Articles About Terrorist Activities

Mike Hancock MP

There is nothing romantic about terrorism, and nothing nice about terrorists. They are evil people who commit evil acts. Although they claim to be fighting for human rights, every time they attack, their attacks take away the human rights of, in some instances, the very people whom they claim to represent. The uselessness of such action must be seen to be believed, and, all of us here should enthusiastically support the prevention of its continuation.

The Iraqi Government has fallen well short of the mark in terms of delivering a response to terrorist-based activities which then spill into another country. That also applies to the Kurdish Regional Government and the Coalition forces. If the authorities are ever to secure law and order in and establish principles of justice for the people, they cannot ignore what is happening on their northern border with Turkey. They cannot allow terrorist camps to be established in the first place, and they certainly cannot allow them to continue in operation. It is not acceptable for them not just to sustain the terrorists themselves, but to allow them to plan and carry out atrocities across the border.

Not so long ago, the only country in the region that opened its borders to take in Kurdish people from Iraq when they were being oppressed by Saddam was Turkey. It opened them without reservation, and nearly 100 000 people fled from persecution in Iraq. That was not the action of a country that sought to punish people or keep them out but that of a country that was prepared to do what it had to do, in humanitarian terms, to enable people to flee from persecution.

What should Turkey do in response to the situation that it has faced? No reasonable government could allow someone to attack it continuously, biting at the very heart of its democracy and trying to disrupt whatever initiatives are being put together by the Turkish Government and the Kurdish people in Turkey to bring together those communities. Those acts are not about delivering a free Kurdish state but about disrupting the ongoing attempt to integrate communities.

There are many Kurds who serve in the ruling party of the Turkish Government. A significant number are members of the parliament. It is probably equivalent to the number of Scots who serve in the British Parliament, and we do not find that objectionable: We are proud that members of our parliament come from all four corners of the United Kingdom. Ours is not a government of Englishmen and Englishwomen, but a government of British people, citizens of the United Kingdom. Turkey and its ruling party are rightly proud of their ability to establish such a large cohort of Kurds in their political organisation, and they are now in government, running the country.

We must give credit to Turkey for what it has already achieved. We would be foolish to deny those in Turkey the right to protect its citizens on the very border of their country, which is adjacent to a state in which the normal rule of law and order does not prevail. How can it prevail when hostilities exist such as those that continue in Iraq, along with the disorganisation of government systems?

We should urge Turkey to be proportionate in dealing with it. “Proportionate” is the fashionable word now, is it not? The Russians were not proportionate in their response to Georgia, and we now ask Turkey to be proportionate in its response to attacks from northern Iraq. Perhaps six months from now another word will be the political flavour of the month, but “proportionate” does seem to be the right word in this instance.

We often forget that minority communities are not that eager to integrate themselves. They are not that eager to conform to the rules and laws of the country in which they reside. We are all too easily led into the trap of believing that the romantic campaigners for the rights of minorities need not have a responsibility to themselves and the country in which they live. I urge the Kurdish population to recognise that there cannot be a one-way dialogue; there has to be give and take on both sides. The Kurdish population has to recognise that living in a civilised society means playing by the rules of the game, which means not hunting down innocent people and killing them, not bombing property and not trying to break up and disrupt society.

To make a society work, we need cohesion to bring it together. In most instances, that is provided by the rule of law, and people believe in fairness. I believe that Turkey’s Government is working very hard to try to deliver that message to the whole nation, and not just to those who support the Government.

Based on a speech delivered by Mike Hancock MP on 3th December 2008 in Paris on the 55th Plenary Session of the Assembly of Western European Union.

Source: ukdf.blogspot.com/2008/12/reaction-to-terrorist-activities-on.html