Beyond oppression and being oppressed: the Kurds and political eclipse

The reply to my article criticizing Taraf newspaper's approach of pouring gasoline on the fire, in a way that would further inflame the fight, further increase the grudge and hatred of the combatants toward one another, and ensure that they can never reach agreement, when it could have calmed the parties at the moment of the fight, reconciled them and provided their communication, came, again in Taraf newspaper, from a writer of the journal Nibahar. The writer, named Nevzat Eminoglu, chose the familiar attack as the best form of defense.

I was going to say let us pass over this section quickly, but it cannot be passed over, because he displays an approach that takes us to a trap that the Kurdish problem has recently fallen into, to the emotional sources of the apolitical stance displayed especially by Kurdish politicians, and exemplifies it very well. That is, excessive touchiness, an approach that tolerates no criticism: "either you are with us unconditionally or with them." This is a criticism generally and naturally directed at power, because a conservative anxiety soon envelops those in power. They have things to protect, and their defensive antennas work more actively against every kind of criticism, and their style of defense is mostly aggressive.

So, is the excessive touchiness toward criticism of a movement that regards itself as oppositional, a victim and oppressed, an expression of a fracture that has still not been sufficiently acknowledged and repaired, or is it related to the arrogance of a now relative sense of power? As far as I know, in times when the Kurdish movement was truly more victimized, more oppressed, its concern to defend and explain itself was also greater.

How was it that Eminoglu, by his own expression "a writer, an academic whom he has read and followed with admiration for years, who has always defended the victims of the Republic, that is, Kurds, the religious, Alevis, non-Muslims," could suddenly be seen in an "eclipse of reason and conscience"? Is it really a change in that writer that led to the feeling that "almost every article of that writer makes bleed the hearts of us, the oppressed of this wounded country"? Can such a great change occur in a person? Let us say it can. Theoretically a person is open to every kind of change, but here there is a claim that needs to be proven. What might Eminoglu have seen in Aktay as an expression of this change?

Let us listen: "Has someone, with the reflex of the Kemalist, racist understanding of the state, made a statement that met with a justified reaction against Kurds and other othered segments, you look and the next day Mr. Yasin has gone to great lengths, bringing water from a thousand streams, to make this insult and racist statement look normal and rationalize it."

This too is part of the claim; with a generalization, he says I have done nothing for two years but defend the racist understanding of the state; am I misunderstanding? The claim keeps growing, and there is a situation that adds all the more weight to the claimant if it cannot be proven. I fear (on Eminoglu's behalf, of course) that it is a claim that can never be proven, because it rests on a generalization at the most basic level and in this form carries no meaning other than dry slander, a cruel smear, an attempt at discrediting. Now if I were to show an article of mine in these two years in which I defend some of those whom Eminoglu also calls oppressed (which, as you will appreciate, is not at all difficult), this generalizing remark would immediately collapse. Either Eminoglu does not know how to count, or... In fact this slander, which should not need an answer and should be referred directly to God, we can nevertheless take up as a productive example, as I said at the beginning.

The only example (this is outside our latest subject) that forms the basis for Eminoglu's claim is the debate with the theme and intention of "unity instead of separation" around the Kurdish problem, started about two months ago by Hayrettin Karaman. I do not know how right it is to call it a debate. The subject was not even discussed. Karaman was almost being lynched there by Eminoglu's "oppressed." Yet Karaman was starting a new debate around the Kurdish problem from a different angle. Moreover, between his first article and his last on the subject he showed that even he himself was affected by this debate.

But, God forbid, what is there to discuss about the Kurdish problem? Whatever the Kurdish nationalists, the PKK, the BDP say! There can be no framework or attempt at a solution outside what they define and frame. Today Kurdish political reason roams in dangerous waters where the world has been reduced to such black and white, us and them dualism. Moreover, it is embarrassing to say, in that debate I had not approved of what Karaman said, at least in his first article, but I had criticized this authoritarian approach shown against his effort to bring a debate to the agenda.

To tell the truth, I have a respect for Professor Karaman's learning, dignity, age and entire personality amounting to a weakness, and even if I am going to object to what he says, I object with due manners and debate according to proper procedure.

So now, by doing this, have I seared the hearts of the oppressed? What kind of victimhood is this that can condemn people the moment they open their mouths and speak, that can exile them to the ranks of the "oppressors"? When will we see that this understanding of victimhood is gradually turning into a despotic trap that closes Kurds to every kind of idea and brings to the fore in them only feelings of hatred and enmity? How tearful sentences beginning with "we the oppressed" end with merciless judgments of power! Nietzsche's identification of the discourse of oppression with the lust for power in proportion to its violence is not so out of place.

Frankly, for an authentic political stance in the Kurdish question, a way beyond this instrumentalist literature of oppressor and oppressed is visible.

As for what Eminoglu said against my criticism of Taraf newspaper's news about the greeting. Frankly, his trying to prove that the word "slav" is used in written or spoken language as the equivalent of the word "selam" in Kurdish was a completely unnecessary verbosity. Because I had not said that the word slav is not Kurdish. I had said that slav is also used, that regionally and as a dialect, because of the "m" turning into "v," different phonetic derivatives of these two words are possible.

I find fault with his saying that my Kurdish is Tarzanese. I have nowhere claimed to know Kurdish; if he is trying to prove with this that I cannot tell selam and slav apart, he need not worry: even though I am familiar enough with the Kurdish spoken in my own region to distinguish the levels of validity of selam and slav, while writing this article I asked at least three Kurdish scholars, "experts in the matter," whom he cannot consider less knowledgeable than himself. They are Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cemalettin Erdemci of Yuzuncu Yil University, Vahdettin Ince and Mufit Yuksel. All three of these valuable scholars, whose command of Arabic, Kurdish and Persian is beyond dispute, confirmed what I said.

We come precisely to what I mean. If there is a subject under discussion, it means the subject has a debatable side, and one must avoid building such definite and merciless judgments about others from a view on a debated subject. Let us leave today aside, so that we may have a face left to look at one another tomorrow.