Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar highlighted last week how Turkey is waging a historic extermination war against the Kurds. In fact, he frequently makes similar claims. He takes satisfaction in the fact that he has killed tens of thousands of Kurds and writes this to his credit.

The minister boasts that they have "neutralized" over 32,000 Kurds since 2015. In a statement issued last week, he stated that they carried out “the most thorough and effective operations in the republic's history." He admitted that they were waging a more extensive war than the massacres and destructions of İsmet İnönü and M. Kemal's reign.

After all, it is not known what the Kurds have done to Turkey's state and its people to deserve such attacks.

The Kurds were the ones who contributed the most to the founding of the republic. M. Kemal could not have taken a single step unless he summoned the Erzurum and Sivas congresses and obtained Kurdish support.

Furthermore, Kurds fought alongside them against countries such as France in areas such as Urfa, Maraş, and Antep.

M. Kemal delivered good news to the Cizre leadership via telegram and he claimed that they would grant autonomy to the Kurds whose support he said they received. During the Ottoman Empire's demise, the Kurds did not form any counter front alongside any state.

"There are Kurds among the thousands of martyrs in Çanakkale," Turkish administration members say. In other words, the Kurds fought alongside them on all fronts and shed their blood.

Turkish rulers betrayed and tried to exterminate the Kurds, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian peoples. M. Kemal and his supporters preferred to exterminate other peoples in order to establish a nation-state.

First and foremost, Armenians were exposed to genocide. The legacy of the Committee of Union and Progress [Ittihat Terakki] was taken over by Kemalists. They enforced the strategy of one language and one nation on the people.

They precepted that everyone would be Sunni and Turkish. The Greeks were cleansed throughout Turkey, including the Black Sea region. The rest were kidnapped as part of the pogrom on September 5-6, 1956, under the arrangement of the Special Warfare Office. Their property was looted. In areas like Edirne, the Jews were subjected to the same treatment. Genocide was committed against the Assyrians.

Throughout the republic's history, the Kurds have been subjected to genocide continuously. Beginning in the 1920s, all Kurdish rights movements were subject to massacres, destruction, and exile.

Dersim was subjected to a planned and deliberate genocide. Tens of thousands of people, including women, children, the young, and the elderly, were murdered by chemical weapons and warplanes.

Dersim people committed no crimes against the Turkish state. On the contrary, they had high hopes for the country. However, the fact that they were Alevis and Kurds was a red flag for M. Kemal and his associates, and they ordered them to be slaughtered.

While on his way to be executed, Seyit Rıza expressed contrition, saying, "I could not cope with your games and tricks.” The same applies to Şêx Seid. They were worldly-wise people who had varying degrees of life experience. They did not completely anticipate that the people in front of them would be so harsh and anti-Kurdish.

Those who announced that "We have achieved Kurdish-Turkish unity," caused the Kurds to vanish. They made those who declared, "I exist and I am a Kurd" regret existing and being born. This saying is well-known in the Turkish army: "We will make you regret being born!"

This fate remained with the Kurds. It became almost like destiny.

When the guerilla battle that began in Kurdistan in 1984 could not be suppressed, the Turkish state embarked on new quests. They implemented a repentance law against the guerillas and those who took part in the struggle. That, of course, did not fix the situation. They put a gun in their hands, causing the Kurds to fight each other and spread the betrayal. They encouraged the village guards to commit criminal acts.

The Kurdish language, name, and culture were all outlawed by the Turkish state. In addition to the physical destruction, they continued the cultural genocide continuously. This is how Kurds spent the twentieth century. This is how the first quarter of the twenty-first century unfolds for them.

Turkey's rulers have never abandoned their racist and anti-human ideology, and they proudly claim to be waging the most complete and effective war in their history, based on this horrible genocide.

Because they were reliant on the United States and NATO. They have a substantial NATO army. After the United States, they have NATO's second-largest army. They did not fight any other state after the founding of the Republic, except for the Kurds. They unleashed the whole force of NATO's soldiers, planes, tanks, and tactics against the Kurds.

The Turkish racists would not be able to continue the war with such destructive results if the United States and NATO recognised the existence of Kurds and their demand for rights and did not label the PKK and its resisting forces as terrorists. The United States and NATO are to blame for the extension of the conflict and for the devastation in Kurdistan.

If you pay attention, you will notice that the Kurds have become the most effective and active fighters against ISIS in the Middle East. Syria and Iraq were fleeing ISIS that intended to sweep through the Middle East like a flood. In Shengal, however, the PKK and guerilla troops fought against ISIS. They prevented a genocide against the Yazidis. In Kobanê, thousands of guerrillas were killed. The Kurds were the leaders of the forces that defeated ISIS and freed the world from this scourge.

The Turkish state, on the other hand, backed ISIS. Brett McGork, the US Syria official at the time, was well aware of this. "No matter what we did, we couldn't convince Turkey to close the borders. When Kobanê fell into the hands of the Kurds, Turkey tried to block its borders," he once said.

Furthermore, Russia is one of the powers most familiar with Erdogan's fascist alliance with ISIS. They were also present in Syria. They possess a large amount of information and records.

The Erdogan and Bahçeli fascist partnership has now accused the US of "collaborating with terrorists." They even accuse the United States, which has supported Turkey for forty years while doing immense harm to Kurds, of aiding PKK and YPG terror.

In the history of the world, no alliance has ever been formed in such a short period and with such a broad scope. ISIS advanced at the same rate as it confronted the rest of the world. Under the leadership of the United States and Europe, a grand coalition was created. However, it was Kurds and Arabs who sacrificed tens of thousands of martyrs and injured on the battle ground. However, the occupation of Afrin and Serêkaniyê fell to the Kurds, once again in front of the United States and Europe. The Turkish state arrived to kill people who had fought against ISIS and to carry out ethnic cleansing.

And as if that wasn't enough, they now declare, "We will clear the terror corridor." Indeed, Erdogan referred to it as the "Kurdish corridor." But he was warned; "There is sympathy for the Kurds around the world, if you express it, you will be labelled as an enemy of the Kurds. Do not use the Kurdish term; instead, let us continue to deny the existence of the Kurds by calling it a terror corridor and terrorizing Rojava as well." They did everything to restrain the name and status of the Kurds.

Hulusi Akar, on the other hand, claims to have fought the republic's most complete and effective war while concealing the costs to Turkey, the Kurds, and the peoples of the region.

They did, in fact, deepen and spread the war. But let's not forget that they have the potential to get buried in history like Saddam and Chemical Ali!

Source: Yeni Özgür Politika