New Iraqi Passports w/ Kurdish script

[Joseph]

Confessions of an Honest Kurd;
The Assyrian & Armenian Genocide;
Past and present *

by Haydar Isik I ***

April 17, 2005
Translated from the German Language. wm.warda

I am an Alevi Kurd! Where we lived there were no mosques. In my childhood I admired the ruins of the Armenian churches in the area. Though their walls had crumbled the domes supported by the columns still stood. The marvelous pictures painted on them could still be seen. My birth city was called "Kizilkilise" or 'Red Church' in the Kurdish language . [it probably had a Syriac or Armenian name before] But later like other Kurdish names the Kizilkilise was changed to 'Nazimiye' by the Turkish government.

My childhood was affected by two important historical events. One was the Dersim massacre of the Kurds in 1937/38 , when 70,000 of them were killed by the Turkish army which still is very fresh and sorrowful in my mind. The other was the Armenian Genocide, of 1915-16 by the Turks which exterminated one and half million Armenians and a half million Assyrians. During the winter months I often heard about the sorrowful fate of our Armenian neighbors and it made me cry.

To achieve racial supremacy in Anatolia, the Turkish regime wiped out first the Armenians and Assyrians and then the Kurds. General Kazim Karabekir, who had participated in the killing of the Armenians and Assyrians once had said: "le yandan zo zo lari, doenuence de lo lo larin isini bitirecegiz." 'We will exterminate the Armenians with an invasion to the east, on our way back we will do the same with the Kurds.'

It was always the strategy of the Turks to kill or drive out the country first the Christian Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks to turn the country into an islamic nation, then to carry out similar genocide and ethnocide against the Kurds. To accomplish this Turkish rulers promoted hatred and incited one people against the other.. The Kurdish feudal chieftains became instrumental in carrying out these Turkish policies.

The Turkish regime used sunni tribes in Northern Kurdistan who lived side by side with the Armenians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia to implement its policies. The Aschirets (tribe) which lived in Van, Urfa, Agri; Mus and Bingöl were known as Hasenen, Cibran, Zirkan, Sipkan, Zilan, Milan etc.. These Aschirets were a minority of the Kurds. The Aleviti Kurds, the yezidis and the rest of the sunni Kurds provided no assistance to the Turks.

A minority of Kurds was used to kill Christians to prove their loyalty to Turkey and Islam. Today's Kurds see the massacre of the Armenians [and Assyrians] as a shame on Kurds. I am ashamed that Kurds were involved in killing their neighbors in such barbarous manners.

In the shadow of the 1ST world war, during the rule of Pascha Enver Talat and Cemal, Turks organized the Christian pogrom in Anatolia and Mesopotamia with the approval and knowledge of Germany. It was the first genocide in human history that was carefully planned and carried out. However one needs to see the other side of the coin also. The rag-tag brigades, recruited by Turkey out of 36 Kurdish tribes, which were used to massacre the Christian were also incited against the Alevi and the yezidie (moslem) Kurds.

The regiments were formed exclusively out of the sunni tribes in Northern kurdistan which means, the young Turkish regime (Ittihat Terakki) intentions were to incite one section of the Kurds against the other according to the principle of "divide and conquer". Consequently animosities between Sunni and Alevi Kurds continues to this day.

The Hamidiyeh regiments was also used against the Kurds to undermine the Kurdish aspirations for independence. Their Attacks against the Armenians, Assyrians or Kurds remain a blemish in the history of the Kurds. Nothing holds back the Kurdish descent bandits who attacked Armenian villages yesterday and killed countless people from killing their own. One has to ask is it just for anyone to kill other human beings because someone orders them to do so?

Yes, the story of the humanity is full of such events. About 50 years ago the German fascism massacred the Jews in industrial fashion. They believed that their victims deserved to die! Hitler has been quoted as having said that the Kemali Turks were masters of the Armenian and Assyrian Genocide. "The world watched as the Kamalist Turks massacred the Armenians. Who will object if I massacre the Jews?"
This is why the two largest Genocide *of the twentieth century happened. *

Now Turkey is using Kurds to fight their compatriots. Like the Hamidiyeh brigades of the past which Killed 100.000 of their own people, Kurdish gangs have been equipped to fight against the Kurdish liberation movement, which fights for liberty and well-being being of the Kurds living in the mountains.

The same mentality which massacred the Armenians and the Assyrians yesterday , is responsible for the killing of the Kurds today. The Kurds in Dersim provided protection for their Armenian neighbors despite pressure from the Turks, however such kindness cost them dearly when Turks massacred them in 1937/38 partly for that reason.

Turkey is a country of various people, Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians and other minorities. Although Turkey has signed almost all the international treaties including: The 'General Declaration of the Human Rights', the 'European Convention of Human Rights', the 'CSCE treaty' , which promises Equal Rights, Self-determination, and rights of minorities to teach their mother tongue, Turkey has denied such liberties to its none Turk citizens, yet it wants to join the European union.

The Armenians were exterminated by the policy of Turkey in Anatolia. We, the Kurds would like to live peacefully together with our neighbors, Armenians, Assyrians and Turks in a country, where the sound of the church-bells and the call of the Muezzin can be heard side by side. We are not any more the Kurds who were used as tool by Turkey to exterminate their Christian neighbors. We are ashamed and would like to make amend and do well.

www.haydar-isik.com

MAYORS CHARGED IN KURDISH TV DISPUTE
YIgal*Schleifer 7/06/06

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Fifty-six mayors from Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast region will soon stand trial in the city of Diyarbakir for allegedly aiding militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Charges were filed against he mayors after they wrote an open letter to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen last January asking him to resist Turkish pressure to shut down Roj TV, a Kurdish news and entertainment satellite channel beamed out of Denmark. If found guilty, the mayors could face up to ten years in prison.

Since it started broadcasting in 2004, Roj has become one of the most widely watched television networks in Turkey’s Kurdish regions. For the Turkish government, though, Roj TV brings little joy. Ankara has accused Roj of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for the PKK, which battled Turkish troops during the 1980’s and 1990’s in a bloody separatist fight that took the lives of more than 30,000.

Locals look at the station quite differently. In her small apartment in Diyarbakir, a major metropolitan city of about 721,000 in southeastern Anatolia, Rabia Celikmilek has access to the entire world. A satellite dish on the roof of her crumbling brick building streams 452 channels into her television, with programs from almost every continent. But Celikmilek, a Kurd, says she really only watches Roj TV.

"I don’t know Turkish and I don’t want to watch Turkish programs. I want to watch programs in my own language, so I watch Roj," the 46-year-old housewife and mother of ten said, as she watched the station’s evening news broadcast. "Roj TV reflects the emotions of the Kurds, our opinions. It’s a mirror of the Kurds. So when I watch it, I am happy."

With PKK guerillas again clashing with Turkish security forces following several years of quiet, and tensions on the rise in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, the Turkish government has lately been stepping up a campaign to have Roj TV shut down – a move that threatens to strain the country’s normally staid relations with Denmark and which has raised hackles among Kurds.

"We know for sure that Roj TV is part of the PKK, a terrorist organization," said one Turkish foreign ministry official. "[The PKK] is listed as a terrorist organization by the EU [European Union], and Denmark is a member of the EU and we would expect that the broadcasting organization of a terrorist group would not be given a free pass."

Turkey has accused Roj of helping incite a three-day outbreak of violent protests in the southeast in March and says it has provided the Danish government with documentation to prove the station’s link to the PKK.

Denmark, meanwhile, finds itself caught in yet another sticky freedom of the press debate. Although the outcry has been minor compared to the furor over a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Denmark’s embassy in Ankara reports that it has received a steady stream of angry letters and e-mails from Turks incensed by the country’s hosting of Roj TV.

The issue even sparked a mini-diplomatic crisis in Copenhagen last November when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan boycotted a joint press with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen because a reporter from Roj was in the room. News services reported Fogh Rasmussen as saying on Danish radio in mid-June that he finds it "rather shocking . . .that because you write a letter to me, you are being accused of violating the law. It is shocking that it can take place in a country which is seeking EU membership."

"Surely it’s not something that helps to improve relations," commented Anders Christian Hoppe, Denmark’s ambassador to Turkey, about the Roj TV affair. "The [Danish] government’s position is that, just like in Turkey, this is a matter for the courts. Governments in western countries, including Turkey, do not interfere with the courts," the ambassador continued.

The station, he added, "is being investigated by the police, the government. We have been given material by the Turks and it has been very helpful."

Roj, which means both "day" and "sun" in Kurdish, has open access to the PKK, whose fighters and leadership are holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq. The station frequently airs footage provided by the organization of its guerillas in action against Turkish security forces. Its news programs feature frequent updates about imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, a figure many Turks revile. The station’s announcements regarding the deaths of PKK members border on the reverential, the guerillas’ young faces shown in front of the organization’s red flag.

But Manouchehr Tahsili Zonoozi, a Kurd from Iran who is the station’s general manager, says that while the station maintains contact with the PKK, it is not controlled by it. "We are an independent Kurdish broadcaster. Our job is to be journalists," he said, speaking by telephone from the station’s studios in Denmark.

Zonoozi also rejects as "rubbish" the Turkish claim that Roj helped incite the recent violent protests in Turkey. "If I am going to be accused for what happened in Istanbul or Diyarbakir, then you should accuse Le Figaro for [the recent riots that] happened in France," Zonoozi said. "We are very popular and that’s hard for the governments in the region."

Until recently, local stations in Turkey were forbidden from broadcasting programs in Kurdish. As part of the country’s reform drive to join the European Union, that restriction was lifted, but other limits remain.
Stations are only allowed to broadcast in Kurdish for four hours a week and are not allowed to tackle political subjects in their programs or offer shows for children. Deniz Gorduk, news manager of Gun TV, a local station in Diyarbakir, says Roj – which, among its various programs, shows children’s cartoons in Kurdish – fills a vacuum created by the Turkish government’s controls.

"There are so many limits on us and that is why Roj TV is so popular," Gorduk said. "Roj TV is freer than us."

In the increasingly restive southeast of Turkey, where satellite dishes now adorn even the humblest village homes, the Turkish government’s efforts to shut Roj TV are now being added to the local basket of grievances.

In one Diyarbakir family’s living room, the subject of Roj TV easily gets emotions going. "When Roj TV started, it was like a sun rising," said Ali, a tailor who asked that only his first name be used. "For Kurdish people, Roj TV is a big window into their lives. We only have Roj TV and now Turkey wants to shut it down."