To: Charles A. King who wrote (10196 ) 11/20/1998 8:16:00 PM From: Norman H. Hostetler Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Charles, putting the blame on the Kurds for human rights violations on them by the Turks is about as classic a case of blaming the victim as you can get. And assuming that the execution or incarceration of one leader will solve the problem is way too simplistic. The conflicts between the Kurds and the Turks goes way back into the dim mists of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were one of the Axis powers in WWI; the Kurds, listening to Western rhetoric of self-determination, started an uprising. (Note that the pattern is exactly the same as the one the Allies promoted and supported in the present Saudi Arabia, except that the Allies didn't send support to the Kurds--1) not much oil in the Kurdish area, compared to the Saudi's, and 2) Russia, which has some Kurdish peoples, didn't want an independent Kurdish state on its Southern doorstep). Using the war as an excuse, the Turks slaughtered some 500,000 to 600,000 Kurds, making no distinction whatsoever among men, women, and children, all of whom were demonized as internal traitors. After WWI was over and the oil sites were being divvied up among the Western powers, the Allies found it convenient to remember that their promises of self-determination and democracy were only intended for European peoples, not for the great unwashed of everywhere else (ironically, only Turkey itself came out of reconstruction after WWI with anything close to a democracy). The Turkish Kurds who survived got divided between Turkey and and the new state of Iraq (where Saddam experiments with poison gas and biological weapons on the Kurdish villages, despite the supposed no-fly zones). There is also a substantial Kurdish population in Iran. The Kurds in all these countries (something over 2.5 million people, if I remember right) have ever since been conducting more or less open campaigns for combining all the Kurdish areas into a Kurdistan nation. Whenever there is political turmoil in one of the countries, they foment more open rebellion, hoping to gain political alliances or advantages. When the consolidated power of the country is at its height, the Kurds lie low, resorting primarily to propaganda and education campaigns. Since the Kurds, traditionally more of a nomadic people, see themselves primarily as internees in occupied Kurdistan, they don't respect the "borders" of these countries as drawn on the map at Versailles without consultation with or approval by the Kurds. Denying allegiance and crossing boundaries as if they were not there of course annoys the current powers no end; so they interpret the Kurd's activities as "smuggling," "evading taxes," etc., and send the troops when they can afford it. When faced with military power, the Kurds engage in lots of passive-aggressive games which frustrate the hell out of the military troops and usually lead to brutal violence in retaliation. The West says tut-tut about human rights (we don't approve of rioting by the cops, most of which gets covered up, but when it doesn't, as in the Rodney King case, the cops get punished) and the local powers say quit messing around in our internal affairs, and the Kurds ask whose internal affairs they are talking about, since Kurdistan seems to have been left out of the discussion again.
