Revolt in Turkish Kurdistan: The unreported 'Intifada'

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By ISTANBUL, Turkey—Two years after the definitive outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, known worldwide as the "Intifada," a new Intifada has emerged on the scene. In response to the constant repression in Turkish Kurdistan, the Kurdish masses have made it clear that they are determined to wage their struggle for self-determination at all costs.

Kurdistan was carved up and distributed among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria following the First World War. Since that time, the Kurds in Turkey—who number between 10 million and 20 million, according to different estimates-have been subjected to relentless assimilation and annihilation policies intended to deprive them of a national identity and to force them to believe they are just Turks who happen to speak a different "dialect."

In reality, Kurdish is a distinct language belonging to the Indo-European language family, while Turkish is a Ural-Altaic language. The Kurds are a people native to the Middle East, while the Turks migrated to the area from Central Asia in successive waves, finally breaking into Asia Minor in the 11th century.

The spark that rekindled place in the town of Nusaybin after the military shot into a funeral march in honor of several Kurdish militants who had been killed by government forces. In response, the people closed down all the businesses in Nusaybin, and the protests soon spread to other towns.

Lightning demonstrations

Thousands of people came together in "lightning demonstrations," in which they chanted slogans in Kurdish and then disappeared before the police had time to intervene. Even children participated in school boycotts. Some 700 people were arrested; many of them were tortured.

The Turkish ruling class is clearly frightened by the failure of their attempt to assimilate the Kurdish population. They have drastically upscaled the presence of military, police, and counter-insurgency forces in the area. The Kurdish region has been under martial law since 1978, replaced by an only slightly milder state of emergency in 1987.

The government employs some 20,000 "village guards" who are local community members paid to inform on anyone who has contact with the guerrillas and to prevent such contact from taking place. Those who accept the job are detested as traitors, while atrocities or even death by the government. In addition, "special teams," roving counterinsurgency forces who are trained outside Turkey, terrorize the area and kill at random.

Millions of villagers are driven out of their homes as part of a policy aimed at preventing them from assisting the guerrillas. As a result, innumerable homeless are clustered on the fringes of Kurdish towns, where they have no source of income and no access to land to harvest fruits and vegetables.

"Forget about people"

One Turkish general has gone so far as to state that should he be allowed to determine policy in the area: "Forget about people. Not even weeds would be left growing."

In addition to the torture and killings, the Turkish government has responded to the recent uprisings with new censorship laws that prohibit anything designed to "excite the public." Although primarily intended to keep people in the rest of Turkey (and the world) uninformed about the terror in Kurdistan, the legislation is also being used to silence and isolate the socialist press.

Moreover, this same legislation provides for the immediate banishment without trial of all persons living in the area who are considered undesirable for any reason. Such persons are then to be confined to specially selected Turkish towns known for their preponderance of reactionary Turkish nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and even fascist groups.

Nevertheless, there are some indications that sections of the Turkish capitalist class SOCIALIST ACTI