24 January, Istanbul: Turkey’s parliament fulfilled a long-standing promise to decriminalize the use of the Kurdish language during Turkish court trials after an intense debate between nationalist politicians and members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). The law, which passed 238-41, allows the use of Kurdish in court, but comes with drawbacks. According to the new law, Kurdish is allowed if the defendant speaks it better than Turkish. Kurdish is only allowed during the court proceedings, not during legal procedures before and after.
Nonetheless, the move has been welcomed by many Kurdish citizens who were constantly disenfranchised by the prohibition of Kurdish in court. A Kurdish citizen on trial for allegedly being part of the KCK was the first to benefit from the new law, when a court in Diyarbakir unanimously voted yesterday to allow the defendant Ali Şimşek to use his mother tongue.
The right to use Kurdish in court has come after a long and defiant battle on behalf of Kurdish prisoners and activists. One of the central demands of the thousands of Kurdish prisoners who were on an extended hunger strike last year was the right to use Kurdish in court, and it was only after the hunger strike that negotiations began to change the laws regarding its use. The prohibition has been lifted only after thousands of Kurds have already been disenfranchised in the Turkish court system by the denial of their right to use Kurdish and express themselves freely.
Turkey’s limitations on the use of Kurdish is a long standing tactic to repress the Kurdish identity. However, the fact remains that even though defendants are now allowed to speak Kurdish in court, many of those Kurds shouldn’t be in court to begin with. The Turkish justice system is hardly more just because it allows defendants to speak their own language; in order to truly prove that it is willing to reform, Turkey must stop unfairly targeting Kurds to begin with.
via Turkey “allows” Kurdish in court, still prosecutes Kurds unfairly | Alliance for Kurdish Rights.
ISTANBUL—The Turkish government, seeking to defuse a potential crisis over an eight-week hunger strike by hundreds of imprisoned Kurds, said it would propose legislation to allow the use of Kurdish language in courts if the prisoners abandoned their protest.
The move, announced by Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc in Ankara, comes amid concerns that more prisoners and Kurdish lawmakers could join the almost 700 inmates who have been refusing solid food to try to exert pressure on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, amid reports by Turkey’s main medical association that some of the protesters are at risk of death.
“A person will be able to defend themselves in court in the language in which they can best express themselves,” Mr. Arinc told reporters late Monday after a cabinet meeting where the issue was discussed. He appealed to the prisoners, saying “You would be alone responsible for the possible negative consequences…Do not upset us, do not upset our nation,” and said the legislation would be proposed in coming days. It is expected to pass, as the ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP, has a majority in Parliament.
European Pressphoto Agency
Turkish police detained a protester at a demonstration in support of the hunger strikers Sunday in Istanbul.
The prospect that Kurdish protesters would agree to the offer appeared slim on Tuesday as the hunger strike moved into its 56th day, with the leading pro-Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, reiterating its solidarity with the inmates.
While several Kurdish lawmakers acknowledged Tuesday that allowing the use of Kurdish in courts was important, they also said they might join the strike in coming days, unless concrete progress is made in fulfilling the prisoners’ demands. Those demands—the right to education in their mother tongue and an end to the isolation of Abdullah Ocalan, the convicted PKK leader who was captured in 1999 and is serving a life sentence on an island in the Marmara Sea—haven’t been met by the government.
The offer of an olive branch to the protesters contrasts with the hard-line stance taken until now by Prime Minister Erdogan. He has repeatedly described the hunger strike as a “show,” and accused protesters of making common cause with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union.
The head of the Turkish Medical Association has warned that such comments risked hardening the resolve of protesters, who include politicians, PKK fighters and alleged members of an organization that Turkish prosecutors say is the urban arm of the PKK. The protesters—who are subsisting on only water, sugar and some vitamin supplements—could begin to die on the 60th day, the medical association warned.
The possibility of deaths from hunger strikes in Turkish jails is a grim reminder of a number of deaths since 1980. Some 144 people, including Kurds and leftists, have starved themselves to death since then, according to the medical association.
The government’s growing concern over the potential implications of the strike was underscored late Tuesday when President Abdullah Gul summoned Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin to discuss the strike, according to Turkey’s state news agency.
The prospect that jailed Kurdish protesters could die in the weeks ahead follows one of the bloodiest summers in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast since the PKK took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state. The conflict has cost some 40,000 lives since then. The PKK subsequently scaled back its demands, and now says it is fighting for Kurdish autonomy rather than secession from Turkey.
Protesting prisoners didn’t immediately respond to the government’s plea to end their hunger strike.
The PKK said in a statement Tuesday that it believed the hunger strike could end if the protesters’ “reasonable demands” were met.
Write to Ayla Albayrak at ayla.albayrak@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared November 7, 2012, on page A20 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: To Cool Protest, Turkey Set to Allow Use of Kurdish in Courts.
via Turkey Plans to Allow Use of Kurdish Language in Courts – WSJ.com.
Prime Minister Erdogan says if enough students ask for lessons, Kurdish can be taught in state schools
For the first time schools in Turkey will be allowed to teach the Kurdish language as an elective subject, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says.
Mr Erdogan told parliament the measure was “a historic step”.
Turkey has been fighting Kurdish rebels in the country’s southeast for decades. Many Kurds have been campaigning for autonomy and better cultural rights.
Lessons in the Kurdish language will be granted in schools if enough students asked for them, Mr Erdogan said.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in nearly 30 years of fighting between Turkey’s government and the banned Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdish People’s Party (PKK).
Tuesday’s announcement is the latest in recent reforms introduced by Turkey to ease tensions with the Kurdish minority, who account for about 20% of Turkey’s population.
‘Oppression’
Pro-Kurdish politician Gultan Kisanak has said the measure does not go far enough
While the move is a significant concession to Kurds, the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Istanbul says Mr Erdogan will have to do more to win the trust of Kurdish politicians.
Deputy Chairwoman of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy party, Gultan Kisanak, addresses a news conference in January 2012 Pro-Kurdish politician Gultan Kisanak has said the measure does not go far enough
Gultan Kisanak of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy party said permitting lessons on only an elective basis “amounts to oppression”.
University-level language courses in Kurdish and other minority languages were introduced in 2009, a move widely welcomed by rights groups.
The EU has still urged the Turkish government to improve anti-discrimination laws for all minorities in the country and do more to tackle racism.
Kurdish rights remain a sensitive issue in Turkey, where political organisation along ethnic lines is banned by the constitution.
Use of the Kurdish language by Kurdish politicians has in the past provoked uproar from Turkish officials.
High-profile Kurdish activist and member of parliament Leyla Zana caused an outcry in 1991 when she took the parliamentary oath in her mother tongue.
Last month Mrs Zana was sentenced to 10 years in prison for spreading propaganda on behalf of the PKK.
via BBC News – Kurdish can be taught in Turkey’s schools, Erdogan says.
A Turkish university has begun teaching the country’s first ever degree course in the Kurdish language.
A rally of Turkey's main Kurdish political party, the BDP Kurdish groups have campaigned for years for more rights
About 20 students have signed up to study Kurdish at Artuklu University in south-eastern city of Mardin.
The government in Ankara started easing restrictions on the use of Kurdish in 2009 as part of its efforts to join the European Union.
Kurds make up around a fifth of Turkey’s population and have for years been pressing for greater rights.
The new undergraduate course will last four years and will cover both Kurdish language and literature.
The head of the new programme at Artuklu University, Professor Kadri Yildirim, told the Hurriyet newspaper: “This city is the centre of upper Mesopotamia and Kurdish culture is a major part of this.
“As other universities start opening Kurdish language classes and once Kurdish is used in the primary education system, this department will become more popular.”
Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party announced a series of initiatives to improve the rights of Kurds three years ago, but has since been criticised for dragging its feet.
Violence by Kurdish separatists has continued and Turkish nationalists have objected to attempts to reach out to the Kurds.
Tens of thousands of lives have been lost during three decades of fighting between Kurdish rebels and the security forces.
via BBC News – Turkey university begins country’s first Kurdish course.
Arts & Entertainment, Caucasus — By Poe Aslan on September 26, 2011 12:30 pm
Armenian-Turkish singer Arto Tuncboyaciyan/Wikimedia Commons
Istanbul is a magical city. You feel it in almost everything but mostly in Bosporus at sunset, night and to be honest, all the time. The magic that wraps you with strange energy is not just because of the magnificent landscapes. Istanbul is enchanting because the city is rooted in many different ethnic and religious civilizations.
Armenian architects have shaped the city with powerful and magnificent mosques, caravansarays, inns, bridges and many other artifacts. During the 15th century, between the land and sky, Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbians and Jews lived quite happily in this magical city. Diversity was the main feature of the empire. All in all those times were the best years for Istanbul.
Everyone knows how this extraordinary cosmopolitan atmosphere split up and resulted in tragedy.
And in the new millennium, some Turks remember once again there are minorities in Turkey. Thanks to ultra-nationalists, there are only a few Armenians and Greeks in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. But there are many Kurds in southeast of Anatolia and Istanbul. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party movement or PKK, which has been labeled as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, has been fighting an armed struggle against the Turkish state for an autonomous Kurdistan and greater cultural and political rights for the Kurds in Turkey since 1984. They have achieved some cultural and political rights, but the civil war still continues and nobody knows when and how it will end.
Most Istanbul residents go to seaside resorts or Anatolian villages to cool off during the summer season. On the other hand, they organize concerts for locals. The latest featured the band “Kardeş Türküler” which can be translated as “Brotherhood Songs” or “Songs of Fraternity” in Harbiye. Kardeş Türküler was founded about 15 years ago as a result of concerts series given by the music branch of the Folklore Club at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. The diverse ethnic groups in this ancient part of the world initially gave cause for the concerts to have artists perform interpretations of Anatolian folk songs in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Armenian.
This time they were not alone in this concert. They had guests, brilliant Armenian musicians Arto Tuncboyaciyan and Ara Dinkjian.
Tuncboyaciyan, who has appeared on more than 200 records all around the world and worked with numerous jazz legends, fronts his own group called the Armenian Navy Band. His compositions have been recorded in 13 different languages by some of the most celebrated singers and musicians throughout the world. And the greatest Turkish pop singer, song-writer and producer who sold over 40 million albums worldwide, Sezen Aksu, was another special star at the concert. In addition to her singing career, Aksu has an interest in social issues, including women’s rights and educational reform in Turkey. She also pledged her support for the “Kurdish Initiative,” a 2009 government-led proposal which contained uncertain progressive policies about Kurdish identity but failed after mutual provocations. She has worked with Ara, Arto and Arto’s brother Onno, with whom she had a love affair with until he tragically died in a plane crash in 1996.
Thousands crowded into the Harbiye Open Air Theatre for / by Poe Aslan
The Harbiye open air amphitheater has a capacity to hold around 5,000, but the place was overflowing that night, not only in the concert hall, but around it. People had even huddled on the stairs to watch. Much of the audience was young and ready for what the concert had in store.
Famous Kurdish folk and jazz singer Aynur Doğan was booed for performing Kurdish songs at Istanbul Jazz Festival in same place two months ago. She had been announced as one of the participants for this concert, but she didn’t perform, citing personal health problems.
“Kardeş Türküler” showed up first with a crowded dance group. Their first message was that they wished to see doves flying over mountains. With mountains being associated with war and the struggles of rebels in Anatolia’s history and doves with peace, the group was conveying a message of harmony.
All group members wore a mix of traditional and modern white costumes. You could see their aura, it was like a white flame.
Another interesting view on stage was that of a female musician wearing a modern hijab, regarded by secular elites as anti-secular and anti-Kemalist playing electro-guitar. The way she played solo was amazing, as was her harmony with her instrument.
When the members of the group presented Tuncboyaciyan on stage, the entire hall erupted in applause. He joyfully bowed to his fans. He played drums with the group, then they performed Turkish, Kurdish, Balkan and Chechen songs with modernized folk dances.
It was Arto’s time to make a great show. He sang one of his own songs in Turkish while he was playing drums. Then he left his chair and walked to the middle of the stage to sing an Armenian song with thousands; “Haydo”. It was the most amazing moment, everybody joined in the chorus for this touching song which was about a little Armenian boy living in the hillsides. Then, he decided to use a water bottle as an instrument. He didn’t like the sound at first, and so the celebrated musician spilled some water to adjust the balance and then continued, which resulted in another speechless moment.
It was kind of Arto’s night. He said he didn’t have hate and vengeance inside himself. He asked all people to be honest, sensible and decent. He added “whenever a baby is born, a fresh hope is born with him too, never give up demanding peace”. He sang another song but then went on to chat with the audience as well, explaining how him and his friends were caught in an aircraft to Rome while smoking secretly, he made jokes with a Turkish TV star so he made fun with his friends and made laugh all others.
After a break, a melody played by cümbüş (Middle Eastern oud like instrument) was heard while the stage was lit once again. This time, Ara Dinkjian was on stage. He was here in his own country once again though he has called New Jersey home for many years. After a wonderful solo greeted by applause, the charming Sezen Aksu showed up. She sang one of her famous songs composed by Ara. Then he played the oud and Sezen went on singing his other famous songs once again. One of them included Rumi’s amazing words:
“…The past has vanished, everything that was uttered belongs there; Now is the time to speak of new things…”
When she was on stage, Onno’s daughter Ayda accompanied them with violin and Arto with drum. Arto was so joyful, they talked about Onno as his name was written on Arto’s shirt. Sezen said “there are many things we don’t know but I feel he is around here,” adding, “thanks to Kardeş Türküler for reminding us we are all brothers.”
A dance group takes to the stage during/ via the Kardeş Türküler FB page
People shouted persistently for an encore and the group obliged, finishing the concert with traditional dances.
The concert made us more hopeful for the future but it raised some questions which made some things more complicated. Why can’t people live together between the land and the sky in this small world, why can’t they be more tolerant to each other, why can’t they see the beauty in diversity and finally why do ultra-nationalists have louder voice than peace loving people in all around the world?
A native of Turkey and graduate of Istanbul University, Poe is interested in diversity, history, Armenian culture and historical conflicts in the Caucasus. He expects not to see borders and hostilities anymore.
The naïveté in the West about the so-called “Kurdistan Workers’ Party” (PKK) decreased gradually during the last decade, but did not disappear. The reluctance of news agencies to even directly label it a terrorist organization is a remarkable example of incomplete evolution. The PKK maintains strong propaganda, and even pretends to represent “the Kurdish people”. The facts are in complete contradiction to their claim. Instead of improving the situation of the Kurds, the PKK’s misdeeds have always created new problems, or worsened pre-existing difficulties.
Tension strategy
The PKK was founded in 1978. During the five previous years, the situation in eastern Anatolia experienced some improvements, following the end of the military-backed regime (1971-1973). The development of universities anda revival of cultural activities were notable trends. The main difficulty was far-left terrorism — whose perpetrators were frequently close associates of the PKK — and the terrorist reaction on the part of the far right. Instead of taking note of these improvements and fighting against the terrorist violence, the PKK chose an extreme form of terrorism as the main, not to say the single, solution by which to achieve its goalsfrom the very beginning. Far from caring for the Kurds, the PKK, which at that time claimed a Maoist ideology, had the deepest contempt for their overwhelming majority.
Not unlike the terrorist campaign of the Armenian organization Hunchak and Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnak against the loyal Armenians and dissidents, from 1890 to 1914, the PKK attempted to exterminate all notable Kurdish individuals and political organizations which could challenge its pretentions to hegemony: the conservatives, like Mehmet Celâl Bucak (assassinated in 1979), the progressives (resulting in the decimation of the Kurdistan Socialist Party), those who advocated primarily for cultural rights, the supporters of administrative autonomy, and even the violent separatist groups which refused to merge with the PKK [Çağaptay 2007]. From 1978 to 1980 alone, the PKK assassinated 354 people and wounded 366; all were Kurdish [Mango 2005, p. 34].
From 1980 to 1983, the military regime stopped the kind of civil war which risked to disintegrating Turkey — the methods used at that time, against both far left and far right terrorists, are a completely different issue, and the purpose of this paper is surely not to pretend that every action was fully justified; but the security goal was [İtil 1984; Mango, pp. 18-20]. If the use of Kurdish dialects was subjected to more than questionable restrictions in 1982, southeastern Anatolia received very significant help from the Southeastern Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or GAP). The GAP provided electricity and running water to villages, which had primitive conditions of material life until that point, and developed irrigation. Whatever counter-terrorist methods employed during the military regime, there was no kind of “persecution” targeting the Kurds as Kurds: the Kurdish Turgut Özal was Minister of Economic Affairs from 1980 to 1982. As it is well known, Turgut Özal became Prime Minister at the end of the military regime (1983) and eventually President of the Turkish Republic (1989).
Such a senseless strategy becomes more understandable when considering that the PKK was materially dependent on the USSR, its Bulgarian satellite State, and its Syrian ally [Mango 2005, pp. 34-35]. For its sponsors, the PKK was a tool against Turkey and NATO, nothing more, nothing less — a tool among others, for the Turkish far-left terrorist groups, or, in another field, the Palestinian terrorists [Sterling 1981, pp. 228-244].
Blind and mass violence
Instead of taking note of the economic improvement and to take advantage of the presence of a Kurd at the head of the Turkish government, the PKK launched its first great offensive in 1984. The violence of its actions increased in 1987, when civil targets became a priority. From 1987 to 2002, 5,335 civilians were butchered, including 96 teachers only because they were teaching in the Turkish language; the PKK completely demolished 114 schools and six hospitals, heavily damaging another 127 and eight of them respectively. Michael Rubin pertinently compares this strategy to that of the Khmers Rouge’s [Rubin 2008]. Such extreme violence provoked departures of PKK members and leaders. The mass destruction and the massacres of civilians do not prevent the PKK from alleging — falsely — that the Turkish administrations “neglect” the development of southeastern Anatolia. Actually, the main obstacle to economic development in this region was — or perhaps still is — the PKK itself. The PKK profited from the underdevelopment, hence its absence of interest in contributing to the prosperity of eastern Anatolia.
As early as 1984, a local official of the PKK in Sweden left the group, and was assassinated; as a result, Sweden was one of the first Western countries to forbid PKK activities on its soil (it should be noted that A. Öcalan himself accused his ex-wife and ex-associate to have organized the assassination of Olof Palme, the Swedish Prime minister, in 1986). In 1988, Hüseyin Yıldırım, spokesman of the PKK in Europe, broke spectacularly with the PKK, saying that it was a scandal to massacre women and children. He was sufficiently lucky to escape to A. Öcalan’s killers[Mango 2005, p. 43].
The PKK’s second major series of attacks happened in 1992, i.e. when Turgut Özal was president, and one year after the official recognition of the Kurdish ethnicity, recognition which included the end of the strictest restrictions on the use of the Kurdish dialects. Several Kurdish cultural associations were created in Turkey in the beginning of the 1990s. The PKK decided to use mostly terrorism, not democracy. The PKK terrorist attacks also targeted German tourists after the closure of the PKK’s political wing by the German government in 1993, and Israeli diplomatic missions in 1999 as a result of Mossad’s assistance in the arrest of Mr. Öcalan, the leader of the PKK.
Since the end of the 1990s, in the context of the stabilization of Turkish political and economic life, the Ecevit and AKP governments widely expanded the outlets for the expression of Kurdish cultural activities. The single response of the PKK to the laws passed from 2001-2004 was a new wave of attacks. Its single response to the “Kurdish opening” of 2009 was a cease-fire which was actually never implemented.
The PKK’s propaganda pretends that only police and military are targeted. To kill policemen and soldiers in ambush is by no means excusable — this is terrorism — but the PKK never did limit its targets to security forces. Several examples were provided already. A recent and striking one is the assassination of an 18-year-old Kurd, Serap Eser, in 2009. In 2006-2007, the PKK burned many shops owned by peaceful Turkish traders, in France, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, and other countries. Such actions have no motivation but pure racism — and perhaps also the hope to worsen the relations between ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds. In 2009, eleven Kurds were sentenced by the Paris tribunal, from 18 months to five years in jail, for arson and the fundraising of terrorist activities. Some others were sentenced in Germany [Libération Bordeaux 2009; State Department Report 2009]. Similarly, Çayan Tekiner was sentenced by the French justice system to two years in prison for attempted arson (by Molotov cocktail) against Turkey’s Permanent Representation at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Such decisions are fully backed by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, which confirmed, on January 27, 2011, the decision of the German justice system (first instance, appeal, Constitutional Court) to sentence a pro-PKK agitator, who had launched a petition of “support” to the “democratic fight of the PKK” in 2001.
The current KCK court case (151 people indicted for supporting the PKK, physical threats, and other crimes) and the abduction of the son of Fehtullah Mehmetoğlu, the AKP mayor of Hazro (south-eastern Anatolia),illustrated the continuation of physical intimidation by the PKK and its supporters against any Kurd who would challenge their criminal activities and designs [Zaman 2010-2011].
Gangsters’ methods and alliance with the Armenian nationalists
The PKK used violence against Kurds for not only purely political, but also financial reasons. Far from obtaining systematic and spontaneous support from the Kurdish immigrants, the PKK had to use racketeering, as well as narcotics trafficking, to pay for its expensive terrorist activities [Çağaptay 2007; Haut 1998; Laçiner 2007; Minassian 2002, p. 194]. Such criminal activities began even while Greece, Southern Cyprus, and some others were providing material support to the PKK at the time. For instance, in 2000, Irfan Balsak was sentenced by the Paris tribunal to four years in jail and ten years in exile for various charges, including racketeering against Kurdish traders in the 1990s. More recently, the investigation by the French magistrate (juge d’instruction) Thierry Fragnoli dismantled a racketeering network in France. It should be stressed that this investigation was launched thanks to the complaints of Kurdish traders, who had been assaulted by PKK members. The verdict will be announced in November. Similarly, Mr. Fragnoli’s investigation demonstrated the PKK’s use of religious discourse to recruit and manipulate young Kurds, a finding which corroborates Turkish and British sources on the use of teenagers by the PKK, who are mostly abducted, often abused sexually, and tortured [Laçiner 2010].
Another striking example demonstrating that the PKK is not pursuing Kurdish interests, but its own interests, is the alliance with Armenian nationalist organizations, the ASALA in the 1980s, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation [Minassian 2002, pp. 74, 108-109, 116 and 194], the Hunchak, and some others, including in Armenia itself, up to today [Tanu and Abidelli 2007]. No group butchered more Kurds than the ARF-Dashnak and its volunteers for the Russian army during the World War I [McCarthy 2006, pp. 176-257; Reynolds 2011, pp. 156-159 and 194-197]. Even now, the ARF-Dashnak’s and the Hunchak’s territorial claims against Turkey imply a necessity for ethnic cleansing against the Kurds (as well the Turks) of Kars, Van, Bitlis, and other regions.In October 2009, the openly racist article of Laurent Leylekian, executive director of the Dashnak lobby in Brussels from 2001 to 2009, removed any doubt, if there was any, about what the ARF thinks of the Kurds: no better than the ethnic Turks. The article was removed, as was the website which published it, due to a court case, but the ARF never published the slightest criticism against the racist statement of its former leader.
Such an alliance, though absurd, is by no means an innovation. Hoybun, in a certain sense the ancestor of the PKK created in the second half of the 1920s, was closely associated with the ARF-Dashnak [Selim 1931 & 2005] — despite the Dashnak crimes being very fresh in the Kurdish memories at the time.
Conclusion
The PKK should be presented by any person who believes in democracy and human rights as a gang of criminals, existing by crime, rather than “guerillas” and the even less accurate “freedom fighters”. The PKK used Maoism as well as Islamism, and even racism, as a basis for extremely violent attacks. Its pretention to represent the Kurds is nothing but aninsult to its thousands of Kurdish victims. The pro-PKK should be more systematically considered accomplices of terrorism — following the example of Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, which banned two pro-PKK newspapers in 1997.
———————————————————————————–
Works cited
Çağaptay 2007: SonerÇağaptay, “Can the PKK Renounce Violence?,” The Middle East Quarterly, XIV-1, Winter 2007,www.meforum.org/1060/can-the-pkk-renounce-violence
Haut 1998: www.drmcc.org/IMG/pdf/41b3a420533c6.pdf
İtil1984 :Turanİtil, “Terrorims in Turkey With Special Consideration of Armenian Terrorism, ” International Terrorism and the Drug Connection, Ankara: Ankara University Press, 1984, pp. 29-47.
McCarthy 2006: Justin McCarthy, Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Taşkıran and Ömer Turan, The Armenian Rebellion at Van, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006.
Minassian 2002: Gaïdz Minassian, Guerre et terrorisme arméniens, (Paris: Presses universitaires de France), 2002.
Reynolds 2011 : Michael Reynolds, Shattering Empires. The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
State Department Report 2009:www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,USDOS,,DEU,,4c63b64428,0.html
Rubin 2008:
Selim 1931 &2005 :YavuzSelim (ed.), TaşnakHoybun : Türkiye Cumhuriyet’ine Karşı Ermeni Kürt İttifakının İç Yüzü, (İstanbul : İleri Yayınları), 2005 (first edition, Ankara, 1931).
Sterling 1981: Claire Sterling, The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism, (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston), 1981.
Tanu and Abidelli 2007: /www.turkishweekly.net/news/52549/-armenia-and-karabakh-support-pkk-terrorism-.html
Zaman 2010-2011: www.todayszaman.com/news-224788-101-defense-in-kurdish-marks-first-day-of-kck-trial.htmlhttp://www.todayszaman.com/news-248158-pkk-releases-kidnapped-son-soon-after-mayor-quits-ak-party.html
(*) Maxime Gauin is a visiting researcher at USAK.
Armenian-Turkish singer Arto Tuncboyaciyan/Wikimedia Commons
Thousands crowded into the Harbiye Open Air Theatre for / by Poe Aslan
A dance group takes to the stage during/ via the Kardeş Türküler FB page
