Kurdistan parliament in Exile I

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

From: tabe at newsdesk.aps.nl
Subject: Kurdistan parliament in Exile I
Reply-To: kurdeng at aps.nl

Kurdistan the Kurds and the Kurdish National Question
Historical Background and Perspective

this is the firsth part of a scan of the brochure with this name. In the
next week I will scan and publish more of this important document.

Page 3-6

The Kurds constitute, with the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks, one of
the four major peoples of the Near East. They should number in 1995 between
35 and 40 million, of whom a majority of about 52 % (18 to 20 million) live
within the borders of Turkey, 8 million in Iran, 5 million in Iraq, 1.5
million in Syria and 0.5 million in the former USSR. The Kurdish diaspora
in Western Europe is estimated to be nearly one million. The Kurds increase
more than one million in number each year, at a rate much higher than that
of the Turks. They are distinguished from their neighbors by their
language, their homeland, the feeling to constitute but one people, the
will to remain Kurds and the aspiration to live and to progress together
under their own flag, in peace and cooperation with the neighboring peo-
ples. They speak an Indo-European language, alien to both Arabic and
Turkish. Its affinity to Persian and Iranian languages is similar to that
existing between Russian and Polish in the Slavic family. Kurdistan, the
homeland in which they have been constituted across ages as a people of
their own, is a country geographically, as large as France, where they
represent a majority of 90 % of the population. Kurdistan is the backbone
and the water shed of the area, with such large rivers as the upper
Euphrates and the upper Tigris, green valleys, well cultivated plains, and
a subsoil rich in natural resources, including oil.

Because of their unhappy present political condition, the name of Kurd is
usually associated with the idea of resistance to national suppression
and the sufferings from human rights violations. Our oppressors have
described us, unjustly and successively, as a primitive mountain
population refractory to civilization, lawless nomadic tribes without any
national consciousness, highway rubbers, eternal rebels, bloody landlords,
red communists, and today as international terrorists. Contrary to
historical facts, we are said to have never been organized into a state or
states of our own. Our past has been so blurred, our present is so full of
struggle that it is often forgotten that we are a people of the Hurrians
and the Medes respectively the Kurds' first and second ancestors.

Two dates appear to be ill-fated in modern Kurdish history, 1514 and 1923.
The first is that of the battle of Chaldiran which took place in Kurdistan,
near the north-eastern edge of the lake Van, between the Ottoman Turkey,
then seeking to establish an empire in the Near East - but already ruling
as such over the Balkan -and the Safavid Persia. Most of the ruling princes
of Kurdistan sided with the Ottomans, while the eastern principalities
sided with Persia. Since then and for about two centuries the country
became a battlefield between the two empires and was ultimately ruined. The
Kurdish principalities lost their independen- ce one after another, the
last ones by the middle of the 19th century. The classical literatu- re
written in modern Kurdish goes back to that medieval and chaotic period.

At the end of the World War I, it was a question to grant independence to
the nations who still were under the Ottoman rule. Woodrow Wilson, in his
project of 1919 regarding the League of Nations (LON), mentioned three
countries to be separated from Turkey, namely Armenia, Kurdistan and
Arabia. The peace Treaty of Sevres of August 10th, 1920, articles 62 to 64,
provided for an autonomous Kurdistan within Turkey, and for an independent
Kurdish state if the Kurds expressed such a will within one year from the
coming into force of the Treaty and should the (LON) decide to recommend
that independence. That was a recognition by the international community of
the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination. After the advent
of Mustafa Kemal, the Treaty of Sevres was replaced by that of Lausanne,
signed on July 24th, 1923, in the absence of the Kurds. Instead of acceding
to autonomy or independence, former Ottoman Kurdistan, which represented
75% of the people of the whole Kurdish country, was included in the new
Republic of Turkey. For the French Mandate of Syria were given three
districts. Taking into consideration Iranian Kurdistan, the Kurdish country
was thus divided into four unequal portions by "international" frontiers
which should be more exactly called interstate and which indeed are intra-
Kurdish. The Kurdish people were never consulted on the division of
Kurdistan.

That was the second ill-fated date in their modern history, the beginning
of a period in which the Kurds have been submitted to a violent policy of
national oppression by chauvinistic governments knowing democracy only
by name, if not openly dictatorial and racist. Their patriotic uprisings
were reduced in the blood. Saddam Hussein of Iraq, using chemical and
conventional weaponry, committed genocide against the Iraqi Kurds, a crime
which remains unpunished.

Yet, it is in Turkey, which is member of the Council of Europe and is still
cynically pretended by many governments to be "a democratic country",
that the Kurds are the most ill-treated, the most suppressed and the most
endangered. Saddam Hussein, despite genocide, recognizes his Kurds as a
people distinct from the Arabs, Iraq having even proclaimed, on March
11th, 1974, a formal "Law on the Autonomy of the Area of Kurdistan". There
is nothing similar in Turkey. Soon after the signature of the Treaty of
Lausanne, the Kurds in Turkey, representing 30 % of its total population,
found themselves in the situation of a people with no legal status and
whose very existence was denied. They were said to be Turks, but were in
fact subject to discrimination and to Turkish contempt. They were denied to
have a history, a land and a culture of their own, submitted to a policy
of assimilation and mass deportation, coupled with military occupation and
under-development. The use of the Kurdish language was banned. The name of
Kurdistan, which was written in bold letters on all the Ottoman maps,
disappeared under the Republic. That is the worst kind of colonialism, a
kind which,, curiously enough, is not recognized by the United Nations.

The so-called democratic Turkey has known three military coups, in 1960,
1971 and 1980, which all were motivated by "the Kurdish separatist
danger". The Turkish Constitution of 1982, elaborated by the putschist
regime, aggravated the repression in Kurdistan. In the absence of any
democratic means to reach a negotiated political settlement for the Kurdish
national question, the Kurdistan Workers Party of Abdullah Ocalan, PKK,
began its armed struggle in 1984. Since then the Turkish army has announced
unceasingly "the imminent liquidation of the terrorist rebellion." If the
Turkish state" although launching repeated attacks with about half a
million soldiers against the Kurds,, was however unable to do it/ and
since, on the contrary, this resistance movement has been growing in the
last eleven years,, it is simply because the PKK guerrillas are a patriotic
force and a movement of decolonization supported by an overwhelming
majority of the Kurdish people. It is because resistance has definitely
given dignity to the Kurdish people, even by those who had forgotten the
Kurdish language or who used to feel ashamed, not so long ago, of being
Kurdish, thanks to the education given to them by the Turkish colonialist
order. A psychological point of no return has been reached and it is more
than unlikely that the Kurdish enslaved nation will go on.

The financial investment promised by Ms Tansu Ciller, the present Turkish
Prime Minister, for the development of the so-called "South-East" will not
solve the problem. How can one believe this when the Turkish military
forces are following a scorched earth policy in Kurdistan and that Ankara
spent some 15 billion US $ in 1994, to finance her dirty war? That reminds
one of the Constantine Plan by which France had imagined to solve the
problem of its Algerian colony before realizing that the diagnosis was
faulty.

As to terrorism, it is the deed of the state secret services of Turkey and
its anti-guerrilla covert network, against the Kurdish civilian population.
Since the fall of 1992, the Turkish state has leveled to earth more than
2000 Kurdish villages and several towns, displaced, by force, 3 million
Kurds, assassinated, by its death squads, 3840 civilian Kurds, including
intellectuals, journalist and one MP. Thousands of scholars, including
Turks favorable to the Kurdish case, were arrested and are being tortured.
The Pro-Kurdish DEP party was banned and its MPs stripped of their immunity
by the Turkish Parliament and put in jail. In December 1994, 8 Kurdish MP,
including 6 from the DEP, were sentenced to 3, 7 or 15 years of
imprisonment, simply because they had expressed patriotic opinions as
Kurds.

This policy of terror, of destruction, of under-development and of brutal
military operations is a policy of genocide. Its result is a half
atomization of the Kurdish people. What had been committed against the
Armenians and the Greeks of Anatolia is being repeated, in some ways,
against the Kurds. Of the 18 or 20 million Kurds in Turkey, 11 to 12
million no longer live in the Kurdish areas, but are scattered throughout
Turkey and in Western Europe. Istanbul alone counts 3 million Kurds, if not
more, on a total mixture of 11 to 12 million inhabitants. But Turkey cannot
solve the problem in that way. Its Kurds, more and more impatient to get
rid of tyranny and injustice, are too numerous to be absorbed. Within some
20 or 30 years, they will be more numerous than the Turks. And Kurdistan,
irrespective of its bleeding, will remain predominantly Kurdish. Besides,
the Kurdish movement of national and social liberation constitutes a hope
for some other non-Turkish elements in Turkey, numerically less important,
but which are oppressed in their cultural rights, such as the Arabs (about
2 million), the Circassians (about 2.5 million), perhaps the Lazes (about 3
million). The Alevi Turkmen should not be forgotten. They may number 8
million and, although speaking Turkish, they would by no means identify
themselves to the Sunni or Hanafi Turks.

The Alewis who, by mid-March 1995, demonstrated massively in Istanbul, and
then Ankara, after the killing of several of them by the police and by the
armed bands of the racist General Turkes, were of Kurdish origins. Their
slogans were those of the Kurdish liberation movement. Alevis, Sunriis,
Shafiis or Ezidis, whether speaking Kurmanji or Dimili Kurdish, or possibly
Turkish, the Kurds in Turkey and in the diaspora, are united in the
patriotic struggle for freedom. The movement also includes the Christian
elements of Kurdistan, namely the Assyro-Chaldeans and the Armenians. Those
bloody events are the signal of a deep rupture in the society and the
failure of the Kemalist ideology. Should things continue to go on as they
are, Turkey would know a civil war a la Yugoslavia.

Democracy cannot be established in Turkey, before a solution for the
Kurdish problem is found through the right of self determination for the
Kurds. That implies first, a cease-fire mutually accepted between the PKK
and the Turkish state, as Abdullah Ocalan has repeatedly offered, but so
far in vain; then the abolition of all the Turkish racist laws; and then
constitutional recognition of them as a nationality and a people distinct
from the Turks. 
That would open several options, one of which is separatism and the
creation of an independent Kurdish state. Actually the Kurds are seeking
a solution within the present frontiers of Turkey, and that was mentioned
in Ocalan's proposals for the cease-fire. A federalist solution is
advocated by many Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals. in this respect,
Belgium offers a good example, and Ethiopia another and a quite recent one.
The right to self-determination, which is by definition inalienable should
remain naturally reserved.

Encouraged by the ambiguous attitude of most of the Western governments;
Turkey has even invaded the northern part of Iraqi Kurdistan, thus
violating the rules of the international law, not to speak of human
rights. The Gulf war against Saddam Hussein had been engaged because of his
invasion of Kuwait. It is true that the Kurds do not possess the oil of
their own land, as the Kuwaitis do. The Western powers, and especially the
United States, who have been for decades helping Turkey in the financial,
technological and military fields as they had done with Saddam, are
indirectly responsible for the oppression of the Kurdish people. The
resolution of the European Parliament unanimously adopted on April 6th,
1995, condemning Turkey for her military intervention in Iraqi Kurdistan
and stating that "the Kurdish problem cannot be solved by the military
force" is, no doubt, a good positive step towards a political solution.
More efforts, and perseverance, are needed.

The Kurdish people do no longer accept to be the last colonized and the
most oppressed people on the Earth. Whatever might be the price, they are
decided to pursue their patriotic struggle to get rid of colonialism and
racism, and to have a place of their own in the Sun. Their way is the path
for democracy in the Near East. For the Kurds, it does not much matter
whether their colonizer is white or brown, Muslim or Christian. Theirs is
the desire to live better, in a free and democratic Kurdistan, living in
peace, cooperation and union with the neighboring nations, just as the
European nations are living united in one Europe, after the blood baths of
two world wars.