time… If there was a commercial disagreement between two Turks the problem became personal, but the commercial disagreements between the Turk and the Kurd surpassed the personalization, and was described on the basis of ethnicity…

With the secularization ethnic hatred increases.

On the other hand, in places where the lifestyle and worldview was more secular the probability of an ethnic tautness emerged as clear-cut facts… As I have mentioned before there was a spiritual ground that the Turks and the Kurds share… There is a common tie that is created on the basis of Islam… This makes it possible to have coalescence/togetherness above ethnicities, soften the disagreements…

In the sociological process of secularization these symbols and values are eroded away… If the secularized society cannot create a common moral ground around citizenship, it ignites the conflicting politicization of the ethnic identities, we should know this well…

We have lived this in Turkey and are living it now… Anybody who knows a little bit of sociology understands what a baloney is Islamification words/concerns… This country is becoming a more modern, and correspondingly more secular country… Modernization, unfortunately, on contrary to what many liberal and leftist intellectuals believe is not a one-sided solely positive process… It brings a lot of problems with itself… It provides a society with a chance of changing its cover completely, and transformation of its world-view… If a secular “civic” ground in this process does not replace the eroded traditional values, it can create a fascistic conflict environment…

Turkey is not longer old Turkey… “Turk-Kurd are brothers” sentences do not make any sense for the new and secularized generations of the Turks and Kurds… On top of this dangerous ground, the government is making things worse by agitating the society…

I will continue with this subject tomorrow, too."