WeeklyWorker

25.09.2014

Kurds left in limbo

The US has begun its bombing campaign in Syria

When I started writing this article I was going to focus on both the city of Kobanê in northern Syria, because of the attacks carried out by Islamic State gangs surrounding the enclave, and also the influx of refugees into Turkey, who promptly suffered the time-honoured treatment meted out to Kurds by the state since time immemorial.

I was going to explain that Kobanê (or Ain al-Arab - ‘Spring of the Arabs’) is the linchpin of Rojava, or western Kurdistan, and it will be the fulcrum around which the coming battles will be fought. I was in no doubt that the Kurdish freedom movement would prevail in the end, since it represents the only organised modern force in the battle zone with the will to win, and the organisation to maintain strict military discipline under extremely hard conditions.

I was going to inform Weekly Worker readers that, despite the major powers’ hesitancy to act against the IS, the Kurdish freedom movement would be likely to come out on top, albeit at the cost of terrible suffering and many lives, unless there was a major improvement in IS tactics and determination.

I had started to write along those lines when news broke of the US-led air strikes against IS targets in Syria. None of the sources I checked the day before even hinted that such an operation was on the cards. Of course, the US ongoing coalition-building exercise in Syria had been well recorded, but the timing of such a strike just before a major international gathering at the UN caught me by surprise.

In due course we will get a better background picture, but in the meantime I will deal with what I know. Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in January 2011, about 800,000 have officially registered as refugees in Turkey. However, everyone working in the area is quite certain that the actual figure is at least double that.

The main reason for such a high number of unaccounted refugees lies in the fact that Turkey did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1951 in full, but declared its reservations. In the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees it repudiated its obligations in this way: “The government of Turkey maintains the provisions of the declaration [but] applies the convention only to persons who have become refugees as a result of events occurring in Europe.”1

The rulers of Turkey made great use of this ‘reservation’ during the cold war. Many Soviet defectors were accepted as refugees forthwith and transferred to developed countries, while millions of refugees were either not allowed in during the Iranian, Kurdish and Syrian crises of earlier years or were forcibly repatriated. Even those the Reagan administration dubbed “freedom fighters”, such as Afghan refugees, were kept in limbo. They were forced to rely on the aid provided by charities without any right to work or settle in Turkey.

That is why thousands of refugees were forced to make use of notoriously flimsy boats to cross the Aegean Sea to Greece or the Mediterranean to Italy. And, of course, there is good money to be made in human trafficking, especially if it lubricates the wheels of a bureaucracy paid to turn a blind eye.

Since its inception Turkey has been a xenophobic state, and over a hundred years of propaganda have left an imprint on the popular mentality. The more schooling you received, the more indoctrinated you tend to be - although the mosque, under the control of the government’s religious affairs department, was able to fulfil the same task. The story goes something like this:

The Balkan peoples forced us back to a barren Anatolia; the backstabbing Arabs rose against us on the instigation of Britain and France; the Iranians were eternal enemies because of their Shia beliefs; the Armenians took arms against us when we were fighting at Gallipoli, so whatever we have done to them since was justified; the Anatolian Greeks were the heathens of Byzantium who attempted to push us back into central Asia; Russia was gradually carving out its sphere of influence in the Caucasus region, and on top of everything it grew into a godless Bolshevik bear that became the enemy of the world!

This was the outcome of the century-long attempt to forge a Turkish nation out of the remnants of the Ottoman empire - there was nothing but cold steel and nationalist myths to unify the remaining population. Those massacres, forced population exchanges and ethnic cleansing had never ceased. They lingered on in the imagination and whenever there was an opportunity the killings and plunder of the past could be recalled.

In Turkey today every major city has its own Syrian quarter, which provides cheap labour for second-rate manufacturers, as well as for the agriculture, trading and service sectors. Conflict between the local population and refugees has recently flared up in Gaziantep, a manufacturing centre near the Syrian border. Problems were exacerbated by local nationalist/fascist forces with the support of the well-entrenched racists in the national press. The refugees’ lack of official standing, combined with a shortage of basic services, means that rumours and hearsay are believed all the more easily.

The government has declined to seek assistance from international refugee agencies, such as the UNHCR - that would provide it with funds, but would require the granting of further rights to “foreigners” - just as another independent part of Kurdistan is emerging on its border! So Turkey has received only a pittance from abroad to help it provide basic support for registered Syrian refugees.

Esen Uslu

Notes

1. www.unhcr.org/4dac37d79.html.