Author: Tania Jagharian

Green Left


John Tully
February 6, 2022

Since his kidnapping by Turkish military intelligence in Nairobi in
1999, Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan has
endured almost 23 years of imprisonment. For much of that time he has
been confined on Imrali island, in the Sea of Marmara, without any
contact with family or friends.

His jailers hoped that by slamming shut the prison doors, the world
would forget about Ocalan’s existence. But for millions of Kurds and
their supporters around the world, Ocalan is a living symbol of
resistance to a century of oppression by the Turkish state.

According to the Turkish government, Ocalan is a terrorist. The
Australian government agrees, listing the PKK as a terrorist
organisation.

The listing was originally made in 2005 by the John Howard Coalition
government after a visit by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the autocratic
Turkish leader. It has been periodically renewed since then, including
by Labor governments. The listing was made for purely opportunistic
political reasons. Government justifications simply do not add up.

The PKK is not and never was a threat to the security of Australia,
nor that of any other outside of the Turkish state. Several European
courts, including the highest Belgian court, have ruled that the PKK
cannot be treated as a terrorist organisation. Instead, it is a party
to an armed conflict with the Turkish state.

Under Ocalan’s leadership, the PKK launched an armed struggle against
the Turkish state in 1984. It has since declared several unilateral
ceasefires and, in 2013, Ocalan was permitted to join peace talks. He
continues to advocate for a peaceful solution to an intractable
conflict.

Originally formed as an orthodox Marxist-Leninist party with the aim
of creating an independent Kurdish state, the PKK has since taken a
different approach under Ocalan’s intellectual guidance. Ocalan argues
that given the ethnic plurality of Turkey and the Middle East, the
solution to the century-long oppression of the Kurds and other
non-Turkish populations lies in what he calls “democratic
confederalism” — autonomy with full rights for all peoples.

This shift did not, however, cause the Turkish government to back away
from its determination to maintain Turkey as the ethnically pure
political-cultural organism envisaged by Kemal Ataturk at the time of
the inception of Turkish Republic in 1923. Ever since, the Kurdish
people have endured cultural and, at times, physical genocide.

In recent times, the Erdogan government has stepped up repression both
inside and outside the boundaries of the Turkish state. Thousands of
Kurds have been arrested and many killed, especially members of the
pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party. Cities in heavily Kurdish areas
have been bombed.

The Turkish military has also invaded and occupied the mainly Kurdish
regions of Rojava in northeast Syria, ethically cleansing towns and
cities and collaborating with Islamist terrorists, including ISIS. The
Kurdish-speaking Yazidis over the border in Iraq have also been
targeted by Turkish troops.

Yet world governments and much of the media continue to avert their
eyes from Turkey’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Kurds have a well known saying that they have no friends but the
mountains. But they do have many friends around the world, including
in trade unions, left-wing and green parties, and other organisations
of civil society: people who have seen the injustice heaped on the
Kurdish people and are determined to help end it.

Key to fighting such oppression is to demand governments take the PKK
off the terror list and call for the immediate release of Ocalan, so
that he can lead the struggle for peace with justice for the Kurdish
people in Turkey and neighbouring states.

Prison has not broken Ocalan, nor stopped his brain from working. In
his prison cell, he has written a stream of original books and
articles dealing with many aspects of Kurdish freedom and broader
human emancipation.

Central to this is his insistence that “a society can never be free
without women’s liberation”. His watchword is that “you must believe
before everything else that the revolution must come, that there is no
other choice”.

*

[John Tully is a historian and activist with Australians For Kurdistan.]


 

                                        Monday, 


Armenian Official Cautious After First Talks With Turkish Envoy

        • Karlen Aslanian
        • Naira Nalbandian

Armenia - Deputy speaker Ruben Rubinian at a session of the National Assembly, 
October 5, 2021.


Three days after holding his first meeting with a Turkish diplomat, a senior 
Armenian official on Monday expressed caution about the success of negotiations 
on normalizing Armenia’s relations with Turkey.

Ruben Rubinian, Armenia’s top negotiator, and his Turkish counterpart, Serdar 
Kilic, met in Moscow on Friday. In virtually identical statements, the Turkish 
and Armenian foreign ministries described the talks as “positive and 
constructive.” They said the two envoys agreed to continue the dialogue “without 
preconditions.”

“Very substantive issues were not discussed at the first meeting,” Rubinian told 
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in an interview. “We discussed general approaches to 
the process. … It’s still too early to say what kind of approaches Turkey will 
take.”

“We must try to achieve peace in the region and our position is sincere,” he 
said. “We expect Turkey to demonstrate a similar position because it’s simply 
impossible for Turkey to pursue a policy in the region without having a 
relationship with Armenia.”

Rubinian, who is a deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament, said that Yerevan 
hopes that the next round of negotiations will be more “substantive.”


Turkey - Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar (right) meets Ambassador Serdar 
Kılıç to discuss normalization talks with Armenia, January 10, 2022.

“We are interested in solving real issues and those include, first of all, the 
opening of the [Turkish-Armenian] border and, secondly, the establishment of 
diplomatic relations,” he explained.

In recent months Turkish leaders have made statements making the normalization 
of Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on Armenia agreeing to open a land 
corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave. They have 
also cited Baku’s demands for a formal Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani 
sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Rubinian insisted that he did not discuss these demands with Kilic in Moscow. 
Yerevan continues to stand for an unconditional normalization of 
Turkish-Armenian ties, he said.

Armenian opposition leaders remain unconvinced by such assurances, saying that 
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian is ready to accept Turkish preconditions relating 
to not only the Karabakh conflict but also the 1915 Armenian genocide in the 
Ottoman Empire.

Rubinian faced harsh criticism from opposition lawmakers when he chaired a 
session of the National Assembly earlier on Monday. Some of them deplored what 
they see as the secrecy of the Turkish-Armenian dialogue welcomed by Russia, the 
United States and the European Union.


Armenia - Deputies from the opposition Hayastan alliance attend a session of the 
National Assembly, Yerevan, .

“When you say that ‘we learn about everything from Turkey’ … there has not been 
a single development about which our foreign ministry has not informed [the 
public,]” responded Rubinian.

The 31-year-old vice-speaker lost his cool when some deputies from the main 
opposition Hayastan alliance cited the fact that he lived in Istanbul for 
several months in 2017-2018 on a scholarly exchange program to accuse him of 
promoting Turkish interests in Armenia.

“I’ll do whatever I want,” Rubinian shouted before walking off the parliament 
podium and menacingly approaching Hayastan’s parliamentary group.

With the shouting match nearly degenerating into a violent clash between 
pro-government and opposition deputies, Rubinian rushed back to his seat and 
interrupted the parliament session. The deputies continued to argue on the 
parliament floor during the break.



Armenian Task Force To Work On Rail Link With Azerbaijan

        • Robert Zargarian


The Armenian government has set up a task force that will coordinate work on a 
railway that will connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through 
Armenia’s Syunik province.

The 45-kilometer railway will be part of broader transport links between the two 
countries envisaged by the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 war 
in Nagorno-Karabakh as well as follow-up agreements reached by Baku and Yerevan.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev 
reported decisive progress towards establishing the rail link between 
Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan after face-to-face talks held in Brussels 
in December.

Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the 
construction of its Armenian section will likely cost Yerevan $200 million and 
take about three years. But Grigorian did not say when it will start.

The task force formed by Pashinian’s government late last week is to deal with 
practical modalities of the transport project. It will be headed by Artashes 
Tumanian, Armenia’s former ambassador to Iran, and also comprise nine government 
officials and railway and construction specialists.

Tumanian, who is now an adviser to Pashinian, did not return phone calls at the 
weekend.

Pashinian insisted last month that the rail link will be beneficial for not only 
Azerbaijan but also Armenia. “Through that railway Armenia will gain access to 
Russia and Iran, while Azerbaijan will get a rail link with Nakhichevan,” he 
said.

Critics of the Armenian prime minister are skeptical about the project’s 
economic benefits for Armenia, however. Suren Parsian, an opposition-linked 
economist, believes that it is first and foremost a political undertaking.

“We often overestimate the significance of this unblocking of transport 
infrastructures,” Parsian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “True, Armenia needs 
to have open roads and alternative options. But this must not be presented as a 
miracle cure.”

While apparently reaching an agreement on the rail links, Aliyev and Pashinian 
failed to patch up their differences on the status of a highway that would also 
connect Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan through Syunik.

Aliyev said ahead of their December 14 meeting in Brussels that people and cargo 
passing through that “Zangezur corridor” must be exempt from Armenian border 
controls. Pashinian rejected the demand.



Opposition Lawmakers Absent From Armenian Delegation Visiting U.S.
Հունվար 17, 2022
        • Marine Khachatrian

Armenia -- Former National Security Service Director Artur Vanetsian speaks at 
an opposition rally in Yerevan, November 21, 2020.


Opposition deputies were not included, for different reasons, in a delegation of 
the Armenian parliament that began a working visit to the United States at the 
weekend.

The delegation headed by speaker Alen Simonian is due to meet in Washington with 
the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and other members of 
the U.S. Congress. Simonian personally decided its composition.

He did not appoint any deputies from the main opposition Hayastan alliance. Nor 
did he ask it to name a representative for the trip to Washington.

Hayastan, which has the second largest group in the National Assembly, said in 
December that it will not join Armenian parliamentary delegations travelling 
abroad until the authorities lift travel bans imposed on 12 of its 29 lawmakers. 
The bans stem from various criminal charges rejected by the bloc as politically 
motivated.

Simonian’s delegation included instead Artur Vanetsian, a leader of Pativ Unem, 
the other opposition alliance represented in the parliament. However, Vanetsian 
pulled out of the trip at the last minute.

Explaining the decision, A Pativ Unem spokesman, Sos Hakobian, said that just 
hours before the delegation’s departure to Washington Vanetsian was informed 
that he will not be allowed to attend Simonian’s meeting with Pelosi.

The Armenian speaker will be accompanied only by Hayk Konjorian, a senior 
pro-government lawmaker, and Lilit Makunts, the Armenian ambassador to the U.S. 
Makunts is also a political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

Hakobian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Vanetsian’s “undemocratic” 
exclusion from the meeting with Pelosi made his participation in the trip 
“meaningless.”

“All other meetings and events [in Washington] will be largely ceremonial in 
nature,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Simonian rejected the criticism on Monday, saying that Pelosi 
is scheduled to meet with her Armenian counterpart, rather than the delegation.

“And the chairman of the National Assembly himself decides the composition of 
the delegation,” she added.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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