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Turkey's Kurds still prepared to fight
9.7.2007
By Scott Peterson |
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There
are 40 million Kurds in Turkey. Does this mean there
are 40 million terrorists?
July
9, 2007
DIYARBAKIR, Kurdish Southeastern region of
Turkey
Sultan Koyun says she cries as much for fallen
Turkish soldiers as for killed militants of the
Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK). For the first half
of this story, published June 6, click here.
But as a Kurdish member of the "Mothers for Peace"
group in southeast Turkey, she holds the PKK and its
three-decade separatist struggle in higher regard.
She is proud to count her son as a guerrilla,
fighting Turks "in the mountains" for minority
Kurdish rights that until recent years have been all
but denied by the Turkish state.
"The State says the PKK is a terrorist organization,
but the PKK is founded by our sons and daughters,"
says the sturdy matron with wire-rimmed glasses and
head scarf. "They are not terrorists. They are just
Kurds, humans like others, created by God."
|
'Mothers for Peace- Kurdish mothers Sultan Koyun
(l.) and Emine Ozberk, say the PKK militants are not
terrorists. 'They are just Kurds" |
"There are 40 million Kurds," says Mrs. Koyun,
overcounting regional numbers by 10 million or so.
"My question is to the state: "Does this mean there
are 40 million terrorists?"
Offering tea in the Spartan "Mothers offices," Koyun
and another mother describe how lives for many
ethnic Kurds are defined by harassment at the hands
of Turkish authorities, which for decades referred
to Kurds as "mountain Turks" and refused to permit a
separate cultural identity, including banning the
Kurdish language from government institutions.
There is no talk of the PKK's many civilian
casualties, except denial that PKK has caused any.
But they both say that government pressure caused
their sons – like thousands of others – to join the
fight with the PKK in a 15-year war that stopped in
1999 after an estimated 37,000 deaths, but has now
begun to reignite.
"The PKK is an organic part of society here, and
largely through dead bodies," says a
Western-educated Kurdish analyst in Diyarbakir who
spoke on condition of anonymity.
TICKING OFF numbers, he says that 20,000 PKK
militants have been killed, 10,000 more are in
prison, and that there are 20,000 PKK activists in
Europe, all with extended families. That means that
hundreds of thousands of Kurds "are organically tied
to the PKK," he says. This analyst himself lost
three siblings who fought for the PKK.
"The naive strategy would be to claim they are only
a terrorist organization, with no support," says the
analyst. One hurdle is the "dehumanization" of Kurds
by constant use in the media of the "terrorist"
label.
Koyun's son was arrested in 1994 at the institute
where he was a student, during the peak of a
sweeping Turkish military state of emergency marred
by mass clearances of Kurdish villages,
disappearances, and torture. The son was "tortured
badly," the mother says, so "had to run away to the
mountains" – the euphemism here for joining the
rebels.
Abuse continues in Turkey, though the state of
emergency was lifted years ago. "Torture,
ill-treatment, and killings continue to be met with
persistent impunity for the security forces in
Turkey," Amnesty International reported last week.
There were "widespread allegations of torture" after
mass arrests during lethal demonstrations in
Diyarbakir in March 2006, Amnesty said, in which 10
protestors were shot dead.
Koyun has been questioned many times by police, and
once when her husband was arrested, he was told that
800 guerrillas had been killed.
"All of these 800 are like sons to me," the father
says. The belief that their son was killed was
dispelled only after eight years. They were able to
visit him at a PKK base in Kurdistan region
(northern Iraq) a couple years ago. He had been
badly wounded, and no longer fights on the front
line, but decided to stay.
"We are all here as slaves without those rights, so
he chose to stay and fight," says Koyun. "I was
proud of him.Emine Ozberk is another activist, a
mother who has been jailed twice, with two nephews
and a niece who died fighting for the PKK.
Because of their role, Mrs. Ozberk's son was
pressured by police, fled, and was arrested in
Europe, before joining the PKK.
"Our children are defending themselves, because the
Army and government does not give any human rights,"
asserts Ozberk. "They have nothing else but a simple
weapon, [but] there is an Army that engages them
with tanks and planes and guns."
In a first for a Turkish leader, Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2005 admitted that Turkey
had a Kurdish "problem" and that "mistakes have been
made" in its heavy-handed dealings with the Kurds.
They should be given "more democracy," not more
oppression, he said.
Mr. Erdogan made the comments after several years of
relative calm, when Turkey had made some EU-inspired
legal changes that eased pressure on Kurds.
"What is going to change Kurd-Turkish relations in
Turkey is not the EU, but what happens in [Kurdish]
northern Iraq," adds the analyst. "While northern
Iraq has 10 TV stations, here there is only 45
minutes [of Kurdish broadcasting allowed] each day.
Here, you can't work in Kurdish. There, universities
teach in Kurdish. This may radicalize [Turkey's]
Kurds."
That is now happening, say Kurdish activists.
"[Turkish Kurds] don't expect so many things –
[just] their own culture, language, and richness,
but it's not allowed in Turkey," says Hasan Gungor,
head of the Diyarbakir branch of the Teacher's
Association. "A child is born, but can't be taught
in [his or her] own language. It's a big
infringement of human rights." Some restrictions
have eased, but Mr. Gungor's predecessor has been
sentenced to 14 months in prison for affixing his
name to a statement marking international peace day,
and legal cases continue against teachers caught
addressing pupils in Kurdish. "From childhood, I
learned the struggle from my father and older
brothers," says a Kurdish woman and PKK supporter
who asked not to be identified. "I will struggle
forever for my rights, until my death." The PKK
guerrillas "want to put the weapons down, but the
Turkish state keeps on attacking them, so I accept
PKK attacks as defending themselves," she says.Even
with attacks against civilians? "Never, never, says
the woman, "The PKK never attacked any civilian."
csmonitor 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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