Turkey and the EU

[elendil]

The whole world was watching how Saddam was terminating uprising Shia Arabs and Kurds. It was in the world news, do not come with the justification that PKK trespassing borders.
There were as you said 800.000 people, for almost 100 days in the mountains before Turkey agreed the UN to open it's borders. In the first place, Turkey even refused. The killings were not in Dersim (man, you just don't know even your own country), they were on the border of Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan. Sirnak and Hakkari provinces.
And if you still stick to the point that people fleeing from Saddam must not enter Turkey but should rather die, than it's up to you and shows your image against Kurds.

The killing of boy I was talking about was in Dersim(Tunceli) not the border events naturally(Come on man). You misunderstood. However if you are talking about another subject of shooting then I am sorry I do not know the event. My image about Kurds are not different from anyone who tries to trespass my border. Be it Arab,European or Kurd trespassing our borders without necessary arragments is not allowed in constitiuon(likewise any country).

And care to explain what fore?
Because it's the first Kurdish self-governing area? Because you see that Kurds have a political entity? Because you don't know how to hate a people of 40 million that seeks a political recognition in the world?
I'm sorry but Iraqi Kurdistan has suffered from continious Turkish bombardments since it's creation. Napalm bombings against villages and shepherds were used frequently, of course constantly justified by the claim that there are PKK members. I know how many civilians have lost their lives.

The treatment of Turkmens, the corruption in its politics(Talabani and Barzani)
The dealings with Iraq.And so on and on... These are what for. Not because you are Kurds or Armenians or Arabs...

[elendil]

And does Spain call Basques, mountains Spaniards?
I think you mean Catalonia is having more and more autonomy, well if Turkey gave that bit only to us, Turkey would be more developed and developed each day.
But why are you ignoring the fact that Spain is negotiating with the ETA? Doesn't the ETA also have hundreds of bombing allegations?

That bit you call is nearly %25 of my country where half of Kurdish population in Turkey live in western areas. I have no problem with that but as soon as there is a division on ethnicity, racism will rise with terrifying speed. Especially in a country like Turkey. Kurds will defend their own areas and Turks will their own. It will be another example of Sunni-Shia clash, just one difference it will be in the terms of ethnic roots. If it went with flowers and peace, Turkey indeed can be a much more developed country but, alas we have mixed too far in that regard.
As to Spain, it is in that situation because it negotiates with ETA while it should negotiate with its people. That means you give up, admit every action ETA has taken was right since the ends justify the means in these issues. Ofcourse that is my idea...

Look, I know this much and much better than you. The reason why we do not want to identify ourselves as Turks, Iraqis, Syrians or Iranians is because people are going to think we actually have chosen to live in these countries while it is a well known fact that we all were forced to carry an identity we do not want and have nothing Turkish,Iraqi Syrian or Iranian to feel so much pride for that country.
If somebody asks a Kurd from Turkey his nationality, he does not want to say Turk, rather he maybe say I am a Turkeyic, not a Turk. Which is why the term Iraqi is more reasonable to carry for a Kurd. Because it explains that he is from a geographical area. If Turkey was called Anatolia, I bet many Kurds would carry that nationality. I'm sorry, go ask another people to carry the identity of TURK, do not expect any goods.

Yes our fight(at the times of empire) and English Imperialism in middle-east caused Iraq's,Syria's maps. that much is true. But regardless people live together in these countries. People estimate there are 2 millions Kurds in Istanbul only. We have got have an common identity that unifies us. Else people will fall on each other. It is true also that Kurds say in that I am a Kurd in every place of the world. That is only natural, I respect that. But Turkishness must come second. Ofcourse this is what I believe it is people's call to do that or not. Turkishness has well exceeded beyond an ethnical identity. But Anatolian identity...Hmm. A leftist Kurds had once mentioned it. But I do not see it much possible honestly

No, instead you called us Mountainious Turks

We did that and that was wrong. But situation of Kurds were still much better that Saddam's or Iran's I believe...Still it was wrong naturally.

Good to hear at least you care about us.

Believe it or not, we do...

In the same way that Hitler was a Jew.
If someone wants to become president in Turkey, he must still deny that there are Kurds, only speak Turkish, pray the Turkish flag and pray towards Ataturks tomb. So much "Kurdish" that has left from that person. Saddam could also have Kurdish grandparents, who knows. Saladin was also born in the same city (Tikrit) where Saddam was born.

Hitler was a Jew?? Heh would it not be a story now
Ataturk never denied Kurdish problem. In fact he has speeches to European ambassadors about Kurdish problem and its solutions. But, still the country though victorious, torn apart,economically and culturally backwards. Our leader did the best he could regarding the time and circumstances.
Ofcourse, I may have Kurdish blood in me. Likewise you may have Turkish blood in you. And we all have mongolian blood in us respectively to invasion of mesopotamia. Still blood does not define us, but the culture we are born into.

It would be nice if you recognized us.

If you are talking about Regional Goverment of Kurdistan in Iraq, just be patient, our intelligence services have already met in Erbil if I know correctly.
If you are talking about a defined Kurdish identity in Turkey, I do not know really..

[Joseph]

Turkey sees it can't stop 'independent Kurdistan,' says US advisor to Kurds

Wednesday, August 23, 2006



Galbraith urges Washington to redeploy forces in Kurd-controlled northern Iraq
ÜMI?T ENGI?NSOY
WASHINGTON - Turkish Daily News

**Turkey cannot stop the formal creation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and is beginning to understand this reality, a top U.S. adviser to Iraqi Kurdish leaders said.

**Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Zagreb, also urged Washington to redeploy the American army to "Kurdistan," withdrawing from the rest of war-torn Iraq. He said there was nothing the United States could do to put an end to the country's ongoing "civil war" or to reunite Iraq.

**"I don't advocate the breaking up of Iraq. It has already disintegrated," Galbraith said Monday in an address to the Middle East Institute, a think tank here. "I haven't met a single Kurd who would say 'I prefer to live in Iraq' rather than in an independent Kurdistan. There's no chance to persuade the Kurds to give up their independence."

**He said the Kurdish entity in northern Iraq already has been de facto independent, only lacking a seat at the United Nations, and that winning formal independence was just a matter of time.

**President George W. Bush told a news conference here Monday that his government would continue to work for a united Iraq and opposed calls for the country's break-up.

**Asked to comment on Ankara's position on an independent Kurdish state, Galbraith said: "Turkey has long viewed anything Kurdish as an anathema, a threat to its national integrity, but that attitude is changing. Now there's a significant body of opinion that basically adopts a different approach."

**He said that this new understanding developing in Turkey, which partly stemmed from European Union-related political reforms, acknowledged that invading northern Iraq was not an option, because this would involve huge political and military problems.

**Galbraith said that those Turks with this new understanding knew that any Turkish move to invade northern Iraq would alienate the United States and make sure that Turkey would be forced to stay "out of the European Union for the rest of this century."

**"So I think the basic argument is that Turkey doesn't have an alternative, doesn't have a way to stop the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. That being the case, what's the best strategy for Turkey? The best strategy is good relations with Kurdistan, and that's actually what is happening on the ground," Galbraith said, calling this attitude "a realistic approach."

**He did not directly specify which groups or agencies in Turkey had adopted this new understanding toward a Kurdish state but said: "Turkey is by far the largest investor in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turkish government has promoted investments in Kurdistan."

**Galbraith is an advisor to both Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)*and head of the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). But sources say he is closer to Barzani. He was in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 war and during last year's negotiations for a constitution.

**Galbraith suggested that the U.S. Army pull back from Baghdad and Iraq's central parts, scene of a simultaneous Sunni Arab insurgency and Shiite-Sunni sectarian fighting, and the Shiite-controlled south and instead redeploy in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

**Asked if the Kurds wanted the creation of a greater Kurdistan uniting the Kurds of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria and how Turkey's Kurds would behave, he said that Turkey's Kurdish problem was largely a civil rights issue.

**"Most Turkish Kurds see that they're better off staying in a Turkey moving toward the European Union" rather than seeking alternatives, he said.

**Galbraith said the Iraqi Kurds were not interested in a greater Kurdistan because this would make them a minority in such an entity, like in the case of "a merger of Moldova and Romania."

**Asked to comment on Kurdish efforts to win full control of northern Iraq's multiethnic city of Kirkuk which sits on 40 percent of the country's oil reserves, he said that "the Kirkuk issue has already been settled" through a constitutional provision that calls for a referendum in the area before the end of 2007.

**Turkey and a number of international experts have been warning that such a referendum,*which would favor the Kurds amid an ongoing Kurdish exodus that is altering the city's demographic structure, would not be legitimate, but Galbraith said, "You can't make everybody happy."

[kerkuk_kurdista]

The killing of boy I was talking about was in Dersim(Tunceli) not the border events naturally(Come on man). You misunderstood. However if you are talking about another subject of shooting then I am sorry I do not know the event. My image about Kurds are not different from anyone who tries to trespass my border. Be it Arab,European or Kurd trespassing our borders without necessary arragments is not allowed in constitiuon(likewise any country).

I was talking about incidents were Kurdish refugees were fleeing, the Turkish border guard killed every refugee fleeing from the Republican Guard gunships.

The treatment of Turkmens, the corruption in its politics(Talabani and Barzani)
The dealings with Iraq.And so on and on... These are what for. Not because you are Kurds or Armenians or Arabs...

I think your information about Iraqi Kurds is mainly from Turkish media , which is censored by Turkish nationalists and tell everything different to create hatred towards Kurds.
I barely think you have met an Iraqi Turkmen yet.
In 2006, 150.000 Arabs from Southern Iraq have arrived in Kurdistan, 40.000 Christians(Assyrians) have arrived, almost all Turkmen in Baghdad are now in Kurdish cities, enjoying it's wealth. Even the Mandeans have headed for Kurdistan. Kurdistan has representation for every minority group in Kurdistan. Ministers speak Assyrian, Turkmen in the parliament. Assyrian and Turkmen languages are official languages in the area's those peoples make a majority.
As for dealing with Iraq, it is the Kurds that are trying to keep Iraq stable. Not killing eachother for having another religious sect. The most destabilizng threat to Iraq is Iran.

[kerkuk_kurdista]

That bit you call is nearly %25 of my country where half of Kurdish population in Turkey live in western areas. I have no problem with that but as soon as there is a division on ethnicity, racism will rise with terrifying speed. Especially in a country like Turkey. Kurds will defend their own areas and Turks will their own. It will be another example of Sunni-Shia clash, just one difference it will be in the terms of ethnic roots. If it went with flowers and peace, Turkey indeed can be a much more developed country but, alas we have mixed too far in that regard.
As to Spain, it is in that situation because it negotiates with ETA while it should negotiate with its people. That means you give up, admit every action ETA has taken was right since the ends justify the means in these issues. Ofcourse that is my idea...

The fact is that you do not want to recognize an area in Turkey that is indigenous to Kurds, leaving the description that Kurds are just country dwellers and happen to be in Turkey.
Division on ethnicity is better than to be called Turks. Racism will rise if it's up to you, because in the past there have already been so much problems.

We did that and that was wrong. But situation of Kurds were still much better that Saddam's or Iran's I believe...Still it was wrong naturally.

But how can you flourish up a people when you have had so much bloodshed on them in the past?

Hitler was a Jew?? Heh would it not be a story now
Ataturk never denied Kurdish problem. In fact he has speeches to European ambassadors about Kurdish problem and its solutions. But, still the country though victorious, torn apart,economically and culturally backwards. Our leader did the best he could regarding the time and circumstances.
Ofcourse, I may have Kurdish blood in me. Likewise you may have Turkish blood in you. And we all have mongolian blood in us respectively to invasion of mesopotamia. Still blood does not define us, but the culture we are born into.

Yes, Hitler was, but leave that. As you said, Turgut Ozal could have Kurdish blood in him, but he was a Turk.

If you are talking about Regional Goverment of Kurdistan in Iraq, just be patient, our intelligence services have already met in Erbil if I know correctly.
If you are talking about a defined Kurdish identity in Turkey, I do not know really..

So tell me, what if the rights of the Kurds in Turkey were the same as the rights of the Kurds in Iraq, keeping out the regional autonomy. What would you think?

[TONY CASTALINO]

Shame ON EU

It is shame on EU even to think about allowing Turkey in their union:
1. Turkey had bloody history with everyone in the region
2.Turk are moselman
3. Turkey is not part of Europe, & turk are mangolians not Europeans. .

[elendil]

But how can you flourish up a people when you have had so much bloodshed on them in the past?

Somehow we have to. We do not stand much of a choice. Even if southeastern Turkey breaks up there will be Kurds in Turkey and Turks in the other part..

So tell me, what if the rights of the Kurds in Turkey were the same as the rights of the Kurds in Iraq, keeping out the regional autonomy. What would you think?

If majority of the Kurds in Turkey wish it,it should be given..(Education,language courses)

I think your information about Iraqi Kurds is mainly from Turkish media , which is censored by Turkish nationalists and tell everything different to create hatred towards Kurds.
I barely think you have met an Iraqi Turkmen yet.
In 2006, 150.000 Arabs from Southern Iraq have arrived in Kurdistan, 40.000 Christians(Assyrians) have arrived, almost all Turkmen in Baghdad are now in Kurdish cities, enjoying it's wealth. Even the Mandeans have headed for Kurdistan. Kurdistan has representation for every minority group in Kurdistan. Ministers speak Assyrian, Turkmen in the parliament. Assyrian and Turkmen languages are official languages in the area's those peoples make a majority.
As for dealing with Iraq, it is the Kurds that are trying to keep Iraq stable. Not killing eachother for having another religious sect. The most destabilizng threat to Iraq is Iran.

I was hitting on a Turkmen girl, so I know about them. I did not say Kurds massacred peopleif you are aware. If I have read correctly and these information was from Kurdish sites, there was a small-scaled riot because of corruption in Iraqi Kurdistan cities thoudh no bloodshed was involved. And Talabani and Barzani, man you should really find other leaders. Barzani is okay to a point but Talabani...I know their past dealings with Turkey and with themselves. The dealing with Iraq as we all know is about oil..Still Kurdish region is the only stable and peaceful part of Iraq for the time being.

[kerkuk_kurdista]

Somehow we have to. We do not stand much of a choice. Even if southeastern Turkey breaks up there will be Kurds in Turkey and Turks in the other part..

Got your point.

If majority of the Kurds in Turkey wish it,it should be given..(Education,language courses)

Though, it is taking ages, we are still optimistic if Turkey reforms. We do not want any bloodshed either.

I was hitting on a Turkmen girl, so I know about them. I did not say Kurds massacred peopleif you are aware. If I have read correctly and these information was from Kurdish sites, there was a small-scaled riot because of corruption in Iraqi Kurdistan cities thoudh no bloodshed was involved. And Talabani and Barzani, man you should really find other leaders. Barzani is okay to a point but Talabani...I know their past dealings with Turkey and with themselves. The dealing with Iraq as we all know is about oil..Still Kurdish region is the only stable and peaceful part of Iraq for the time being.

Well, Okay, because almost every country that has sent it's representation to Iraqi Kurdistan has listed it as one of the best areas of the middle-east.
I advise you to visit it, there are many people from Turkey that go into Iraqi Kurdistan (Both Turks and Kurds from Turkey).

There are many oppositional Kurdish websites, operating in Iraqi Kurdistan and abroad. At current moment, it is not a top priority for total reform of Iraqi Kurdistan, since it has only been free for some years.

Elendil, contrary to many Turks I have met on the net, you seem to approve Barzani over Talabani. I do not really care much about them today, my feelings are for the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan must be united this time, and Turkey is working everything against Iraqi Kurdistan.

[Joseph]

New York Times


August 27, 2006
The World
For an Iraq Cut in 3, Cast a Wary Glance at Kurdistan
By EDWARD WONG

QARADAGH, Iraq

THE Kurdish policeman’s mother died in 1988 when a boulder crushed her as she fled to Iran after the aerial bombardment of their village. His older brother had been killed earlier, in combat with Saddam Hussein’s troops.

“But I don’t just hate Saddam,” the policeman, Lt. Ismail Ibrahim Said, 29, said in this mountain town’s station house before the start last week of Mr. Hussein’s trial on the charge of genocide against the Kurdish minority. “I see it in the new government of Iraq. When they have power, they’ll oppress us like Saddam did.”

The policeman’s sentiments, widely shared across the autonomous Kurdish homeland, reflect a lack of will among many Iraqis to forge a unified nation, and could herald the breakup of the country into three self-governing regions. As Iraq writhes in the grip of Sunni-versus-Shiite violence, a de facto partitioning is taking place. Parts of the country are coming to look more and more like Iraqi Kurdistan, with homogenous armed regions becoming the norm.

But if Kurdistan increasingly portends the future shape of Iraq, it also signals the hazards inherent in a fracturing of the country. American and Iraqi officials agree that the greatest danger to a politically divided Iraq, or to an Iraq riven by civil war, is hostile intervention by the country’s neighbors. The resulting regional conflagration could remake the Middle East through mass bloodshed. Here in Kurdistan, interference by border nations is already happening more overtly than elsewhere in the country.

More than a week ago, Iran lobbed artillery shells for several days at villages around Qandil Mountain in the remote north of Iraqi Kurdistan, killing at least two civilians, wounding four and driving scores from the area, said a senior politician, Mustafa Sayed Qadir. Iran has been shelling the area sporadically for months, he said.

Qandil Mountain is a base for militant groups fighting for Kurdish independence or autonomy in Turkey and Iran.

Like Iran, Turkey has been increasing the pressure against Kurds who are pushing for self-governance. This month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, warned Tariq al-Hashemi, the Iraqi vice president and a Sunni Arab, that the Iraqi government needed to take “satisfactory steps” against the Kurdistan Workers Party, a guerrilla group with hideouts in this region. Turkish officials have also warned Iraqi Kurdistan against seizing control of the oil city of Kirkuk.

The top Kurdish politicians in Iraq officially are not pushing for an independent Kurdistan. They are all too aware that a Kurdish nation would draw intense hostility from Turkey, Iran and Syria, which all have Kurdish minorities chafing to raise their own flag. Kurds in those countries and in Iraq have long dreamed of uniting to form the nation of greater Kurdistan, encompassing up to 30 million people and stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to southern Iraq.

“Both Turkey and Iran are not happy with what’s going on in Iraqi Kurdistan — having a special region, having a government, having a Parliament, and so on,” said Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish member of the Iraqi Parliament. “That’s why they do those special operations, those bombings. It’s a blow against the Kurdish government in Kurdistan.”

“We have to be very careful, and we are very careful,” he added.

The type of cross-border disputes occurring in Kurdistan could spread across Iraq should the country splinter. Some Shiite leaders are working to create a nine-province autonomous Shiite region in the south, one that would include the oil fields around Basra. If this were to happen in the context of a large-scale civil war, Saudi Arabia and Syria, countries with Sunni Arab majorities, could openly back Sunni militias in Iraq against the Iranian-supported Shiite fief.

Yet whether Iraq’s neighbors like it or not, this country’s regions are heading toward greater autonomy, not less.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been virtually independent of the national government since 1991, when the American military established a no-flight zone across the region. The toppling of Mr. Hussein in 2003 only pushed the Kurds to reinforce their autonomy. Seeing that, many Shiites in the south began clamoring for the same.

The endgame for this nation, however bloodily it may come, could be an Iraq divided into three self-governing regions dominated respectively by Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. (The Shiite Arabs make up 60 percent of Iraq’s population; the other two groups 20 percent each.)

Here in Kurdistan, the people are open about their reluctance to participate in the project of a greater Iraq. In January 2005, 98 percent of Kurds voted for independence in an unofficial referendum. The Kurds often point out the artificial nature of Iraqi nationhood, created when colonial powers carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and ask why the people should be expected to possess a strong sense of Iraqi identity now when they never really had one.

“Iraq was never a unified country,” said Asos Hardi, editor in chief of Awene, an independent Kurdish newspaper. “When you released the only factor keeping this country together, Saddam, all the problems came to the surface.”

In the market square of Sulaimaniya, the main city of eastern Kurdistan, a schoolteacher said the historical enmity between Arabs and Kurds would not disappear anytime soon.

“The Kurds and the Arabs have been like neighbors, but the Arabs have always been occupiers on this land,” said the teacher, Anwar Abu Bakr Muhammad, 33, as he chatted with friends before dusk. “Being separated from them is much better.”

The drive for independence is evident simply from a glance around the square. On one side of a building is a towering painting of Sheik Mahmoud al-Hafid, who fought for a Kurdish homeland in the early 20th century. The square’s center is dominated by a bust of Piramerd, a poet best known for his writings on Kurdish nationalism.

Across Kurdistan, the Iraqi flag is almost nowhere to be seen. The red, white and green banner of Iraqi Kurdistan, with a yellow sunburst in the middle, flutters along streets and from government buildings.

Children are not required to learn Arabic in schools, which means an entire generation is growing up without the ability to communicate with other Iraqis. Arabs arriving from other parts of the country have to register with local security forces. The Kurdish regional government has its own militia, called the pesh merga, which is estimated to number more than 100,000 and operates checkpoints on the border between Kurdish Iraq and Arab Iraq.

Moreover, the rift between Arabs and Kurds could be widened rather than healed by the trial of Mr. Hussein and six aides for their brutal 1988 military campaign against the Kurds, called Anfal. Survivors on the stand last week used a term that has recently entered the Kurdish vocabulary to describe the fate of relatives taken by government forces and never seen again: “Anfalized.”

Such memories of suffering might hinder Iraqi unity, but they serve to reinforce the foundation of Kurdish nationhood.

“The Arab nationalists think of us as inferior to them,” said Bahman Jabar, 30, another teacher in Sulaimaniya’s market square. “It’ll be better for us to split from the Arabs and have our Kurdish state.”

Yerevan Adham contributed reporting from Sulaimaniya for this article.


* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Joseph]

I can just tell you that the Arab States of the Middleast were formed first by United Kingdom and the other European countries after the World War-1. And you know better than me, in this region, the problems NEVER ceased since then.

Today, it has been being formed by USA, (including Kurdistan) but seems the problems are getting bigger. And I want to ask you that have you ever seen a solution by UN forces anywhere? Can you say that the UN solved a problem anywhere on the world?

So, what will happen in the Middleast is more problem and more a caos.

Whether or not it is mandated by the UN, USA, or whomever, the Kurds will eventually get their own state and rightly so. For a nation of 40 million people not to have their own county and to be held hostage by bullies (Turkey, Syria, Iran, a soon-to-be dissolved Iraq) is an injustice; this wrong is slowly being over-turned, the wheels are in motion.