Kurds’ Barzani and Turks’ Erdogan have previously met, but Saturday’s meeting represents the first time that the two leaders have met in the Kurdish region of Turkey (Courtesy of the Kurdistan Regional Government)
Turkey’s meeting with Kurdish leadership this weekend posed as a promising start to tentative peace talks between the two clashing groups, according to an Agence-France Press report.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani for the first time in Turkey’s Kurdish city center of Diyarbakir in the southeast part of the country Saturday.
The landmark meeting was designed to “kickstart” a peace process to end a decades-old conflict between the two groups, particularly in reference to Turkey’s tense relationship with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Erdogan described his meeting with Barzani as a “historic” and “crowning moment” in overcoming the conflict.
Erdogan’s positive perspective of the meeting and Barzani’s role in encouraging peace talks between the two groups and bringing Turkish Kurds to the negotiating table as well was echoed by other leaders in Ankara, including Energy Minister Taner Yildiz who described Barzani’s “importance in the eyes of our citizens” as “making it contribution [to the potential peace talks].”
However, responses from the Kurdish community were mixed, with some prominent members of the community citing Barzani’s visit as “an opportunistic gesture” ahead of the March 2014 municipal elections, while others saying that his visit was motivated by “hope [for a different future].”
Reports indicate that the historical meeting was also set in order for Erdogan to discuss a tentative energy partnership with Barzani, considered by many to be a springboard for “aggravating tensions” in the region, particularly in reference to Ankara’s relationship with Baghdad.
Previous attempts at peacemaking between the two groups were stalled after jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan did not withdraw his fighters from Turkish soil as promised in September, accusing Ankara of “failing to keep to the terms [of the original] bargain in giving greater rights [to the Kurds].”
Ocalan’s accussation was largely in reference to Erdogan and his Law and Justice Party (AKP)’s recent reforms that supposedly give Kurds and other groups “extra rights.” However, as indicated by Ocalan’s comments, the reforms are largely seen as inadequate and failing to give the Kurds “any constitutional recognition.”
Kurds in Turkey have been calling for reforms from Ankara since the establishment of the country in 1923 due to the fact that the country’s constitution fails to recognize the Kurds as a distinct minority.
While the two leaders met in an unprecedented meeting in the country’s southeast region, Turkish army officials reported that one of its convoys was attacked, allegedly by PKK rebels near the Syrian border. PKK rebels have previously used northern Iraq, the region under Barzani’s control, to attack Turks as part of their “campaign for self-rule” in southeast Turkey, but also in the world order more generally.
Kurds have been struggling to secure their own homeland for decades with communities scattered throughout Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. As Barzani told AFP, “Having our own state is the natural right of the Kurdish people.”
Barzani’s historical visit also follows last week’s declaration of autonomy in Syria by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). Kurdish regions in Syria have been administered by local Kurdish councils since regime forces withdrew from the region in mid-2012.
via Turkey’s “promising” landmark meeting with Kurds’ Barzani receives mixed responses | Al Bawaba.
By now it’s obvious that “spring” is the wrong description of the political turmoil and civil war that have followed the Arab revolutions of 2011. But for one nation in the Middle East, it’s beginning to look like freedom and prosperity just might be blooming. “People are beginning to talk about the Kurdish Spring, not the Arab Spring,” says a grinning Fuad Hussein, a senior official in the government of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Hussein and a delegation from the Kurdistan Region Government, which controls a strip of northern Iraq slightly larger than Maryland, were in Washington last week to talk about where their country stands a decade after the U.S. invasion. From Irbil, Kurdistan’s capital, the war looks like an extraordinary success.
Jackson Diehl
The Post’s deputy editorial page editor, Diehl also writes a biweekly foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.
Kurdistan is a democracy, though an imperfect one; the territory is peaceful and the economy is booming at the rate of 11 percent a year. Foreign investors are pouring though gleaming new airports to invest, especially in Kurdish-controlled oil fields. Exxon, Chevron, Gazprom and Total are among the multinationals to sign deals with the regional government. A new pipeline from Kurdistan to Turkey could allow exports to soar to 1 million barrels a day within a couple of years.
There was one university for the region’s 5.2 million people a decade ago; now there are 30. “Our people,” says Hussein, the chief of staff to President Massoud Barzani, “did quite good.”
The bigger story is that Kurds, a non-Arab nation of some 30 million deprived of a state and divided among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, are on the verge of transcending their long, benighted history as the region’s perpetual victims and pawns. Twenty-five years ago, Kurds were being slaughtered with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein and persecuted by Turkey, where nearly half live. A vicious guerrilla war raged between Kurdish insurgents and the Turkish army.
Now Turkey is emerging as the Kurds’ closest ally and the potential enabler of a string of adjacent, self-governing Kurdish communities stretching from Syria to the Iraq-Iran border. Having built close ties with the Iraqi Kurdish government, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now negotiating a peace deal with the insurgent Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) — a pact that could mean new language and cultural rights, as well as elected local governments, for the Kurdish-populated areas of southeastern Turkey.
Meanwhile, Barzani and the Iraqi Kurds have been trying to foster a Kurdish self-government for northern Syria, where some 2.5 million Kurds live. Syrian government forces withdrew from the area last year, giving the Kurds the chance to set up their own administration. Until recently, the principal Syrian Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), was supporting the PKK’s fight against Turkey and leaning toward the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Now, thanks to the nascent peace deal, it may be switching sides: Earlier this month its fighters joined with Syrian rebels to drive government forces out of a Kurdish-populated district of Aleppo.
Middle Eastern geo-politics, which for so long worked against the Kurds, is now working for them. The sectarian fragmentation of Syria and Iraq has created new space for a nation that is mostly Sunni Muslim, but moderate and secular. Suddenly the Kurds are being courted by all sides. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki this month sent a delegation to Irbil to propose that the Kurds return the parliament deputies and ministers they withdrew from the national government last year. Barzani’s government declined but agreed to send a delegation to Baghdad for negotiations.
As Hussein portrays it, the talks may be a last chance to avert a breakup of Iraq into separate Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish areas — a split he blames on Maliki’s attempt to concentrate Shiite power. “Either we are going to have a real partnership, or we are going to go back to our own people,” he said, adding that the result could be a referendum on Kurdistan’s future.
It would make sense for the United States to join Turkey in backing this Kurdish renaissance; the Kurds are a moderate and pro-Western force in an increasingly volatile region. Yet the Obama administration has consistently been at odds with the Iraqi Kurdish government. It has lobbied Turkey not to allow the new oil pipeline that would give Kurdistan economic independence from Baghdad, and, in the Kurds’ view, repeatedly backed Maliki’s attempts to impose his authority on the region.
“The administration sees us not as a stabilizing force, but as an irritant, as an alien presence in the region that complicates matters, another Israel,” one of the visiting Kurds told me. That, like so much of the administration’s policy in the Middle East these days, is wrongheaded.
via Jackson Diehl: Iraqi Kurdistan in bloom – The Washington Post.
Kurds celebrate Newroz in the PKK controlled area of Qandil in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan.
A sandstorm was kicking up at Ben Gurion International midday last Friday, winds bad enough to cancel the departure ceremony for President Obama’s winning trip to Israel. But in a sheet metal trailer on the tarmac, Obama was calming another storm, three years along and finally running out of bluster. In the box with him was his host, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Nentayahu. In Netanyahu’s hand was a cell phone. And on the other end of the line was the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
As arranged in advance by Obama and diplomats from all three countries, Bibi read out an official apology for the nine lives lost on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara in May 2010, when Israeli commandos boarded the aid ship en route to breaking Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu’s words, along with a promise to compensate survivors and continue to ease strictures on the Palestinian enclave, ended a diplomatic cleavage seated in sheer cussedness, and restored what one Israeli diplomat calls “the triangle” – made up of the two most stable and prosperous democracies in the Middle East, and the superpower that needs them on the same side.
If that was all that went Erdogan’s way last week, he might have come in second to Obama, whose tour of Israel left the supposedly wary Jewish population something close to twitterpated. But Erdogan had already pulled off a diplomatic coup of his own — and just one day earlier: Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned head of the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its intials in Turkish as the PKK, had agreed to end the country’s bloody 29-year civil war and bring the Kurdish struggle into the realm of representative politics. In the space of two days, Erdogan – once jailed himself for an Islamist proclamation – had brought to life the foreign policy slogan of Turkey’s modern founder, the rigorously secular Kemal Ataturk: “Peace at home, peace abroad.”
(MORE: New Day for the Kurds: Will Ocalan’s Declaration Bring Peace With Turkey?)
The story of “Turkey’s Triumphs” appears in this week’s print edition of TIME, available to subscribers here. It lays out the implications for the American strategy in the Middle East of the tentative rapprochement between Jerusalem and Ankara — closely allied before Erdogan’s rise to power. Burying the hatchet should pay off first for Washington in Syria, the country coming apart between Israel and Turkey. Both have huge stakes in the outcome of that Arab nation’s civil war, but while Turkey has been deeply involved in sheltering and arming the rebels, Israel has taken pains to stand back, keenly aware that even the perception of support for the uprising will be unhelpful, given its standing in the region. The exception is Syria’s arsenal of advanced weapons, including chemical and biological arms; the Jewish state has already interceded once , and says it will again if they detect them falling into the hands of Hizballah or other terror groups.
But history may well show that, if it holds, the pact with the Kurds will be of greater significance. Turkey is home to perhaps half of the world’s at least 30 million Kurds, the largest population still seeking a homeland of their own, after being promised one, then denied it, as European leaders were drawing the map of the Middle East after World War I. The uprising Ocalan began in 1984 claimed 40,000 lives; it sought secession for most of the war sought. Kurds now say they will be happy with equal rights and some form of cooperation with fellow Kurds across the borders in northern Iraq, western Iran and in Syria – where a Kurdish party allied with the PKK has won a measure of autonomy by keeping out of the civil war. Its accommodation with the PKK may well give Ankara a new measure of influence in what happens with Syria’s Kurds. It already enjoys close ties with Northern Iraq’s Kurdish government, to the point of cooperating on building a pipeline from the oilfields of Kirkuk, bypassing Baghdad. Iraq’s Kurds, in turn, have a history of cooperation with Israel. So in a way, what Obama did in the trailer in the sandstorm on the runway was to close a circle. It’s far from a perfect circle, though, especially given Erdogan’s ardent support for the Palestinians, including Hamas. The day after receiving the apology, he announced he was considering a trip to the Gaza Strip. Washington said it wished he wouldn’t.
But the Turks figure they’re on a roll, as Erodgan’s top advisor, Ibrahim Kalin, told TIME’s Pelin Turgut: ”The apology in particular presents new opportunities for the moribund Middle East peace process, which the Obama administration has tried to revive without much success. We are aware of the obstacles to the realization of the two-state solution, including the occupation of Palestinian territories and the illegal settlements,” Kalin said. ”But it is not impossible to establish peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians, each having its own state and enjoying a free and dignified life.”
via Turkey’s Big Week Means New Clout In An Emerging Middle East | TIME.com.
A view of Palangan village in Kurdistan province, about 660 km (412 miles) southwest of Tehran, May 11, 2011. (photo by REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl)
By: Bayram Sinkaya Translated from ORSAM (Turkey).
ORİJİNAL YAZIYI TÜRKÇE OKUYABİLİRSİNİZ
For some time Turkey has been searching for ways to solve its Kurdish issue under the label of “the solution process.” Despite the optimism generated by this label, both the government and the Peace and Democracy Party [BDP] (along with other elements of parliament’s Kurdish wing) have shown prudence. One reason for this cautious optimism is Ankara’s concern that power brokers who do not want Turkey to solve this issue might sabotage the process. Many insist that no country in the region, or anywhere in the world for that matter, would like to see Turkey prosper after solving the Kurdish issue. Turkey’s most frequently mentioned adversary is Iran.
ABOUT THIS ARTICLE
Summary :
Tehran is reluctant to support Turkey’s efforts to reach a resolution with the Kurds, fearing that such a settlement could exacerbate the conflict between Iran and its own Kurdish residents, writes Bayram Sinkaya.
Publisher: ORSAM (Turkey)
Original Title:
Why Doesn’t Iran Want Turkey to Solve its Kurdish Issue?
Author: Bayram Sinkaya
First Published: March 16, 2013
Posted on: March 20 2013
Translated by: Timur Goksel
Categories : Turkey Iran Security
For a while now it has been alleged that Iran is in alliance against Turkey with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] — or at least with PKK leaders such as Cemil Bayik, who is said to be close to Iran. We remember how many listed Iran among the possible culprits of the Paris murders. Is Iran really against Turkey resolving the Kurdish issue?
The first theory is a classic one, and posits that solving the Kurdish issue will empower Turkey. Therefore Iran, which sees Turkey as a regional rival, would not want it to gain more power by resolving the Kurdish issue.
But wouldn’t a strong and prosperous neighbor that has solved this problem contribute positively to Iran as well? Isn’t that why Iran backed Turkey’s accession to the EU and its democratic openings? Stability, economic growth and peace in Turkey’s east would certainly be felt in Iran’s restive northwest, which has been living through similar problems for many years.
Another theory is that if Turkey makes progress in solving the Kurdish issue through democratic means, it might put the authoritarian Iranian government — which also has a significant Kurdish population — in a tough spot. Iranian Kurds who see Turkish Kurds making gains might well exert pressure to achieve the same rights. This is why Iran would not want Turkey to solve the Kurdish issue through democratic means, it is claimed. While there may well be some truth to this claim, one has to admit that Iran’s Kurdish issue and the phase it has come to differ from what Turkey has experienced. For example, Iran supported the demands of Kurds in northern Iraq to form a federation, immediately recognized the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] without hesitation and quickly developed relations with the region.
Perhaps Iranian leaders won’t be uncomfortable with Turkey solving its Kurdish issue but will rather worry about the Turkish approach to a solution. The “solution process” now means the withdrawal of about 4,000 PKK militants from Turkey. Where will these militants go with their guns? Northern Iraq, Iran and Syria are the places that first come to mind.
Another question that has to be answered is what these militants will be doing after they leave Turkey. Will they sit on a mountaintop waiting for the process to be completed? Certainly not. A PKK that suspends its operations in Turkey is most likely to support the armed struggle of the Iranian Kurds and fight against Iran, or to go to Syria to boost and consolidate the gains of the Kurdish people there.
The PKK fighters’ withdrawal from Turkey with their guns will gain time for Turkey in the solution process. But Iranian officials have serious fears that the PKK will join with the Iranian Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) to focus on the struggle against Iran. Those fears may explain the recent wave of arrests of Iranian Kurdish politicians. It is reported that this wave of attacks is the most comprehensive since 2008. The fact that these arrests have come at the same time as the solution process in Turkey cannot be a coincidence.
In a nutshell, the solution process linked to the PKK’S withdrawal from Turkey is disturbing Iran. This is not because of Iran’s concern with democratization or the empowerment of Turkey, but because of its worry that the PKK fire could ignite its territory.
via Iran Cautious of Turkey’s Kurdish Approach – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.
Turkey’s central government and Kurdistan Workers’ Party rebels are negotiating a peace deal that could halt a bloody guerrilla war, upend Turkish politics and reverberate across the Middle East. Joe Parkinson and Ayla Albayrak report on WSJ.com.
All photographs by Ayman Oghanna for The Wall Street Journal.
Boys sat Monday atop the medieval city walls of Turkey’s main Kurdish city, Diyarbakir. The leader of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, is in solitary confinement in an island prison but is negotiating a peace deal that could halt a bloody guerrilla war.
The Diyarbakir prison, shown here, housed thousands of Kurdish political inmates over the past three decades. Another prison compound, where the PPK leader spent the last 14 years, a four-hour ferry ride from Istanbul, is an unlikely setting for negotiations that could shape Turkey’s future.
The Peace and Democracy Party’s Altan Tan was part of a delegation of Kurdish lawmakers who visited Mr. Ocalan in February. ‘Despite solitary confinement, he is on top of everything,’ Mr. Tan said.
A woman on a street in Diyarbakir. Last week, Mr. Ocalan sent a handwritten letter to senior PKK leaders in Northern Iraq proposing a cease fire.
In return for a cease-fire deal, under Mr. Ocalan’s plan, Ankara would set up a parliamentary commission to enshrine the rights of Kurds in Turkish laws.
Kurds want greater autonomy in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Here, men at a plaza in Diyarbakir.
Kurds also want education in their mother tongue, which is now banned. Here, an unofficial school in Diyarbakir where teenagers are taught in Kurdish.
Turkish police watch over a street corner in Diyarbakir. The Kurds represent about a fifth of Turkey’s population, and the guerrilla war begun by Mr. Ocalan has claimed 40,000 lives since 1984.
A Kurdish choir rehearsed recently for the coming Kurdish New Year celebration, Newroz, in a cultural center in Diyarbakir.
Graffiti on a wall in Diyarbakir reads ‘Freedom for our leadership now.’ Mr. Ocalan, leader of the PKK, has been imprisoned since his capture by Turkish Special Forces in 1999.
A peace deal also could usher a new political settlement in Turkey and help realize the ambition of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to rule for another decade, according to analysts.
All photographs by Ayman Oghanna for The Wall Street Journal.
In a visit to southeast Turkey, Cengiz Candar responds to Mustafa Akyol’s article “Is There a Turkish Kurdistan?”
Original Title:
Part of Turkey’s Territory is Kurdistan
Author: Cengiz Çandar
Translated by: Timur Goksel
This is what happens every time I travel to Hakkari. Hakkari is the only Turkish province that has common borders both with Iran and Iraq. It wouldn’t be out of place to call this province, “the hotbed of Kurdish insurgency.” The first bullet of the PKK’s armed struggle that began in 1984 was fired in this province’s town of Semdinli that abuts both Iran and Iraq. Even today, the province the most troubled corner of Turkey.
A pro-Kurdish demonstrator gestures during a protest in Istanbul, Feb. 15, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Murad Sezer) Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/02/turkey-kurdistan-pkk-hakkari.html#ixzz2Lzyl714M
What makes Hakkari so special, more than its geopolitics and historical background, is its topography. Some 88% of its area comprises mountains. Flat plains are but 2%. The remaining 10% consists of high plateaus. When you say mountains, we are speaking of those above 3,000 meters, some even 4,000 meters.
The nearest airport to Hakkari is 200 km away at Van. It takes about four hours of driving to get to Hakkari. The topography of Van and its environs are similar to that of Hakkari. Your first sensation that you are in the different land and even in a different planet overcomes you after about an hour and a half of driving from Van, once you drive through the Guzeldere Pass at 2,740-meter altitude.
The other day when passing through Guzeldere [which means Beautiful Creek] I realized that there was no creek to see and that the name was affixed to as a matter of routine without any creativity whatever it as it was done with many Kurdish location names. I said to my Kurdish friends from Hakkari who were with me that Guzeldere Pass must have had a Kurdish name. It did. It was called Gedika Chux. Chux was the name of a village a bit below the pass. Nobody in the region ever calls it the Guzeldere Pass.
Anyone who lives in Hakkari city calls it Colemerg. The most populated town of the province and perhaps the zenith of Kurdish militancy in Turkey we call Yuksekova, but the Kurds call it Gever. For them Cukurca and Semdinli, the two towns known for frequent attacks on border outposts, are known as Cele and Semdinan, respectively.
After you drive through the pass, the horizon is a series of mountains lined up like a wall. Beyond them is Iran. Once you take the Iran border to your left and drive toward Hakkari city, you are engulfed by one of the most spectacular sceneries of the world. The Zap River that enters Iraq at Cukurca and links up with River Tigris near Mosul meanders through wadis and canyons overlooked by majestic mountains.
The region’s distinctive ethnic and geographical identity that sets it apart from other regions of Turkey continues unchanged in Iran in the East and Iraq in the South. That is the heartland of the region called Kurdistan. Hakkari’s topography is similar to Iran and Iraq. Their common feature is being the land of Kurdistan. On these lands live the Kurds with their tribal ties and kinships.
The people of the region have never acknowledged the borders imposed on them. You can’t have natural borders on such high mountains. There are also no ethnic boundaries. Borders are easily traversed by the Kurds who don’t use passports. Kurdish armed movements in all three countries have routinely used the land of each other as hinterland of their area of operations.
Those who live inside the borders of Turkey refer to neighboring countries without using their official designations. For them Iran is Rojhilat and Iraq is Bashur, that is East and South respectively in Kurdish language, just as they are now referring to Kurdish areas adjacent to Turkish border in Syria as Rojava, that is, the West.
These identifications are based on their perception of Kurdistan. With feel they live in Kurdistan. For them the part of their geographical and ethnic entity that on paper remains in Iran is the East, those parts in Iraq is the South and the parts in Syria is the West, hence the labels East Kurdistan, South Kurdistan et al. Bakur, that is North, is where they live, hence North Kurdistan.
We reached he city of Hakkari, that is Colemerg, talking about all these with Kurdish academics of the Hakkari University.
A surprise was waiting for me in Hakkari that evening.It was an article by Mustafa Akyol in Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse titled, ‘’Is There a Turkish Kurdistan?’’
The introductory paragraph of the article was especially stunning: “If you follow the Turkish media, and especially focus on news related to Turkey’s southeastern neighbors, you will notice an interesting nuance: The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of is almost never referred to with its official name. Most Turks rather simply call it ‘Northern Iraq’ with clear intention to avoid the K word. Others who try to be more realistic speak of ‘the Kurdish Regional Government.’ They, in other words, prefer the word ‘Kurdish’ to ‘Kurdistan,’ because the latter is quite toxic for most Turkish ears.”
Allergy of Turks to the word “Kurdistan” is at times unnerving and at times amusing. While I was reading these lines I remembered an incident with an Iraqi young girl who entered Turkey from the border of Kurdistan in Iraq. In 1991 after Saddam Hussein lost his sovereignty beyond the 36th parallel, marking the actual emergence of a Kurdistan region, many babies were named Kurdistan and that was how they were recorded in population registers. This young girl, almost a teenager when the Americans invaded in 2003, entered Turkey through the Habur border crossing in the southeast. The official studying her passport gave her a long look and asked: “What is your name?” After hesitating a bit, she answered: “Northern Iraq.”
Akyol’s points were on the mark, provided if you read this part of it from the end: “The reason for this widespread Turkish sensitivity is not hard to see: The geographic area that historically has been called ‘Kurdistan’ is divided since World War I between four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the last of them having the largest share. Moreover, groups among Turkey’s Kurds have launched almost two dozen rebellions against Ankara in the past 90 years. This had led successive Turkish governments –and especially the bureaucratic establishment, which was politely called ‘the regime’ – to try to ‘Turkify’ the region.”
What I mean by reading from the end is this: “Because successive Turkish governments — and especially the bureaucratic establishment, which was politely called ‘the regime,’ tried to ‘Turkify’ the region, that led groups among Turkey’s Kurds to launch almost two dozen rebellions against Ankara in the past 90 years.”
And I can add the following “As long as the identity of Turkey’s Kurds are denied including the avoidance of the K word, Kurds will never feel reconciled.” Because the Turkish allergy to the word Kurdistan brings with it the fear of division of Turkey. For Kurds, this means rejections of their quest and demands for equality.
The problem with the word ‘’Kurdistan’’ is not solvable by citing claims that the borders are not precisely defined, therefore it has the potential of causing problems in the Turkish administrative structure. While there is Kurdistan in Iraq, a province with that name in Iran was allowed to keep it both under monarchy and then the Islamic Republic, there is now the possibility of another one emerging in Syria, to think that there has never been an area called Kurdistan in Turkey only attributes sacrosanctity to the superficial, illogical and abnormal borders drawn after World War I to define Turkey’s southern frontier.
This can no more be possible in the second decade of the 21st century.
Akyol’s remark that “if there is a Kurdistan in Turkey, it is the whole country and its capital is Istanbul” sounds pleasing to the ears. His intention with that description is subtly pleasant but not in full harmony with historical and physical facts and the direction developments are heading toward nowadays. Akyol’s words, “Kurds should be made more at home in every inch of Turkey,” are entirely justified.
But this will be impossible, if the name of their homeland is denied or considered as dangerous for the unity of the people and country or as ‘sinful’.
The proper response to the question “Is there a Turkish Kurdistan?” that will also satisfy the concerned parties could well be: ”Part of Turkish territory is Kurdistan.”
Cengiz Çandar is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse. A journalist since 1976, he is the author of seven books in the Turkish language, mainly on Middle East issues, including the best-seller Mesopotamia Express: A Journey in History. He contributed to two Century Foundation publications: Turkey’s Transformation and American Policy and Allies in Need: Turkey and the U.S. He is currently senior columnist of Radikal in Istanbul. Çandar was a special foreign policy advisor to Turkish President Turgut Özal from 1991 to 1993.
