ReNCKe$ Z!L@n: September 2008

INTRODUCTION TO KURDISH PROBLEM

The total surface of Kurdistan almost to be equal with France, there is no exact population. The number of Kurds could be about 40 million. The main Kurdish problem is water essential which means the Tigris and the Euphrates, the two long rivers watering Iraq, Syria and Eastern Turkey, have their sources in the Kurdish part in Turkey. For a long time the Syrian president, Hafez el-Assad had sheltered the staff and the basis of PKK, Kurdistan party workers because Turkey put pressure on neighbours with dams that will deprive Syria and Iraq of water. Another important problem is the rich petrol on the Kurdish soil. The reason why Kurds are in conflict with Arabian, Persian and Turks at the same time is because Kurdistan has a strategically situation between Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia. Also, Kurdistan is one of the wealthiest Eastern countries in raw material. We must not forget the embargo ordered by United States, Iraq was the fourth producer of petrol in the world and 70% of this petrol was existed in Kirkuk, the Kurdistan of Iraq.

Kurdish problem is not recent. Kurdish people could not be independent after separation of Ottoman Empire by group of Nations and the treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and were divided by four countries three of which practices an ethnical nationalism (ba’athism and Kemalism) that necessitate them to fit in to the Arabic and Turkish "races" a citizen's duty. The Kemalist creed that sings each morning the Turkish pupils, "I am Turk, Great is my race" has its corresponding in Syria and Iraq. But the situation and the oppression of Kurds are not the same in previously mentioned states. Iran, for example, federates since millenniums a mosaic of people and though under the reign of the Shah, the cultural rights of the Kurds were restricted and at present, the Kurds, Sunnite at 95% should live under a Shiite rule, the Kurd-Iranian conflict is essentially politic.

KURDISH PROBLEM IN SYRIA

In Syria, the Kurds are about 1 million and had profited by the attainment to the presidency of a non-Muslim minority that had sought to gain the other minorities' goodwill against the Muslim movements. Also, most of the president’s guard is Kurdish. However, the publication of Kurdish books or reviews is forbidden, as the learning of the Kurdish language, though it is allowed for the Armenians of Syria. Moreover, Kurds of Eastern Syria had been drive out from their home when Syria wanted to "arabize" its frontiers and thousands of Kurds are underprivileged of citizenship, have no right to existence.

KURDISH PROBLEM IN IRAQ

The name of Iraq is equal meaning of southern Mesopotamia in Arabic and anciently engaged by Arabic and Semitic populations. Correspondingly, North and South of Mesopotamia were never united, neither geographically, economically nor demographically. However, the outbreak of Kurdish conflict took place with the construction of this state with frontiers drowned by the British who wanted to control the production of petrol in the area. The North of Mesopotamia was for a long time a part a large country that Arabians called “Jazirah” it’s a mountainous area and anciently peopled by Kurds, Armenians and later Turkmens. However, most of the Arabian of Iraq was Shiite, in conflict to Sunnite Kurds.

(After destroy city of Halepce, retrived 29 sep,2008, http://images.google.co.nz/)

Since after the creation of Iraq, Kurdish people revolted and fought against British and Arabic of Iraq. Despite the fact that 1953 revolution that suppressed monarchist establishment Kurdish problem did not solved. After all Iraq establishments guaranteed the political and cultural rights of Kurds however, the conflict never stopped because of bad will of Iraqian authorities to accept the Kurdish autonomy.

On the other hand the persecution reached its climax during the war between Iran and Iraq which was in 1980-1988. However, when Iran tried to arm Kurd inhabitants against to Saddam Hussein, he wanted to defuse them, its Kurdish population. After war there were a lot of forfeit which includes; it’s about 5.000 villages were destroyed, some regions were fully burnt down with napalm, and some others were steadily depopulated. So 182.000 persons disappeared in the region of Germiyan and most of them were secretly executed. After Gulf War the process supply reassure that set up a secure area in Northern Iraq for defending the Kurds against what it remains of the Iraq army, Kurds could create a sort of autonomy in spite of embargo that deprived the Kurdish regions and the brutal disagreement contrasting the two fundamental political factions : KPD and PUK. But the regular raids of the Turkish troops in this area and the parched earth strategy experienced with napalm along the Turkish frontier bothered this hope of a Kurdish state. Bombardments intended on the record to destroy the military basis of PKK( Kurdistan Party Workers), but Turkey wanted basically to control the territories of Mosul and Kirkuk, that it never stop to claim since the set up of the border by Britannic.

KURDISH PROBLEM IN TURKEY, REFERENCE LIST, RELAVANT LINKS

The Turkish republic founded by M.Kemal Ataturk directly its Establishment and the criterions of its citizenship on the belonging to the "Turkish race". Then, de jure and de facto, to refer oneself from an else ethnical origin is treason. Dissident populations eliminated by massacres or deportations. But the Kurds were the biggest ethnicity and oppression began since the 20s. Some population deported to Turkish regions to stop rebellions that each of them was reprimanded and Eastern Anatolia was forbidden land until 60s.

There were many political fanatic movements from leftwing as well as from rightwing during the 70s which stirred up the country. Scholars thrilled by the war of Vietnam and the Palestine claims. At the same time Kurds were militated by leftwing parties which Turkish and Kurdish members worked together. However, the individuality of PKK (Kurdistan Party Workers) was not its program but still it will support the Kurdish problem in Turkey as a colonialist problem. PKK was founded on 27th of November 1978 in Diyarbakir, which was capital city of Kurdistan, by group of students and Abdullah Ocalan to be a leader of them who was imprisoned at the moment. The actions of PKK were at first political. But after the coup of 1980 that set up a military power and started a hard political repression in Kurdistan, PKK chose to fight as a military organization.

Despite all works from parties and sides Turkey did not change the attitude of the regime concerning the Kurdish problem. Until few years ago,speaking else than Turkish language was forbidden, Kurdish people had no historical or legal existence,and to mention them was a crime of separation The Turkish sociologist Ismail Besikci has been condemned to fifteen years of prison for having mentioned the existence of the Kurds.

The Turkish sociologist Ismail besikci, retrieved 29 sep, 2008, http://www.saradistribution.com/

There were many other things forbidden for Kurds such as, music, book, and TV channels so on and so full. The low economical development of Kurdistan and the rigidity of oppression had nothing done but radicalized the disagreement and all the attempts of a political determination are blocked by the decline of the Turkish political group and the government to permit a "Kurdish problem". The Human Right's associations, syndicates, newspapers and Kurdish parties are steadily repressed murdered, prison or are forbidden. So, five of HADEP MP's are in jail, after one of them, Leyla Zana, spoke in Kurdish in Parliament saying Turks and Kurds are siblings and should be together. And most of their leaders are imprisoned too, as well as thousand of its sympathizers.

The forbidden Kurdish letters and book, retrieved 29 sep, 2008, http://images.google.co.nz

Currently, though PKK gave up claiming self-government and just claims a federalist or autonomist solution, or a democratic creation for Kurds in the Turkish Republic, Turkey is de facto separated between a more residential and democratic Western part and Eastern Anatolia with its emergency law and courts, and its militias. This war of 14 years had made 36.000 victims, whose 20.000 Kurds. 4.000 villages had been destroyed and thousands of villagers of Anatolia crowded in the shantytowns of some Kurdish and Turkish towns as Diyarbakir, Istanbul, Ankara, and Konya. This migration can move the conflict, until nowadays limited to the South-East of Turkey, into the Western metropolis. War is the cause of a serious economic recession and a lot of networks belonging to mafia, profiting to drug connexion, and many scandals had shown kinks between mafia and government. Then it is clear that the Kurdish problem is as a cancer in all the levels of the Turkish society. And with the Kurds' demographic growth, they could become during the next century the most numerous populations in Turkey.

The arrest of Abdullah Öcalan and the well-built protests of the Kurds in the world prove that the Kurdish problem is more than a case of terrorism around a leader, as repeat for many years the Kurdish diplomacy. In fact, the two thousands Kurds of Iran, who had defiled the 20th February 1999 at Teheran, the 4.000 Kurds of Suleimanie in Iraq, the Syrian Kurds who rushed in Lebanon for a demonstration, the Kurds of the Diaspora who had began a series of actions in the world are not all members or sympathizers of PKK. Western diplomacy must be aware of the importance of the Kurdish problem and the serious consequences that it could have in the future of the near and the Middle East. The Kurdish problem will be probably one of the most essential and one of the most dangerous of the 21th century.

Alexie, S. (1999). The Kurdish problem or the future of the Middle East.

Website: http://www.ofkparis.org/english/kurdish-problem.htm

REFERENCE LIST

Abramowitz, M. (2007). How to save Iraqi Kurditan from itself.Foreign Policy

Website: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3910.

Caqaptay, S. (2007). Everybody's Kurdish Problem. The WashingtonInstitute for Near East Policy.

Website: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC06.php?CID=1106

Dyer, G. (2008). How saying the right words can save lives. TheNew Zealand Herald

Webasite:http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm

Kilercioglu, O. (2005). What Kurdish problem?. Turkish Daily News.

Website:http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=22143

Popham, P. (2007). Who are the PKK, could they drive Turkey into theIraq conflict and what does the US think. The New Zealand Herald