There you go. It's now legal to speak Kurdish in Turkey, in both its
dialects. (Does anyone know if it's true that, when spoken, each
Kurdish dialect is unintelligible to speakers of the other dialect?) I
should have emphasized more in my last post that while Turkey has made
great progress, it has done so very slowly. Rome cannot be built in a
day. Now that they are moving toward joining the EU, they are starting
to fix a lot of the old problems.
I think the Kurds probably have a good claim to be made against Turkey.
They should have all their human rights. I don't know enough about the
Kurds to fully endorse their cause, as if there were just one cause
that all Kurds were united behind. Is an independent Kurdish state
justified? Although I remain open minded, I don't know how that would
benefit Kurds.
I'm also suspicious of revolutionary movements that seem to just
appear. It may be due to my ignorance and lack of education, a
situation I would like to correct, but it may be that we don't have the
full story on the Kurds yet.
In the case of Tibet, for example, the so-called resistance leader, the
Dalai Lama, would like to replace Chinese Communist rule (a tyranny
that I harshly criticize) with his own dictatorial theology. Many
Western sympathizers lap this up unthinkingly.
Is the Kurdish situation similar to Tibet? No, not that I know of. But
I don't simply jump on the bandwagon of every revolutionary movement
that comes along. If people had looked before they leaped, that fiasco
might have been avoided in the American Left which occurred subsequent
to the Russian Revolution.
Finally, as for the "Mountain Turks" label for Kurds, that could be
offensive. Is the label really a violation of their human rights,
however? I admit the answer is maybe. But the "Turkish" people are
composed of probably over 100 ethnic groups and sub-groups, of which
"Turks," properly so called, are only one. The original Turks were
nomads and hardy warriors. Eventually they conquered Anatolia, Thrace,
and Europe up to the gates of Vienna. The true "Turks" of today are the
Turks of Turkmenistan. The ethnic Turks of Turkey have Westernized much
more than they have. With the call to nationalism under Kemal Ataturk,
the term "Turk" took on additional meaning. All the ethnic groups that
survived and remained within the confines of the modern Turkish state
were called "Turks," being citizens of Turkey. These ethnic groups
included Greeks, Arabs, a few dark-skinned Africans, and many others.
Thus, today, "Turk" is both a political designation and an ethnic
designation. I'm unsure, but the term "Mountain Turks" could simply be
a political designation.
Best,
Andrew Hagen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Tue, 4 Sep 2001 15:09:04 -0700, Macdonald Stainsby wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Andrew Hagen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 3:45 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:16714] Re: Sick Man of Europe: Next Generation (was Michael's
>question)
>
>
>> I was just in Turkey, albeit only as a tourist. While the people of
>> Turkey do face political repression in several forms, as in the cases
>> of some journalists who are arrested, Turkey is not a totalitarian
>> state. The people of Turkey have a will of their own. They can think
>> for themselves.
>
>Two things jump to mind:
>you aren't Kurdish... (yes, cheap shots abound....apologies in advance)...
>and also, "totalitarian" has to do with where you are in the country/caste
>system.
>
>Ask the DHKC or the TKP ML or the PKK or... and we'll find out what is
>totalitarian (a horrible, horrible word from the Cold War we seriously need to
>exorcise from our vocab) and what is not. It has only been, what- a pair of
>years? Since Turkey made it legal to speak Kurdish- who are still on the books
>as legally "Mountain Turks".
>
>Macdonald
>
>
