Nejmaddin Baban

By recalling a saying, we start a discussion of society and its intellectuals. When the French student movement was in its first steps, student demonstrations and street protests annoyed the state. Along with students, great French writers and intellectuals were at the forefront of protests and demonstrations. Among the figures mentioned are several authors and philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, and Simon De Beauvoir.

The commander-in-chief of the French armed forces, or as some say, the president of France at the time, accompanied by field commanders, entered Paris to quell the protests and to observe the riots. The field commander sees that the students' actions are more effective and intense than ever. So, he told the commander of the French armed forces: If you let us, we will shoot and kill them.

The commander-in-chief replies: Whom do you want to shoot at? They are "all France." See who is ahead of them. Sartre, De Beauvoir, Foucault, etc. are marching in front of the demonstrators. Whether real or symbolic, this is a great truth. French intellectuals and authors have been compared to France itself by the commander-in-chief. Attacking them was considered an assault on France.

Here we must ask what role these writers and intellectuals have played in French society and their influence on youth and students, whom the armed forces recognized as France itself and did not dare to attack them.

We all know the level of those authors in the world, but apart from that level, how they appeared among their own people and what decisive role they played. How they have become the trust of the opposition and the fear of a stable position. We may be able to make many assumptions, but of course, we can say that beyond the assumptions, what is obvious and must be said in the language of ordinary people is that the intellectuals were not only some authors in their own

corners; they were not a group that had crept into their private rooms, ignoring the world and what was in it, and caring about nothing but their own fame and work. These authors were neither sectarian nor narrow-minded. They were neither trying to build their own private sector nor fool society. They were the troubled souls of that society. They were people who opposed the unfavorable and failed regime, but even after independence they did not become a burden on the shoulders of the revolutionaries and did not want to separate themselves from society by getting involved in corruption, power, and even institutions and the press. They gave knowledge and information to society and acted through their thoughts, knowledge, and discourse. They did not come to empty their people of knowledge. Instead, they built knowledge. In thought and criticism, they innovated. They talked about the system of power, the competition between science and power, the ethnology of power, existential human beings, women, and the second gender. They wrote for these phenomena and acted on them; they didn’t deceive their people by plagiarism and copying their preceding philosophers and authors.  They did not shout out slogans and did what they believed in. They took a stand against all anti-freedom, repressive, and inhuman forces. Their thoughts and pens served their humanity and the world. Therefore, they were the pride of history and their own people.

How about the intellectuals of the city of culture (Suleimani) in the past twenty years? I am not raising this issue to distinguish this beloved and unique city. Instead, I am talking about it because, in the past few years, there have been some inappropriate events that do not suit the city’s glorious history, and I want to see the role of those authors and intellectuals of the city who were constantly opposing but now are silent. I do not mean those poets and authors who have been marginalized by the cultural mafia and have been deliberately ignored. They are examples of loyal people, language experts, and artists of Suleimani. I will mention many names in other writings but will not mention them now.

In modern Kurdish history, Suleimani has always been a leading city and one of the rare cities in the Middle East that can be said to have been first of all secular. The relationship of the people, intellectuals, educated people, women, and even religious scholars with religion has not been a fundamentalist. We can name dozens of intellectuals and poets of the city who did not think of the "other world" and thought of "this world". The people were essentially secular,

which has made Suleimani a city that is a forum for thought, culture, development, and freedom. Every Kurdish individual knows that the fire that was opened a hundred years ago by people like Piramerd, Yara Hill, and the site of Piramerd's Newroz fire were not only a symbol of a simple national occasion. These phenomena marked a stand against a thousand-year-old tradition of gathering and organizing people. Organizing the people towards "this world" and "secular", enjoying world life, developing customary life, and the development of society, and so on.

The history of the past century of culture, from the publishing house and newspaper of Piramerd to Galawezh, the existence of different musical and theatrical groups, famous singers, painters, sculptors, etc., all confirm this fact. Later, the formation of leftist and social democratic political forces revived Suleimani and made it modern and updated.

However, in the past two decades, especially after a group of authors and intellectuals became allies of the religious extremist forces, the fact that some of the intellectuals and writers of Suleimani and those who once considered themselves examples of intellectual radicals got dominated by the radical political-religious forces. The secular and social democrats gradually prepared themselves for other bitter events, the latest example of which is the attack on women in Suleimani, who are insulted and dishonored for no reason and only because they are women. The question is, from which sources and perspectives should the reaction, guidance, and analysis of the so-called intellectuals of the city be seen? The authors whose voices have not reached anywhere and who have not been given a chance by this group are different. Because they have long subjugated most of the centers and bases in a totalitarian manner.

Another question is how come among neighboring nations such as Arabs, Persians, and Turks if a stealthy phenomenon becomes common in society, the authors and intellectuals of those nations take a stand and speak out promptly. How is it that in the past ten years, hundreds of tragic events have occurred for Kurds in all parts of the country and the authors and intellectuals have not had a reaction? In the past few years, even Persian authors have come to defend the

Kurds. For instance, in Zhina's Revolution in Rojhelat, dozens of Persian and European authors wrote articles. They expressed their sympathy and awareness of the situation, but these authors did not write anything as if nothing had happened. Where are the attitudes and writings of these authors? If East Kurdistan is beyond their taste and ability to interpret, what about the Kurdistan Region? If they do not consider the whole Kurdistan region their own, what about Suleimani, the beloved city and the real capital of culture? That Suleimani is their hometown.

Kurdish Sartre and Foucault do not appear on the streets of Suleimani. I don't know, why?