Zs6na’s Weblog

Since the 1910’s and 20’s the Republic of Turkey has denied that Kurdish people are part of Turkey. Authorities committed horrific human rights violations against the Kurds in an attempt to “promote” a separate Kurdish nation. Historically however both Kurds and Turks were taught that they are ancestors of the “pure” Turkish race. Turkey now declares however, that Kurds, living in the eastern mountains, have forgotten their native language with the obvious goal to make Kurds either become more Turkish or remove them from the country, what the government has called repression and assimilation. As Turkey’s past has shown this “assimilation” is most often accomplished by genocide i.e. the Armenian Genocide (which the Republic of Turkey still denies) and with the Kurds who account for about 20% of Turkey’s population.

An article from openDemocracy discusses a recent attack by Kurdish militants against the Turkish Armed Forces. In this the policy of repression and assimilation is mentioned,

“millions of Kurds living in central and western parts of Turkey have mostly avoided being identified with Kurdish nationalism. It is not uncommon for a Kurdish citizen to hide or downplay her ethnic identity even from her closest friends.”

This conflict, as the article explains, seems to be a structuralist view of ethnic conflict, that is the state has a heterogeneity of states and a possible solution would be partition, which the Kurds have pushed for, but apparently have been rejected by Turkey in establishing an independent Kurdish state. This may lead one to the conclusion that in fact this might be primodialist view of ethnic conflict meaning that these are long standing ethnic hatreds and a solution might not be possible.