The Rise and Fall of PKK Propaganda

After Syria, the threat of ISIL was directed against Iraq, and some voices began being heard from Western states, albeit feebly. This attitude on the part of the West, which had not intervened during the three-year Syrian civil war, is noteworthy in terms of supporting the PKK; moreover, all kinds of efforts are being expended for this. For example, an ‘Operation Sinjar’ was staged for the purpose of gaining Western backing.

When Yazidis fleeing from ISIL sought refuge on Mount Sinjar, the U.S. Air Force first dropped emergency aid from the air, after which a corridor through which the Yazidis could escape to Turkey was opened up through intensive bombing. At that point, PKK/PYD units guiding the Yazidis were depicted as ‘heroic warriors,’ as if they themselves had opened up the corridor, and the Yazidis were encouraged to think that ‘Abdullah Öcalan rescued you.’ During interviews with the world media, Yazidis who had reached safety stated that it was Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK that had saved them.

Abdullah Öcalan, who is imprisoned on an island and unable to  carry out any operation, and the PKK, a Marxist-Leninist terror organization, were heralded as ‘the friend of the people.’ The new plan was actually quite clear: The USA and EU countries had chosen the PKK as their new pawn against ISIL, which had appeared independently of their plans.

If the West sought to arm the PKK against ISIL, then it would be obvious the PKK would suffer a severe defeat because as an organization hiding in the mountains and carrying out cowardly terror attacks, the PKK may be able to inflict damage using hit-and–run tactics, tire the army it identifies as its target and inflict losses on it but this time it was facing another guerrilla force, many times stronger than it in terms of ideology, the propulsive force behind guerrilla warfare. ISIL had highly advanced weaponry belonging to the Iraqi and US armies. Eventually, the PKK suffered a defeat it had never expected at Kobane, and lost much of its strength with the deaths of numerous terrorists. In this way, the policy of ‘controlling the region by supporting terror organizations’ that the USA had previously used in  Afghanistan, Iran and Latin America, once again collapsed.

The civil war in Syria, Turkey’s immediate neighbor, has been going on for three and a half  years, and hundreds of thousands of innocent people have lost their lives to Assad’s bombs and in attacks by the units of the regime. The number of refugees is more than six million. Yet not even a small part of the propaganda waged in order to save the PKK/PYD fighters in Kobane was expended to save the whole of Syria. In the same way, ISIL has long been present in Raqqa. It captured several regions of Syria and moved into Iraq, and has taken control of dozens of villages with largely Kurdish populations in Syria and Iraq. Yet the panic in Kobane never happened in those other areas. What was it that made Kobane so important?

There is actually nothing of interest to the West in Kobane. The great majority of the population of Kobane, 182,000 civilians, actually fled to Turkey, at Turkey’s warning, before ISIL ever got there, and are now in safety. There are just a very few civilians in Kobane, whom the YPG are using as human shields and not allowing them to depart for Turkey. There is no oil in Kobane, and nothing else of any interest to the West apart from the destruction of the dream of a communist Kurdistan. One naturally wonders why nothing was heard from the West about the Kurds, thousands of Shiite Arab Iraqi troops and Syrian Arab opposition members killed by ISIL in other regions.

Western countries believed in all the PKK’s Marxist propaganda, such that the PKK would no longer support terror, that it was pro-democracy, that if Kurdistan were founded it would be pro-Israel and that the PKK attached great importance to women: Yet if a communist Kurdistan is established in the region under the control of the PKK, it will prove to be a terrible scourge, not just for Israel, but for the whole capitalist West. It is impossible for a terror organization such as the PKK ever to give up its weapons. That would be a violation of their ideological foundations and reason for existing. The true face of the PKK, a Marxist-Leninist terror organization, was plain to see in the bloody attacks it perpetrated last week resulting in the savage slaughter of some 40 civilians and the burning and looting of public property, shops and vehicles. The PKK is a perfidious terror organization that regards violence as the only proper solution, and the propaganda it carries out to gain the sympathy of the West is simply not credible.

Of course ISIL is a threat, but the PKK is a greater and closer threat  to the world than ISIL. Western states must not be fooled by the propaganda intended to portray the PKK as an innocent body. The reasons why it is on the list of terrorist organization of almost every country are still valid today; the strategic facts also prove that. The problem of bloody organizations such as ISIL and the PKK can only be resolved through a campaign of ideas, not through guns and bombs. A contrary stance, that is to say, the use of force in order to solve the problem,  will only lead to even greater violence. 

Adnan Oktar's piece on Urdu Times Newspaper & Weekly Blitz:

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/2014/12/rise-fall-pkk-propaganda/