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Kurdish teens in Turkey are joining the
Kurdish PKK party
6.11.2007
By Nicholas Birch |
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November 6, 2007
DIYARBAKIR, Kurdish Southeastern region of
Turkey, -- At least 150 teenagers from the
Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey
have joined the Turkey's rebel Kurdistan Workers'
Party PKK in the past year, illustrating a magnetic
pull that many of their elders find baffling.
Since the jailing of Kurdish nationalist leader
Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, the central government in
Ankara has taken major steps to address Kurdish
grievances. Their region is now free of military
law; the use of Kurdish names has been legalized;
Kurdish-language broadcasting is permitted for one
hour a day; and, for the first time in a decade,
Kurdish nationalists are represented in parliament.
The Turkish military, meanwhile, has waged a highly
successful battle against the PKK — as the Kurdistan
Workers' Party is referred to by its Kurdish acronym
— at least in tactical terms. As many as 75 PKK
members have died since militants attacked a Turkish
platoon on Oct. 21, killing 12 soldiers and
capturing eight — all of whom were released over the
weekend.
President Bush added to the pressure on the rebel
group yesterday, promising Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington that the United
States will offer intelligence and other help in
battling the PKK.
"The PKK is a terrorist organization. They're an
enemy of Turkey; they're an enemy of Iraq; and
they're an enemy of the United States," Mr. Bush
said at a press conference after talks with Mr.
Erdogan.
Nevertheless, as Turkey"s No. 2 general conceded
recently, Turkey has been "unsuccessful" in
dissuading a new generation of Kurds from joining
the militant organization.
Military intelligence last year reported that 40
percent of the estimated 3,000 Kurdish PKK militants
in Kurdistan 'northern Iraq' had joined since the
start of a PKK cease-fire, which began in 1999 and
lasted five years.
In Diyarbakir, locals say at least 150 teenagers
enlisted this year. In Yuksekova, a city of 100,000,
six have joined in the last month.
In towns and villages across the region, the story
is told in photos on the walls of homes like that of
Irfan Gur, a slender man whose face is wrinkled from
years of sun and locally grown tobacco.
There is a picture of his father, long dead, the top
of his portrait covered in lace in accord with local
tradition. Lace also covers the features of a much
younger man, Mr. Gur"s son, a PKK militant who died
fighting the Turkish army in 1994.
Mr. Gur points to another photograph. "My youngest
son," he said. "He went to join the group in July. I
haven't heard from him since."
Many Kurds say they are surprised by the PKK"s
continued ability to attract recruits, especially
since the rebels dropped their separatist demands to
call instead for "democratic confederalism" — a
concept that few Kurds understand.
Part of the explanation can be found outside Mr.
Gur's front door.
A decade ago, his neighborhood consisted of fields
sloping down to a river. Now it's a slum, streets
full of grubby children, some barefooted, leaping
over open sewers and piles of rubbish.
Places like this exist throughout southeastern
Turkey, filled with villagers forced from their
homes by Turkish security forces during the 1990s.
Kurdish Diyarbakir's population, 350,000 a decade
ago, is now nearly 1.5 million. Ninety percent of
the families in some districts live below the
poverty line.
"What future do these children have?" one local
journalist asked. "Crime, the PKK, radical Islam."
Locals say it was poverty and a sense of neglect,
rather than organized PKK activity, that drove a
recent riot in Diyarbakir, in which 11 persons,
mainly children, were fatally shot by security
forces.
Poverty, though, is not a problem unique to
southeastern Turkey. What makes it explosive here is
the frustration that has grown since PKK leader
Ocalan was captured in 1999.
Despite the steps by Ankara to ease restrictions on
the Kurdish language and culture, nationalists point
to a flood of criminal investigations opened against
Kurdish politicians since elections in July. The
latest came last week in response to calls for a
revision of Turkey's unitary structure.
When four policemen shot a 12-year-old boy 10 times
in the back at close range in 2005, on the other
hand, a court described it as "self-defense" and
freed the policemen.
Nothing irks Kurds more than what they see as the
partiality of the Turkish press and television. When
a TV reporter enthusiastically described a military
attack that killed 30 PKK fighters last week,
student Semdin Dumankaya complained, "He makes it
sound like a [soccer] match."
washingtontimes com
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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