Do you know Mahmut Alinak?
If I strolled down a street in Hawler, Kurdistan, and asked people that very question, most would stare at me blankly and say, “Never heard of him.”
One or two might finally venture: “Isn’t he the guy who was locked up in Turkey with people like Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Ahmet Turk and others?”
Yep, that would be a correct answer.
But Mahmut Alinak deserves wider recognition—especially for a recent column he wrote in Rojeva Kurdistan, an online newspaper, entitled, “Freedom Walk.”
His inspiring words vibrated through my heartstrings as if I were listening to Kurdish poet Ehmede Xani recite his old poem, Derde Me, but with a new title and content, Çareki Ji Bo Derde Me—which translates as, a way out of our trouble.
Mahmut Alinak sings the virtues of civil disobedience and calls on readers and friends to join him in a walk from Qers, a city at the top of Kurdistan, to Amed, in its heart.
He then proposes another walk from Amed to Geneva to stage a “Freedom Vigil” in front of the United Nations—urging a “civil solution to the Kurdish Question as well as restoration of basic human rights to all and an immediate amnesty for prisoners of conscience.”
It is an ambitious undertaking and deserves our support.
Unfortunately, nonviolence is not a hot topic among Kurdish politicians and intellectuals.
Perhaps it should be.
It worked amazingly well for Mahatma Gandhi and his disciples, putting an end to the British Raj that had ruled India for centuries.
It revealed its magic to Martin Luther King in America, enabling him and his followers to dismantle a century of solidified segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks.
It may well be the Achilles heel of our adversaries.
Gandhi urged ahimsa, meaning “not injure”—reminiscent of the famed Hippocratic oath for doctors: “Do no harm.”
It is time we Kurds learned this venerable language and confounded our adversaries the way a porcupine bewilders a wolf.
Before you brand me drug-crazed, ask yourself this: How far has all the blood-drenched soil of Kurdistan, thick with the butchered bodies of our finest Kurdish sons and daughters, moved us toward freedom?
Not very far, right?
I believe it is about time we “think outside the box,” as Americans are fond of saying when they are in a bind.
Gandhi said of violence: “The good it does is temporary; the damage it causes is permanent.” He also said, it is the fuel of “evil” the way water is of life.
Mr. Alinak’s peaceful, nonviolent march is a step in that direction—at least in Turkey where 20 million Kurds are trapped and put on a tight leash as if they were a danger to the larger Middle East.
I fully endorse it. If Ankara had not revoked my “Turkish” citizenship, I would have made arrangements to fly to Qers, not just for the first leg of his march to Amed, but on to Geneva.
That said, I fear it may be too early to appeal to the United Nations. Before telling the UN that we are a people apart, we must serve notice to our neighbors, in clear and unequivocal language, that they do not have our consent to be our overlords.
So if there is going to be a march, let it be from one end of Kurdistan to the other.
Gandhi did exactly that in India, dressing and eating like ordinary Indians—showing he was one of them, and would be the first to sacrifice everything, but without injuring anyone that represented the British Raj.
He was interested in growing power within and argued it was purer, superior and longer lasting than the one that grew out of the barrel of a gun.
Indeed, selflessness, fearlessness, truth and love permeated every cell of his tiny body—catapulting him into a giant for freedom.
Einstein said of him, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”
For example, to get Indians ready for self-rule, he and his followers, burned their western clothing at city squares, serving notice to the British that they were a people apart and would not be forced to ape after them by force or blandishments. Thousands of Indians emulated the example, and the cathartic experience acted as a warm-up session for the more decisive battles later that ultimately freed India from the house of bondage.
Dr. King similarly unshackled blacks. His challenge was not independence, but equality before the law. So he organized sit-ins, boycotts, mass arrests and voter registration drives. This successfully dismantled segregation and paved the way for a black man, Barack H. Obama, to be elected president.
The march that Mr. Alinak has proposed could be turned into a listening tour—an exchange of views with ordinary Kurds about the nonviolent ways to divorce the Turks. If I were taking part in it, I would have urged my fellow Kurds to internalize: lênexe, which means, do not strike, but learn, how to “open the lids of joy with the key of suffering,” as Tagore, a contemporary of Gandhi, once memorably put it.
Mr. Alinak, a gentle soul, has already set in motion what it would take to separate the Kurds from the Turks. He doesn’t shake hands with Turks who openly display their racism. That is a good start. I would add not speaking Turkish at all and home schooling for Kurdish children till northern Kurdistan is free of Turkish rule.
As Cesar Chavez, another disciple of civil disobedience, put it, “There is no such thing as defeat in nonviolence.” If applied right, it is a win-win for the oppressed as well as the oppressor.
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