If you want to get into NATO, you have to be anti-Kurd like it

Commentary by Remezan Mendayî on the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO.

Never has a political development revealed the true and anti-Kurdish character of NATO as explicitly as the diplomatic process of the last five weeks since the two Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Finland, applied for membership in the transatlantic alliance. With its veto, Turkey closed the door to the security alliance and made a policy directed against the Kurds and the democratization of the Middle East in the Turkish sense, the key with which Sweden and Finland, after committing themselves to precisely this political stance, can then enter NATO. According to Turkey's demand, the two countries must adopt the character, standards and practices of the alliance if they want to become part of it.

For example, like Great Britain, they must align their policies in the Middle East to prevent Kurdish self-determination, because geostrategic interests such as the appropriation of resources there, as has been made possible since the end of World War I, would then be in jeopardy. They must also, like Germany, persecute Kurdish people and deny them rights to which they are entitled if they engage in political activity, deport them to Turkey despite the risk of torture and death; suppress their organizations, symbols and organizing; confiscate tons of cultural products of a culture that is already under threat, etc. Like France, they must undermine, if necessary and at Turkey's request, the exposure of the murders of Kurdish women politicians by the Turkish secret service on European soil. Like Denmark, they must "do the trick" against Kurds and for Turkey, e.g. ban a Kurdish TV station in the tradition of the historically first Kurdish broadcast ( MED-TV) in exchange for the post of NATO Secretary General for the Dane, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Swedish and Finnish politicians, like Jens Stoltenberg, have to twist the facts and claim that Turkey has suffered the most with regard to the terror of the Islamic State.

They have to do this despite the knowledge that the Turkish AKP/MHP government around Erdogan, in alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Nusra or other Islamist groups in the Middle East, aims at a theocratic fascism. That the Kurds have stopped the Islamic State is something all NATO countries must treat ambiguously. Yes, to be sure, the Kurds have prevented the Islamic State from becoming a powerful state and have instead joined with other population groups to build a feminist popular democracy. Yes, indeed, with that the Kurds have prevented further terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere and thus saved the safety and lives of people. But Sweden and Finland must regard Turkey at this point as an instance for the control and guidance of Islamism and prevention of democracy in the Middle East, because, from NATO's view, applies rather a controllable Islamist danger, than an uncontrollable people's democracy and sovereignty of a geopolitically important and at natural resources, one thinks of gas and oil deposits, rich region!

With that background, Finland and Sweden must always express understanding for Turkey's "security concerns," even if it is Turkey that is waging war on the security of the people on its own and foreign territory; even if by "security concerns" is meant, in principle, the perpetuation of the Turkist-fascist character of ethnically and religiously diverse Turkey.

In short, like all NATO countries together, Sweden and Finland must sell weapons and weapons technology to Turkey so that they can then be used by it against the Kurds. In order to keep up the legal appearance and to "legitimize" Turkey's crimes and terror against the Kurds in their own state and beyond, Sweden and Finland, like all other NATO countries, must label the Kurds and Kurdish organizations as "terrorists" and isolate them as such. Because this is the standard and the basis. If this point is reached, then they don't (!) have to do anything, let alone say anything, if Turkey commits war crimes against the Kurds with chemical weapons or armed drones, mistreats the nature of Kurdistan, forcibly administers Kurdish cities or locks up masses of Kurdish politicians and politically active people in prisons without legal basis; persecutes Kurdish identity, language, history, culture or media in one way or another. They have to live with this. Kurds as well as Swedes and Finns.

All these and other similar practices must be followed by the states of Sweden and Finland, although - or perhaps "because" - the Kurds are fighting for democracy, equal rights for men and women as well as ethnic and religious groups, for human rights and freedom in Kurdistan and the Middle East. It may seem paradoxical now, because Sweden and Finland stand for these values like no other countries, since they are considered model countries of Western democracy and human rights standards. But they must not worry, because the terror stamp serves just for the possibility and veiling of this paradox!

This is the meaning of the terror stigma of the Kurds, this is the practice and the policy of Western-European states since the end of the First World War, since the existence of NATO towards the Kurdish people. This is the framing of the memorandum between Turkey, Sweden and Finland, the content of this memorandum in another language and, in other words.