b- The February 15 Conspiracy Can Be Transformed into Lasting Peace and Democracy for the Peoples

When we interpret the February 15 conspiracy from a historical perspective, important features emerge:

1- The conspiracy can be seen to have taken place, in general, along the East-West line of conflict. They regard me as a point of vulnerability that weakens Anatolia and Turkey. As the West's spoiled child and outermost outpost, Greek politics has always wanted to see me in an unprincipled position that does nothing but cause harm. Conversely, the moment it saw that its relationship with me would harm it, it did not hesitate to throw me into the fire. But its role in the latest conspiracy is essentially that of treacherous collaboration that exploits friendship. It is not itself the planner and executor; it is more a subcontractor. It is quite clear that, in return for this subcontracting, it expected future concessions over Cyprus and the Aegean. Subsequent developments have made this point abundantly clear. President Clinton's special envoy, Blindken, told the press that it was President Clinton himself who gave the order to hand me over. Explaining this in terms of a stance against terrorism would be a narrow approach. It is certain that Israel is behind it. Its connection with the promise made to Turkey by the extreme, pro-war wing of the Israeli right is strong. Israel's prime minister at the time was Benyamin Netanyahu, leader of Likud in the right-wing bloc. Israel is the principal actor in carrying out the conspiracy in order to keep Turkey on its side in the strategic balance of the Middle East; but it is not alone. Nor do I think there is a connection with Israel's left-wing democrats, with the Shimon Peres line. It must not be forgotten that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is also linked to the extreme right. When preparations for the conspiracy intensified, Clinton was rendered ineffective through the Monica blackmail and was in no position to refuse anything the Israel lobby demanded. With blackmail in the hands of both his wife Hillary and Monica, it became possible to secure many presidential decisions. Here a temporary cooperation between Israeli and Greek strategy concerning Turkey emerges. Clinton coordinates it. The foundations of this coordination were laid in London, and the calculation of isolating me and bringing the Kurds and the PKK under their control is very strong. My position of leadership shakes the traditional Western policy toward the Kurds. The essence of the affair rests on this reality. Europe therefore considered my elimination to be in its interests. For the Kurdish policy it has pursued for a long time is once again being frustrated because of me. A more general feature that unites them is their inability to understand Eastern culture as embodied in my person.

2- This constituted the psychological and cultural justification for handing me over. The fact that Western culture did not have a structure capable of assimilating me contributed to my being seen as a personality who had to be excluded. Although material economic interests were decisive in this, the cultural basis cannot be disregarded either. The West's posturing about supposedly not wanting to produce another Lenin or Khomeini played a role. It became quite clear that they were not at all tolerant toward someone who was neither a collaborator with nor an imitator of their culture, who did not demean himself and accept them as superior. They maintained the line dividing the civilized from the barbarian in this affair. It was evident that they had observed my personality for a long time. I found myself in an atmosphere in which they seemed to have decided long before that I was at odds with their mentality. This atmosphere was a deliberately created situation.

3- The Kurdish policy of European capitalism over the past two hundred years has essentially been maintained. At the foundation of this policy lies the use of the Kurds as an instrument of threat to make the Turks in particular, as well as Iran and the Arabs, dependent on it. I was pressing for a final solution to the Kurdish question, whether through war or peace. They, however, took as their basis keeping this question permanently in their hands as a bargaining chip. Having this weapon taken from them was not at all in their interests. They did not want to stop treating it as one of the dirtiest remnants of traditional colonial policy. A strategically resolved Kurdish question was, for them, a matter whose time had not yet come. Their position of keeping the Kurdish card in reserve until they had fully settled their accounts with Iran, Iraq and Turkey was plainly evident. This is just like the attitude of certain circles in Turkey that tie their interests to the question's remaining unresolved; from the Kurdish perspective, it is a policy of "neither die nor live." It is a savage approach: supporting them just enough to prevent them from dying, keeping them on the edge of the abyss so that they cannot live. Had they given a little support, extremely positive conditions could have arisen on a sound basis. For example, had they persistently shown the Kurds the same approach they show today in Kosovo and Macedonia, the problems would long since have been on the road to resolution. A similar situation applies to Israel and the Arabs, and to Russia and the Chechens. Their interests lie in keeping the problems going over the long term. But when the matter concerns Europe's interior or its immediate surroundings, they can act swiftly and intensively and develop solutions. Since my situation, in the circumstances of the time, did not make such a solution compatible with their interests, my exclusion becomes something they regard as normal.

4- Eliminating the Kurdish Freedom Movement and its Leadership is a clear objective in handing me over. Through this elimination, they sought to make the relationships maintained for years with Kurdish collaborators functional once more. Supposedly, a liberal-democratic Kurdish leadership would be created, and the Kurdish elements each state had prepared for itself would create various organizations in the ensuing vacuum. Germany takes the lead in this. Creating pro-German Turkish, Kurdish, Arab and Iranian groups is an old Middle East policy, and this policy has been operational since Enver Pasha. While the Iraqi Kurds have become old hands at this policy, in recent times they have sought to take further steps in Turkey as well. Growing strong under the protection of foreign powers has become a way of making a living.

The failure to eliminate the Kurdish Freedom Movement will lead them to concentrate once more on efforts to eliminate and fragment it, or else they will disperse and disappear. They will also try to exploit the developing conditions for peace, limited though they may be; the freedom movement's inability to create a free civil society will increase these attempts at exploitation. It is therefore of great importance to be alert both to reactionary organizations in the old religious-order style and to collaborationist sham civil society organizations, and not to give them the opportunity to deceive the people.

5- Devoting the İmralı process to reviving peace within the sister cultures of Anatolia and Mesopotamia is harder than war, but its results are more revolutionary and productive. A peace based on the free use of cultural assets will also be the most fitting response to the Renaissance of Anatolia and Mesopotamia and to the revolutionary essence of the Republic of Turkey. Taking into account the principle that every war has its peace, efforts toward the peace most suited to the peoples' interests are extremely necessary and important. Those who cannot bring peace to their wars cannot escape being used by other powers, and against their own interests at that.

Exploring peace and developing it, even to a limited extent, never means wasting time on lost causes or empty pursuits. Those who cannot develop realistic paths to peace for their wars cannot escape having their efforts nullified in the end, even if they win militarily. A miscalculation regarding peace renders even the most important military gains meaningless. Leaders who are responsible to their people and their soldiers are people who make it their aim to study the problems of peace at least as much as military problems and to find realistic solutions. Leaders and commanders who cannot accomplish this cannot escape defeat.

When one looks at who is behind the attitudes toward peace efforts in the İmralı process, it will be seen that those who continually turn corruption, marginality, factionalism and hostility into an art play a role. For a meaningful and serious peace eliminates the sham chaos that neither serves society nor elevates the individual, prevents unlawful situations, and makes the order's legitimate way of earning a living and living prevail. Those whose abilities and way of life are not compatible with this, and who do not change in time, neither understand nor want peace. Nor do they know the suffering and difficulties of war. Nevertheless, the seriousness of the process must be recognized. Whether or not it achieves complete success, this process is important. Even a war that might develop afterward will be different from the previous one. The longest-lasting crisis in the history of the Republic of Turkey, which it is now experiencing, is a consequence of the past war. Unless this is properly acknowledged and transformed into a just peace, the crisis will not disappear. For there is no desire to diagnose the cause of the crisis correctly. The treatment, then, will not be correct either. Turkey is living through this contradiction in the 2000s. The crisis can be eliminated either through a new and bloodier war or through a just and honorable peace. Otherwise, it cannot escape the social nightmare experienced daily.

6- The İmralı process is a period of third birth for the Kurdish people and, institutionally, for me. The first period encompasses birth from the mother under the conditions of an agricultural village society at odds with the twentieth century, and the time up to entry into the officially modeled society. This period passed amid the great significance and inadequacies of a process of rupture whose two sides were separated by fifteen thousand years of history. The web of life before and after that fifteen-thousand-year divide cannot be unraveled. This lack of resolution led to social struggle within the family and the village. I was a village rebel. This rebellion continued until the transition to official society. Later, a second process of creation was added to this one, beginning with primary school and continuing through various stages up to revolt against the oligarchic republic. Resembling Don Quixote's attack on a windmill, this period brought the problems to light and aggravated them further. Capitalist features were added to the contradictions of Neolithic and feudal society. Since there was no revolutionary approach, an atmosphere of turmoil prevailed. The rebellion that was resorted to could not resolve even the reactionary elements within itself. After producing effects on a regional and worldwide scale, this phase of rebellion, which lasted about twenty years, turned into the İmralı process as a result of the impasses it encountered.

The conditions of İmralı signify a third birth not only for the individual but also for the republic and the people. The second birth expressed being born and cleansed through violence and war. In accordance with the law of the existence and unity of opposites, valid in every phenomenon in nature and society, the period of opposition to the oligarchic republic, which has lasted sufficiently long on the basis of violence, will give way to the secular and democratic republic to be realized through democratization. Just as development cannot be achieved without contradictions, perpetually grappling with meaningless contradictions that remain unresolved, far from bringing development, can produce only devastation, destruction and crises. Because Turkey has been slow to understand its contradictions adequately and resolve them in time, it has naturally entered a process of crisis and cannot find a way out.

The process compels all forces to undergo a new birth and take shape anew. Every sphere, from the state to the economy, from politics to law, from morality to art, is shaken, distressed and seeking a solution amid the crisis. My İmralı process also means setting this reality in motion. Just as the previous process acquired meaning as the phenomenon of "me and war," this new process means the phenomenon of "me and peace." A fundamental part of my institutional existence is Kurdish freedom consciousness and will. This consciousness and will, tested through war, are now passing through a peace process. While the war process formulated itself as anti-feudal and opposed to the oligarchic republic, the peace process expresses itself as renewing itself in substance and form as a "democratic and secular republic." If separation and violence are not desired and are to be excluded entirely from the system, the Kurds must not be forcibly excluded, through denial, from the process of state-building and nation-building that they have experienced alongside the Turks through their labor throughout history. Peace requires politics and law to make room for the Kurds to integrate with the republic by freely living their cultural existence as they wish. A republic based on denying the free Kurdish will is oligarchic, and it is inevitable that it should generate violence and separation. Being open to free unity, that is, democratic accommodation, means living in peace and unity. The failure to put this into practice stems from the fact that the struggle between the oligarchic republic and the democratic republic has not yet been settled. In this sense, the İmralı process symbolically marks a historical phase. This process will either bring forth peace; or, if it does not succeed in this and the oligarchic republic's policies of denial and annihilation continue, it will be followed by a process in which division deepens alongside more intense and extensive violence.

This fundamental reality underlies the crisis that Turkey is experiencing at such depth for the first time in its history. The failure of politics, the sphere of resolution represented by Parliament and the Government, to assess the issue realistically, address it in time and fulfill its responsibilities, its covering up of problems and abandoning them to decay and nonresolution, shows that politics is the source of the crisis, as is also extensively discussed in the press. Politics imagines it will achieve results by dangling the death sentence over me like the sword of Damocles, and it makes its greatest mistake here. This approach condemns Turkey to a system imposed from outside and within, based essentially on a gang of rent-seeking and corruption, and thus to crisis; it inflicts material losses of billions of dollars every year, indeed every month, and morally engulfs this country in profound suffering and hardship. Since the overall toll of fifteen years of war is forty thousand deaths and material losses running into hundreds of billions, what must be done is to address this phenomenon within all its historical, social and international conditions and arrive at a correct definition and solution. Unless this is done, a further escalation of the crisis in its many dimensions is inevitable.

My İmralı process, as an individual and as an institution of leadership, requires the issue to be assessed within this framework. When utilitarian mentalities and mentalities of cheap exploitation prevent this from happening, the approaches of denial, slander and annihilation that are developed, whether they come from official state circles or collaborationist Kurdish circles, impose a period of war that again ends in an impasse. While acting with great sensitivity and understanding to avoid falling into this game, and knowing that a development based on my material and spiritual annihilation at İmralı would mean the annihilation of all Turkish and Kurdish forces of free will, one of the most fundamental conditions for the success of this process is to carry out all strategic and tactical preparations for the war of legitimate defense soundly, as though war were to begin tomorrow, so that the struggle for freedom may conclude in favor of our peoples. This is the historical meaning of İmralı for the state, society, our people, the PKK and myself.

7- The February 15 conspiracy also has a meaning that must be correctly defined from the standpoint of Europe, the United States and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). My detention and arrest, undertaken against the Kurdish will for freedom and decidedly unlawful and contrary to the ECHR, hold the institutions of the United States and the European Union responsible, both legally and politically, more than the Republic of Turkey. For, as I explained comprehensively in my defense, the powers and institutions concerned created this situation through an unlawful stance that violated the European Convention on Human Rights on the basis of a colonialist political understanding. Therefore, in going before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), it is a primary priority to take into account in the proceedings not only the Republic of Turkey's violation of the ECHR, but above all the EU's and the United States' legal and moral responsibilities for their unlawful and immoral acts against the Kurdish will for freedom in my person.

In three important European capitals, nails were driven into the cross on which I would be crucified or the coffin-like cell in which I would be placed (a Kurdish word: being nailed with four nails). Then, through a subtle capitalist game, I was thrown from the hands of African cannibals into the Turkish plane.

The first place where I was crucified was the capital, Athens. With a reactionary culture and a cowardly spirit inspired either by its bewilderment or by its blind vindictiveness, Athens wanted to avenge the loss of its three-thousand-year dominion over Anatolia; it expected a cheap and unprincipled victory from me against Anatolian Turkishness. When it realized that this was hardly possible, as though it owned me, it displayed the historically unparalleled baseness of the betrayal of presenting me to the Turkish Government like a gift package or a sacrificial sheep in exchange for certain concessions in Cyprus and the Aegean, and a dishonor that has no place whatsoever in the book of friendship; as an EU member, it committed a legal offense against the ECHR. Without any counterexcuse being put forward, its great immorality in this affair and its offense before the law are clear. If necessary, this can be proved with numerous witnesses and statements.

The Greek writer Kazantzakis wrote the novel "Christ Recrucified" long ago. But my position is not individual. The act of crucifixion has also been inflicted on millions of free-willed Kurds devoted to their Leadership unto death. The Greeks may consider themselves very cunning ever since the god Zeus. His daughter, the goddess Athena, whom Zeus created from his forehead, can use deceit, taking on the guise of Trojan Hector's brother Deiphobos, to throw Hector into the fire of war and eliminate him. In this way she can open the gate of Anatolia. This reality appears in mythology. But I was caught in this trap while living in the twentieth century, one year before 2000. Had they killed me themselves, even through a conspiracy made to look like an accident, I would not have grieved. It would have happened and ended in accordance with their culture. But how could they dare hand me over to Turkish special warfare teams as a packaged gift, an act with no place in any book of humanity or any moral principle, amid the suffering of nearly thirty thousand martyrs and the tears of the martyrs' mothers, at the most critical moment, when I was not at all prepared and they still hoped for something from me? Apparently, US President Clinton was behind them; he gave the order. (His special adviser Blindken officially announced this to the press.) The Greek Government carried it out by playing with friendship.

At that time Clinton was caught in the Senate's grip as it tried the Monica scandal. His wife Hillary and his lover Monica are two female agents of Jewish origin, both prepared long beforehand and placed inside the White House. Jews say that God gave them this art. While, as related in the section on the Hebrews in the Torah, the prostitute Rahab is praised as the first female agent, Clinton is the latest insolent representative of the cowboy culture of the white man who hunts Native Americans. Implementing the decision to hand me over, which MOSSAD made a condition merely so that he could cheaply escape the Monica scandal he was embroiled in, could not be the Greek Government's duty. Everything was done for the support of the great US President. Otherwise, the immorality and unlawfulness of this conspiracy could not have been risked in any other way.

Israel could not have the right to sacrifice me in order to establish a strategic balance through Turkey. Even our common ancestor, the Prophet Abraham, is the prophet who first abolished human sacrifice from religion. Out of respect for his memory and his religion, MOSSAD should not have undertaken this act of sacrifice. There must be a moral limit to the pursuit of supremacy. At the very least, the Greek Government should not have become an instrument of this dirty game. They should not have agreed among themselves on such intricate games involving Turkey and used a Kurd like me as a living atomic bomb, although they did not believe at all that he could be intelligent. They should have calculated that one day a Kurd, too, might come to his senses and organize his revenge. Even if the probability was one in a thousand, this possibility should have been kept in the calculation. This crime, which in every respect crucifies the spirit of Jesus Christ anew at the center of Orthodox Christianity, should not have been committed so cheaply. They should not have become a contemporary version of Judas Iscariot. Worse still, this grave immorality and guilt should not have been covered up with fraudulent explanations. I will not prolong this too much. The historical and human meaning of the cross prepared in Athens, or of driving the first nail into my coffin, lies within this framework. If honest conduct is to be the basis, both its political and legal aspects must unequivocally be taken into account.

The second nail was driven in Moscow. I was not at all surprised or angry at this. Nor do I find complaining particularly meaningful. I did not consider it likely that the Russians and their Government, who remain indifferent in the most contemptible ways even to their noblest values, had any human or moral concern. In this period the Russians have abundantly proved that there is no value they will not sacrifice for money. As a member of the Council of Europe, Russia is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. Consequently, disregarding my request for political asylum, approved by the Duma, its parliament, by 298 votes to one, and forcibly expelling me from Russia is unlawful. This also concerns the EU and the ECtHR.

The third nail, driven in Rome, Europe's sacred capital, was driven before the Pope's eyes. Although the great man Saint Paul, too, was initially the first Christian killed in Rome, a process worse than death should not have been imposed on me. Europe and Rome claim to represent contemporary civilization. One year before 2000, Rome should not have tried for a second time what was done to Saint Paul. Just like him, I too was coming from Damascus. I was going to relate certain truths about civilization as well as I could put them into words. Why had they become so unwilling to accept them? For sixty-six days they treated me cruelly, as though keeping me in an iron cage, surrounding me on every side with policemen like steel. I was also going to give voice to the existence and demands for freedom of one of history's oldest peoples, whose very name had yet to gain acceptance and whose human rights were not recognized at all. It is clear that this is a right and a democratic demand according to European political and legal values. No respect at all was shown for this right. Everything was done to make me flee. All the psychological functions of crucifixion were performed, and I was shipped off. The ECtHR should examine this aspect of reality, demand an account of why such a situation developed in the capital Rome, which gave the EU its form and spirit, and consider what must be done.

My abduction to Kenya's capital took place entirely through the joint will of Europe and the United States. They assigned the most contemptible role to their spoiled child, the Greek Government. The story is long. I have mentioned part of it. If necessary, I will also give the ECtHR a lengthy oral account, supported by evidence, of this abduction and the handing over at the embassies in Kenya. Having the task of hanging me and carrying the package, the coffin-like cell or the cross performed by the hands of the Kenyan cannibals of Africa whom they have so thoroughly trained is one of the dirtiest acts of the conspiracy. Supposedly, Europe came out perfectly clean; Kenya committed the crime! It is clear that Europe has gained considerable experience in having peoples slaughtered. Here, too, it assigned the simple role of a political executioner. Because they feared public opinion and the law, they partly brought this tactic into play for that reason as well. In other words, dirty deeds never happen in Europe; if they happen anywhere, it is among cannibals!

The role of the United States in Kenya is clear. Indeed, the US President has acknowledged his own role, namely the order to hand me over. In my view, it is certain that Greek Intelligence and the CIA did not conduct this intrigue out of love for Turkey. I have no doubt that they adopted my death at the hands of the Turks as a strategic objective. I believe this was also the British approach. In my view, partly my refusal to display hostility toward the Turks like a crude resistance fighter, and partly the cautious approach of the Turkish General Staff, prevented the bomb they expected from this game from exploding, in a way that, through my person, could have cost tens of thousands of lives. The twenty-first century was prevented from becoming a century of Kurdish-Turkish conflict. But it is clear that this game played against both sides, Turks and Kurds alike, under the mask of friendship is the basest and most dishonorable conspiracy, without parallel in history and worse even than Byzantine intrigues. I believe that both Turks and Kurds must certainly see this aspect of the conspiracy.

Israel played a decisive role in my worldwide isolation and handing over. It regarded my move into the Middle East and my development of a new line in the Kurdish movement as a strategic rival and a danger to itself. Traditionally, when speaking of the Kurdish movement, Israel takes the Iraqi Kurdish collaborationist forces as its basis and, through multifaceted relationships with them, tries to draw all Kurds into a strategic network. My breaking up this network and acting quite independently, as well as continually restricting the collaborators' scope of action and remaining a long time in the Arab sphere, led them to develop a worldwide strategy concerning me. I think I present Israel with a far more undesirable situation than Arafat does. These factors played a fundamental role in their entering a strategic alliance with Turkey concerning me. Although I have no doubt that this strategy belongs to the Israeli right, it has not become clear to what extent it has or has not been adopted by the Shimon Peres line representing the left.

Israel acted against me before October 9, 1998. It knew of and supported the bombing of May 6, 1996. The extent to which Greece was used as a subcontractor is a matter worth investigating. Prime Minister Primakov's expulsion of me from Moscow is definitely connected with Israel and the Jewish lobby. I remember that on the last occasion Ariel Sharon himself came. It was also Israel that pressured Italy through the United States. There is a strong possibility that the force behind the stance defining me as an unwanted man in London and Europe was MOSSAD as well. It was also the Jewish reality that forced the United States to give the order to hand me over. I always liken this attitude of Israel to what they did to Moses in Exodus, perhaps even killing him. I have always wanted the Jewish people also to have a place in a democratic Middle East. I have also felt admiration and respect for Jewish strength in science, art and philosophy. With each passing day they will understand better that they have done themselves great harm through what they did against me. As the Kurds see this aspect of reality, they will awaken further, regain their strength and prove that they can bring about justice.

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