Washington Kurdish Institute
December 4, 2018
For the Kurds, the name Ismail Besikci carries great meaning, as it is the name of a prominent and tireless Turkish thinker who has devoted his life to defending the Kurdish cause, sacrificing more than most activists ever could in the process. Dr. İsmail Besikci, born in Iskilip in the Black Sea region (northern Anatolia) of Turkey in 1939, is a Turkish philosopher, sociologist, and writer. He has dedicated his life to the study of the Kurdish people and addressing their plight within Turkey and more broadly throughout all of Kurdistan. He has chronicled the history of the Kurdish people and development of their society within the borders of Turkey, even as the Turkish state actively denied the existence of the Kurdish people. Much of Besikci’s work has focused on the persecution of the Kurds in Turkey, and, as a result of his work, he spent more than 17 years in Turkish prisons. He first encountered the Kurdish people when completing his mandatory military service in the Kurdish region of the country. Later, in 1969 as a professor at Ataturk University, he published The Order of East Anatolia, an analysis of Kurdish society, which resulted in his termination at the university and being sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was being released in 1974 after a general amnesty by the Turkish government. However, in late 1979, he was once again detained for similar charges relating to his work on the Kurds, and spend much of his life in various prisons until 1999. Besikci continued his studies of the Kurdish people and advocacy for their rights throughout his time in prison and following his release. He is perhaps the first non-Kurd figure who consistently referred to the homeland of the Kurdish people as Kurdistan in his writings and speeches – a simple but controversial and risky action in Turkey. In Turkey, over 33 of his books are banned, and only about ten of them are currently available to readers. Besikci was subject to a travel ban until 2013 and, following the lifting of this ban, he chose the Kurdistan region of Iraq as his first foreign visit. During his visit to the Kurdistan region, he received the Mustafa Barzani medal from Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani in recognition of his historical service to the Kurdish people and also received an award from Salahuddin University in Erbil. In recognition of his decades of selfless human rights advocacy, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. He also was awarded the International Hrant Dink Foundation Award for Freedom of Thought in 2012, and an Honorary Doctorate from Boğaziçi University in 2013.
Addressing Kurdish social issues, Besikci publications’ criticized the Turkish state’s propaganda against the Kurdish people. In his landmark work, the International Colony Kurdistan written originally in 1991 and published in 2016, he addresses the division of Kurdish land between four states – Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Besikci argues that, for all their political differences, there is a longstanding agreement between these regional states to deny Kurds the right of self-determination and nationhood. In 1981 he wrote a letter to UNESCO entitled “M. Kemal Ataturk, UNESCO & destruction of Kurdish identity in Turkey”, addressing the atrocities committed in Turkey against the Kurds during the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The book was published in 1983 in Europe, and then in 1990 in Turkey. Besikci was sentenced to six years in prison for writing the book 1981-1987. Another of his acclaimed works was Science, the Official Ideology of the State, Democracy and the Kurdish Question, and, in 1991, he published Thoughts on Kurdish intellectuals and later The Resurrection of Kurdistan Imaginary. In addition of tens of other publication, Besikci also released The taboos of Turkish “democracy”: the Kurds & Their Human Rights: the Trial of Dr. Besikci.
On November 28, the Kurdish Policy Research Center (KPRC) hosted Dr. Besikci for a panel at the National Press Club in Washington entitled The Anti-Kurdish Paradigm: From Sykes-Picot to the September 2017 Referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan. At this event, Besikci briefed the attendance about the history of the division of Kurdistan and the international and regional powers’ intervention to stand against the will of the Kurds. During his opening remarks, he said, “Dear friends, I would like to discuss a very general question, the Kurdish question. What is the Kurdish question and what does it mean? My friends, the issue at core is this: during the 1920s in the face of the League of the Nations, while the creation of Kurdistan had been promised, that right was violated. It led to the division of Kurds as well as Kurdistan.” He explained how the colonial powers of Great Britain and France allied with the Ottoman and Persian empires to oppose the Kurds. “Two colonial powers, mainly Great Britain and France, together with the help of two regional powers of the Ottoman and the Iranian empire… The Ottoman Empire’s legal successor being the modern-day Republic of Turkey, and the regime of the Shah succeeding the Iranian empire. These four countries have divided Kurds and Kurdistan.” Besikci also described the 1920s as a most active time for peoples’ self-determination. “That period was the period which the principle of the peoples’ rights to self-determination was the most active in terms of its execution.” On the Kurdish ambitions, he explained that the Kurdish leader Sheikh Mahmood al Barzanji had declared himself as a King of Kurdistan to Great Britain but did not receive any recognition of his declaration. “The two colonial powers at the time refused to allow an independent Kurdistan, and even ignored to recognize a Kurdish colony,” stated. Besikci.
Elaborating on the Kurdish question, Besikci raised the Iranian regime‘s persecution of the Kurds. “My friends, the principles of self-determination must be highlighted and can be analyzed in conjunction with how the Kurds in Iran are governed by the Iranian regime,” he said. He added, “We see how youngsters in their twenties are been hanged by the [Iranian] regime. Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide, and acts of this regime qualify as a genocide.” On the foundation of the United Nations, Besikci stated that the UN did not change anything as with respect to the status of the Kurds. He explained that “while the political circumstances post World War II were undergoing significant changes, especially in Asia and Africa with the wave of the decolonization, nothing changed in the status of the Kurds.” He described these international policies as “an anti-Kurdish paradigm”. “Today there are 212 counties in the world, of which 195 are member states of the United Nations. Many of these countries’ populations were less than one million people when they were founded! For example, Gulf states such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE had populations of less than one million when established. In European Union countries such as Malta, Cyprus, Luxemburg have a population of about one million or less,” he added. He made a comparison between the tens of states with very small populations and Kurds being a nation of 50 million people but without a state. “Kurds are more than 50 million in population but do not possess any official status.”
Moving to present day policies toward the Kurds, Besikci described the US foreign policies as “full of contradictions”. He said explained how the US invasion of Iraq has aided the Kurds in the creation of a recognized regional government. However, he added, Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution which called for addressing the situation of Iraq’s disputed areas (i.e. areas with Kurdish populations which were forcibly Arabized) was never implemented. He praised the Kurdish Peshmerga forces for deploying near Mosul and in the Kirkuk province and defending them from ISIS when Iraqi forces left the region. Concerning the recent Independence Referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, he pointed out that Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey and condemned it. “while, at the same time, greater powers such as the United States, France, Germany, and the UK also declared their rejection of such a referendum.” He added, “In conjunction with the international organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation all rejected the independence referendum.” He stressed that a message was delivered to the Kurds standing against their self-determination, a view that “we do think you do have that right and we are the ones to determine whether you have a right or not.” He described a referendum held in Kurdistan region as similar to what has been taking place around the world, as a democratic process: “While a referendum is, in its guiding principles, something very democratic that happens on regular basis in countries, for the Kurds no such right was given.” He also stressed the significance of the independence referendum held in the region despite the subsequent atrocities against the Kurds. “It should be underlined how important the referendum that took place on September 25, 2017 was, regardless aftermath. With 72% participation, 93% voted in favor of the independence of Kurdistan,” said Besikci. He criticized the regional and the international powers for the not recognizing the referendum and made a comparison between Kurdistan’s independence referendum and the recent referendum held Turkey to grant its current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more powers. “Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won 52% to become a more powerful president, while 93% of the Kurds were in favor of independence. And yet they described the Turkish referendum as a very democratic process!”
Besikci also addressed the attacks on Kirkuk by the Iranian-backed militias and the Iraqi forces. “Prior to October 16, 2017, the United States was regarding the Hashd al-Sha’bi [the Popular Mobilization Units] as a terrorist organization. However, on the morning of October 17, we saw the American weapons that had been given to Iraqi federal government were given to Hashd al-Sha’bi to fight the Kurds,” he said. “The US foreign policy that I mentioned before becomes visible here in terms contradictions. While on one hand, the United States considers the Hashd al Sha’bi as a terrorist organization, on the other hand, US weapons were in their hands while fighting the Kurds,” he added.
Besikci explained other US foreign policy contradictions towards the Kurds in the 1970s, going back to the talks on the Kurdish people attended by Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, when the latter promised to hold a census to determine the fate of Kirkuk province and grant Kurdish autonomy. He explained the US and the Soviet Union, alongside Iran and Turkey, pressured Saddam Hussein not to proceed with the agreement, against the will of the Kurds. “Saddam Hussein, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Soviet Union, the UK and other international states rejection ultimately led to the prevention of a census,” he said. He also noted how the lack of implementation of the agreement between the Iraqi regime and the Kurds led to hostility between the two sides in 1973. By 1975, Iraq signed an agreement with Iran meditated by Turkey in Algeria. “Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran signed an agreement mediated by Turkey which included Iraq giving up all their rights in the Gulf to Iran and giving up and in the south of Iraq near Basra. In return, Iran would end support for the Kurdish moment inside Iraq. In this regard and during the tenure of Kissinger [as US Secretary of State], the Kurds received U.S. support and, following the agreement between Iraq and Iran, the US also stopped supporting the Kurdish forces (i.e., Peshmerga) after years of assistance,” said Besikci. He concluded, in regard to the US policies, by saying, “My friends, while I could trace back the history of the US foreign policy and the Kurds as early as the 1940s to Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in today’s Iran… but let me underline one thing: the only ally of the United States in that region are the Kurds. Because of such US policies with respect to the Kurds, the Arabs, the Persians, and the Turks do not trust the U.S. policies. Despite the contradictions, the Kurds have gained from the support of the United States.” He added, “While the US does not trust the Arabs, the Persians, and the Turks, the Kurds are the only forces in the Middle East that the US can rely on. Therefore, US foreign policy must be constructed in a healthy and conscious way.”
Besikci reaffirmed that the self-determination is a legitimate right and once again addressed the persecution of Iranian Kurds under the Islamic regime, “In Iran, Kurdish youth are been killed, forests are burnt down, and more atrocities are taking place.” Again touching on the results of the recent independence referendum conducted by the Kurds in Iraq, Besikci said, ” 93% [voting in favor of independence] is a badge… a license and it can be used by the Kurds at any time. A solution for the so-called the Kurdish question is a question 100 years overdue. We are talking about this problem that should have been addressed a century ago after World War I when new states were created under the colonial system of mandates. Iraq was established under the protectorate of the UK and Syria under France, and Palestine under the UK as well. However, this has never been manifested in regard to the Kurds.” He concluded his speech by saying, “The message that I am trying to convey to policymakers is to understand this problem.”