By: Kaziwa Salih
Despite having been founded in 1999 and having performed dozens of terrorist activities in the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) didn’t capture the attention of the world. However, since it started massacring dozens of groups in 2014, carrying out beheadings, crucifixions, rapes, public executions, enslaving women and other brutal acts, it has not only captured the world’s attention but has become the focus of the world’s shock. This includes President Barack Obama of the United States, who reputedly confessed, “We don’t have a strategy yet,” for over two weeks regarding his plans for defeating ISIL.
The global community did not screen its strategy for defeating the world’s most dedicated and fanatical radical organization until it recognized how rapidly ISIL was flourishing and understood that it had set its sights beyond Iraq and Syria. However, Kurds were neither shocked by ISIL’s brutal actions nor unprepared for them.
Westerners were shocked by ISIL, and Kurds were shocked by the West’s shock. The Western revelation of the Kurds’ immediate organized plan of defend, the capacity of Kurdish female fighters is surprising for the Kurds. Their astonishment presents the consequence of Western ignorance of Kurdish struggles and their capacity for controlling violence in Middle East. What is currently considered new and dreadful for the global community, the Kurds have been suffering from for almost a century. ISIL is just another name, like the Turkish regime, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and the Iranian regimes. For decades the Kurds have claimed that Turkey is a terrorist state performing terrorist acts against Kurds, as they did against Armenians, Greeks, Azeris, and Eastern Europeans, and supporting all the Islamic extremist groups in the Middle East. In the interest of a few trade collaborations with Turkey, Western superpowers twisted the equation, turning Kurds into terrorists, the Armenian genocide into a worthless local event and Turkey into a heroic rescuer, while the photos of its atrocities were too graphic for the Western media to publish them.
Turkish soldiers beheaded Kurdish men and proudly had their taken picture with them.
For example, photos of Turkish soldiers with the heads of beheaded Kurds might misinform viewers and make them think they are images of ISIL. However, this photo isof a Turkish militant and was taken during the 1990s. Turkish soldiers regularly beheaded Kurds, and taking a picture with the head of the victims was a sign of the self-righteous and heroic acts of the Turkish state. This proof of Turkey’s atrocities confirms that ISIL has learned its methods of brutality and showing off of its barbarian acts from Turkey, which also provides substantive support to ISIL.
Currently, the Western media has ultimately confessed that Turkey is providing direct financial aid and training, intelligence and logistical support to the ISIS terrorist organization. Yet the most honest statement was uttered by Gordon Duff, a senior editor of Veterans Today from Ohio, when in his interview with press TV he mentioned that ISIL terrorists “Are using Turkey as almost a superhighway.” He also added they were “moving freely in and out of Turkey.”In reality, Turkey is one of ISIL’s founders. From very beginning, in an official leaked letter from the Qatar embassy in Morocco that was written by, Naïf Abdullah Al Emadi, to the Qatar Minster of Foreign and Arab Affairs on June 2014, asserted that he was able to equip about 1,800volunteers from Morocco and other North African countries. He suggests that his government send these militants in three batches via the Libyan ports to Turkey. He also calls for urgent coordination with the Turkish side to receive the fighters at the appropriate port.
Turkey not only supports ISIL with militants and cooperation with other ISIL supporters, it also devotes a special hospital for ISIL and many bazaars (shops) that sell and advertise ISIL products in Istanbul.
Just because the above mentioned evidence might have not been published in English does not mean that America has no knowledge of it. Yet the ambiguity and lenience of the U.S toward Turkey’s great relations with ISIL seems to suggest that commercial interests with the West can lighten the effects of terrorist acts. In particular, “Turks are major business partners of the ISIL terrorists, as they are in cahoots with the militants in their oil and gas theft from Syria,” as Duff argues. He means the process of looting large quantities of Iraqi and Syrian oil with the help of NATO and the government in Ankara.
What the world community should at least understand is that the Ottoman Empire’s genocide, defunct in Europe, was never ended in the Middle East. In fact, the genocide of the Kurds in Turkey is one of the longest in history. In reaction to these atrocities and the silence of the world community, Kurds were compelled to arm themselves in self-defence for over 40 years. This initiative of the Kurds turned into a nightmare for Turkey, mainly in preventing their aim and political dream of reinstating the Ottoman Empire. Accordingly, Turkey expected that its nightmare could only be rooted out by ISIL, and its support of this terrorist organization will be overlooked, as is its help for other fundamentalist groups. Thus the Kurds weren’t shocked, nor caught off-guard. Correspondingly, the strategy to combat ISIL needs the political certification of the Kurds.
The world community, particularly the United States of America, in order to fight the terrorists, should constantly re-examine its previous political friends in the Middle East and rethink its conservative estimates regarding Turkey’s past and present to new, critical political decisions addressing current concerns in the world.
Press TV/ http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/11/06/385025/isil-using-turkey-as-superhighway/