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Turkey, Kurds and The Treaty of Sevres 1920. A
history
5.6.2007 |
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June
5, 2007
The Peace Treaty of Sevres 1920. In this treaty
signed by the Ottoman Government 10 August 1920, the
Kurds were granted autonomy.
Section 3 articles 62-64
SECTION III.
KURDISTAN
ARTICLE 62
A Commission sitting at Constantinople and composed
of three members appointed by the British, French
and Italian Governments respectively shall draft
within six months from the coming into force of the
present Treaty a scheme of local autonomy for the
predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the
Euphrates,
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The Treaty of Sevres 1920-map |
south of the southern
boundary of Armenia as it may be hereafter
determined, and north of the frontier of Turkey with
Syria and Mesopotamia, as defined in Article 27, II
(2) and (3).
If unanimity cannot be secured on any question, it
will be referred by the members of the Commission to
their respective Governments. The scheme shall
contain full safeguards for the protection of the
Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious
minorities within these areas, and with this object
a Commission composed of British, French, Italian,
Persian and Kurdish representatives shall visit the
spot to examine and decide what rectifications, if
any, should be made in the Turkish frontier where,
under the provisions of the present Treaty, that
frontier coincides with that of Persia.
ARTICLE 63.
The Turkish Government hereby agrees to accept and
execute the decisions of both the Commissions
mentioned in Article 62 within three months from
their communication to the said Government.
ARTICLE 64.
If within one year from the coming into force of the
present Treaty the Kurdish peoples within the areas
defined in Article 62 shall address themselves to
the Council of the League of Nations in such a
manner as to show that a majority of the population
of these areas desires independence from Turkey, and
if the Council then considers that these peoples are
capable of such independence and recommends that it
should be granted to them, Turkey hereby agrees to
execute such a recommendation, and to renounce all
rights and title over these areas.
The detailed provisions for such renunciation will
form the subject of a separate agreement between the
Principal Allied Powers and Turkey.
If and when such renunciation takes place, no
objection will be raised by the Principal Allied
Powers to the voluntary adhesion to such an
independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting
that part of Kurdistan which has hitherto been
included in the Mosul vilayet.
Ends.
This was then superceded by, after months of
re-negotiations under the leadership of Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk by the
Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Here the Kurds had no longer the opportunity to have
their own independent country and so the seeds of
the present conflict were sown.
"We are frankly Nationalist.....and Nationalism is
our only factor of cohesion. Before the Turkish
majority other elements have no kind of influence.
At any price, we must turkify the inhabitants of our
land, and we will annihilate those who oppose Turks
or 'le turquisme'"
Ismet Inonu May 4 1925.
This statement is chilling as the Turkish state did
then embark on an 'annihilation' of the Kurds
policy. Banning, jailing, torturing and forced
depopulations and pogroms of the Kurds in an attempt
to forcibly assimilate them into Turkish culture.
This philosophy became known as 'Kemalism' and was
built up around the cult of Mustafa Kemal or Ataturk.
But of course the Kurds rebelled (27 times) and
fought against this right up to modern day as the
Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, under the leadership
of the imprisoned Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan,
continue to fight for political rights in Turkey.
Although much has changed, much remains the same.
The assimilation policy has been halted but still we
await a political solution to the Kurdish Question
in Turkey.
Now the situation of the Kurds, numbering up to one
third of the population of Turkey, is summed up by
Turkey's leading human rights lawyer Eren Keskin.
"The Kurds are one of the "domestic enemies" that
this system, controlled by the military, needs to
create in order to sustain its domination, failure
in providing any solution to this issue makes the
military all the more powerful. Even the minor
progress made lately in this field - achieved at
enormous cost and partly the outcome of the EU
accession process - does not change the fact that
"the policy of `non-solution' still dominates the
government's approach to the Kurdish issue." Eren
Keskin, Human rights lawyer, Turkey. April 2006
The PKK has offered the latest unilateral ceasefire
to the Turkish state 1st Oct 2006 but the Turkish
state reply with denial, violence, imprisonment,
murder and ultra nationalism. The Kurdish Question
continues to dominate Turkish politics to this day.
If only The Treaty of Sevres could of been realised
Turkey would today probably be quite a different
place.
Source : http://hevallo.blogspot.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.
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.
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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