TURKISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY REVIVES PLANS TO CREATE KURDOLOGY INSTITUTE

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Sept 3 2007

Turkish Historical Society (TTK) Chairman Professor Yusuf Halacoðlu,
speaking to Zaman daily, said recent statements about the possible
Turkoman genealogy of Turkey’s Kurds and the Armenian ancestry of
Kurdish Alevis were deliberately misrepresented in the Turkish press.

Yusuf Halacoðlu Halacoðlu clarified his use of the word
"unfortunately," while referring to his research on the ethnicity of
Kurdish Alevis, whom he claims have Armenian ethnicity. The professor,
whose controversial comments have been the subject of heated debate,
noted that "unfortunately" refers not to the "fact" that Kurdish Alevis
are Armenian but to the implied fact that Armenians had to convert
or pretend to have converted. "There are a good number of Armenians
who have become Muslim. These people are accepted as Muslims and have
been incorporated into society. But these [Kurdish Alevis] could not
integrate; hence, my use of the term ‘unfortunate’," Halacoðlu said
while speaking to Zaman’s Nuriye Akman.

The TTK chairman spoke about the lack of academic institutions in
Turkey devoted to studying "Kurdology" and Armenian issues. Claiming
that he was a ahead of his time in freely using the term "Kurdish"
in his articles when use of the term was regarded as taboo in Turkey,
Halacoðlu said he had floated a proposition to the National Security
Council (MGK) to establish a Kurdology and Armenian Studies Institute
in 1988. "When I voiced this [proposal] at a meeting, everybody
looked at me in a very unimpressed fashion," Halacoðlu said. The MGK
secretary-general at the time, Teoman Koman, was interested in the idea
and had called the professor to his office and asked him to start work,
he explained, and added: "A month later he became undersecretary of the
National Intelligence Organization (MIT). And this task was abandoned."

The TTK chairman also informed Akman that as soon as a bill relating
to the TTK is passed by Parliament, he will establish a Kurdology
Institute, to include desks for the Caucasus, Black Sea region,
Balkans, Middle East, Iran and Asia. Halacoðlu said the Kurdology
Institute would deal with archeological, social anthropological,
linguistic, cultural and ethnographic research.

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