KCK Executive Council Co-President, Cemil Bayık, described the Turkish state’s attacks as illegitimate and inhumane, and noted that the Kurdish people would not acknowledge the government and the state as long if the state did not acknowledge the Kurdish people’s self-administration.
In his article published in Yeni Özgür Politika and Azadiya Welat newspapers (translated from Kurdish by ANF English service) Cemil Bayık wrote the following:
Whatever AKP officials and its suck-ups may say, the AKP government is hostile towards the Kurdish people. The AKP government expressed its hostility when Erdogan claimed “Kobane is about to fall”, and this hostility has hit its peak in the form of enmity towards the PYD. The state is further showing its hostility through the massacre and destruction of civilian areas in North Kurdistan and attacks on the HDP. We can say that no political power has been as anti-Kurdish as the AKP government. Such enmity has not existed in Iraq, Iran or Syria. The attacks of the AKP are beyond human comprehension.
For the AKP, Kurds have no value. Even speaking of the Kurds is an objection to the strategy of the Turkish state that aims to destroy all Kurds. For these policy makers, Kurds should either suck up to the state or face brutality and torture. If a Kurd defends her identity and wants a free and democratic life, she will receive the worst insults and treatment for her act.
The Turkish state views the Kurds as its property, a cadaver that can be treated in any way. This is why Kurds may be treated brutally. This mentality and policy is at the root of the Kurdish issue. This approach will not change as long as the Kurds’ free and democratic life is not accepted. Of course, the Kurds do not accept the Turkish state’s assault. The Western World speaks of democracy and the values of humanity, but does not object to the Turkish state’s policies towards the Kurds. Turkey, an ally of the West, is normalising the policies of insult and brutality against the Kurds!
Turkey now directs its policy of insult and brutality against the Kurdish people towards the parliamentarians of the party that these people voted for. Turkey thinks that these parliamentarians are not the people’s representatives but paid civil servants of the state! Turkish politicians and AKP officials say that ‘these parliamentarians are paid by the state, so they should implement the state’s policies and accept whatever the state dictates’. Turkey should know that the HDP parliamentarians are not paid civil servants; they are the representatives of the Kurdish people. The salaries they mention come from the taxes that Kurdish people are forced to pay. If they say that the HDP parliamentarians should betray the Kurdish people because of their salaries, then why should Kurdish people pay taxes? Why should the people acknowledge the courts, when the courts are institutions of brutality? Why should the people acknowledge governors, when governors give massacre orders targeting the people? Why should the people acknowledge the state, when the state arrests the mayors elected by the people? Nothing can be as legitimate as the Kurdish people’s decision to declare self-administration in the face of state policies. The Turkish state’s attacks are illegitimate and inhumane. The Kurdish people will not acknowledge the government and the state as long as the state does not acknowledge the Kurdish people’s self-administration and Turkey does not democratise. This is the right of the Kurdish people and nobody can question why the Kurds do not acknowledge the state. Nobody can legitimise the policies, discourse and applications of the Turkish state.
The Turkish state now disrespects pain and suffering; it is attacking the condolence tents of Kurdish mothers and fathers. All political actors, including the President and the Prime Minister, go to the funerals of soldiers and police officers that massacre hundreds of Kurdish people, but other people are not supposed to go to the condolence tents of the young person who carried out the incident in Ankara. If people can go to the funeral of soldiers and police officers that destroy Kurdish towns and kill civilians, including babies and old people, everyone can go to the funeral of a Kurdish youth. Whether it is a soldier-police officer or a Kurdish youth that dies, even if one does not like their ideologies, one cannot attack a funeral. Parents mourn the death of their children, but the state prohibits Kurdish mothers and fathers from mourning. They even arrest Kurdish parents for mourning. Their goal is to make parents curse their deceased children, just like the state does.
The AKP government has gone mad, it does not have any humane, moral or conscientious values. The AKP does not respect the traditions and values of the Kurdish people. The most basic cultural values of parents who mourn the death of their children are ignored. Is it up to the state to decide which families can mourn the death of its children? This is the tyrant state that the Kurds are resisting. This is a state that does not tolerate the will and culture of a society. This is the mentality at the root of the Kurdish issue.
It is not surprising for those that rip apart and desecrate dead bodies for revenge to then start attacking parents that are mourning the death of their children. It is a duty of neighbours to visit the funeral of a neighbour, and it is shameful if neighbours fail to fulfil this duty. Someone from the HDP can visit the family of a person that voted for the HDP, and nobody can prevent this visit. It is not up to the state to decide who can go to a funeral and who can mourn their deceased relatives.
In fact, the pressures on the HDP parliamentarian Tuğba Hezer has nothing to do with her visit to a funeral. The AKP state wants to silence everyone on the dirty war it is waging against the Kurdish people. The pressures on the HDP aim to silence the only opposition in the country.