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Film about Kurdish female PKK leader Nuriye Kesbir |
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: Radio Netherlands |
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Film about Kurdish female PKK leader
Nuriye Kesbir
6.12.2007
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December
6, 2007
The International Documentary Film Festival of
Amsterdam (IDFA) is in its 20th year, and claims to
be the biggest of its kind in the world. It's a
marketplace where film buyers, filmmakers, and film
lovers all come together for screenings that cover a
vast range of non-fiction topics. Often the films
give a deeper insight into geo-political hotspots
than what is normally available in the news media.
One such film is Sozdar, She Who Lives Her Promise,
which just premiered at the IDFA. The central figure
in the film is Nuriye Kesbir, who has named herself
Sozdar. She is a leader in the Turkey's Kurdish
Workers Party, also known as the PKK, a rebel
separatist movement with a stronghold in the Kurdish
mountains on the border of Turkey and Northern Iraq.www.ekurd.net
The director of the
film, Annegriet Wietsma, was drawn to the idea of a
woman fighter. "I wanted to make a movie already for
decades about the Kurdish problem but I always
hesitated, because the level of testosterone was a
bit too high for me. But then I read about this
woman who was in Dutch jail. She was having a hunger
strike, and I thought: 'This is my chance.'" |
Nuriye Kesbir |
Alleged 'terrorist'
On a trip to Europe in 2001, Kesbir was arrested at
the airport in the Netherlands. She spent several
years fighting extradition to Turkey. Wietsma says,
"For the Turkish she is a terrorist. Therefore they
ask for her extradition wherever she will be. The
judge didn't want to extradite her because the
Turkish government didn't want to give guarantees
that she would have a fair trail and not be
tortured, raped, whatever.
Because they said: 'We just don't torture and don't
rape so we don't do it with her either.' And the
Dutch judge said: 'Well, we keep her here until we
have these guarantees.'"
The film also gives insight into the Kurdish
community living in Europe.
"Everybody is in motion. Nobody knows exactly: 'Am I
Kurdish, am I Western, am I Turkish, what am I?' So
that's what you see also with how people dress and
behave."
Bombing
In the end, Kesbir escaped back to Kurdistan without
telling anyone. Wietsma was able to follow her later
because of contacts she had made in the Kurdish
movement. She speaks of the danger she encountered
there:
"I waited for the less dangerous period. Of course
it's always dangerous because the week before I went
two guys were hit by a grenade and killed. Of course
it's a dangerous part of the world. Particularly
now.www.ekurd.net
The regions where I
filmed are now in real danger and there's man to man
fighting, there's grenades falling from the air by
the Turkish army."
Apparently Kesbir is still in safety. As for what
will happen next, Wietsma offers this opinion:
"Nobody will know what will come in the next couple
of months. My personal conviction is: you can bomb
these 10,000 girls and boys and men and women in
this mountainous region. The guerrillas. But you
never can bomb and erase the problem of 40 million
Kurds being an unwanted people. You can't bomb that
problem."
Radionetherlands nl
**
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,
large Kurdish community 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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