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Why does the PKK exist? 'Do not sing in Kurdish,
leave the stage'
31.5.2007 |
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May
31, 2007
Turkish Professor Baskin Oran asked "Why does the
PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) exist?" during a TV
program last Tuesday. He then answered the question
that he posed by reading an excerpt from a brief
story that appeared in daily Radikal's May 28 issue.
"Do not sing in Kurdish, leave the stage," was the
headline of the quoted story in the Radikal.
According to the story, during a festival held on
Agri Mountain near Igdir in eastern Turkey, Igdir
Deputy Governor Mithat Gözen gave orders to Çoban
Ali (shepherd Ali) to leave the stage because he
started singing a Kurdish song.
Recalling that incident during the NTV program,
Professor Oran said "This is the reason why the PKK
exists." He of course meant that policies like the
ones the Igdir deputy governor has been pursuing do
not help to reduce the PKK terror threat, but on the
contrary only increase it.
The example he cited might seem a simple one, but
behind this incident in Igdir lies a bigger problem
of treating individuals badly, embarrassing them and
above all depriving them of their ability to even
singing a song in their mother tongue.
Here we are not talking about a constitutional
violation or legally enforcing Turkish as the only
acceptable language.
Rather we are considering the right of citizens to
enjoy speaking their mother tongue among themselves,
even to sing in their language.
Unfortunately we have not learned to act like a
great state free from fears of a possible division
in the country. On the contrary, small incidents
like the one that occurred recently in Igdir have
piled up and the Kurdish issue has for many decades
now been an explosive one.
This incident reminded me of an experience of my
own, which I went through almost two decades ago,
that has proven how the narrow minded approach in my
country has not changed in centuries.
It was in the mid-1980s when I was a journalist
covering the visit of the foreign ambassadors in
Ankara to the Southeast for the first time,
accompanied by then Foreign Minister Vahit Halefoglu.
The main purpose of the visit was to allow the
foreign ambassadors to see for themselves the
Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP). The tour was
taking place amid heavy criticism related to the
project.
Some Western ambassadors were criticizing GAP as not
being aimed at addressing the poverty problems of
the region's poor, but rather the interests of their
landlords. Iraq and Syria, meanwhile, were
complaining that GAP was preventing the flow of
water from both the Euphrates and Tigris into their
territories.
More than two decades after this visit, it is hard
to say that GAP fully met the purpose of helping the
region's people to prosper.
Nevertheless, let me share with you my experience.
On the way to Mount Nemrut near the Adiyaman
township in a minibus with the Tunisian ambassador,
the driver of our bus was stopped by the driver of
another minibus coming from the opposite direction,
who started speaking in a language that none of us
understood except the driver.
Strangely enough our driver was not responding to
anything said in this language. After this brief
pause we continued our way to Mount Nemrut.
In an attempt to soften a slight tension that had
developed inside the bus, the Tunisian ambassador
jokingly said "I know the driver speaks Arabic."
In fact, as all of us in the minibus guessed, the
driver coming from the opposition direction was
speaking in Kurdish.
Apparently due to fear, our driver did not respond
to his remarks, and I never did learn what he said.
Today we are in the year 2007 and in the 22 years
that have passed since that experience with the
Kurdish language, things do not seem to have
changed.
Our decision makers should think not just twice, but
several or even thousands of times about the reasons
why we have not made any inch of progress in
addressing our Kurdish problem and are still losing
our loved ones to PKK terrorism.
When addressing the economic problems of the country
in general and the Southeast in particular, Turkey
lost another opportunity in 1999 when the US handed
over to Turkey PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan -- now
serving a life sentence in a Marmara island jail.
Benefiting from the calm atmosphere that emerged in
the Southeast, the coalition government of the time
should have
used this golden opportunity to launch an economic
and social mobilization for the region encouraging
the private sector
to invest there. But engulfed in serious allegations
of graft and bad governance, it missed this chance
to heal the
wounds of the people in the region.
In 2005 Prime Minister and Justice and Development
Party (AK Party) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan
identified the problem of the Southeast as a Kurdish
problem, amid expectations that he would unveil an
economic plan. This also did not happen.
Instead nowadays we are again talking about a
military incursion into northern Iraq to crush the
PKK terrorists. As one Western diplomat once told
me, incursion will only have a short-lived effect
though it may satisfy the ultra-nationalist
sentiments of the people.
In the long term, though, such an incursion, staged
without the support of the US or the Iraqi Kurds,
will have irreparable repercussions for the
country's fragile economy as well as Turkey's image.
We all know that there are those in Turkey who
really do not care about where the country's
national interest lies, but at the end of the day
short-term gains have not done any good to the
country. So we have to rethink the issue,
concentrating on solutions to the Kurdish problem
within Turkey.
Source: todayszaman com
** 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.
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.
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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