Didim Today
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She was among the core that founded the PKK with Abdullah Ocalan What do the corpses of three Kurdish women activists of the PKK found killed with silenced weapons at the Kurdish In‐ formation Center of Paris in the early hours of Jan. 10 tell us? e keys to an answer are actually in the question above. e identities of the victims re‐ veal important points. Sakine Cansiz, said to be above 55 years of age, was an important figure inside the PKK. She was among the core that founded the PKK with Abdullah Ocalan. As such, she had a substantial and emblematic posi‐ tion in the history of the Kurdish move‐ ment. We are told that she spent 10 years in the Diyarbakir Prison, notorious for torture and ill treatment of Kurdish pris‐ oners, following the 1980 military coup and that she had become one of the sym‐ bols of resistance in prison. Sakine Can‐ siz was a prominent name among politi‐ cized Kurdish women. With all her par‐ ticulars and background, she won’t be simply forgotten by Kurdish nationalists. e second person killed, Fidan Dogan, 31, was the representative in France of the National Kurdistan Congress, which also made her a valuable target. e third victim was a younger woman, ac‐ tivist Leyla Soylemez, 24. Comments by French President Francois
Hollande, carried by the Turkish press, offer clues on the extent of the political activities of the victims: “is disastrous incident has directly affected three per‐ sons, one of whom I knew personally, as she was meeting with us regularly. Many
politicians and I knew her.” e murder of these persons is a heavy trauma for the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Kurdish public opinion. Ad‐ verse consequences should be expected. e timing of the murders also offers significant clues. e murders took place at a time of preliminary contacts be‐ tween Turkish state officials and the PKK’s founding leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life senence in prison. e Turkish side had described these
talks as intending to persuade the PKK give up its arms. Many observers, including the spokes‐ men for the Kurdish movement, believe that these contacts with Ocalan at a spe‐ cial prison on the Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara have not yet been ele‐ vated to a systematic peace-negotiations process seeking to end the Kurdish issue between the Turkish government and the PKK. But there was hope that such a process could start soon. at is why the Paris murders serve the interests of actors who would like to de‐ stroy the process even before it starts. And there are powerful actors who don’t want Turkey to reconcile with its own Kurds for the time being and whose in‐ terests could be harmed by such a peace. e technique of the murders speaks volumes as well. Only professionals can commit perfect murders. e office door had coded entry system, but it was opened without force. is tells us that the victims probably knew the killers, or the killers want us to think that. e near consensus in Turkey is that the killers wanted to destroy a peace process. If it is a conspiracy against peace, and it is, then we have to look for answers to two ques‐ tions: Who would want to block peace?
And who among them would have ade‐ quate intelligence and operational capa‐ bility to carry out such a perfect murder in Paris? Let’s start with the “Turkish-agents” hy‐ pothesis, the immediate “usual suspect” of Kurdish public opinion in Turkey and in the Diaspora. For the culprites to be agents working for the Turkish govern‐ ment is a most absurd allegation. Why would a government that wants the PKK to give up arms want to block the pro‐ cess with its invisible hands? And why would it endanger its very valuable Turk‐ ish-French relations by committing mur‐ ders on French soil? Unless they are to‐ tally moronic, this is unthinkable. ere is also suspicion of a “deep Turkish state,” which also out of place. In the Turkish political lexicon, the “deep state” is an illegal, unaccountable phenomenon that uses state facilities and commits crimes for the so-called “high interests” of the state. We knew that Turkey’s for‐ mer military/bureaucratic tutelage regime was opposed to a political settle‐ ment of the Kurdish issue. e “deep state’” was an adjunct of this regime. e AKP rule eliminated this tutelage regime and all the institutions that the “deep state” relied on either came under gov‐ ernment control or were eradicated.