Aristos Michaelides
The head of Germany’s intelligence and internal security service, Thomas Haldenweg, said the other day that the jihadist arm of the Islamic State jihadist group in Afghanistan has been of increasing concern to the agency recently. “The strengthening of this organization is escalating the threat to Germany,” he said. The Islamic State – Khorasan Province, although at war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, is at the same time keeping its eyes “on the direction of Europe” and is seeking to launch attacks against “infidels in the West”.
Scary stuff! The jihadist terrorists will again launch attacks in European cities. The terror that Europeans experienced a few years earlier may well return. But, especially the German services, can they distinguish the real terrorists from those who serve their political purposes?
By what logic, for example, do they put ISIS terrorists in the same position as the Kurds? Because it is the same (German) agencies that are currently demanding that Cyprus hand over the Kurdish intellectual political refugee Kenan Ayas as a terrorist. Just as they demanded a few years ago that Cherkez Korkmaz be handed over to them.
Why? Because they made speeches in cultural associations and elsewhere about Kurdistan, about minorities, about human rights. The difference is visible. But it is covered up under the “good relations” that Germany wants to have with Turkey. And innocent people, who are fighting peacefully for their people, are paying the price.
The Kurds have never acted with guns and bombs in countries that host them. They have never carried out blind suicide attacks in European cities. Neither in Germany nor elsewhere. They only do peaceful events to inform Europeans about the Kurdistan struggle and to preserve their traditions in exile. And yet, they are treated like ISIS jihadists. As dangerous terrorists.
This is how Kenan Ayas is being dragged through the Cypriot courts these days, with Germany demanding that he be handed over to it so that it can in turn send him to the Turkish dungeons. But if Germany is concerned about jihadists, it must first recognize who the really dangerous terrorists are and stop pandering to terrorist Turkey and its genocide against the Kurdish people. Because, they forgot very quickly, like the Americans, that it is the Kurds who fought as their allies against ISIS in Syria. They had 13,000 Kurds killed in the battles with the Islamic State. While Erdogan’s Turkey was accused of collaborating with and strengthening it. And instead of being helped, the Kurds were not only abandoned but persecuted as terrorists.
So, if Germany and other European countries continue to consider the Kurdistan Workers’ Party as a terrorist organization, because Turkey wants it to be, and continue to persecute its members on behalf of Turkey, what will they do if they drive the Kurds in the diaspora to despair and start terrorist attacks in their cities? If they persecute them as terrorists, what will they do if they abandon their political struggle and become real terrorists too?