Vol. 72/No. 17      April 28, 2008

The Turkish military announced April 10 that its troops killed 13 Kurdish rebels in the eastern provinces of Tunceli and Diyarbakir. A force of 200,000 Turkish troops are carrying out military operations aimed at the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed Maoist group, in southeastern Turkey.

Turkey’s invasion of northern Iraq was sanctioned and supported by Washington. Both the U.S. and Turkish rulers fear that growing confidence among Kurds who have gained a real measure of autonomy in Iraq could lead to renewed struggles in the Kurdish regions of neighboring Turkey, Iran, and Syria.

Kurds in Turkey organized mass celebrations of Nowruz, their new year celebration, which began on March 21 this year. In Istanbul 300,000 took to the streets March 23 in a display of Kurdish national pride.

Thousands waved the traditional green, yellow, and red colors of the Kurdish flag. Some chanted slogans in support of the PKK and carried photos of its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

The Turkish police responded by trying to crack down on the celebrations, prompting angry demonstrations. For five days police clashed with Kurds in a number of Kurdish towns and cities. In two towns, demonstrators were killed by police.

In the Syrian town of Qamishli, near the Turkish border, about 200 people gathered March 20 on a road in the town, lighting candles, making a bonfire, and performing traditional Kurdish dances, witnesses told the Associated Press. A half-hour later, Syrian internal security forces opened fire on the crowd, killing three men.

Fearing protests, the Syrian government sent 10,000 troops into the Kurdish region, the Jerusalem Post reported.  
 
Oppressed nationality
The Kurdish people are an oppressed nation of 20 to 25 million with their own language and culture.

Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I a Kurdish state was agreed to by the Allied powers codified in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. However, the treaty was never ratified. Three years later it was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, which denied the Kurds an independent state and divided their lands between Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

About half of the Kurds live in Turkey. Despite their size as a national group Kurds are not recognized as a minority and face political and cultural persecution. Historically the Kurds in Syria, Iran, and Iraq have faced similar oppression.

Until 1991 it was illegal to speak Kurdish in Turkey even in informal settings. The language is still illegal in public schools and official settings. In 2004 Ankara began broadcasting on state television and radio the first Kurdish-language shows—for 30 minutes a week. There are no private Kurdish TV or radio networks.

The second-class citizenship of Kurds in Turkey is further underlined by health and literacy statistics. In the rural eastern area of the country, 43 percent of Kurdish males and 68 percent of Kurdish females have no education. In the rural population as a whole, the figure is 18 percent and 37 percent. Infant mortality among Kurds is 74 deaths per thousand live births, compared to 46 among Turks.

Political parties that are sympathetic to the Kurds have been shut down under a law which forbids recognition of religious or racial minorities. In the 1990s eight parties were shut down for being “separatist.”

Leya Zena, then a leader of the People’s Labor Party (HEP) and the first woman elected to parliament, wore Kurdish colors in her hair and spoke in Kurdish at the swearing-in ceremony in 1991 as a form of protest.

After losing her immunity as a member of parliament, Zena was tried and jailed for treason in 1994 and the Democratic Party, the successor to the HEP, was banned. She was released in 2004 after serving 10 years in prison. On April 10 she was sentenced again to two years in prison for violating antiterrorism laws for “speaking respectfully of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan,” the Voice of America reported.

In their current operations against Kurds in southern and eastern Turkey, the Turkish military is aided by a force of 55,000 “village guards.” This mainly Kurdish paramilitary force was set up by the Turkish government. Any village that does not provide forces to the system faces reprisals by the military, in some cases destruction and forcible evacuation.  
 
 
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