“How is Turkey’s aggression against Kurds different to India’s aggression against Kashmiris? Kurds – millions of them with a distinct language and culture – deserve a country of their own! I fail to understand why larger countries feel that holding an entire population of a different ethnic group submissive with the help of their military might shows their greatness! In Turkey’s case, not only is it subjugating its own Kurdish population, it suppresses them in neighboring countries as well!
Just allow historically distinct ethnic groups the right to self determination. If Europe can have small countries and live peacefully and prosper together, why can’t other learn from the European example?”
Israel, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, & the UK are among the nations condemning or mildly scolding Turkey’s onslaught against the Syrian Kurds. Whatever the political betrayals of the Kurdish leadership toward the Syrian Arab Spring or the ‘solidarity’ grandstanding of these regimes, Palestinians, Kashmiris, & other oppressed peoples have everything in common with the Kurdish people now facing genocide.
The level of discussion among Assadists on social media & in Assadist & Stalinist journals like Mint Press & Global Research on the Turkish genocide of Kurds is as politically degraded as German fascism. This is a typical comment from one of their discussions reflecting the racist politics of that current: “One wants to feel sympathy for the Kurds, but they are hard to like, just as gypsies can be, because as an outsider you can never trust them.”
On the more ‘sophisticated’ level of these discussions, Assadist Tariq Ali suggests that the EU should expel Turkey from NATO & that “The Kurds might have been better off doing a deal with Damascus.” At no time does he express solidarity with the Kurds against the Turkish onslaught nor the dismantling of NATO altogether. ‘Where have all the leftists gone. Long time passing.’
Indian Home Minister Amit Shah makes it clear to an interviewer that Muslims are specifically excluded as refugees.
#India's Home Minister Amit Shah explicitly declaring Muslim refugees won't be allowed into the country, referring to them as "intruders."The Home Minister has assured Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist refugees that they will not be forced to leave India.In other words, the #BJP-led government doesn't have a problem with #refugees, they have a problem with Muslims!
Trump defended handing the Kurds over to slaughter by saying ‘the Kurds did not help the US during WWII or in the Normandy invasion’. Come to think of it, they weren’t at the Bowling Green Massacre or the Battle of Covfefe either. It’s impossible to distinguish the small-minded malignancy of Trump from that of Stalinists & Assadists.
During the Morsi regime in Egypt in 2012-2013, the Muslim Brotherhood were ruthlessly attacking & brutalizing Arab Spring protesters in the streets & we wrote many posts describing & denouncing their actions. But when the military turned on the Muslim Brotherhood & began piling up their bodies in unspeakable street massacres, those who stood for human rights denounced the military & defended the Muslim Brotherhood regardless of their earlier conduct against the Arab Spring. That is the character of human rights solidarity which at no time ever adopts the methods & politics of the oppressors.
When the Kurdish leadership, in the struggle for Kurdish self-determination, operated opportunistically in maneuvers between the US-coalition & the Assad dictatorship instead of standing with the Syrian Arab Spring, sharp criticism was required. But when they come under military attack by Turkish ground forces & bombers, we brush all that criticism aside to stand with Kurdish civilians against genocide. That should not have to be explained to those with an elementary sense of human decency. Only Stalinists & Assadists who support war, occupation, & genocide are incapable of understanding that elementary principle of human solidarity & are gloating.
(Photo is Kurdish in North Kurdistan in flight from Turkish bombers from Twitter sources)
