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Ibrahim Parlak
Struggle for Freedom Continues
By David Meyers

I’d like to tell you about a few stark moments of beauty and intense shows of resistance and resilience, shared with the family of Ibrahim Parlak and many supporters one cool night in October at a movie theater out in the middle of nowhere.

Still wallowing at the Immigration Detention Center up at the Calhoun County Jail in central Michigan, Kurdish restaurant owner and resistance fighter Ibrahim Parlak wanted his supporters to watch a film together, so that we might better understand the Kurdish struggle in Turkey: “Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends But the Mountains.”

Ibrahim’s local family, including his brother Huseyin, were joined by a sister and niece visiting from Germany and an aunt visiting from Switzerland; all shared the stage just before the movie. And just before the movie Ibrahim called from jail, to thank his many supporters and wish us well.

Kurds are the largest ethnic group on earth without land to call their own. Somewhere over 25 million Kurds are an oppressed minority in not only Turkey, but Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Huseyin related to us some of the ways the Kurds have been denied the most basic human rights in Turkey since the military coup in the1980s, and the formation of the Turkish state long before that. Though Turkey now dons a veneer of democracy in its bid to join the European Union, tens of thousands of political prisoners are still held from that time. 30,000 Kurdish people have been killed, largely with weapons sold to Turkey by the United States.

Huseyin told us that until recently, the Kurdish people in Turkey were forbidden to speak Kurdish, even in their own homes; to speak Kurdish was a crime of “separatism.”

Kurds could not name their children with Kurdish names. Kurdish names for children are allowed now - unless those names include the letters w or x, which because they do not exist in the Turkish alphabet, cannot be used by Kurds in naming their babies.

When asked by an audience member what would happen if Kurdish parents in Turkey named their baby with a name with the letter w or x, Huseyin replied, “You can’t. You just can’t.”

I looked at Ibrahim’s family up on the stage in front of the blank movie screen, a family like so many others who have spread out across the globe in the wake of torture, ethnic cleansing, and cultural, economic, and political repression in what should be their home, their land.

In the soft yet bright light reflected on their faces, I saw not resignation, not despondency, not even fear, though maybe a hint of sadness, at the treatment of their brother here in the United States.

Mostly what I saw was a steely, warm determination in these women who have traveled thousands of miles to help their brother, nephew and uncle gain freedom from the skewed policies of a country in the thralls of corporate and military interests. In the audience, I began to wonder if the movement that has grown up around Ibrahim Parlak is just now getting that same sort of determination, and if so I hope that as this determination matures, it helps to gain not only Ibrahim’s freedom, but feeds into a movement to radically alter the nature of this country’s social and political landscape.

“Good Kurds, Bad Kurds” by journalist Kevin McKiernan, describes “Good Kurds” as those whom the United States government needs as it seeks to dominate dwindling world oil supplies; “Bad Kurds” are those who advocate for the freedom and independence of the Kurdish people, who get in the way of U.S. policies. In the wake of the Gulf War, McKiernan decided to cross the border into Turkey from northern Iraq, where the Kurdish population that had been egged on by George Bush Sr. to rise up against Saddam Hussein was then abandoned, leaving tens of thousands to perish as Hussein re-established power over the area. In Turkey, McKiernan found another large scale-uprising, and another brutal suppression of the Kurdish population, this one conducted by the Turkish government with full backing, support and weaponry provided by the U.S. government.

Clearly Ibrahim Parlak is the “Bad Kurd” of the U.S. government’s warped imagination, and thus it has continued to detain him and attack him with increasingly preposterous charges.

Just after Christmas, immigration judge Elizabeth Hacker issued a 59-page decision, ruling against Ibrahim on all seven issues brought by the government. This includes, most stunningly, denying

Ibrahim protection under the Convention against Torture, an international agreement that says that a government cannot deport someone if they may reasonably face torture if returned to their country of origin. Ibrahim’s lawyers note that much of Hacker’s decision takes language verbatim from the government’s case, a fact they are bringing up in their appeal of the decision.

Throughout this ordeal, Ibrahim Parlak has remained strong and steady regarding the struggle for Kurdish rights within Turkey and internationally. Ibrahim also recognizes that his case may shed light on the cases of thousands of other immigrants wrongly detained and deported in the current climate. Ibrahim’s dedication to stay in this country, the land where his beloved 7-year-old daughter Livia was born and lives, is an act both of courage and of love in this era of cowardice.

For more information, please visit
cafegulistan.com and freeibrahim.com.