Last Friday evening, I watched intently on Belgian television the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics and the associated demonstrations, as athletes from the participating countries crossed the Seine in their national costumes and waving their national flags assigned to them on boats of various sizes.
While athletes from Israel, where bloodshed continues in the Palestinian territories, were given special protection, Russia, the world’s largest country by area, was excluded from this most important international sport. The event, which began in the 1990s during the Soviet Union’s post-World War II period, was a satirical reenactment of the Cold War, which lasted until its collapse in the 1990s.
The Soviet Union first participated in the Olympic Games in 1952, and went on to take part in 18 Summer and Winter Olympic Games. The Soviet team came in first in the total number of gold medals won in six of the nine Summer Olympics they participated in, and first in the total number of gold medals won seven of the nine Winter Olympics they participated in.
Additionally, the 1980 Summer Olympics were held in Moscow with 80 countries participating.
We know that armament hysteria is raging again in the Western countries, that the Warsaw Pact is a thing of the past after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but NATO has made progress by recruiting the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe. In a new era in which even symbolic states of “neutrality” such as Sweden and Finland have recently become unparalleled monsters of war, many international social, cultural and sporting events, especially the Olympic Games, will continue to fall victim to warlike ambitions. And levies…
Yes, as I sat in front of the TV screen watching the athletes from 54 African countries, 48 European countries, 44 Asian countries, 41 American countries, and 17 Oceanian countries waving their national flags as they passed by in boats of all sizes, I have personally participated in and attended international events throughout my career as a journalist, and the pain I felt watching it on TV came back to me again…
Firstly, the absence of Russia, and the fact that the three great ships specifically assigned to the giants of the Western world, the USA, Great Britain and France, were ignored alphabetically, placed at the end and held consecutively with great pomp, while other great powers such as China, India and Brazil were listed in alphabetical order, made the opening of the 2024 Olympics marked by classic Western colonialism.
But as a child of South-Eastern Europe and the Near East, what truly shocked and revolted me was the sight of the ancient and modern Middle East, athletes from a country with a population of just 10,000 marching past in force. In this river procession, complete with boats, flags and national costumes, the Kurdish people, who have resisted all kinds of oppression and repression to preserve their national language, identity and honor, were completely unrepresented in this international event.
My reaction to the expulsion of the Kurdish people was 25 years ago, in 1999, when Kurds from Turkey, but also Iraq, Syria and Iran, came together to form the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) in the Netherlands, in an article I wrote for Politico.
He noted the similarities between the founding of the African National Congress (ANC) and that of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), just as the ANC under the leadership of Nelson Mandela liberated South Africa from racial discrimination and oppression. I emphasized that this new Kurdish organization also led to the liberation of Greater Kurdistan everywhere, embarking on a mission to rescue its people from captivity, and that anyone who claims to be a democrat or a lover of peace should support this struggle.
Memories from 7 years ago…
I remembered this when I asked Artu Gerček in an article published on September 28, 2017, the first year of his broadcast:
What could be more natural than for one of the oldest and most settled countries in the region to want to break the chains of dependency and join a community of nations with its own flag and its own language?
Yes, in the United Nations, which we call the Community of Nations, we have St. Kitts and Nevis with a population of just 50,000, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino with a population of just 30,000, Palau with a population of just 20. Tuvalu has equal rights as a member state with a population of just 10,000.
These countries, each with populations the size of Greater Kurdistan’s towns and villages, include China and India, the United States, Russia, and Japan, all with populations of over a billion, and Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, and Mexico, all with populations of hundreds of millions. But the Kurdish state, with its total population, including its worldwide diaspora, perhaps reaching 30 to 40 million, remains a colony of these four countries.
No man with a modicum of fairness and sense can remain silent in the face of this shameful injustice unless he has the poison of racism injected into his veins.
Our friend Recep Marashli took to his Facebook page to provide a necessary response to those who, under the pretext of “regional security”, are issuing threat after threat to the independence-seeking Iraqi Kurds.
The gigantic USSR collapsed, disintegrated, giving birth to 10 independent states … As if that wasn’t enough, the Warsaw Pact collapsed, regimes changed … The wall fell, West Germany annexed the East; Czechs and Slovaks were torn away from each other; Yugoslavia disintegrated, giving birth to 7 independent states … World peace and order were not destabilized, its security was not endangered …
But if 5 million Kurds went to the polls to decide their future, it would create instability in the region and upset the world order!…
There are 22 Arab countries. There is no instability or disorder in the Middle East, but if the Kurds, one of the oldest and most settled peoples in the region, had a single state, it would create instability and disrupt world peace.
In fact, the most stable, peaceful and calm region in the world is the Middle East…come and join us!
Dear Mr. Ismail Besikci, in a statement published by the BBC on April 9, 2014, expressed his reaction to the exclusion of Kurds from the 2012 Olympic Games:
For example, in the current 27-member European Union, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus are states with a population of about 500,000. If we look at the Kurds in the Middle East, their population is over 40 million, so why do they not have status? For example, in the 47-member Council of Europe, four states, San Marino, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Andorra, qualify. But the Kurds have no status. When terrorism is mentioned, the Kurds are mentioned. The international order is an anti-Kurdish order.
The last Olympics were held in London in 2012. Despite their large population, the Kurds are missing from the world’s nation states. Between Australia and New Zealand, they have two provinces, Tabal and Vanuatu, one with a population of 10,000 and the other with 15,000. They are members of the United Nations.
Yes, all individuals and institutions in Turkey who claim to support democracy, rights and the law, seeing the sad scenes of yesterday, especially the CHP, which has already seized power in major cities and is striving with the support of the Kurds to become a power throughout the country with its demand for “early elections”, must now decide their attitude to this issue.
All the heads of the main opposition parties, especially the new CHP leader Ozgür Ozer, who has sought to de-escalate tensions with Tayyip Erdogan by saying, “We are the main opposition in Turkey, but we are a Turkish party abroad,” should immediately acknowledge their responsibilities towards the Kurdish state and start a dialogue with the real representatives of the Kurds, based on democracy, peace and human rights.
In particular, mediation between Essat and Erdogan, whose main concern is to end the Kurdish political presence in Rojava, should be stopped immediately.
Turkey’s next general elections will be held on May 7, 2028 at the latest… two months after the 2028 Olympic Games will be held in Los Angeles…
Yes, Kurdistan athletes must also be allowed to take their rightful place in the Olympic nations’ parade, with their national dress and flag.
Who is Dogan Ozguden?
Since 1952, he worked for the Ege Günesi, Saba Postaş, Milliyet and Öncü newspapers in Izmir, and in the 60s was editor-in-chief of the Güce Postaş and Aksam newspapers in Istanbul. From 1967, he published the socialist Anto Magazine together with his wife İncı Tuşavlı, Yaşar Kemal and Fetih Naşi. He was involved in the management of the Journalists’ Union, the Journalists’ Association, the Press Honorary Council and the Türkiye Workers’ Party. He left Turkey after the coup of March 12, 1971, and abroad was one of the founders of the Democratic Resistance Organization, the Info-Turkish News Agency, Güneş Atliyesi and, after the coup of September 12, 1980, the Democratic Organization. He and his wife were stripped of their Turkish citizenship by the Evren military junta in 1982. He has a book in English called Resistance Documents Against the March 12 Regime, Black Book Against the September 12 Regime, two volumes of “Stateless” Journalist in which he talks about his life and struggle in Turkey and in exile, and seven volumes of books called Exile Works in Turkish and French. He has been writing since the founding of Artı Gerçek. (https://www.info-turk.be/ozguden-tugsavul-T.htm)
