One characteristic of our people in the Southeast is that they do not like pressure. Everyone wants to be free. The reason for their support for the PKK, as I said the other day, is not only threats. Not only the threats from the PKK. Maybe they say, “Allah forbid, if there were some other structure, an autonomous one or a federation, nobody would look down on us or be arrogant towards us.” That is their belief. A great many of them think along the lines of, “We could then worship freely, dress as we like, cover our heads, wear turbans if we choose and live by Islam as we see fit.” They also say, “Or we could do business as we like and not have to pay taxes.” But most of all they think, “There would be nobody above us hurting our pride.”
The reason why our brothers have adopted these ideas is earlier policies. Members of the alleged terror organization Ergenekon, and the people who shared those views, constantly humiliated our brothers in the Southeast, refused to take them seriously and talked down to them. They looked down their noses at them. They made it perfectly clear in all ways that they disliked them and did not want them. They foolishly pretended that they were much smarter than and superior to them. They also emphasized that being Kurdish was something to be embarrassed about.
In other words, they said, “We are Turks, and therefore a superior people.” Meaning in genetic terms, not moral ones. “We are genetically superior to you. We are your lords. We have been placed over you. And you must submit to your betters.” That was their mentality. And those poor people put up with that for years. They bore it patiently. But they were beaten and sworn at and slandered. And some of them were ashamed of being Kurds. They would not admit to being Kurds. Asked where they were from, they would say, “I am from Ağrı.” May Allah forbid. The climate was freezing cold. Someone would ask “Are you a Kurd?” in a suspicious manner, and they would admit they were, and that ruined them. They felt like they had committed the worst crime in the world. They really felt belittled; I saw that with my own eyes. When I asked people, they would say, “I am from the Southeast.” They would not admit to being Kurdish. May Allah forbid, I saw that with my own eyes.
These vile people so oppressed by Kurdish brothers that they ended up in a state of the most awful breakdown. Intensive measures need to be taken to rectify that terrible state of affairs and wickedness. My brother, you are a normal human being, a servant of Allah. If your moral values are defective, then simply being Turkish does not make you a better person.
According to some people, just as everything was getting back on track, this Islamic Unity then raised its head. This powerful belief in Islamic Union emerged suddenly just as they were about to get their own way. They panicked. The cause of Islamic Union emerged just as Turkey was about to be broken up, may Allah forbid, just as they were about to make the Southeast communist. We are now talking about “Turkish-Islamic Union.” If the Islamic Union, Turkish-Islamic Union, had emerged as a racist concept, in the form of the superiority of the Turkish race, then it would have been a defeated ideology from the outset because the whole world has seen that this ideology [racism] has been defeated. Everyone knows it. The whole world would unite in the face of the idea of the superiority of the Turkish race. They would crush it. Nobody would go along with it; everyone knows that. There can be no such claim and there is no such claim.
All that remains is Islamic Unity. Islamic Unity will come to life in a glorious way with the system of the Mahdi, insha’Allah. Islamic Unity has 1.5 billion supporters and will achieve the clearest results. (Adnan Oktar, January 17th, 2013, A9 TV)
