However, the Israelis who just like us have been persecute for so long and know first hand the cruelty and barbarity of injustice and persecution why they side with the Turks who as a nation any way historically no better than Arabs when it comes to the very existence of the Jews and cooperate with them in bombing our people, villages and bridges and infrastructure?

I know it is all real politick but even on a pragmatic basis it does not serve the Israeli interests on the long run to make an enemy of the Kurds, the only people in the whole greater Middle Ease who genuinely love Jewish people.

I have not heard a single dissenting Jewish voice objecting the Israeli complicity in the Turkish aggression to Kurdistan. It is really ironic when you compare Turkish invasion of Kurdistan to “Israel’s decision to go after Arabs who target Jews from Gaza”. It is a shocking conclusion least to say. Here I think you are doing injustice to Israel before the Kurds: would you justify Nazi pursuit of the persecuted Jews of Germany, say to Poland, and invading the country on such a pretext? Turkish Kemalist racism and persecution of the Kurds (1924 to present) is more akin to Nazi’s persecution of the Jews (1933-45) though the former on a slower pace except few times like Dersim genocide in 1937-38.

It is neither fair nor wise to compare Turkish treatment of Kurds with Israeli treatment of ‘Palestinian’ Arabs unless you find parallels in Israeli laws and practices of the Turkish brutal persecution and racist and humiliating policies against the Kurds and the Kurdish willingness to lay down arms in return of recognition of cultural, linguistic and a very modest rights of political participation within Turkey with its territorial integrity, let alone its own survival, intact.

Srusht Salih, Kurdistan (Iraq).

Please read the article again slowly and carefully. I don’t believe you’ll real find disagreement with you here. I don’t say Turkish treatment of Kurds is the same as Israeli treatment of Arabs. I make a drastic contrast between the two…and I call for a drastic revision of Turkish policies as well.

Please see this on Kurdish media (type in url yourself) and open up my archive there also.

http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=14624

All my best…

Jerry Honigman

I have always read your articles with interest and care.

I have no doubt that you know perfectly well the difference between the Turkish – Kurdish / Kurdish – Turkish and Israeli – Arab / Arab – Israeli sets of relations and you have articulated that in your article. I agree absolutely with your assessment of and differentiating between the two sets of situations.

However, the irony is you still condone the Turkish invasion by drawing an analogy with Israeli incursion into Gaza: “I cannot condemn Ankara’s decision to invade Iraqi Kurdistan anymore than I could condemn Israel’s decision to go after Arabs who target Jews from Gaza…” This conclusion, let alone it contradicts your own subsequent assessment of the facts, is, with all respect, worrying and unfair.

We expect from our Jewish friends to promote Jewish – Kurdish friendship and to shy away to speak up against the Israeli government’s military and intelligence aid to Turkey in invading Kurdistan. It is not in the interest of Israel, the only democratic country in the region where human rights are truly respected, to become part of, or at least associated with, the Turkey’s systematic persecution and denial of its own Kurdish population.

Kind regards,

Srusht Salih

PKK is using another sovereign State–Iraq–to hide in after attacking both civilian and military Turkish targets.

As I pointed out the real grievances which gave birth to the PKK and call for those grievances to be addressed, the fact still remains that a nation is allowed to pursue those who attack it. If the nation which harbors the attackers won’t get a handle on the problem (I call for the KRG to do just that), then the attacked nation has the right to defend itself…like Israel’s incursions into Lebanon, Gaza (not a sovereign state), etc.

That is fair, and I expect that behavior of all nations, It’s called self defense.

That has to be addressed separately from also pressuring the Turks to grant far more cultural and political freedoms to Kurds and others…something that I point out in my articles as well.

All my best…

Jerry

On a strictly legal point of view, I agree a limited Turkish action against PKK combatants in southern Kurdistan may not be a breach of international law on the ground of self-defence. In addition to the fact that the accuracy of the legality assessment, in the current circumstances is highly doubtful, even if so, the legality would not make the invasion a ‘fair’ one anymore than the legality of, to apply common sense in civil matters, denying an existing debt where the other party for whatever reason lacks strict supporting evidence make a failure to repay a due debt fair.

I believe you should not presume the legality of the Turkish action so readily either. Unlike the fanatic Arabs, the PKK, who never sought to annihilate the Turks, do not launch rocket attacks from the Iraqi borders. The KRG on its part has always called for good neighbourly relations with Turkey; encouraged the PKK to lay down arms; and to the dismay of most Kurds the KRG has few times engaged in cooperation with the Turkish army in fighting the PKK to force them leave the mountains which have been under the PKK control since late 1980s.

If not merely seeking a pretext to interfere in the Iraqi political issues, Turkey, which boasts having the NATO’s second largest army, instead of violating Iraqi sovereignty could tighten the security over its international borders to prevent any alleged PKK infiltration to its side of the border. Given the size of its army and the limited length of the international Iraqi – Turkish border this is manageable and as such it is a reasonable first step.

Another point against the Turkish self-defence argument is that Turkey driven by a racist paranoia against the Kurds has forfeited such a right by constantly and publicly interfering in Iraqi issues and threatening Iraqi Kurds that Turkey would not let them to push for Iraqi federalism and currently threatening the Kurds that Turkey would intervene if they incorporate Kirkuk into the Kurdistan Region according to the 2005 Iraqi Constitution. You will appreciate that on a purely international legal point of view if Iraqi Kurds or any part Iraqi population want even manage to break up the country whether peacefully or by force, just like what happened not long ago in former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the neighbouring countries have no right under the UN Charter to intervene by force. They may only push for a UN action if there were valid reasons warranted such action.

Accordingly I think you are mistaken when you assert so unreservedly the legality of Turkish incursion. Even if you assume such a controversial legality on reserved terms you should, as a friend of Kurds which I think you still are, immediately qualify the incursion per se as being unfair, e.g., by the reason that the whole unfortunate affair in the first place has been brought about by the Turkish determination to deny the very existence of the Kurds in Turkey and any political rights for the Kurds anywhere on the face of the earth.

Kind regards,

Srusht Salih

I haven’t mentioned the word “legality” at all in my article, so am puzzled by your comments…

Regardless, if I allow folks to take refuge in my backyard after they cross into my neighbor’s yard to attack them, I can expect to have to answer for that.

All that you’ve written here I wrote in the very article you’re commenting about. So I don’t disagree with you…and thus still don’t understand your point.

Please read my article again and then look at what you’ve just written. The Turks don’t get a free pass from me at all.

All my best…Jerry

You are right you have not mentioned the word ‘legality’, but you base a Turkish right to “pursue those who attack it” on legality argument, though not mentioning the word, and more specifically on the “self defense” ground.

I agree with all the points you have raised and explained in your article and I really appreciate the fact that the “Turks don’t get a free pass from [you] at all”. My only quarrel is with the conclusion you have drawn early in your article: “I cannot condemn Ankara’s decision to invade Iraqi Kurdistan anymore than I could condemn Israel’s decision to go after Arabs who target Jews from Gaza…”

My point is since the circumstances of Turkish aggression differ so fundamentally from the Israeli incursions, as you have explained so eloquently and persuasively in the remainder of your article, one should not hesitate to condemn the former simply because he, and rightly, cannot condemn the latter.

Allow me to disagree with you on one factual scenario where you say: “if I allow folks to take refuge in my backyard after they cross into my neighbor’s yard to attack them…” I think in reality the PKK presence in Kurdistan Iraq is not that simple. The KRG has not ‘allowed’ the PKK to take refuge there. The PKK has been in the southern Kurdistani mountains since 1984, long before the KRG was established. Turkey which had bilateral agreement with Saddam Hussein conducted, to no avail, a number of cross-border incursions to root out the PKK during the reign of Saddam. The KRG has similarly tried its luck too in 1992 and 1997 to force the PKK out.

In fact, KRG wants to see the back of PKK and PKK to KRG is but a headache and Turkey knows that well. It is not the KRG who uses the PKK card against Turkey but it is quite the opposite. Turkey is exploiting the PKK presence to destabilise Kurdistan Iraq. That is why, unlike the Israeli incursion which is truly base on the right to self-defence ground, the Turkish aggression can and should be condemned.

Best regards,

Srusht.