The Kurds are an "Aryan" people in the true, Indo-European sense of the word (not the Nazi aberration meaning "Nordic"), referring to the populations of Northern India, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran. Their origins are uncertain. One school holds that they are related to Iranian (Persian) tribes living around Lake Van in southeastern Turkey 3,000 years ago.
The ancient Kurdish city of Hasankeyf on the Tigris River is currently threatened by a huge dam that will destroy hundreds of archaeological sites and a great deal of valuable wildlife, especially, bird habitat. It is widely opposed by Kurds.
Others feel that the Kurds are former Persian Jews who converted en masse to Islam (see Joseph Katz' fascinating site Eretz Yisroel for more on that theory). At any rate, Kurds having been living in Anatolia for 2,700 years.
Turkey has been committing cultural genocide against its Kurdish population since the formation of Turkey as an ethnic ultranationalist state in 1918, amidst the blood of 1.5 million Armenians, a massacre that Turkish fascists refuse to admit to until this very day, much to the fury of Armenians around the world.
For decades, in a campaign reminiscent of the boarding schools US Indians and Australian Aborigines were sent to, Kurdish children were bussed off to boarding schools, where they were raised as Turks. The goal here, as with the Indians and the Aborigines, was the destruction of the child's culture and language.
The US has backed all of Turkey's Nazi-like fascism to the hilt. 80% of Turkey's weapons come from the US. There are bizarre laws on the books against "separatism".
Until recently anyway, "separatism" meant such mundane things as speaking the Kurdish language, wearing Kurdish colors in one's hair, celebrating Nawruz (the Kurdish New Year), giving your kids Kurdish names or testifying about Turkish genocidal racism in other countries.
In recent years, Kurds somehow managed to get five parliamentarians elected to the Turkish Parliament. Now all five are languishing in Turkish prisons for speaking out about Turkish fascism.
Turkish nationalism, honed in genocide with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the rise of the Young Turks, and Kemal Ataturk's obsessive secularism, has been a particularly virulent and racially supremacist ultranationalism. At the moment, this disease is the Turkish character.
The majority of Turkish people are fascists and racists, which explains why, despite their poor country that retains remnants of semi-feudalism, every election year they march off and vote for one rightwing party or another, against their basic interests.
As feudalism and fascism typically give rise to Leftism, this has happened in Turkey too. Turkey has a vibrant, militant, often-armed Left that carries out regular armed attacks on the Turkish state. It even has an extant Maoist movement, always a sign of a society that is at least semi-fascist and semi-feudal.
It is useful to note, and shameful of the Armenians to refuse to discuss (not to mention Turkish ferocious denials) the fact that while the Turks were killing 1.5 million Armenians during the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, the Turks also killed 275,000 Assyrians and 350,000 Pontian Greeks. A total 2.125 million people were slaughtered by the genocidal Turks.
Armenians freezing in the winter during the Armenian genocide. The fate of this particular group is unknown, but 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Turkey will not acknowledge the genocide to this day.Around about the same time, from 1910-1919, Turks ethnically cleansed 1.5 million Greeks from Pontia in far western Turkey, where they had lived for centuries. In the process, 350,000 Greeks were killed.
When I call Turks Nazis, fascists and racists, I do not use the term lightly! I can back it up with facts. If this were all in the past, like the German and American forays into genocide, we could at least hope for the future and refuse to blame the sons for the sins of the fathers.
But since the Armenian Genocide of 90 years ago, the Turks have not learned the slightest thing. I am inclined to believe that unless forceful actions are taken to prevent their recurrence, such genocidal behavior can occur again and again.
Why do the Turks refuse to discuss the Armenian - Assyrian - Greek Genocides of 1915-1923? Possibly because that would be like a man cursing his own birth and entry into the world. For with the slaughter of 2.125 million non-Turks and ethnic cleansing of 1.5 million more, the Turkish state, as we know it today, was built.
During World War 1, Turkey was attacked by their ancient rival, Russia. Russia was siding with Serbs, who were hostile to Turkish Ottoman genocidal encroachments into the Balkans. The Kurds loyally helped secure Turkey's borders from the Slavic threat. For this good deed, many of them were cut down.
With the formation of the modern Turkish state after World War 1 amidst the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the European imperialist powers sat down to devour the spoils. Most of the Ottoman colonies were turned into British and French colonies, notably what is now Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and part of Saudi Arabia.
The Kurds demanded and were promised a state with the signing of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, but the Turks reconquered Kurdistan after signing the treaty, Kemal Atatürk rejected the treaty, and the Allies had more pressing matters.
Subsequently, a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, was signed in 1923, and much of Kurdistan was given to Turkey and parts of the rest were chopped up into the new states of Syria and Iraq.
A maximalist map of Kurdistan. I would cut off Iranian Kurdistan somewhere around central Iran, right about at the city of Kermanshah (click on photo to see detail). The notion of extending all the way down to the Iranian coast strikes me as absurd, or a cynical way or giving the Kurds a seaport. Furthermore, Iraqi Kurdistan extends considerably to the south of where it reasonably ought to be and surely includes neither Kirkuk nor Mosul.Interestingly, the Lausanne Treaty called for the protection of the Greek minority in Turkey, but the Greek population in Turkey has declined from over 400,000 in 1923 to only about 2,000 now. This precipitous decline was caused by the virulent anti-Greek racism of the Turks, that continues to this very day.
The Kurds were furious at the loss of the state they were promised in the land they had lived in for centuries, if not millennia. An uprising broke out right away and was viciously suppressed by racist Turks. Since then, Turkish Kurdistan has been in almost continuous rebellion. There have been a total of 29 violent rebellions since 1924, and all have been savagely crushed by the genocidal Turkish state.
The most ferocious rebellion was led by the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, from 1984-1999. It left 37,000 people dead in its wake. I supported this rebellion 100%. The leader of the PKK was Abdullah Ocalan. He was recently captured in Africa by Turkey with the disgusting, despicable help of intelligence from the Israelis, of all people.
As in Palestine, the war left a trail of villages wiped off the map - 3,000 in Turkish Kurdistan. Kurds are forbidden to return to these wrecked sites. If you try to go back to one of these villages now to rebuild the ruins, you run the risk of being arrested by Turkish fascists, tortured and murdered.
After the usurpation of parts of Kurdistan by Syria and Iran, the Kurds in those regions were also often in rebellion. In Iraq, the British waged ruthless campaigns against the Kurds, to the point of dropping chemical weapons on them. Winston Churchill angrily justified using poison gas on the Kurds.
Later, Saddam Hussein waged a decades-long genocidal war against the Kurds, including the Anfal Campaign in the 1980's that left countless Kurds dead. There was another genocide in Syria as Syrian Arabs brutally crushed Kurdish rebellions there.
In recent years, Syria has ethnically cleansed Kurdish and Assyrian villages in the far north and moved Arabs into them in their place. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have not been granted Syrian citizenship and wallow in statelessness, in a condition similar to the Palestinians but off the world's radar screens.
Brutal repression of Syria's Kurds continues. Recently, wild Kurdish riots in Syria's northeast were met with gunfire and scores of Kurds were killed. Syria's Baathist Arab nationalism, like Saddam's was a virulent, racist, Arab supremacist, Nazi-like ethnic ultranationalism that resembled fascism in some ways.
In post-Saddam Iraq, the Kurds have played important roles in the tragic history of US-occupied Iraq. Much of that history goes beyond the scope of this post.
One of the essential sticking points between Kurds and the government of Iraq is the demand by Kurds of not only an independent Kurdistan, which is reasonable, but to make the oil-rich city of Kirkuk their capital, which is not reasonable, since Kurds have not been a majority there for decades.
The virulent Arab nationalist racist and Sunni bigot Saddam Hussein started an ethnic cleansing campaign in Kirkuk and other parts of the north in recent decades. Around Kirkuk, this campaign was intended to keep the oil fields in the hands of Arabs and out of the hands of Turkmen, Assyrians and Kurds.
Before this ethnic cleansing campaign, the oil region of northern Iraq (basically the Kirkuk fields) was inhabited by Kurds, Sunni and Shia Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen, frequently living together peacefully. Since 1950, Turkmen has been the largest group in the city of Kirkuk, even after Saddam's racist campaigns.
In Iran also, the Kurds have been chronically rebelling, and as in Turkey, Syria and Iraq, there was another Kurdish genocide in Iran.
Monday, May 8
Adana: Turkish prosecutors are outrageously charging 4 kids aged 13 and 14 with distributing PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) propaganda during a funeral for a PKK member who was killed by Turkish fascist forces. The youngsters are facing decades in prison for this outrageous crime.
Sunday, May 7
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Diyarbakir: Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited Turkish Kurdistan for the first time in years and made some conciliatory statements at a local meeting of his political party. "As long as we walk together as Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Lazes, Georgians, Bosniaks and Albanians, without discriminating against any particular ethnic group, nobody will be able to divide us," Erdogan said.
Although this statement appears bland and unimportant, it is actually a very important remark. For the Turkish state is finally starting to acknowledge ethnic groups other than Turks in Turkey. For decades, Kurdish identity has been denied, and Kurds were referred to as "mountain Turks".
Although Erdogan stated that "Turkish citizenship should be the primary identity of all Turks", he still deserves commendation for acknowledging the existence of non-Turkish populations within Turkey.
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The leader of the PKK, Cemil Bayik, threatened to attack Iran due to Iran's launching artillery attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan (see April 30 post). This blog strongly supports the right of the PKK to attack Iran due Iran's shelling of the PKK. Iran may be trying to cement an alliance with Turkey over their mutual racist oppression of the Kurdish people.
Saturday, May 6
Iraqi Kurdistan: While Iranian and Turkish ominously line the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan, the President of Iraq appealed for calm. I cannot stress enough how destabilizing this matter in Iraqi Kurdistan is for the region.
Hakkani: Large crowds protested against the PKK after the attack that wounded soldiers' children in this town earlier in the week (see May 3 entry). It was not known whether the protesters were Kurds or Turks. This attack appears to have been a PR disaster for the PKK.
USA: US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, Kurt Volker cynically warned European countries to shut down all PKK media in their countries, as the US tried to suck up to its disgusting ally, fascist Turkey. Denmark has refused to outlaw ROJ-TV, despite many requests by Turkey that it do so. This blog salutes Denmark's noble stance on this matter.
Thursday, May 4
Diyarbakir: 80 Kurdish youths face phony charges for participating in illegal demonstrations during funerals for PKK fighters killed in action fighting against fascist Turkish troops. They face outrageous charges of 10-15 years for demonstrating against the fascist state.
Wednesday, May 3
Hakkani: The PKK launched a brutal roadside bomb attack on a military vehicle guarding a school bus carrying the children of soldiers in this town, wounding 27 people, including 11 children.
Sunday, April 30
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Iraqi Kurdistan: Iranian forces moved into Iraqi Kurdistan and attacked Kurdish guerrillas there. Iranian forces fired artillery at Kurdish forces at Hajj Umran in far northeastern Iraqi Kurdistan, and then crossed the border to fight the guerrillas.
I have always supported the secessionist Kurdish armed movement in Iran, which has been going for a long time, at least 10 years. However, at the moment, considering the Zionist and imperialist threats against Iran, perhaps now is not the best time to break off any pieces of Iran.
Kurdish secessionism in Iran would be easier to support at another time when it would not be such a painful imperialist and Zionist tool against Iran.
Iraqi Kurds inspect a crater from Iranian artillery in Iraqi Kurdistan.*****
Istanbul: Check out a breathtaking video of a wild riot in the streets of Istanbul in support of the Kurdish uprising, organized by the PKK, the MLK (Maoist Communist Party), the TKIB (Communist Workers Party of Turkey) and MLKB (Marxist-Leninist Communist Party)
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Thursday, April 27
Fascist Turkey added another 30,000 troops to Turkey's southeast, adding to the estimated 250,000 already there, in response to recent violence by the PKK. Turkey also has 2,000 troops inside Iraqi Kurdistan, in apparent violation of international law.
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Concerns were rising in the region that recent violence in Kurdistan could be a harbinger of a return to the bloody violence of the 1980's and 1990's, when the PKK was a ferocious struggle against Turkish fascism for the self-determination of their people. In recent months, 40 PKK fighters, 14 soldiers and 4 police have been killed in renewed fighting.
Riots that raged across Turkey in late March killed 16 people and resulted in hundreds of arrests. There are a large number of young Kurds who are living in Kurdish cities after their villages were destroyed by the fascist Turkish army in previous decades. These young people have not adjusted well to life in the city (and probably to the destruction of their villages) and are very, very angry.
It is this angry young generation of Kurds that is threatening to reignite the war. The Kurdish region remains mired in horrible poverty, with high unemployment and a lack of business investment.
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Wednesday, April 26
Kurdish guerrillas attacked a Turkish military outpost in Turkish Kurdistan with grenades, killing 2 Turkish soldiers and wounding a third.
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A bit on the background of the present unrest: In 1999, after waging a 15-year armed struggle, Abdullah Ocalan was captured with the help of treasonous US and Israeli agents in Africa and spirited to Turkey.
He was subsequently sentenced to a long term at an isolated prison. After his sentence, Ocalan urged the Kurds to abandon armed struggle and seek peaceful accommodation with the fascist Turkish state.
Of course, any settlement is impossible with fascists. The Turkish state made many moves towards reforms and said that everything is fine now. Kurdish university students who demanded instruction in Kurdish were thrown out of school and arrested.
The 3,000 Kurdish villages that had been wiped off the map, Nakba-like, were not rebuilt. Anyone publishing any book on the Kurdish Question was subjected to harsh measures.
The housing needs of the many Kurdish refugees who migrated to the cities after their villages were destroyed were ignored, and they suffered serious discrimination in the cities. Demands for compensation or acknowledgment by the relatives of the thousands of Kurds slaughtered by fascist death squads were ignored.
Kurdish history and language continue to be banned in the schools. Beautiful Kurdish folk songs are banned in Turkey. Every day in Turkish schools, millions of Kurdish kids are forced to utter the fascist phrase, “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk.”
The Turkish government has recently allowed the Kurdish language to be broadcast on TV for a whopping 45 minutes a day, for a total of a stunning 4 hours per week. All programs must have Turkish subtitles. This is the sort of meager gesture that Turkey calls a serious reform.
It is in this kettle of frustration, phony promises, continuing repression and rising rage that the current crisis was incubated.
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Monday, April 24
A wing of the PKK called the Kurdish Falcons has warned of a wave of vicious bombings in Turkish cities designed to bring the war to the Turkish people themselves. The Falcons have claimed responsibility for 8 bombings in the past 3 months that left 2 dead and 47 wounded. The Falcons have posted detailed bomb-making instructions on their website. This is an unfortunate but typical escalation of the conflict.
Sunday, April 23
Sirnak: Fighting between the PKK and Turkish troops killed 3 PKK fighters and 1 Turkish soldier. Fighting continued into the next day.
Friday, April 21
The riots and violence of the recent days have been the worst that Turkey had seen in years, and, according to this article, threaten to erase the "progress" being made in recent years regarding the Kurdish question.
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Wednesday, April 19
Turkey appears to be slipping into the bad old days recently after the riots and demonstrations in southeastern Turkey during the funerals of 4 PKK fighters. 13 Kurds were killed by police during the rioting and hundreds of others were wounded.
Many more were arrested, imprisoned and apparently tortured. Members of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party are already facing a slew of phony charges based on current anti-terrorist legislation. Under new regulations slated to go into effect, waving a PKK banner could get you 15 years in prison (!) and spreading PKK propaganda (which I am apparently doing in this post) could get you 5 years in prison.
Considering that the vast majority of Kurds in the southeast support secession and probably, consequently, the PKK, these laws seem to turn about 3 million Kurds into felons facing 5-15 years in prison.
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Tuesday, April 18
Istanbul: Terrorists set off a bomb in a trashcan in Istanbul, wounding 31 people. There were no claims of responsibility but the attack may have been done by the Kurdistan Liberation Hawks, or TAK.
Monday, April 17
Brussels: Thousands of Kurds took to the streets of this city, demanding an independent nation in eastern Turkey, better treatment for Kurds and freedom for jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Sunday, April 16
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Iran: Guerrillas from the Kurdish separatist group Pejak, a Marxist group, were interviewed by a reporter in Iran. The group is Marxist, pro-ecology, feminist, secular, and pro-human rights and freedoms. They are not well-armed but they have a number of female fighters. Their numbers are estimated at 500-2,000.
They claim to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers since March after starting a new offensive after Iranian forces killed 10 Iranian Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku. The group claims to have hundreds of thousands of supporters amongst Iran's 4 million Kurds. Since the election of Islamofascist Ahmadinejad, the Kurdish situation has worsened here.
The group, formed in 1998, operates a training camp on one of the tall mountains in Iranian Kurdistan. Since the clashes in March, they claim to have been flooded with new recruits. This blog strongly supports Pejak.
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Tuesday, April 11
Istanbul: Turkish forces arrested 20 PKK members in Istanbul on suspicion of planning firebomb attacks.
Monday, April 10
Istanbul: The TAK claimed responsibility for planting a bomb on a bus full of prosecutors and judges. The bomb was found by the bus driver before it could go off. The bomb was a warning to judicial officials to stop prosecuting PKK fighters.
Iran: Iranian officials arrested 7 Pejak (see April 16 entry) members in northern Iran near the border with Turkey. Kurdish guerrillas, mostly from Pejak, killed 120 Iranian police last year and wounded many more. Pejak is thought to be associated with the PKK in Turkey.
Saturday, April 8
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Istanbul: Turkish troops reportedly "protesting the new violence in the southeast of the country" took hostages in Istanbul in a symbolic action. The situation was resolved by security forces and the hostages were freed. However, the bit about protesting against the violence in Kurdistan was Turkish propaganda that was idiotically picked up by most of the world's clueless media.
We will set the record straight here. These 2 Turkish troops shouted Turkish ethnic nationalist (fascist) and anti-Kurdish slogans during the hostage crisis. Reportedly, they were stationed in a Turkish city and were all upset because they were not being sent to Kurdistan where they could have fun repressing, killing, wounding, arresting and beating Kurds. Poor guys.
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Elazig: Kurdish guerrillas exploded a land mine as a Turkish military vehicle passed by, wounding 2 soldiers. Turkish troops here also arrested the alleged perpetrator of a bombing at a Turkish resort as he planned another bombing attack.
He was associated with the Kurdish Liberation Hawks, a breakaway group from the PKK. They were responsible for a bombing against a Turkish tourist site in the city of Kusadasi that killed 5 innocent tourists and wounded 13 more.
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Thousands of PKK guerrillas are apparently sheltering in Iraq. Rebels are vowing revenge for 14 people killed in riots in southeast. The riots erupted during funerals for 4 PKK guerrillas. Funerals for the 14 killed in the latest riots were taking place.
Friday, April 7
Near the Iraqi border, Late night: Turkish forces killed 6 Kurdish guerrillas in fighting in Turkey's southeast. Turkish commandos, backed by helicopters tracked down a group of guerrillas said to be responsible to for the killing of 5 Turkish troops in recent days. 2 guerrillas escaped during the fighting.
Istanbul: Turkish forces arrested 11 Kurds armed with explosives here.
Wednesday, April 5
Istanbul: Kurdish guerrillas bombed an office of the ruling Justice and Development Party here, wounding 2 people, in an audacious attack.
Sunday, April 2
Istanbul: Rebellious Kurds attacked a bus in the Bagcilar suburb of Istanbul, killing 3 innocent passengers and seriously wounding 1 more. Rioters shouting Kurdish separatist slogans attacked the bus with firebombs. As it tried to escape from the area, it was hit by a firebomb and the passengers were killed.
Kurdish rioting continued for the 7th day in a row across Turkey.
Saturday, April 1
Riots continued to rage across Turkey.
Saturday, March 25
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A military confrontation between the PKK and Turkish forces resulted in the deaths of 14 PKK guerrillas. The PKK claimed that Turkish troops used chemical weapons to kill the guerrillas. It was the deaths of these fighters, possibly with chemical weapons, that set off the wild riots that followed.
The riots started in Diyarbakir, but soon spread to many other towns and cities, including Batman, Siirt, Mardin, Kiziltepe, Nusaybin, Hakkari, Agri, Van, Ergani, Kars, and Istanbul. In scenes reminiscent of the Palestinian Intifada, ordinary Kurdish citizens took to the streets throwing stones at Turkish forces.
Many women, children and older people even threw stones in a genuine popular rebellion.
Kurdish children mourn over a poster commemorating the death of a Kurdish child during riots in Turkey protesting the killing of 14 PKK fighters.The fascist Turkish forces used German Leopard tanks and US-supplied helicopters. It is disgusting that the US and Germany continue to supply this criminal reactionary state.
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