Jana Maříková

Some time ago, I published my article “Inconvenient Massacres” on the New Republic website, where I compared the seemingly incomparable – the massacre in Dersim, Turkey, in 1938, when thousands of Alevish Kurds were massacred, and the massacre in the small village of Lejčkov near my native town in South Bohemia  on the last day of the war – actually after it was finished, on May 9, 1945. I explained why I wrote about it, too. It came to my mind while  I was watching the film ZER by the Kurdish director Kazim Öz, where the Dersim massacre is present, although it is not shown openly and is “just” in the past of the main hero’s grandmother, it’s in fact the central motive. The article was also published in Germany, where it aroused a decent response.

Why “inconvenient” massacres? Because nobody knows what to do with them. Now we are at the stage when the German are our business partners and the Turkish, too, and we are allies in the NATO. Such a massacre like the one in Srebrenica is a different story… it is obvious who were the badmen there.. And it does not matter that the reality  was quite different – the Serbs were guilty with everything. Thus, that massacre is actually very comfortable and legally justified – the bombing of Yugoslavia, for example.

 
Now it is the time for other inconvenient massacres. Erdogan’s Turkey has attacked the area around the city of Afrin at the border of Turkey and Syria, inhabited by the Kurds and protected by their militia, but also crowded with refugees from the war in Syria. The  Turkish Army bombs, shells, kills civilians. In thunderous, deafening – silence. Occasionally somebody will raise a poor protest; sometimes someone will appeal on Tayyip Erdogan to be moderate, but probably that’s it. German tanks (produced in Germany) “liberate” Kurdish cities and villages – a look that is not pleasing for Germans themselves, and to us, the people  who can remember the films on WW2, it is causing goose bump.

I’m not a military expert and I will not pretend to be one. In the last few days I read dozens of articles in at least three languages – and I’m clear about one thing. No one will go against Erdogan and will not even condemn his deeds. Germany has admitted his right to “protect their borders”, The American have apparently  concluded that the Kurdish militia have already fulfilled its role of a useful idiot in the fight against the Islamic State and so it is not needed any more, whilst Turkey is still a NATO partner and the Cold War is taking turns – and the Russian? They are trying to persuade the Kurds to render their oil fields to at Afria   to Syria in exchange for  the pressure on Turkey to stop   their operations. (details see here – http://www.atimes.com/turkey-reenters-syrian-endgame-smart-power/) 

In any case, the Kurds are a trouble. Because of their demand for their own state, their combativeness, the way they burden the conscience of the world. To make things worse – they have oil and water,  the raw materials the ownership of which would certainly be liked by someone else … so whatever happens, it will be very uncomfortable for the Western world, and also Russia –  to talk about it. The Kurds – and not only them – organize  demonstrations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria … and so they point to the hypocrisy of “fighters against the causes of migration” who, through their ostrich-like politics, are able to create a new flurry of refugees. The number one thing is that the bossiness thrives … ..the dirtier the deal, the higher the profit.

Once again, I will return to the text I have mentioned above:

„The UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday regarding Turkey’s military operations in Syria turned out to be like the dog that didn’t bark in the night in the Sherlock Holmes short story. There was no bark – no statement by the Security Council – condemning Turkey.“

No one gave a bark but even there was  no growling. Does Europe have a new master? And shall we lament, in a few decades,  some  new, “uncomfortable” massacres of our times?

 

author:Jana Maříková