Mustafa Karasu, Member of the KCK Executive Council, spoke to Medya Haber TV on the anniversaries of the second Paris massacre on December 23, 2022 and the Maraş massacre in December 1978.
On December 23, 2022, Evîn Goyî, Mîr Perwer, and Abdurrahman Kizil fell victim to a targeted attack in Paris. To begin our interview, I would first like to ask you what you have to say on the anniversary of this attack and regarding the investigation into it.
Above all, I would like to gratefully and respectfully commemorate Evîn Goyî, Abdurrahman Kızıl, and Mîr Perwer. It was, in fact, the second targeted attack that had taken place in Paris. It needs to be seriously addressed that our female comrades and patriots of our country had been assassinated in Paris on two occasions. It is no coincidence; that is certain. That these attacks have taken place in France is also no coincidence. Germany is where most of our patriots and Kurdish institutions are located, but both massacres took place in Paris. It is highly probable that they were planned in Germany but carried out in Paris, France.
I worked together with Evîn Goyî for years, as she was a member of our Executive Council. She was part of the leadership of this movement, and she also participated in the resistance of Rojava. That she was assassinated was no coincidence; she was a deliberately chosen target. She was targeted as a member of our leadership. As I said, already before, our female comrades – comrades Sara, Rojbîn, and Ronahî – deliberately been targeted. This is an issue that needs to be carefully evaluated. The Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom is being targeted, but women in particular are under attack. The fact that these women are being specifically targeted raises suspicions that Turkey is behind it. It had already become clear through many indicators that the Turkish intelligence service had a hand in the martyrdom of our comrades. In Turkey they have launched an attack campaign specifically targeting the Kurdish women’s movement. The fact that women are at the forefront of the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom has directed the Turkish state, which wants to subject the Kurds to genocide and crush the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom, towards Kurdish women. The Kurdish women’s struggle for freedom is the crucial struggle that exposes the reality of the Turkish state and ensures that it is being seen all over the world.
However, the French state’s stance is truly unacceptable. Supposedly a state governed by the rule of law. There is the historical Dreyfus affair. It was a crucial historical incident where there was a legal struggle and the truth was revealed. France showed that it was a state governed by the rule of law and that it revealed the truth. This has become one of the most fundamental topics in literature, but the French state has not taken a single step regarding the two Kurdish massacres. The first is clear; it is certain that it was a murder involving the Turkish intelligence service. However, the French state did not take any stance against the Turkish state. It did not put forward any approach. This is not a situation that can be brushed aside through some diplomatic talks. Such assassinations had been committed in their very own sovereign territory. France is turning a blind eye to this dirty war. They have set aside their own law and constitution.
It is being said that the second massacre was committed by some racist. Why would these racists target Kurds? It’s not so that the Kurds in France are a social reality that disturbs French society or is at odds with French society! If it were a racist act, there would probably be other targets. We obviously don’t approve of it, but someone else could have been targeted instead of the Kurds. So even presenting this as a racist incident is nothing more than an obvious cover-up policy. It is a targeted attack against a people and its children. The French state has the duty to reveal those who are responsible for it. It is the same regarding the first and the second massacre. The killer may have been hired. He may have been directed at the Kurd, but it is no acceptable answer to simply say that he was a racist who wanted to commit a crime against people of other nationalities.
The Kurdish people, and particularly Kurdish women, will not give up pursuing this murder. The Kurdish people will continue their struggle until the first and the second massacres of Paris are exposed. This is decisive, since otherwise, Kurds elsewhere may always face such massacres. In this sense, the Kurdish people and Kurdish women are fighting a struggle, and we salute their struggle. The Kurdish people will no longer accept attacks and murders directed against them. They will pursue them to the end and demand accountability.
It is also the anniversary of the Maraş Massacre, which took place in December 1978. It was a massacre deliberately targeting the Alevi Kurdish people in the west of the Euphrates. Why did this horrifying attack take place?
The Maraş Massacre is just one of the peaks of the brutal attacks in the west of the Euphrates with the aim to completely de-Kurdify the area. After the 1924 Constitution, the so-called ‘Eastern Reform Plan’ was set into action, which was basically a plan to de-Kurdify and instead Turkify the area. The Eastern Reform Plan was a clear plan for genocide. After preparing the necessary conditions for it, the state started to implement this plan. The state, as responsible for this plan, should be tried in international courts for committing crimes against humanity and conducting a genocide. The Eastern Reform Plan clearly sets out how to eliminate Kurdishness, how to eradicate their identity and culture, and how to Turkify them.
It’s not one small city that we are talking about. The west of the Euphrates; this includes Dîlok (tr. Antep), Semsûr (tr. Adıyaman), Mereş (tr. Maraş), Meletî (tr. Malatya), and Sêwas (tr. Sivas). It is a very large area. The area to the west of the Euphrates is larger than Southern Kurdistan and larger than Rojava. This massive area is currently under attack by cultural genocide. Genocide does not only occur through physical massacres, nor is the definition of genocide used by the United Nations only for physical massacres. Demographic change, the destruction of language and culture, and the elimination of identity are also genocide. With the Eastern Reform Plan, such a policy was pursued step by step. In the west of the Euphrates, Kurds were separated from their own identity and subjected to a policy of Turkification. This was accelerated by the Maraş Massacre. Because of the Maraş Massacre and the subsequent September 12 fascist dictatorship, the Kurds west of the Euphrates were forced to migrate to metropolitan areas, Europe, and other countries around the world. So now, ten times, twenty times, thirty times, maybe even more than that, the Kurdish population west of the Euphrates is in the metropolises, scattered around the world. To such an extent that in those once-vibrant Kurdish villages, only the elderly remain, with just a few houses left. This has nothing to do with economic reasons, as is often claimed. Those lands have been made completely uninhabitable for Kurds.
With the not-so-long-ago devastating earthquake of February 6, the policy of de-Kurdification and genocide in the west of the Euphrates, which began with the Eastern Reform Plan and accelerated with the 1978 Maraş massacre, has taken on a new dimension. It is a very painful situation. It is necessary to bring the policy applied here by the state to consciousness. One needs to feel anger, and one needs to react. The people need to insist on returning to their lands. Now, some seem to have accepted it. It must not be accepted; one must not bow down. Our ancestors, our forefathers, lived on those lands for centuries. We are their children, their grandchildren. We have a responsibility to defend them and those lands!
The legacy of the Maraş Massacre was and still is truly painful. It is especially necessary for the people of Mereş, Meletî, Sêwas, and Semsûr to think about this issue. It is necessary to return to the country and revive those villages. If this happens, then we will have taken the right stance against those perpetrators of the massacre, those perpetrators of genocide, those who wanted to eradicate the Kurds. The right stance is to take back those lands, to return there. Now there are some who return, and houses are being built – so there are some who take upon this responsibility, but this needs to grow much more.
Nearly 200 people were brutally massacred in the Maraş Massacre. I commemorate all of them with great respect. They will never be forgotten. We will also fight to keep their memory alive in a Free Kurdistan and a Democratic Turkey.