JINHA

DUBLİN - A socialist and ecologist Janet Biehl reacted to the war concept which has been launched against Kurdish people by the AKP government. She criticized the silence of the international community against this war.

Janet Biehl attended the 11th Dublin Anarchist Book Fair took place Saturday 16th of April around Smithfield square in Dublin capital of Ireland. Ecologist Janet made a speech on the struggle for social ecology in the book fair. We talked to Janet about the war concept which has been launched against Kurdish people by the AKP government. Janet made evaluations about current situation in Turkey by saying, "The news media internationally fails to report with any depth the around-the-clock shoot-to-kill curfews and shocking massacres ongoing for months now in the mainly Kurdish cities of the southeast. But some information has seeped out that the public-the news blackout is far from total. Decision makers are aware of it, especially in the halls of government in the US and Europe. Yet they fail to take action, allowing Erdoğan not only to continue but even to export his tyranny and Kurdophobia into their own societies. Erdoğan says the PKK is a terrorist and an internal issue-the US leadership agrees and keeps the PKK on the list of foreign terrorist organizations, voicing no complaint about his treatment of this besieged minority. He permits no dissent at home-and German leadership agrees, and prosecutes a man who read a vulgar poem about the mad, paranoid president on TV. President Obama has acknowledged that Erdoğan is "authoritarian" and has called the AKP's suppression of dissent "troubling" but much more is being suppressed than dissent.

"Apparently the NATO alliance is more important than human rights, although many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment have admitted that NATO no longer serves any real purpose. It makes no sense, and yet these leaders are willing to accede to most of Erdoğan's demands, abandon any loyalty to human rights, and pretend that they cannot see. The Democratic Society Congress (DTK) has called for a democratization of all of Turkey, the entire country. Erdoğan, by contrast, calls for creating a presidential dictatorship. In practice his regime most resembles ISIS. The choice of the west, with the values it says it supports, should be obvious. One day Western leaders will be held to account for their actions."

Janet also commented on Kurdish women's struggle. She said, "The women of the Kurdish movement are fighting for many things; for the survival of the Kurdish people and culture, of course, but for their own autonomy and for the institutions of democratic autonomy that the freedom movement has created. They fight for the democratization of all of Turkey. They fight for their human rights and cultural rights. They fight for gender equality of all women, including Turkish women. They fight for their reproductive freedom, as abortion and contraception are now forbidden in Turkey. I salute their struggle."

Janet, meanwhile, said, "Many people in Western movements for social change are very sympathetic to nonviolent forms of resistance, and my American and European friends sometimes tell me it would be easier to support the Kurdish movement if it were peaceful, if the PKK laid down its arms. Yet they have laid down their arms repeatedly in the past, to no avail, most recently during the 2012-15 peace talks. It seems to me that people in the Kurdish cities have been practicing nonviolent resistance when they refuse to leave their homes in Cizre even when threatened, and when they pour into the streets in mass demonstrations to appeal for peace, as in Amed, and by the stoic and longstanding persistence of their movement.

"There is only so much a people can take, especially after four generations of resistance, both peaceful and armed. Yet still the world does not pay attention, does not reward their and their allies' heroic war against Daesh with the recognition and support that the Kurds have sought. On the contrary, the Turkish state responds to their resistance with cruel, even exterminations brutality. I wish nonviolent resistance could succeed here, and I support any and all efforts for a peaceful solution. But it seems Gandhian Satyagraha [the idea of nonviolent resistance (fighting with peace)] appears futile against the AKP, which is immune to shame. Under those circumstances, having no recourse, the Kurdish movement has every reason to respond to exterminations violence with legitimate armed self-defense."

(mg/gd)