In the third part of this interview, Mustafa Karasu, member of the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Executive Council spoke about the aim of Turkish president Erdoğan in insisting on meeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as the almost ten years of attacks by Turkey against guerrillas. 

Karasu also paid tribute to the martyrs of the 14 July resistance.

The first part of the interview can be read here and the second part here

You often say that the Rojava Revolution has serious enemies and have pointed out that the most dangerous is the Turkish state. While the fascist AKP-MHP’s invasion attacks against Rojava are still continuing, the Erdoğan-Assad meeting is once again on the agenda. How should the threats to invade Northern and Eastern Syria be linked to the fascist chief Erdoğan’s request to meet with Assad again?

Erdoğan intervened immediately when the crisis broke out in Syria. He aimed to overthrow the state, the regime, the Assad government in Syria, and to replace it with a government of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is related to him. For this purpose, he intervened in Syria by almost all means. The civil war in Syria deepened critically because of that. Another reason for wanting the Syrian state to collapse so quickly was so that the Kurds would not benefit from the existing vacuum of power, so that a state affiliated to them would be formed and that this state would crush the Kurds. In this way, it would achieve both goals. The deepening of the civil war in Syria, the occupation of Idlib, Afrin, Serekaniye, al-Bab, and Jarablus, the Turkish state is responsible for all that happened there. The Turkish state spread destruction and wanted a power subordinate to itself. In this respect, it caused all kinds of hostility. And now Erdoğan stands up, as if he had never done any of this, as if he had not destroyed Syria, as if he had not carried out this great destruction, as if he had not committed the greatest enmity, as if he had not cursed Assad every day.

Now he says that he wants to meet with Assad. Why? Because his policy failed. It failed to get results. This is actually an admission that his Syria policy has failed. This is certain. He says, “we can be brothers again”. Assad came to Turkey for a while. They took pictures with his wife, Assad’s wife Esma. After that, he said, `If Europe has Schengen, we have Shamgen`. In other words, Syria and Turkey were almost going to unite like the European Union. Then what happened? Assad knows the reality of Erdoğan. He knows the reality of the Turkish state. There is no morality, no conscience, nothing in the policy of the Turkish state. When it comes to its own interests, everything else is trivial. They saw that Erdoğan had no religion, no faith, nothing other than self-interest. He has no moral values. He has nothing but power. Such a man. Assad knows this. I mean, he is in a position to know.

Now why is Erdoğan doing this? He wants to meet with Assad to convince him to crush the Kurds together. This is his plan, his main goal. Assad’s father had a Kurdish policy. The Kurds did not fight Syria after the crisis broke out in Syria. They did not wage any war with Syria. Yes, they remained in their own place, because if they hadn’t, Al-Nusra would have tried to dominate everywhere. ISIS would have dominated. ISIS and Al-Nusra wouldn’t have left a single Syrian city untouched.

Would Bashar al-Assad have remained? That’s why comrade Bese pointed out the other day that the Kurds ensured the regime’s survival. Yes, the Kurds did. If the Kurds had not controlled Kurdistan, Rojava, and northern and eastern Syria, there would have been no Syrian regime, no Hafez al-Assad regime, and no Baathist regime. Doesn’t Bashar al-Assad know this fact? He does. Until now, they have not waged any war with the Kurds. They have not fought. When the Kurds were in control, the Syrian regime retreated their soldiers and told them they could go home. Everyone, civil servants and soldiers, went home.

This is the reality. What would Bashar al-Assad gain by being hostile to the Kurds? He would lose. Should the Syrian state become hostile to the Kurds, it will lose. When he is hostile to the Kurds, that’s when Erdoğan will achieve his goal. That is how Erdoğan intends to achieve the goals that he could not achieve through war. Syria, Bashar’s government, and the Baath cannot be stuck in the middle. In this respect, the Syrian regime should think carefully. They should solve their problems with the Kurds by reaching out, discussing and meeting. This is why they are already meeting. As far as we are informed, the Syrian regime and the Kurds have been meeting frequently. For 12 years, this relationship has never been lacking. Those in the Syrian administration have met with Bashar, and Bashar`s aides have also met with the Syrian administration. But no solution has been found so far. But they are meeting.

They have the opportunity to meet all the time. At the moment, there is no serious enmity, nothing hostile against each other. From time to time, the Syrian regime makes some unrealistic statements for propaganda purposes, such as “America is the reason why we are in this situation, the Kurds brought America here”, which are only for propaganda purposes and aimed at blaming the Kurds. But they also know that these claims have no real basis. They also know the Kurdish approach. In this respect, our advice to the Syrian regime, to Bashar al-Assad and his administration is that as the PKK, as representatives of a movement with which Rêber Apo and Hafez al-Assad have been friends for years, we want them to solve their problems with the Kurds in reconciliation. Of course, the Kurdish administration should also take this approach seriously. The Kurdish administration should also solve its problems with Syria.

When I say this, I don’t mean unilaterally; both the Syrian regime should take steps towards a solution and the Kurdish administration, the Kurdish side there, the administration in North and East Syria, the Arabs, the Assyrians should go to the regime with a solution approach. But it will not be like before. Kurds want their basic rights. They want their identity to be recognized. They want their language and culture recognized; they want education in their mother tongue. They want local democracy, that is, they want to govern their own localities. They can reach a conclusion through mutual discussions. The solution for Syria is not an agreement with Turkey. They can negotiate with Turkey. They should tell Turkey to get out, and the Turks say this is a precondition. What were the conditions when they occupied the country?

First of all, the start of negotiations means that you have step back from hostility, to stop occupying would be a step. It is the right attitude for Bashar al-Assad to tell the Turkish state to leave. It is not a precondition. It is the most reasonable, the most natural, the right according to international law. The Turkish state raises hell when something happens somewhere. It has gone there and occupied soil. They say get out, but the Erdoğan regime does not accept this. How can neogitations based on good will be initiated under the circumstances of illegal occupation? It seems that the Turkish state is trying to make that occupation a bargaining chip. Again, blackmailing another state. Like I pointed out before, the Turkish state really is a blackmailing state. It blackmails Europe, the US, Russia, Iraq, the Arabs, basically everyone whom it interacts with. One day the blackmail policy will hit the wall and they will lose big time. I don’t think that the Assad-Erdoğan meeting will conclude immediately, or that Assad will come to an agreement with Turkey on the basis of Kurdish enmity. We believe that Bashar al-Assad will act prudently and solve his problems with the Kurds on a democratic basis.

The comprehensive attacks on the Kurds, which are intensifying today, started especially on July 24, 2015. We are entering the 10th year of uninterrupted attacks. What have these 10 years of uninterrupted war and your resistance shown the Kurdish people, their international friends, and especially their enemies?

This 10-year war actually started with the heavy isolation of Rêber Apo, which began on April 5th. We should start from there, on April 5th. Since then, the AKP government has allied itself with ISIS in order to sustain itself and suppress the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom. The June 7 pre-election bombings in Amed, the massacre of the 33 travelers in the Pirsûs (tr. Suruc) Massacre, the massacre of around 110 people in Ankara Train Station, and the wounding of hundreds of others. Again, in the ISIS massacres elsewhere, they raided a wedding in Antep and massacred Kurds at a wedding. The AKP government wanted to weaken the Kurdish struggle, the struggle of the Kurdish people. It wanted to frighten, scare, and intimidate. It waged war not only against the Kurds but also against the democratic forces.

One of the most important things to learn in this decade is that the war against the Kurds is also a war against the democratic forces. The moment an attack against the Kurds is launched, an attack against the democratic forces is launched. This has been seen. On July 24, an attack with dozens of warplanes was launched. That’s how the war started. Davutoglu back then said that they had been preparing this for over a year. Before that, there was the ‘çöktürme planı’ (collapse plan). It was decided on by the National Security Council. Rêber Apo wanted to prevent this. That’s how the Dolmabahçe Agreement came about. That’s how he wanted to prevent it, but the state made an alliance with Erdoğan in order to survive. It allied with ISIS, and it allied with the MHP. It allied with them by releasing some of the soldiers on trial in the Ergenekon case. Thus, it started a war against our movement. The war against the democratic forces has begun.

The war against the Kurds has revealed the true face of the AKP, of the MHP, of the Turkish state, and generally of everyone. What is the approach of the Turkish state towards the Kurds? It has revealed this. In this respect, it led to the realization of an important Kurdish consciousness. Again, there was a distorted understanding of democracy in Turkey. This ten-year attack contributed a lot to the transformation of that distorted understanding of democracy in Turkey. The democratic forces realized that an attack on the Kurds was an attack on them. Democracy cannot be realized without solving the Kurdish question. Because the democratic forces are attacked, the Kurds do not benefit. They are enemies of democracy because they are afraid of Kurds profiting from it.

The question is not if and when the Third World War may start. We are already in the middle of it. We have been pointing out many times, that the Third World War has already started a long time ago and that it is ongoing. If it is understood within the parameters of the First World War and the Second World War, of course, it will be misinterpreted. World War III is developing in accordance with and based on the economic, political and social conditions of the world. The Turkish state wants to benefit from the new world order which would be shaped by World War III. It aims to survive through this war, crush the Kurds, suppress the Rojava administration. It wants to reach the borders drawn in the Misak-ı Milli. In fact, there was no Kurdish denialism during the congress when the Misak-ı Milli was adopted. The Turkish state actually imposed Kurdish denialism in Lausanne, with the imposition of the British, and made them accept the Kurdish genocide in exchange for leaving Kirkuk and Mosul to Iraq, England and France. In other words, in exchange for the cession of Mosul and Kirkuk, the Turkish state was allowed to go for the genocide of the Kurds. Now the Turkish state is pointing out that they have not succeeded in doing what they were promised 100 years ago, that the conditions are different from what was agreed, so it is openly demanding Mosul and Kirkuk back. Devlet Bahceli said it openly. Also Erdoğan said, “We will not make the same mistake in Rojava as we did in Iraq”. What does that mean? In this respect, the world also understood what everyone’s reality is in this game. In fact, the war on the Kurds is a war that revealed who is what in Turkey. It revealed who is of what caliber in the Middle East. It reveals who is of what mentality and what caliber in the world. We have clearly seen this in the past decade.

This ten-year period has, of course, been a great struggle for us. There has been oppression and persecution. Fascism has been institutionalized in Turkey, but our people have been engaged in a struggle against it. They saw the reality of the Turkish state in depth. In the 2013–2014 period, an understanding that the issue could be solved in an easy way permeated society, and some such misconceptions emerged. The attacks since then have revealed the reality and the current mentality of the Turkish state. In this respect, the fact that we have survived and grown despite all the attacks in this ten-year period proves that we will achieve great success in the future. Those who are able to resist such attacks are able to achieve great success. Those who fail to achieve results in the face of such great attacks eventually collapse. At the moment, in fact, it is the Turkish state that has not achieved any results with its attacks. We, on the other hand, have resisted all the attacks. This will create important gains for us in the future. It will also be a process in which the Turkish state’s calculations come to naught.

14 July marked the anniversary of the great death fast. As one of those who took part and barely survived this action, what did the 14 July resistance contribute to today’s struggle?

First of all, I commemorate with gratitude and respect all the prison martyrs and all the martyrs of the revolution in general, by commemorating Hayri, Kemal, Akif and Ali, the martyrs of July 14. I also commemorate with gratitude and respect our 33 people who were massacred in Zap and Salih Kandal, one of our first cadres who was martyred in 1979, with gratitude and respect. I also commemorate with gratitude and respect the 33 people who were massacred on July 20, 2015. The struggle of these socialist young people will live on in our struggle. We will keep their memory alive in a free Kurdistan, a democratic Turkey, and a democratic Middle East.

The resistance of July 14 is, of course, an important resistance in our history. Comrade Duran Kalkan asked these questions in his latest interview: What would have happened without this resistance? Which negative developments would have occurred? He later answered his questions and pointed out that July 14th should always be evaluated with these questions in mind. It is very crucial to evaluate it in this way. On July 14th, persecution and torture were widespread in Kurdistan. Our movement had retreated from the country after suffering a heavy blow. Rêber Apo was trying to recover the movement. There were more than a hundred confessors in the prisons. Esat Oktay was bragging that he would make everyone confess. So much so that he was saying that he would make those in prison unable to come out. In such an environment, and during such a difficult period for the people of Kurdistan, and for our struggle, the realization of the July 14th resistance reversed many things. While the enemy wanted to paralyze us, the July 14 resistance reversed this from within the prison. It made a great contribution to the struggle of the movement, and increased the belief of our people in the freedom and independence of Kurdistan. This was very significant.

July 14 contributed a lot to the struggle of the Kurdish people. It was necessary for the Kurdish people. There was a reality in which the Kurdish people was cornered; they were unable to fight the oppression, and they were frightened and intimidated. July 14th was a response to all this. July 14th played a decisive role in the creation of a new Kurdish identity, a new Kurdish society, a new understanding of struggle, and a new philosophy of life. The most important thing for a society is to have a proper philosophy of life and struggle. The standards of life must be high. Only in this way can a people be free, democratized, have their own country, and have their own identity. In this respect, the greatest result of the July 14 resistance is that it created a philosophy of life and struggle that will last for many years, decades, or maybe even centuries. It has put a new philosophy of life and struggle in front of Kurdish society. This is it, what makes it so significant.

This is actually Rêber Apo’s philosophy of life and struggle. From the very first day, Rêber Apo tried to instill this philosophy of struggle in the group that gathered around him, the PKK. All his discourses, all his life, and all his evaluations were directed towards this. Those who launched the July 14th resistance have lived through a very concrete example of this. With their own lives, reality, and stance, they have revealed what this philosophy of life and struggle is, and they have created a very important turning point in Kurdish history. This is very important. Kemal once said, “I love life enough to die for it.” He said, “I don’t accept a life that is not worth dying for, as life.” If there is to be a life, it must be worth dying for. One must put one’s existence on the line for such a life. Kemal put his life on the line and struggled to create a life to die for. Kemal had a very high love of life. To express that you love life so much that you would die for it is the highest form of contentment, love, and enthusiasm.

It is very important to give meaning to life, to this understanding of life within the PKK, and to show the Kurdish people that there is a life worth living. This is a great achievement. They have shown that even in the most difficult conditions, one can fight and win. This is very important. Especially in a geography and environment like Kurdistan, where the struggle is very difficult, putting forward such a philosophy of life is a great achievement for the people of Kurdistan and for Kurdish history. These achievements will lead us to victory. Based on these achievements, we will achieve the freedom of the Kurdish people. In this respect, while evaluating the July 14th death fast, it is necessary to understand, explain, and comprehend this philosophy of life and struggle well. When the July 14th resistors’ philosophy of life and struggle is explained and comprehended, when it becomes the spirit and thought of society, the spirit and thought of the youth and women, no one can stop the struggle of those people. That struggle will, without a doubt, achieve success. If the struggle has been continuing uninterruptedly for 50 years, 40 years since July 14th, if it has been standing despite all kinds of attacks, this is precisely due to the resistance of July 14th and the philosophy of life and struggle.

On the occasion of July 14, of course, many evaluations can be made. Many aspects of July 14 can be put forward. And it has indeed had many different impacts on today’s struggle. This needs to be emphasized and well understood. If this is not understood, other evaluations of this struggle will not gain depth; they will be temporary. For example, Hayri requested that the word “indebted” be written on his tombstone. And this is from a person who gave everything for this country and for these people. Hayri’s patriotism was very deep. He was a friend of ours who lived the deepest form of Kurdish patriotism. It was that patriotism, that deep patriotic passion, that led Hayri to take such action.