Content area
Full Text
Of all the arguments put forward in defense of the NATO war against Yugoslavia, that which invokes the plight of Kosovar Albanians is certainly the most powerful. The claim that NATO is an appropriate instrument to pursue the aim of defending the lives and rights of the Kosovars is logically the fundamental premise of the pro-intervention left. Leaving aside all of the other problems concerning this kind of approach to imperialism and war, we need only look to one of the member countries of the alliance to see the utter hypocrisy of the NATO claim of humanitarian intentions in response to ethnic cleansing and oppression. That country is Turkey, whose planes are participating in the air operations in Yugoslavia and which has prepared special forces to be used for eventual ground combat. This is the same country which, for decades (practically since the foundation of the republic in 1923), has subjected its Kurds to the most ignominious oppression and that recently carried out one of the dirtiest wars ever waged against a national liberation movement. Turkey also resorted to one of the most massive operations of ethnic cleansing since the Second World War.
Attention to the Kurdish struggle would have been timely even if it did not provide such striking evidence of imperialist hypocrisy. For, after fifteen years of guerilla war and mass struggle, the Kurdish movement has of late been dealt a heavy blow with the capture and pending trial of Abdullah Ocalan (popularly known as Apo), the leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which is the leading force in the Kurdish revolt in Turkey. Apo has become a symbol of Kurdish national pride, and his death at the hands of the Turkish state would have deep repercussions for the morale of the movement, possibly even resulting in its defeat. This would, in turn, have serious implications for the anti-imperialist and socialist struggle in the Middle East.
Kosovars and Kurds
Milosevic (the latest of a series of "Hitlers" unearthed by the Western media), however odious his present methods in dealing with the Kosovar insurgency, had at least agreed to sit down at the same table and negotiate with the Albanian forces of Kosovo (Rugova and the UCK) at Rambouillet. The Turkish state, on...