KURDS CULTURE ON VERGE OF EXTINCTION IN DEMOCRATIC TURKEY
By Hozan Kapri

Kurdish Media, UK
April 26 2006

Turkey, the only democracy in the Middle East, is the topic of this
paper. It has been said that “Ataturk secularized and modernized
Turkey”. The Attaturk’s so-called modernization and secularization has
caused the Kurdish people great suffering. Secularization, however,
does not mean democracy.

It has become a tradition for many people, especially in the Middle
East, to view secularism as democracy. Even Saddam Hussein viewed
his country as a social democratic country. So did the Shah of Iran.

Although these leaders were good for their own ethnic group, especially
Ataturk, their hands are stained red by Kurdish blood.

Ataturk modernized the Turkish language and switched it to the Latin
based alphabet. Yet he banned the Kurdish language and forced the
Kurds to speak Turkish.

Today many Turks as well as the Turkish government try to justify such
acts by saying things such as “We simple made the Turkish language
the official language of Turkey.” That’s hardly surprising.

Turks try to find a justification for everything, even if it is the
genocide and elimination of other cultures. While it’s a well-known
fact that the indigenous Armenians underwent a genocide and mass
exodus in the 1915, yet Turkey and Turks try to twist the story
and come up with whatever it can to try and present it to divert
attention from the genocide. Nothing change the historical fact that
Turks genocide Armenians.

The Turkish government has no shame in forcing Kurdish children
everyday to say “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk.” Turks love
to champion behind other Turkish-speaking people around the world,
such as Turkmen’s in Iraq and Turks in the Greek Thrace, such as
Kamran Inan, a Turkish sheikh.

One Turkish Internet site claims how Turks in the western Greek Thrace
are being discriminated against and that they can’t even study their
mother language. Well, if that is true, it’s unfortunate.

Nobody should be deprived of studying in their mother language. But
why are Turks and the Turkish government so sensitive when the more
than millions of Kurds of Northern Kurdistan (Turkey) demand for
the same right that Turks are demanding in Greece? Or you believe
that Kurds are less than Turks. Has any Turk ever stopped and asked
themselves why are the Kurds being deprived of the same right that
Turks are asking for themselves in other parts of the world? Or are
they going to stand by the famous Turkish saying “Herºey Turkiye icin”
which means everything only for Turkey or Turks.

What I have been seen over the years is many international cultural
festivals in Turkey. Cultural festival in Turkey! – That really
is an oxy moron. Turkey deprives Kurdish people of basic cultural
rights and yet host international cultural festivals. Turks speak of
“democratic rights for Turks”, but the only democratic rights that
Kurds get is the burning of their villages and internal displacement,
and banning Kurdish language and Kurdish history from schools.

Beautiful Kurdish folk songs are banned and have been since Ataturk
founded the ‘modern’ state of Turkey.

Yes, this is Turkish democracy.

Unfortunately democracy has been the most used and abused word in
the modern era. People kick it around like a soccer ball. It has a
different meaning everywhere you go. It is a word where people have
used it to gain more rights. It also has been a word which has been
used to trample the rights of many nations. The ill fortune Kurdish
nation has been one of them. They have been gassed and buried alive
by tens of thousands in Iraq under what Saddam called “Socialist
democracy.”

Kurds have been tortured and forced to assimilate in ‘democratic’
Turkey, and their culture and language almost on the verge of
extinction.

The Turks will gain a lot by meetings Kurdish demands. It will surely
decrease the violence that has plagued the Northern Kurdistan. Let’s
hope that the 21st century will give birth to a federal entity where
both Turks as well as Kurds live side by side, yet both free and
prosperous. No one can loose in such a peaceful environment. There
are many gains to be made.

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