respectful towards religion and has since early times blended and united with Islam, in the name of Turkism, which has the meaning of Europeanism, to those like me who belong to another nation? Yes, although I have friendly and brotherly relations with true Turks, I have in no respect any relation with the Turkism of imitators of Europe like you. How can you propose such a thing to me? Through which law? Perhaps, if you abolish the nationhood of the Kurds, of whom there are millions and who for thousands of years have not forgotten their nationhood and language, and are the true fellow-citizens and companions in jihad of the Turks, and make them forget their language, then perhaps your proposal to those like me who are reckoned to be of a different race would be in accordance with some sort of savage principle. Otherwise it is purely arbitrary. The arbitrary whims of individuals may not be followed, and we do not follow them!
T h e F i f t h
A government may apply all laws to its citizens and to those it accepts as its citizens, but it cannot apply its laws to those it does not accept. For they are able to say: “Since we are not citizens, you are not our government!”
Furthermore, no government can inflict two penalties at the same time. It either imprisons a murderer, or it executes him. To punish by both imprisonment and capital punishment is a principle nowhere!
However, despite the fact that I have caused no harm whatsoever to this country and nation, for eight years you have held me in captivity in a way not inflicted on even a criminal belonging to the wildest and most foreign nation. Although you have pardoned criminals, you have negated my freedom and deprived me of all civil rights. You have not said: “He too is a son of this land,” so in accordance with what principle and law do you propose, contrary to the wishes of your nation, these freedom-destroying principles to someone like me who is a foreigner to you in every respect? Since in the Great War you have counted as nothing all the heroic deeds to which this person was the means and were testified to by the Army’s commanders, and considered his self-sacrficing struggles for the sake of this country to be crimes; and since you deemed his preserving the good morality of this unfortunate nation and his serious and effective work to secure its happiness in this world and the next to be treason; and since you have punished for eight years (and now the punishment has been for twenty-eight years) someone who does not for himself accept your injurious, dangerous, arbitrary principles, which in reality are without benefit and spring from unbelief and from Europe; the punishment is the same. I did not accept its appli