Page 120 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

As all these statements show, both Lenin and his follower Öcalan
failed to comprehend the beauty and warm spirit of religion and the
moral values that God speaks of, for which reason they always imag-
ined that the primary solution was to declare war against religion. The
basic method employed by the PKK has therefore always been to pro-
vide a false philosophical education. That philosophical education is
based on dialectical materialism, and along with that, contains an anti-

religious discourse. This form of education is still employed within the
PKK today.

Yet this is a waste of effort in the Southeast. Our people living in
the Southeast of Turkey have fully grasped the warm and loving spirit
of Islam. They are a strong people who embody the Islamic spirit of
peace, affection and altruism to perfection. It is impossible for the people
of the Southeast to adopt any other way of life than Islam or to abide
by such a cold, terrifying and loveless way of life as Marxism. In fact,
the PKK had to admit two very important facts in the early 1990s, when
it began suffering serious losses: 1.) The Kurds are a religious people,

and will therefore never support any irreligious ideology unless they
are compelled to do so and 2.) the way to win the support of the West
in the Middle East, wracked as it is by radicalism, is through talk of
moderate Islam.

Journalist and writer Mehmet Metiner says the following in the
context of this first fact:

I maintain that at that time (the years of its foundation), had the
PKK not followed a socialist-atheist ideological line and had it
not adopted a policy that directly reckons with the Kurds' reli-
gious beliefs and values, there is no doubt that it would have had
the opportunity to attract a far greater number of people... Because

The inhabitants of the Southeast of Turkey are the people of
love with the loftiest moral values. It is impossible for them
to adapt any other lifestyle than Islam and to live by the cold
and loveless spirit of Marxism.

118 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK