Page 150 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

that is just what is happening. Certain naïve Westerners who describe
the PKK terror in Turkey as "a Kurdish movement undergoing a crisis
of identity" are immediately taken in by this talk of democracy and
entirely forget the reality of the terror in Turkey instantly under the

influence of that spell. The PKK is making masterly use of this sensi-
tivity of the Western world.
The organization that has begun repeating the word democracy

so often also changed its name to Kongra-Gel as of November 2003 for
all these reasons and described its subsequent objective as one of
"building a democratic, ecological society in which democracy directly
prevails, without seeking to found a separate state, for the resolution
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of the Kurdish problem". As a manifestation of that, the objective has
moved from an independent Kurdistan to cantons, and from cantons
to talk of democratic autonomy and now a Kurdistan within the terri-

tory of the Republic of Turkey is being discussed.
The fact is, however, that the aim here has never been democracy
or democratic autonomy within a democratic country: The objective is

to use democracy to get the inside track. It is to use local administra-

148 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK