"Neither soldiers nor guerillas should die"

Osman Baydemir, the current mayor of Diyarbakir, has been sentenced to ten months in prison. The charge is that he was "expressing support and praise for terrorists".

What he said, was simply "Neither soldiers nor guerrillas should die".

The use of the word "guerrillas" instead of "terrorists" is against the law in Turkey.

"Neither soldiers nor guerrillas should die"

In what kind of country does the above sentence qualify a man for ten months in jail? Um, W.T.F.

The control of language, not just down to the word, but down to the letter is one of the main tools used by the Turkish State to maintain its denial of reality.

A quote from the Hurriyet story:

The court ruled that Osman Baydemir, mayor of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeastern region, and Nejdet Atalay, mayor of nearby Batman, had praised terrorist PKK members by referring to them as "guerrillas."

The defendants made the remarks at a rally in Diyarbakir in February 2008, as Turkish security forces were carrying out cross-border operation into neighboring northern Iraq targeting hideouts of the PKK.

Lawyers for the defendants said they would appeal the sentences.

Baydemir had condemned the operation and called for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue, saying that "neither soldiers nor guerrillas should die."





In the same week: (Excerpt from Zaman)

a public prosecutor in Diyarbakir filed a case on Friday claiming that former Diyarbakir Bar Association Chairman Sezgin Tanrikulu had engaged in “discrimination” by publishing a bilingual agenda for members of the bar association. The prosecutor’s office also suggested that Tanrikulu misused his position as chairman of the bar association and “abused the linguistic feelings of the public,” calling for a three-year prison term as punishment. The deputy chairman of the bar association at the time, Nesip Yildirim, the other suspect in the case, did not participate in the crime, but openly supported it by collecting signatures for a petition titled “I am taking responsibility for my agenda and my bar association,” according to the prosecutor.
In 2007, when Tanrikulu was head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, he ordered the publication of an agenda for the members of the association. The agenda featured dates in both Turkish and “a language that is used by a segment of the public,” meaning Kurdish in the words of the prosecutor’s report.

This means that publishing an agenda in a language that is used by a segment of the public amounts to discrimination.

“The publication of an agenda in an alphabet other than Turkish means discrimination in public services,” the prosecutor’s report claimed.

The public prosecutor also suggested that because the agenda was associated with the bar association, citizens whose “mother tongues are different” may hesitate to join the association or to ask for legal assistance. But the prosecutor’s report does not say openly what it means by citizens whose mother tongues are different.

The prosecutor argued that publishing an agenda in a language other than Turkish is an abuse of the “the linguistic feelings of the people” and that this was the basis of the case. Because bar associations are considered organizations that provide public services, the prosecutor had to get permission from the Ministry of Justice to proceed with the investigation and, according to the prosecutor’s report, the ministry gave its approval.

In his defense, Tanrikulu claimed that Kurdish is the mother tongue of Turkey’s Kurdish citizens and to use it is a legitimate right. Mentioning Tanrikulu’s defense, the prosecutor’s report responded: “The suspects in their defense suggested that the signs that are not in Turkish on the agenda under investigation belong to their mother tongue. However, Article 3 of the Turkish Constitution indicates that the language of the Turkish Republic is Turkish; Article 10 indicates that ‘all individuals are equal without any discrimination before the law and no privilege shall be granted to any individual, family, group or class’; and Article 11 states, ‘The provisions of the constitution are fundamental legal rules binding upon legislative, executive and judicial organs, and administrative authorities and other institutions and individuals’; and there are no international or national regulations for giving public services in mother tongues.”

At the court hearing on Friday, the present chairman of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, Mehmet Emin Aktar, presented incriminating information about himself and more than 100 lawyers who are members of the bar to the court and said, “If this is a crime, we committed the same crime.” Aktar also asked for time to prepare a defense. The next hearing in the case will be held on May 15.

The phrase that makes me laugh is "the publication of an alphabet other than Turkish"

No one ever has a cow if someone publishes something in French German, Spanish English, but if it's Kurdish it suddenly becomes this strange nameless "ALPHABET OTHER THAN TURKISH".

As if a language were a kind of kryptonite, so deadly, destructive, radio active, a kind of anti matter, so terrible it cannot even be named.

Imagine, someone can be sentenced to THREE YEARS IN JAIL for publishing A BILINGUAL AGENDA OF A MEETING.

That's our great Nato Ally.

Mehmet Uzun: The Slap & the Lie

A friend once told me he'd gone to a protest in Turkey and the as the crowd of about a hundred people chanted "Human Rights Now!" the police who numbered about two thousand shouted "Down with Human Rights." This was back in the 90's, but these days not much has changed. It was pretty common knowledge that the words "Human Rights" were often interpreted by Turkish authorities as a sign of "supporting terrorism", and there are many semi comical accounts of foreign journalists running into trouble because some official discovered the incriminating phrase "human rights" in a reporters notebook; leading to detainment and quick deportation. This is how language a has been turned inside out and upside down and made into what the great Kurdish novelist Mehmet Uzun called "The Lie"

For reasons that have nothing to do with my own will I came into the world as a Kurd, and since then my life has been marked by two things: suffering and the lie.

He goes onto describe the lesson of "the slap":

The first lesson goes back to 1960, the year I was seven. On a hot, clear day at the end of summer, the very day on which, dressed in new clothes from head to foot, I was beginning grammar school, I received a violent slap in the face in the guise of a lesson on the importance of language and words. I had been born and raised in the shelter of a Kurdish tribe. My family possessed no books except for the Koran, which hung on the wall, and had neither a radio nor a television set. In this enormous house, its garden planted with some pomegranate trees and an equal number of peach trees, the garden where roses bloomed, there was nothing besides my father's bilur (shepherd's pipe), the stories and legends told by my grandfather, and the beautiful strans (traditional songs) that my grandmother sang in the Zaza dialect of Kurdish. It was a universe forged in the feelings, ideas, norms, and values of the Kurdish language.

I was seven years old and loved this universe that I was part of. But from the first hour of the first day that I set foot in school I was instructed by a slap in the face, ineradicably engraved in my memory, that my universe was meaningless, useless, primitive, and taboo, and that I had to leave it. While I was joining the ranks of my classmates in the yard of the grammar school, which was named after the poet Ibrahim Rafet, the teacher, who came from central Anatolia and was fulfilling his civil service, called me to order by a violent slap because I was speaking with a classmate in my maternal tongue. "It is forbidden to speak Kurdish!" The real meaning of this injunction, pronounced in Turkish, only came to me years later.

The lesson I drew from this slap is that language and the word are of great importance.

I hope you will read the entire essay at the link above. he was such a great writer.

Today there's an article in Zaman that illustrates the continuation of "THE LIE" how little has changed since "The Slap" was written.

Prosecutor focuses on religious exploitation in Nevruz protest indictment
The Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has completed its indictment of 14 people arrested on charges of inciting hatred among the public during Nevruz incidents that erupted in March.

The indictment focuses on the exploitation of religion by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), accused of spreading propaganda and inciting hatred among the public.
Fourteen alleged PKK supporters were arrested in southeastern Diyarbakır province last month over incidents that erupted during Nevruz celebrations in March. In the indictment the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office accuses these 14 individuals of using religion as a means to influence people, raising tension in society and spreading the propaganda of a terrorist organization.

One has to ask- seriously, what does this mean? Some people were talking about religion and the PKK. Now they'll go to jail. By being a "supporter" one just has to feel sympathy, not to give arms, raise money or go to the mountains. One just has to say the wrong words the wrong person.

And here's the "Human Rights" angle that makes the whole issue much more "serious"

The indictment also mentioned a meeting between Barbara Anne Lakeberg, the alleged founder of a human rights organization in northern Iraq, and H.B. and A.T., two suspected PKK supporters who were arrested during Nevruz protests in Diyarbakır in March.

“The outlawed PKK tries to regain popularity among people in the region by exploiting people’s religious beliefs. TV stations, Web sites and newspapers belonging to the group serve this purpose. The group is in close cooperation with such organizations as the Kurdistan Islamic Party, the Imams’ Association of Kurdistan and the Patriotic Imams’ Association of Kurdistan to appeal to Kurdish citizens’ religious sensitivities,” reads the indictment.

The prosecutor’s office also stresses in the indictment that the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, made a call to the organization to prepare the groundwork for the establishment of a faculty of theology in southeastern Şanlıurfa province.

“Öcalan once called on the PKK to focus on Şanlıurfa denizens’ sensitivity toward Islam. He told the group to dwell on Şanlıurfa being a city of prophets in its propaganda,” said the indictment.

“Lakeberg, an American citizen who can speak Kurdish, got in contact with H.B. and A.T. and told them she is the founder of a human rights organization in northern Iraq and that she wants to establish a similar organization in Diyarbakır as well. She also told the two men that she has close contacts with Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] officers. The three exchanged views on religion, religious sects and the PKK’s propaganda on religion during their meeting,” the indictment said.

It's "incidents" like this that make Turkey seem like such a spiteful petty little joke state, and if it weren't for the ruin that comes to so many people's lives, I'd laugh.

Mehmet Uzun goes on to describe his second "lesson":

The second lesson came during the course of the summer of 1976. Arrested on March 21 of that year for my responsibilities as managing editor of a Kurdish-Turkish magazine, I was accused of "separatism" and incarcerated in Ankara's central prison. Some time afterward I became aware of the nature of the indictment against me, and presented myself for the first hearing of what was called a Court for State Security, similar to the tribunal that is currently banning my books. I no longer remember the month or the day, except that it was a dog day in the summer of 1976. The atmosphere in the concrete chamber, windowless on all four sides, was horribly suffocating. We were all sweating heavily: myself, "the accused" Mehmed Uzun, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and linen pants; the tribunal made up of five people, two soldiers and three civilians all obliged to wear their official dress; the prosecutor, who I later found out was a Kurd from Agri (1); my counsel; my relatives who had come to be present at the trial; all of us were drenched in sweat. In answer to the prosecutor's brief, which was no longer than two pages, I had prepared a response of seventy-six pages attempting to prove in a pretty awkward and puerile manner the existence of the Kurds and the Kurdish language. The prosecutor's argument was that the Kurds and their language had no form of existence. Whoever claimed the contrary was considered a separatist and deserved to be punished.

The prosecutor hammered home his arguments while looking me straight in the eye. As for me, I pronounced some phrases in the Kurdish language one after the other and then said to him: "That's the language whose existence you deny. It also happens to be my maternal tongue. Did you understand any of it?" The prosecutor, naturally, refused to answer and repeated his arguments. The trial was adjourned. It was only in the sealed army van that was taking me to prison that my eyes stopped watering. Not so much because of the overpowering heat but because of my impotence, my inability to establish a dialog with the prosecutor and the tribunal: because I had been incapable of unmasking a horrible lie that was misrepresented as truth by power, violence, the law, and official values. The lesson I drew from that inane day was that the word must preserve its dignity, its respectability.

Because the Kurds, like the other ancestral communities of Mesopotamia, such as the Assyrians, Syrians, Armenians, Jews, Chaldeans, Nestorians, Yezidis, or Alawites, who find themselves in a situation far more difficult than that of the Kurds, are confined in an irrevocable mode of life. These communities, which have received from history a slap in the face like the one I received at the age of seven, have been condemned to disappear. Completely deprived of their legitimate democratic role, human rights, the right of equality, and freedom of conscience, delivered over to ignorant and wilful military dictators who could not care less about law and justice, to shameless religious leaders who push religious conservatism to an extreme, in a region governed by arrogant politicians who only pay lip service to the words civilization, happy future, and justice, but who are in reality totally insensitive to the real needs of their fellow citizens and completely befuddled by the technical and economic progress to which they reduce all reality, these populations always hear the same message repeated: "Accept your fate. Your forehead is marked with the stamp of death. Do not struggle in vain, history's slap is mortal. Do not expect any help from outside, because you are alone, no one will hear your long cry. Do not hope to open yourself to the world, still less to rejoin it. You have no other choice but to sting those around you like a scorpion--before stinging yourself and disappearing. Everything that belongs to you--including your linguistic and cultural heritage--will be nothing but dead knowledge. You can speak your language in your family if you wish, and even create a literature of the oppressed, capable of awakening in others a feeling of pity. Within your confined universe you can cry out, howl, quarrel with your neighbors. But do not try to open yourselves to the world or to offer it anything at all. Your only chance for survival is to forget everything, to abandon everything that belongs to you and conform to the official vision that defines you. Be ashamed of your own language, your identity, your cultural heritage, and admit that they are primitive and from now on useless. Turn to money, celebrity, pleasure, comfort, kill what you carry in your soul, your brain, your heart. Come, join us ..."

That is what has been repeated for two centuries to the custodians of the oldest cultural heritage of humanity. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the stories of the Bible, the parables of the prophets, the paradise gardens of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the ghats of Zoroaster, Babylon, Nineveh, Ur, Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and an innumerable number of other human treasures belong to them. Still, it is deemed necessary that all this be retained as an ornament evoking the past, but a past not in any way enriched by evoking new voices, new breath.

To paraphrase Ovid, what would happen if, incurring guilt for having seen certain things, you would understand that the reality to which you are required to adhere is a tissue of lies, and you were to insist on giving to this cultural heritage, to those of its languages still capable of being revived, a new voice, a new breath consistent with their spirit? The answer is to be found in Tristia by this same Ovid: The gods never pardon those who--even unknowingly--rise up against them. And so it is with a goal of blocking you that whole armies are set in motion, police, laws, information services, squadrons of death, universities, newspapers, television and radio networks, censorship bureaus, walls raised in heads and minds, tribunals, prosecutors, judges, prisons, torture centers, all in league to impose the lie as the sole reality and determined to make this lie triumph.

This excerpts from this essay were taken from Uzun's article in The International Journal of Kurdish Studies.

Turkey: Where singing is a crime.

This trial was scheduled to happen today.



Three members of children's choir to be tried for singing in Kurdish

Three children, members of the Diyarbakir Yenisehir Council Children's Choir, will stand trial for singing a march in Kurdish while performing in the U.S. The indictment, dated 3 April 2008, seeks the imprisonment of three children under the age of 18 for up to five years each.

The choir attended the World Music Festival in San Francisco between 3 and 7 October 2007, and there sang a march in Kurdish: "Ey Raqip".

The Diyarbakir Public Prosecutor's office opened a case against three members of the choir: Servan Yilmaz, aged 16; Gökhan Ok, aged 17; and Veysel Mamuk, aged 16. The indictment argues that the children sang with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) flags in the background, and that the song they sang has been adopted as an official march by the PKK. The indictment quoted the defence statements of the children, and said that the children took to the stage in San Fransisco and sang "Ey Raqip" after their teacher, Duygu Özge Bayar, taught them the song in one day because the audience requested it.

The children's lawyer, Baran Pamuk, noted that the song was written by the Iranian-Kurdish poet, Dildar, 68 years ago. Pamuk says: "That song was accepted as the national anthem of the Mahabad Kurdish Republic, which was proclaimed in 1946 and lasted for one year, and it is now used as an official anthem by the Northern Iraq Kurdish Federal Government. However, it is not possible to accept that a poem written 68 years ago is the propaganda tool of an organisation. The founders of the organisation in question were not even born yet at the time the poem was written. There is no mention of that organisation in the song."

The teacher of the choir, Duygu Bayar, stated: "We shared our culture there, at the festival. We sang various songs showing the styles of Diyarbakir. Churches and the Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Association contributed to our repertory of songs. If performing these songs is separatism, then we are guilty of promoting separatism."

The children are charged with "making propaganda for a terrorist organisation" and will appear in court on 9 June 2008.

For further information: antenna@superonline.com, sanar@antenna-tr.org, Internet: http://www.antenna-tr.org


Another item from Info-Turk: This is one of the many freedom of expression cases from Turkey just this week.

Diyarbakır mayor Baydemir, Diyarbakır Council’s head of Administration of Accountancy Department Zülfi Atlı, Head of Culture and Tourism Department Mehmet Denli and former mayor of Sur, Abdullah Demirbaş were charged with “violating the law on the introduction and the use of Turkish Letters” and “misconduct in office” over a story book in Turkish and Kurdish. Diyarbakır Criminal Court of First Instance N°.15 set the next trial date as 16 July 2008, at 10:00. (antenna-tr.org, May 16, 2008)

I have to ask, what kind of absurdity is this? Why should anyone be forced to go to court over publishing "a story book". I have a copy of this book myself. It was published to encourage literacy. The stories are for children, in Turkish and Kurdish. In a city where 72 percent of the population speaks Kurdish, its common sense to publish a book in a language the children actually speak, as well as Turkish, the "official language".

If you published the same stories in Turkish and English, there would be no prosecution, even though the use of English violates all the same laws as the use of Kurdish. The law bans the use of letters that don't exist in the Turkish alphabet. W for instance. A highly suspect and divisive letter. Use it and go to jail. Or at least pay a huge fine and/or spend half your life defending yourself in court. Funny thing though, is that even the Turkish embassy uses the letter w : http://www.turkishembassy.org for instance. Why aren't they being forced into court for "violating the law on the introduction of and the use of Turkish letters"?

All the municipal offices in the Kurdish areas of Turkey are harrassed routinely by the "State" government in an attempt to render them non functional.

Mayors are frequently targeted for prosecution for things that would be considered the usual obligations of a Mayor, that is, serving the community he or she was elected too. In Izmir for example (and although this is not a "Kurdish area" it has a very high population of Kurds, a Mayor has been charged with misconduct for providing free water and other resources to his constituents. This is also from Info-Turk:

Dikili Mayor Is On Trial For Providing Free Water

Dikili mayor Osman Özgüven and 14 other members of the municipal council were at the 1st Court of First Instance of Dikili yesterday (June 3), facing the charges of “misconduct in office” or “abuse of power.”

The reason behind the accusations Osman Özgüven, the mayor of a small town in İzmir province in western Turkey, is facing are the services he provides for his town, foremost among them is the free water.

During his tenure Dikili Mayor Osman Özgüven from the Social Democrat People's Party (SHP) made public buses free, obliged bus drivers to drop students off at their homes, provided affordable health services at a municipal clinic, sold bread in municipal bakeries at low prices and did not charge households that use less than 10 tons of water a month.

In addition to the people of Dikili, representatives from many political parties and institutions were there to support the mayor.

Defending his position at the court, the mayor said that as one of the measures in helping prevent global warming, they did not charge people any water fee up to 10 tons and they charged the whole amount above this limit.

To encourage people, said Mayor Özgüven, they granted pardon for the interest payments of the water fees remained from the past administration. About municipality workers’ 50% water fee discount, he said “We wanted those people who are responsible for bringing water to the town to get their creation at lower prices. We did not violate the principle of equality.”

He also added that the municipalities were elected bodies and determination of the rates for their services was their job and that they simply exercised their right.

His lawyer Arif Ali Cangı said in his client’s defense that municipalities are not businesses.

“Municipality work is a public service. This case is trying the concept of public service.”

After Cangı the other members of the municipal council spoke. The defense lawyers demanded an investigation to determine whether or not the services rendered by Dikili Municipality were municipality services. The court is adjourned for the testimonies of the other members of the municipal court and the completion of the missing parts.

Outside the courthouse, Dikili mayor Osman Özgüven said that their services were going to continue, indicating that municipalities were not businesses, they have been serving the people of Dikili and will continue serving. (BIA, June 5, 2008)


Even more absurd is that the State government spies on its local government officials. Phones are taped, email correspondence and mail is intercepted. Local government officials are the no the only targets though. Again, from Info-turk:
I am being listened, you are being listened, he is listening…

It has been revealed that the Security General Directory has been following all phone, sms, e-mail and Internet communications of 70 million people through a decision of Ankara High Criminal Court Num. 11 which they renewed every three months. Security General Directory stated that they did not “listen” but “watched” by a three month court decision. Under the order of Ankara High Criminal Court Num.11 Security Intelligence Department receives all records of all phone and Internet correspondence in Turkey.

Special court decision needed for "Listening" but mass permission is enough for "watching."

As Vatan newspaper reported that police follows all phone conversations, sms, e-mails and fax messages; Security General Directory made the following statement:

"Just as what happens in all democratic countries, Turkish Police Force too naturally engages in all legal activities to prevent crime in the frame of its powers given by the laws and the Constitution. The referred court decision does not include listening. As known, individual court decisions are needed for each listening. Hence it can not be possible for us to listen the whole population in Turkey. Authorised units apply to courts in order to prevent terrorism and organised crime; if the courts grant permission than court decision is sent to Telecommunications Headquarters (TH). As reported in the newspaper the court granted the permission for the referred application. The court decision was sent to the TH and it was proceeded. Statue 5397 grants such power to related authorities in the fight against illegal organisations in order to prevent crime. We would like to inform the public that the referred court decision does not include “listening” and we believe that such reports distorting legal decisions in a way to misinform citizens should be corrected."

Under the order of Ankara High Criminal Court Num.11 Security Intelligence Department receives all detailed records of all phone and Internet correspondence in Turkey.

The Musa Anter Peace Train

I came across this video on youtube but later discovered it's orginal source (link below). It was made ten years ago but it's still relevant today. It documents the journey of the Musa Anter Peace Train.

A quote from Joseph Cooper's web site :

In the summer of 1997 I went along to a planning meeting held by a group of activists and politicians planning to visit southeast Turkey. I was invited to document the journey. This video of the journey of a group of politicians and peace activists who gathered from around the world to meet in Brussels.

From Brussels the peace train delegates intended to travel to Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey to attend a cultural festival to celebrate International Anti-War day on September 1st 1997. An estimated crowd of 200,000 people were expected to greet the peace train delegates in Diyarbakir.

However, the “Peace Train” delegates encountered a series of obstructions and were finally stopped by a blockade of armoured cars 40 kilometres short of their destination.

Produced by Joseph Cooper and commissioned for broadcast by Med TV, a London based satellite TV Channel. 47














The Peace Train was named in memory of Musa Anter, the Kurdish author and journalist who was born in Mardin in 1918 and killed by the Turkish death squad in Diyarbekir in September of 1992. Musa Anter published a play in Kurdish in 1965-- it had been written while he was in jail. He also created a Kurdish- Turkish dictionary, as well as writing his memoirs he wrote for the Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem, Yeni Ulke, and Welat.He was influential to many other Kurdish writers including Mehmet Uzun.

Here is also a personal account of the "Peace Train" journey by William Clark. I'll quote a couple of sections- the whole peice is really worth reading.

I think most people were sleeping when we came into Kurdistan. High Mountains were to the left and right of us with a low mist filling the desert ground of the valley. Higher and higher into the mountains and about eight in the morning we were stopped at a military check point at Gazi Antep2, near the Syrian border. Previously we had heard of deportations from Diyarbakir including Musa Anter's widow and daughter, several HADEP party members and our 'special guests'. They had also stopped us entering Ankara and driven away the people who had gathered to meet us, so there was no telling how things would go: from here on in we were in the Emergency Zone, under Martial Law. At the checkpoint, the soldiers start to take off one of the 'Musa Anter Peace Train' banners and set fire to it in front of all our cameras and all of us, obviously in an effort to get some kind of reaction thus 'justifying' some bloodshed. Eventually after they have had their fun they let us proceed.
As the people along the way, in greater and greater numbers, wave us on with peace signs; we could also on occasion see them being harassed by the police. At about ten thirty we are escorted into a large and notorious military compound at Urfa and more or less held under arrest. The organisers and MPs and so forth start to negotiate with the Army while the rest of us wander around the compound trying to find shade from the radioactive sun. It is beginning to look like a dead end, but I arrange a bet with Francis D' Souza of 1,000,000 Turkish Lira that we get to Diyarbakir, just for the sheer hell of it. A few moments previously Francis told Joe she was going to find out if we were free to go out of the compound by slowly walking out the main entrance and seeing what happened. He agreed to film her. No sooner had she set one foot in the open space when the click of machine guns signalled that this was a bad move and she quickly turned back. Inadvertently Paul and I began talking to one of the Turkish soldiers, a huge guy obviously in Special forces or something: he is armed with about ten fragmentation grenades, a powerful machine gun with a grenade launcher attached. I notice a little Turkish flag on the butt of his automatic hand gun--nice to see a bit of individualism flourishing, but it turns out to be quite common. He looks down at us and quietly asks us why we have come to Turkey: "Why not Bosnia or Palestine or..." "Ireland," I interject. "Yes Ireland" he murmurs, "why don't you go there?" "I've been" I reply. "All we want is peace" Paul tells him, and gradually the conversation tails off. It is a bit tricky talking to man who is equipped to annihilate all of us without breaking into a sweat.

By the end of his journey, after a brilliant description of the mayhem that ensued when the Turkish police attacked the group for having a press conference, violently beating and arresting many people, Clark writes:

As tears well up in your eyes there is a fleeting moment when, if you are as short sighted as I am, the tears make a lens and you can see with perfect clarity, but it is difficult to speak. Looking through tears and emotion--compassion--one sees clearly: but only perhaps if the eyes you meet can feel; feel what you feel and see. The Turkish authorities, the National Security Council, the small group of men who run the country have lost all humanity, and I mean all. With the Mothers of the Disappeared they profess willingness to look them in the eye and still brutalise them. The sacrifice the Mothers of the Disappeared make and will make this Saturday is for peace.
Is the struggle for peace in Kurdistan about land? The possession of land? The Kurds are not a possessive people. Astonishingly they bear no enmity towards their Brothers the Turks--this is not a sectarian struggle. They are not separatists either: how could they become separate from Turkey which has only existed in its present 'unchangable' form since the 1920s.
I have in my pocket some little stones, stolen from the road to Diyarbakir, which mean something to me, but I have given most of them away. Will the Turkish NSC prevail? As Ramos Horta5 said: "The Kurdistan region is one of the most important in the world with possibly the largest oil reserves in the world...but empires built on armies and oppression will not prevail."
One point on the Peace Train. The accusation was made in the Turkish press that the Peace Train was a front for the PKK, and a tactic to cause redeployment of large numbers of armed forces, while the PKK regrouped. This does not stand up to any analysis. If the NSC knew this, why did they then so enthusiastically and overwhelmingly fall for it. Am I smarter than the head of Turkish Intelligence? Seven buses of minor political activists, teachers, students, MPs and (it must be said) a few idiots somehow needed, what--20,000, 30,000 police, Jandarma, army, secret police, special forces, tank crews, riot police etc.--to follow, obstruct, intimidate, arrest, brutalise and attack them? And they do this to avoid bad publicity; they arrest MPs and Ambassadors of a European delegation as a sign of good faith towards their prospective joining of the European Union? This is one simple lunacy amongst many and one cannot help feeling that Turkey needs new leadership. The Kurds seem to me to be asking for little more than I brought back in my pocket--a handful of stony arid land, they probably don't even want the oil.
Peace in Kurdistan is far off. It may require a solution for the whole Middle-East. Ramos Horta described Kurdistan as "possibly the most strategic region in the world."

Ramos Horta, by the way, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, was a founder of the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN), served as the exiled spokesman for the East Timorese resistance during the years of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor (1975 to 1999). He is the second President of East Timor since independence from Indonesia, taking office on 20 May 2007. In February of this year he was was shot but survived the attempted assasination.