Of Oil and
Ethnic Cleansing: Allow Me to Explain the Turks (La Stampa, Italy)
"The Kurds
have a population of over 30 million, spread out along the Sykes-Picot-imposed
border running through Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, plus the European Diaspora. They comprise a people
who numerically have a much stronger claim on statehood than the mere 5 million
Palestinians, but unlike the Palestinians, lack a public voice, because Allah decreed
they be born and live on a sea of petroleum - a sea from which flows a river of
dollars to many, but above all to Iran (35 percent of Iranian production) and
Iraq (65 percent). To leave maneuvering space for Kurdish 'nationalism' would
open the gates of hell geostrategically and unleash a world war over energy. This is all the more true because in the chaos inherited from post-Saddam Iraq, Iraqi Kurds
have already taken, with American help, a good chunk of political autonomy, planting
the likely roots of a genuine cross-border nationalism."
Why, dammit, if the Turks are
there with their tanks, their guns, and their soldiers, before their very eyes watching
the spectacle of the jihadists that comprise ISIS cutting the throats of the Peshmerga Kurds in Kobani, is
nobody making a move? Not a wagon, not a rifle - nothing! Is he mad, that Erdogan, who blathers on that it's necessary to intervene
and yet won’t even consider ordering his men to attack the butchers they see right
in front of them - which they can almost touch?
No, no! Erdogan is by no means a fool.
He knows what he's after: he wants to talk in order to save face, while keeping
his foot on the brake. In any case, no one is making a move, especially not him,
because what's in control in the face of the slaughter is that cold beast of Realpolitik
- which couldn't care less about how the emotional shock of these desperate
images plague us.
The Peshmerga "must"
die, because Turkey must save its Kemalist identity,
and because the Kurds are such a destabilizing threat, that Iraq
and Syria, which appear to be bereft of stability, are in comparison oasis of tranquility.
Allow me to explain …
Modern Turkey, heir to the Ottoman Empire which was defeated
and dismembered in the First World War, was born in the 1920s with a very
strict ideological stamp dictated by the leader of a group of young rebel
officers, Kemal
Pasha Ataturk. Ataturk, father of the Turks and an admirer of Europe who had passionately studied
the Peace of Westphalia, wanted his new nation free of the stigmas that,
according to him, had led to the defeat of the Sublime Porte [the Ottoman
Empire] - two in particular: an uncontrollable excess of ethnic nationalism within
a vast imperial geography that ran from the Atlantic almost to China; and a
theocracy that inextricably mingled religious and political power, which
rendered it lumberous, cumbersome and indefensible, and
making effective management of a country faced with a modernity that was
changing the face of the world impossible.
Therefore: the new Turkey would be comprised only of "Turks."
As for political power, he himself - Kemal Pasha - would have nothing to do
with the old Sultanate of
Topkapi. The first act, "Turkey for the
Turks," involved the ethnic cleansing and extermination of every other
nationality remaining inside the new state, with the consequent genocide of the Armenians,
the exile of Greeks from Asia Minor and condemnation of the Kurds (soon to become
unadulterated obligations under the Sykes-Picot Agreement
and the Treaty of
Sevres and Lausanne, which also recognized in some measure Armenian and
Kurdish nationalities).
And as for
the break with the past, Kemal erased all traces of public
Islamism, abolished the fez, the veil, even the letters and numbers of the Arabic
alphabet, replacing them with Latin, and introduced a legal code that ignored
Sharia law and was based on that of the European states - above all the Italian
and French.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
So if today, the Peshmergas of Kobani are fighting heroically and asking for help from the
world, they also may eventually contaminate the ethnic cleansing imposed on the
"Turks" a century ago, so therefore, let them die as well. So the tanks,
the guns and the soldiers watch with binoculars from nearby hills and won't move
an inch from where we, struck dumb and disconcerted, photograph them.
But the story is even more complex. The Kurds have a
population of over 30 million, spread out along the Sykes-Picot-imposed border running
through Turkey (almost 20 million), Iraq (5 million), Iran (6 million), Syria (1
million), plus the European Diaspora. They comprise a people who numerically have a much
stronger claim on statehood than the mere 5 million Palestinians, but unlike the
Palestinians, lack a public voice because Allah decreed they be born and live
on a sea of petroleum - a sea from which flows a river of dollars to many, but
above all to Iran (35 percent of Iranian production) and Iraq (65 percent). To
leave maneuvering space for Kurdish "nationalism" would open the
gates of hell geostrategically and unleash a world war over energy. This is all the
more true since in the chaos inherited from post-Saddam Iraq,
Iraqi Kurds have already taken, with American help, a good chunk of political
autonomy, planting the likely roots of a genuine cross-border nationalism. Therefore,
to avoid an explosion that no global power would dare imagine, even if it flies
in the face of defending human rights and the recognition of sovereignty, it
is necessary to keep the Kurds on a string but never let them amass too much
hope. All of this is called, precisely, Realpolitik.
To these internal factors can then be added the
fragmentation created by the war of various factions fighting among themselves and against
Assad, the unrelenting struggle between Sunnis and Shiites, the strategic
interests of Iran lurking over in the corner, and America's evident perplexity over
becoming too involved in a destabilization that could really set the world on
fire.
In the face of all this, Kobani is
just a tiny dot on the map and nothing more.