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Subject: How can we do this?
[email protected]    9/6/2002 6:31:07 PM
I'm sorry but I am extremely Disqusted by the US treatment of the Kurds. We have enforced a autonomous Kurdish state in Northern Iraq along with no-fly zones designed for the beniefit for us, rather than the Kurds. But it's amazing how much concern we show for the Kurds when it will beniefit us. If Iraq violates the no fly zone, then we bomb or something but if Turkey stations massive numbers of troops in the Kurd's land then we turn our back. We our so concerned for the Kurds in northern Iraq, which have been so poorly treated, but what about Turkish Kurds that are forcibly evacuated from their homes, or the term the Turkish government uses is that the Kurds are "Migrating". The Kurdish language has lawws regulating it's use in turkey. Turkey does exactly what Milosavec was doing at Kosovo, but Turkey gets away with it. The Kurd population is 26 million worldwide, half of that populace is in Turkey, but in Iraq only ten percent of the kurds population is found there. Iran has more Kurds then Iraq but because we want to hurt Iraq we encourage disputes between the Kurds and saddam, which only results in death. This has to STOP!
 
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alt10    RE:How can we do this?   3/6/2003 4:17:18 PM
see my friend, you forgot to mention is that these "innocent" Kurdish Turks of yours launched a guerilla war on the nation of Turkey in the 90's. What happened to all the Turkish policemen, teachers, and workers the PKK has murdered and bombed. Isn't it the right thing for a nation to defend itself from terrorists? (i.e. the Communist PKK.) So don't complain about the problems Kurds have in Turkey. Its is the affect of the terror war the Kurdish PKK has lost. The US is taking the right approach, to make sure another Kurdish uprising does not occur.
 
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DrCruel    How can we NOT do this?   7/28/2003 2:42:03 PM
The PKK and KADEK are terrorist groups, and Leftist. They were in league with the Ba'athists, and are connected to the ICP in Iraq. Ocalan and his thugs are animals. I am half-Armenian, and have no great love for the Turks. But the PKK does not represent the Kurds, it represents the Left, and the only problem I have with what the US has dne is to give these bastards any prior warning. We should swoop down on them like hawks, and get as many of these rodents as we can. (Don't give me any sob stories about animosity between the PKK and Saddam. I remember, right after Sept. 11th, that the PKK was at the first anti-war, anti-US marches in Washington DC, trying to spew their garbage in favor of Saddam's regime. At subsequent "protests" they kept a lessened profile, but they were still well represented in these anti-US, anti-Bush, pro-Saddam rallies. The Left has supported Saddam since well before the first Gulf War, all during the massacres of the Kurds, and the PKK was right there alongside them the whole time.)
 
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demirturk    RE:How can we NOT do this?   8/27/2003 1:07:44 AM
To the people who actually does not know the reality about the separatist kurdish terrorist activities which has taken place in Turkey, it is easy to call Turks barbaric or racist maniacs.The truth is quite different.There are over 12 million kurds living in Turkey and they have the same right with all others.It is true that our governments has made mistakes in the past but we have never tried to get rid of Kurds.with more than 60 different ethnic groups living together for 100s of years, Turkey can not be blamed of racism.our laws are being changed in order to give more social rights to groups too.But as a veteran of PKK conflict , I will fight for Turkey if the need arise again.People who acuse Turkey for its fight with pkk, should put themselves in Turkey's shoes.what would you do if some one / group wants to take away 20% of your country.killing your soldiers, police officers,teachers,engineers and others.to blame a country or people should not be that easy.
 
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Alan-Mardin    RE:How can we NOT do this?   9/27/2003 3:58:19 PM
First of all Turkey was the most opposing country to the war since the war will remove Sadam. Then the PKK/KADEK is very happy to the US action since it opens better chance for the Kurd as a nation to gain their democratic right. Then why you want to push the American soldiers to fight against KADEK and we all know it that there that KADEK wants more Amrican presence in the region event in the East of Turkey. So the game is like that Turkey's internal problem can be always solved by American assistance. KADEK is the result and not the cause. KADEK can vanish and be defeated but the Kurds in Turkey will never stop to struggle for their right. I remeber when my grand mother used to get scared when we mention a word like Genderma or Turkish soldiers. She was saying that Soldiers were always come to our village and used to beat us and insult us on. This was 50 years ago and it was continuing until the Kurd said no to opression no to Turkification we are not Turk we are Kurd we want to write and read in our Language and call our kids Kurdish name and remove the Turkish names from our Streets, villages, cities . All of the basic human right is called Terror acticities by Turkish Army (TSK) who dectate the goverment from behind in the context of protecting Turkey from separatism ( the Kurd). Burning almost 4000 villages is OK but reading your Kurdish is illegal in Turkey. Why you try to put the struggle as if it is KADEK is an organization outside of any Kurdish link. KADEK represents the idea of 90% of the Kurds every where. KADEK is the engine and a protector for democratic development in Turkey. The Turkish people and not the Kudish people has give a deep thank to KADEK since KADEK is promoting democracy in Turkey by revealing the lies and on paper reforms only from MGK (the Turkish generals). They can't lie any more as they use to do during the 1940,50,60,70,80,90. Reforms has to be implemented and not only talks and paper signature. I beleive in a democratic Turkey where the cause can be solved by democratic means ( Kurdish cause) and not by accusing KADEK of doing so and so. Regards, Alan - Mardin, Mahserte'
 
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demirturk    RE:How can we NOT do this? To Alan   9/29/2003 4:24:51 AM
I have read your article with interest. There is a whole bunch of things I would say against your ideas but it will be no use as I believe you are brain washed by betters of yourself. PKK or Kadek does not want more democratic right for Kurds in Turkey. They want a separate, independent , sovereign Kurdish state consisting of southern Turkey. Let us not hide behind lies such as poverty, poor education , poor human rights in Turkey. We know that there are many areas which needs improvement in Turkey but fighting against your own government will not solve anything. Things are already improving in Turkey although the PKK terror is no more thn a few skirmishes now days.New government is doing it's best to help all of us. We should encourage them but not fight them. I am a Turkish citizen and I am proud of my nation of several ethnic groups which Kurds are a part of.If your struggle is to carve out a piece of Turkey , too bad, it is not going to happen. There is no turning back to Sevr, if you comprehend my meaning. We should all work together for a brighter future of Turkey and prosper together.That way we will be one nation in peace otherwise we will all lose. It is that simple.
 
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GrandTurk    RE:How can we do this?   7/16/2005 3:53:23 PM
Terrorists are terrorists no matter how you slice "them". That includes the ppk, ira, plo, hammas, and the chechens. A Country should and must protect her territorial integrity against insurgents. The pkk (not even worth capitalising) have been killing innocent Turks since the early 80s. Casualties on the Turkish side are somewhere north of 20000. OF COURSE the Turks will amass troops on the Iraqi border. Do you expect them to simply sit on their hands or perhaps put a fence around the area the kurds claim as Kurdistan? Most kurds are clannish mountain peasants famous for fighting each other for power and real estate. They have lived under the protection of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic for a 1000 years. They repay the Turks by rebelling against them. They don't simply bite the hand that feeds them...they eat it. They cry that they have no real rights yet they are elected to the highest office (Prime Minister Turgut Ozal), they form their own parties and win elections. What more do they want? I happened to be in Turkey in 1999 when their leader, heroin addict, Ocalan was captured. The spineless wretch was so scared ****less that he was about to cry. Then, he slapped his own people in their collective face when he apologised to the Turkish Nation for the attrocities that he and the pkk committed. I saw an older kurd climb on his roof and curse him. So much for the kurdish hero. So if you love the kurds so much send me a note and I'll pay for a one way ticket to Baghdad. I would like to see how long you'll stay.
 
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FANTASMA       9/21/2006 3:20:29 AM
The Kurdish question is too complicated and anyone who deals with it has to be aware of the background

The Turkish Republic, which rose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, was conceived on a promise of full rights for the Kurds. Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish general who courted the Kurds to join with the Turks to liberate the remnants of the empire, said nothing at the time of the unitary state that he later advocated and which to this day his successors have defended. He knew of the promises of self-determination made to the Kurds at the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, and yet he succeeded in convincing them that an Islamic comity of two peoples, that of the Turks and those of the Kurds, held forth better prospect than the Kurds' alliance with the "infidels" of the West.

The Turkish and Kurdish war of liberating what is today called Turkey lasted some four years. At the peace talks in Lausanne in 1923, Mustafa Kemal sought legitimacy for his gains. In a symbolic act which his successors are emulating with the same adroitness, he sent a Kurdish envoy, Ismet Inonu, to the negotiating table. Mr. Inonu pleaded with his British interlocutor that the Kurds wanted no special rights and would be happy to be part of the Turkish Republic. To assure the British that this indeed was the case, Ankara even stooped to the time-honored ploy of having reputable Kurdish representatives send telegraphic messages to the British at the peace conference stating that the Kurds were in favor of a "union" with the Turks.

The Lausanne Treaty of June 24, 1923 officially sanctioned the division of the Kurdish lands among five states. Turkey proved to be the largest beneficiary holding onto 43% of the land. Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Soviet Union got 31%, 18%, 6%, and 2% respectively.[1] It is difficult to establish the current Kurdish population figures in these states, since the governments that have the Kurds in their custody choose to ignore the matter or offer figures that run contrary to demographic trends. Unofficial figures vary from a low of 25 million to higher estimates of some 40 million Kurds. Of these, some 15 to 20 million live in Turkey.

The life of the Kurds after Lausanne made the theocracy of the Ottomans seem enviable by comparison. Soon after the agreement, Ataturk (meaning "Father of the Turks", the name now given to Mustafa Kemal) abandoned all of his pre-war promises to the Kurds and conceived of Turkey as being a unitary state comprised of one, and only one, people: the Turks. His rallying cry "Turkey belongs to the Turks!" became the creed which to this day forms the basis for Turkish national consciousness.[2] Even today, the Turkish Constitution reads: "The Turkish state, its territory and people, is one and indivisible. The language is Turkish. These facts cannot be changed, nor can changes be proposed."[3]

What the "facts" of the Turkish Constitution overlooked were the rights of the Kurds, the Armenians, the Greeks, and other natives of Anatolia who now were told to call themselves Turks because Ataturk had so decreed. The Greeks, as late as the 1950s, were systematically uprooted, sometimes by force and sometimes by provocative acts which compelled them to flee and leave everything that they had behind.[4] The Armenians were silenced by the massacre of 1915, prompting Hitler two decades later to argue that what the Turks had done with impunity, the Germans could emulate against the Jews. The Kurds were a different matter. To begin with, there were more of them, and they were Muslims, like the Turks. Something more than brute force was required to undo them.

Meticulous plans were made for such an act of social engineering. The solution was sought in forced assimilation. In a generation or two, the Turkish social engineers wanted to erase all references to the Kurds. Beginning in 1924, the Kurdish language was banned. Then came the laws which enabled the authorities to give Turkish names to everything that had a Kurdish name. All at once, Kurdish cities, town, villages, and hamlets acquired new Turkish names. For example, the maps that were printed when the Ottomans ruled the area have references to the Kurds and their land, Kurdistan; modern Turkish maps, leaving aside the impartiality of science, refer to the entire region as Turkey.

As can be expected, the Kurds did not take lightly the death warrant that was issued in their name. They rose to undo the legislation that was condemning them to the dustbin of history. Long before United Nations Resolution 3103 [5] sanctioned the use of force in liberation struggles, the Kurds fought on several occasions (most notably in 1925, 1930, and 1937/38) to gain control over their destiny.

Until the 1980s, however, all their uprisings were crushed. Known Kurdish leaders were hanged. Their relatives and followers were deported. As if the memory of the defeats were not enough, the Kurdish landscape, especially visible sites

 
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kane    Fantasma   9/21/2006 11:36:47 AM

The Kurdish question is too complicated and anyone who deals with it has to be aware of the background


The Turkish Republic, which rose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, was conceived on a promise of full rights for the Kurds. Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish general who courted the Kurds to join with the Turks to liberate the remnants of the empire, said nothing at the time of the unitary state that he later advocated and which to this day his successors have defended. He knew of the promises of self-determination made to the Kurds at the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, and yet he succeeded in convincing them that an Islamic comity of two peoples, that of the Turks and those of the Kurds, held forth better prospect than the Kurds' alliance with the "infidels" of the West.

The Turkish and Kurdish war of liberating what is today called Turkey lasted some four years. At the peace talks in Lausanne in 1923, Mustafa Kemal sought legitimacy for his gains. In a symbolic act which his successors are emulating with the same adroitness, he sent a Kurdish envoy, Ismet Inonu, to the negotiating table. Mr. Inonu pleaded with his British interlocutor that the Kurds wanted no special rights and would be happy to be part of the Turkish Republic. To assure the British that this indeed was the case, Ankara even stooped to the time-honored ploy of having reputable Kurdish representatives send telegraphic messages to the British at the peace conference stating that the Kurds were in favor of a "union" with the Turks.

The Lausanne Treaty of June 24, 1923 officially sanctioned the division of the Kurdish lands among five states. Turkey proved to be the largest beneficiary holding onto 43% of the land. Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Soviet Union got 31%, 18%, 6%, and 2% respectively.[1] It is difficult to establish the current Kurdish population figures in these states, since the governments that have the Kurds in their custody choose to ignore the matter or offer figures that run contrary to demographic trends. Unofficial figures vary from a low of 25 million to higher estimates of some 40 million Kurds. Of these, some 15 to 20 million live in Turkey.

The life of the Kurds after Lausanne made the theocracy of the Ottomans seem enviable by comparison. Soon after the agreement, Ataturk (meaning "Father of the Turks", the name now given to Mustafa Kemal) abandoned all of his pre-war promises to the Kurds and conceived of Turkey as being a unitary state comprised of one, and only one, people: the Turks. His rallying cry "Turkey belongs to the Turks!" became the creed which to this day forms the basis for Turkish national consciousness.[2] Even today, the Turkish Constitution reads: "The Turkish state, its territory and people, is one and indivisible. The language is Turkish. These facts cannot be changed, nor can changes be proposed."[3]

What the "facts" of the Turkish Constitution overlooked were the rights of the Kurds, the Armenians, the Greeks, and other natives of Anatolia who now were told to call themselves Turks because Ataturk had so decreed. The Greeks, as late as the 1950s, were systematically uprooted, sometimes by force and sometimes by provocative acts which compelled them to flee and leave everything that they had behind.[4] The Armenians were silenced by the massacre of 1915, prompting Hitler two decades later to argue that what the Turks had done with impunity, the Germans could emulate against the Jews. The Kurds were a different matter. To begin with, there were more of them, and they were Muslims, like the Turks. Something more than brute force was required to undo them.

Meticulous plans were made for such an act of social engineering. The solution was sought in forced assimilation. In a generation or two, the Turkish social engineers wanted to erase all references to the Kurds. Beginning in 1924, the Kurdish language was banned. Then came the laws which enabled the authorities to give Turkish names to everything that had a Kurdish name. All at once, Kurdish cities, town, villages, and hamlets acquired new Turkish names. For example, the maps that were printed when the Ottomans ruled the area have references to the Kurds and their land, Kurdistan; modern Turkish maps, leaving aside the impartiality of science, refer to the entire region as Turkey.

As can be expected, the Kurds did not take lightly the death warrant that was issued in their name. They rose to undo the legislation that was condemning them to the dustbin of history. Long before United Nations Resolution 3103 [5] sanctioned the use of force in liberation struggles, the Kurds fought on several occasions (most notably in 1925, 1930, and 1937/38) to gain control over their destiny.

Until the 1980s, however, all their uprisings were crushed. K

 
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