Darkness that renders every bearded person an ISIL suspect

While the wartime in the region is making life difficult for the state and organization, the peacetime, on the other hand, had become prominent through the oppression conducted on the community by the organization. The recent civil war-experiment, which cost the lives of 40 people, is the clearest evidence of this statement. Thus, living in that region and criticizing PKK openly is a bed of nails at the moment. I’d like to share the letter of one of those people, who is sleeping on the bed of nails, in which he/she explains the present situation:

Following the incidents, where nation-wide around 40 people had lost their lives, all the bearded people in Diyarbakır headed to the barbers. People were doing this as a precaution, in order to avoid being captured by the organized masses, which targets every bearded person as an ISIL militant. Besides, this was being shared by a person working at PKK’s Sterk TV with a cheerful comment, “Finally they understood that cleanliness is a faith”.

When I arrived home after the Sacrificial Feast, my brother had told me something.

He told me that, following the incidents in Van, even the owner of the only grocery store in our village, who is a Hüda-Par member and had never caused any harm to anyone, had shaved his beard. Also recently, he had closed his store.

The lynching of people in Kurdistan, who reflect their religion with various symbols, which occurred over three days, and the violent atmosphere created by this incident, had started knocking on our neighbor’s door.

It is not possible to explain the ISIL-member-hunt of the Kurdish youth, who presume every bearded person is an ISIL militant, with only the atmosphere created worldwide by ISIL. Primarily, the ones responsible for this incident are the ones, who create a political mass with the illiteracy to burn the Bediüzzaman Social Complex in Van as a reaction to ISIL.

What caused the deaths of people during October 6–8 was not only the Kobane sensitivity, the anger of people who had been charged by every kind of disinformation via Kobane and with ISIL=AKP propagandas, the YDG-H danger that was screaming “I’m coming” for over a year (and whose names are not even mentioned by their political movement), HDP’s irresponsibility and the President’s “ISIL is the same as PKK” statement. The actual thing that had started the violence and hatred wave on October 6-8 was also the surfacing Islam phobia, which is being carried in the genes of the PKK-centric Kurdish politics since its formation, “at the right time”.

PKK had removed the religion phenomenon from the daily lives of the political mass, whom they can administer, and alienated that mass so much that today the Kurdish youth can attack the organization, which is being declared by ISIL, for being an ISIL supporter. Thus, they can kill a 65-year-old person, who is working at the Akabe Foundation in Van, on his way home.

The people, who had shut down their working places and ran off to the West because of the state’s “Organization is being aided” oppression in the past, are being replaced with people, whose work places in Van Erciş are being burned on account of having beards and being religious.

The Diyarbakır Provincial Co-Chairman of HDP had made the, “As far as we know, only in Diyarbakır there are around 400 associations/foundations that aid ISIL” statement on the radio. What can you call this act, other than rendering every Islamic association in Diyarbakır a target, and transforming them into a hatred focus because they act with the people who hold Islamic incentives? These words reminds us of Tansu Çiller’s “We have a list of businessmen who are aiding the organization”, statement. Following that, we also remember the conditions of those businessmen.

Finally, Aysel Tuğluk, who had written the “AKP had stopped being a partner” main-themed article on the T24 website on October 29, had stated that, “After ISIL comes to an end, they will continue operating as ‘Humane Aid Associations’ in Anatolia”. Also, she accused all the associations, who are handing out warm daily meals to the people that come to Suruç from Kobane, of being ISIL supporters.

Let us remind you that, all these fresh examples had come out following Öcalan’s prompts to PKK, regarding the relations with the Islamic community and approach towards Islam.

Then how can the Kurds still show such kindness towards Islamophobic politics?

The primary responsible behind the tending of more than half of the Kurdish population towards the Islamic or central parties, despite all the torture they were exposed to by the state, is directly the hatred of religion carried inside this political ideology. The remaining half of the Kurdish population doesn’t support PKK since they had been brought up in collective farms and communes. PKK had found kindness due to being regarded as the address for resistance in the period where cruelties against Kurds had reached a climax. Either this segment of the Kurdish population had disregarded PKK’s religious view – or religious sensitivities had been demoted to the secondary plan for them, or it had gained another form following the “patriot and national” religious moves that are applied from time to time by PKK. Also today, PKK is doing politics over the life experiences that came out around that resistance, the great story created by those sorrows, and the moral connection created by the deaths of Kurdish children. This story is still so fresh and so close, that ideologically it is presenting this opportunity to PKK, even though they are struggling with the Kurdish sociology.

This mentality, which is filled with enough hatred and ignorance to murder three youngsters by lynching them and which is spread around with the occasion of ISIL, will be on the top of our agenda for a long time. As long as the conflict and violence retreat from the public field, we will be coming face to face with the Islamophobic mentality, which is left as a legacy to the Kurdish community and politics by the PKK and the other left-wing organization that had come out in the same period of PKK, which accepts religion and religiousness as reactionary, and degrades dozens of separate Islamic interpretations into a single and worst form. For a community who had passed through the Kemalist educational system’s schooling and had been under the effect of an organization, which is being administered by a socialist political mind whose mental date is fixed to 30 years ago, this is not easy.

The complete article at: http://cahitbulent.tumblr.com