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In 2018 — in order to leave her mark on his­to­ry she said — Özlem Çerçioğlu accept­ed to have a bomb tar­get­ing Afrin inscribed with her name as May­or of the town of Aydın (between Izmir and Antalya).

Her Face­book page still car­ries the fol­low­ing com­ments along with her thanks: “I have no doubt that our Mehmetçik fight­ing for the integri­ty of our lands will suc­ceed. Through­out his­to­ry, our glo­ri­ous army has always deliv­ered the necess­sary lessons to those who attempt to take our lands. Our prayers accom­pa­ny our hero Mehmetçik (the lit­tle Turk­ish sol­dier)”.

Oth­er than the fact that the land in ques­tion hap­pened to be offi­cial­ly Syr­i­an and, most­ly, one of the his­tor­i­cal enclaves of the Kur­dish major­i­ty in North­ern Syr­ia (Roja­va), now in the hands of mili­tias armed by Turkey and cur­rent­ly com­mit­ting crime after crime, one notes that the lady did not hes­i­tate to drag her elec­torate into it. She then had part of one of the boule­vards in her town re-named Olive Branch, the offi­cial name of the occu­pa­tion offen­sive led by the Turk­ish army at the time.

Since con­firmed in her posi­tion as May­or, she was named Pres­i­dent of her par­ty’s coun­cil for its Nation­al Con­gress, in recog­ni­tion of her loy­al ser­vices. This 2018 ded­i­ca­tion on the bomb is still of cur­rent inter­est and she is still proud to claim respon­si­bil­i­ty for it. The offi­cial excuse for hon­or­ing her with the pres­i­den­cy was sup­pos­ed­ly because she is a woman and, giv­en the heavy load of vio­lence against women in Turkey, this seemed called for. Does the ded­i­ca­tion also hold for the women in Afrin, some of whom were kid­napped and raped by the militias?

No, we are not talk­ing here about an elect­ed mem­ber of the pres­i­den­tial par­ty, the AKP, but of one of the pop­u­lar elect­ed mem­bers of the CHP, the one so many peo­ple across the world still attempt to describe as a sec­u­lar left­ist par­ty in Turkey and…a pos­si­ble replace­ment. How much longer will these jour­nal­is­tic jokes go on?

At its Con­gress, this same Par­ty reap­point­ed its old his­tor­i­cal leader, Kemal Kılıç­daroğlu, with the eager con­grat­u­la­tions of the lady pre­sid­ing the event. Kemal Atatürk will be under safe­keep­ing, under the sacred bon­net! This beloved leader some­times argues with Erdoğan, but he’s always there “for the threat­ened repub­lic”. We would like to know the list of “Euro­pean fra­ter­nal par­ties” rep­re­sent­ed at the Con­gress. We might be quite surprised.

Of course, on the same social media page of this Kemal­ist elect­ed mem­ber, one finds a glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Lau­sanne Treaty and its nego­tia­tors. This Treaty, need we remind the read­er, effect­ed new bound­ary changes to the cur­rent Turkey with­in the region and buried every pos­si­bil­i­ty of recog­ni­tion for the exis­tence of ter­ri­to­ries with a Kur­dish major­i­ty, as well as Armen­ian or Greek pop­u­la­tions, need­less to say. In short, it pro­claimed the notion of exclu­sive Turci­ty.

Even the per­ma­nent ambi­gu­i­ty that leads to clas­si­fy­ing this CHP par­ty as an “oppo­si­tion par­ty” when, in fact it is noth­ing more than an alter­nat­ing oppo­si­tion in Par­lia­ment and in the State insti­tu­tions, had not accus­tomed us to see­ing its elect­ed mem­bers sign­ing bombs aimed at women, men and chil­dren on Turkey’s Syr­i­an bor­ders. With no one in this par­ty find­ing any­thing to say about it.

Try con­vinc­ing us now that the fact of renam­ing the basil­i­ca-muse­um of Hagia Sophia as a mosque is the most impor­tant top­ic of the hour.

And even if this sto­ry about the bomb is “old busi­ness” and she is not the only one to have ded­i­cat­ed a bomb, let’s get back to the moti­va­tions for a moment.

Sabi­ha Gökçen, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s adopt­ed daugh­ter, was a female pilot and in 1937, she took pride in the fact of hav­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed in the killing of tens of thou­sands of Kurds dur­ing the Der­sim mas­sacre, anoth­er dark and blood-filled page in the his­to­ry of Turkey’s Kemal­ist repub­lic. Özlem Çerçioğlu prob­a­bly does­n’t have the same skills as a pilot, or else she would have deliv­ered the bomb with the sat­is­fac­tion of a duty accom­plished in homage to the past and to its cur­rent “heros”.

If some peo­ple were moved at the last munic­i­pal elec­tions with the vic­to­ries of the CHP in Istan­bul and Ankara, and even if the HDP — sole oppo­si­tion par­ty legit­i­male­ty car­ry­ing this label of true demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion — con­tributed elec­toral­ly to these set-backs for the regime, the day will come when the cur­tain must be lift­ed on the sup­pos­ed­ly sec­u­lar , repub­li­can , social and demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion rep­re­sent­ed by the CHP in Turkey. There is noth­ing there but the com­pli­cat­ed con­ti­nu­ity in a Kemal­ist polit­i­cal block, quite sat­is­fied to pur­sue with no qualms the –Tur­co-Islam­ic syn­the­sis, intent only on shar­ing insti­tu­tion­al pow­ers it may wish to see exer­cised with less per­son­al glo­ri­fi­ca­tion and rest­ing less obvi­ous­ly on the ultra-nation­al­ist wing, with a more dis­crete repres­sion, with­out in any way ques­tion­ing the Repub­lic’s trajectories.

One can thus intro­duce one’s self as the “par­ty for peace”, hold demon­stra­tions on occa­sion, with an olive branch in hand, while being as mil­i­taris­tic as the next per­son, as rabid a nation­al­ist, a nega­tion­ist and a killer of Kurds by proxy. And that, in a nut­shell, con­tains the whole com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry of Turkey.

Hav­ing a bomb car­ry­ing your name: the last time we read some­thing of the sort, it was about tra­di­tions in wartime avi­a­tion, for Guer­ni­ca, Lon­don, Dres­den and Hiroshi­ma. Noth­ing but the finest of memories.

PS: Can some­one inform the lady her bomb was delivered?

28.07.2020 — New Turkish massacre in Manbij | Rojava Resistance
Last night, when a drone had just flown over the Arima region, the localities of Kurt Wiran and Yalani were bombed by pro-Turkish jihadists. The death toll was 6 dead (mainly children and a woman) and 6 seriously injured (mainly children). The Military Council of Manbij indicates that the 12 victims are mostly members of the Diyab family.
The names of 5 of the 6 people murdered by the Turkish fascists are: Eliya Dihab (60 years old), Fatime Mexluf (35 years old), Faris Diyab (13 years old), Xifran Diyab (7 years old), Cemile Diyab (11 years old). 
The injuries of Mehmud Diyab, 7, and Ehmed Diyab, 12, required emergency surgery. Their prognosis is still life-threatening.
No state condemns this new war crime committed by Turkey.

 


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges 
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Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.