After nearly a century of existence, the history of the Turkish Republic has not yet been written. At present, there are official versions of events have occurred since the state was in 1923, but beyond these narratives a crowded chorus of press refused to tell his version of events, or to remember events quite removed. The reasons for this "oblivion imposed" to be found in the rhetoric that government, from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ("father" of the country), has constructed and imposed an image of Turkey based on the unity of language, values \u200b\u200band efforts of the people towards goals municipalities in an attempt to cancel the differences in the name of a common belonging to the Turkish nation. A concept based on the notion of "citizenship", which in its practical application has taken on ethnic overtones dangerously totalitarian. I'm talking dell'Ataturkismo or Kemalism, 'being turkish "as the only identification to be granted and accepted and the only historical point of view common to all levels of society, the ideology of the state in which the defense has played a role important to the turkish army. Auto promulgatosi defender of the values \u200b\u200bof the country, secularism and the legacy of Ataturk, the army has always been a significant presence of republican history, acting behind the scenes or openly, breaking the momentum with three parliamentary coups (1960, 1971, 1980) and speaking publicly on any matter on the agenda. Of course, the generals, with the two currently in the opposition nationalist parties (CHP and MHP), support the continuation of laws that are the most genuine expression Kemalist ideology: Article 301 of the Penal Code which punishes "insulting the Turkey and the Turkish identity ", adopted a mechanism of the right to strike any dissenting opinion or alternative version of the facts and the constitutional law that punishes anyone who" incites separatism "(finalized from the "Anti-Terrorism Act" of 1991), legal weapon used to those parties or individuals who dare to affirm the existence of multiple ethnicities and multiple identities in turkish territory. Although much has changed since there was only one legal party in Turkey, the Republican Party, and when the laws that restricted the rights of minorities were ironclad and indisputable, there is still a public space for discussion that allows a comparison of the history and free the present without consequences for the people. Moreover, it is only very little that the Turkish government acknowledged the existence of a "Kurdish question" in the country, risking a possible ban for posed the problem. The fact is that years of propaganda have shaped people's mentality, making it socially acceptable abuses and restrictions on freedom of expression. The constant shadow of the army and a bloody conflict that has lasted for twenty-five years between the State and the fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), intimidation, kidnappings and destruction that have suffered the country's minorities, the presence of underground power networks connected to the state apparatus, are some of the nodes that Turkey must find the courage and humility to deal with. Only by opening dialogue, only with the participation of more voices in the public debate, and only by coming to terms with its past you can build a working democracy and look to the future with more confidence.
Living in Turkey will soon learn the difference between individuals is the most salient feature of the turkish people, if there is a turkish people. Sometimes you hear so many versions of the same story, or opposing opinions on the state of things, which in most cases, for a quiet life, you avoid certain topics. For example, the deep conflict in the east between the army and guerrillas of the PKK (officially under way since 1984). It's like reaching a critical point of contradictions when it comes to the facts and reasons for the war. Nor is there a unique way of naming: fratricidal war? Liberation struggle? Separatist war on terrorism? There are families who are the personification of this short circuit does not really know what to think when one of your children is a soldier of the regular army and the other joined the guerrillas in the mountains. If you die, which one will be a martyr? The only thing that remains clear at this point and without partisan differences, is the mother plant. Or the value of the Republic, its sanctity must be defended or fought? Living in a wealthy district of Istanbul, worrying about the many possibilities offered by a growing economy, makes the past a bulky weight and support the state a natural inclination. But if you are born and grow in a village on the border with Iraq, the depression of underdevelopment around you, the language of your parents is different from what they teach you in school and do not clearly know who you are and where you take your condition. There are sad stories everywhere, if you know how to listen. And music, and sound and costumes, which are not merely folk variety, as they would like the quiet middle-class urban, but manifestations of strength irreducible. It is a dilemma that is open, has no solution, the enemy is the mirror in which each side sees his nightmares. The unconscious fear of reliving the break up of the Ottoman Empire under the pressure of different ethnic groups, shake the dreams of the nationalists. And the threat of repeated raids keep you awake at night by hooded men of the old Tunceli, of Nusaybin, in Diyarbakir. Many stories overlap, occurred in the throes of constant Turkish history. To get closer to understand one must listen to each of these items because, as Herodotus said, all is in many ways.
Note from the south-east, the highlands and mountains of Anatolia, the many souls of the country shows no mediation. Just travel to Gaziantep Sanliurfa and Mardin, Batman pointing. Between long stretches of flat desert are numerous scattered villages, and destroyed some poor, others green and with a placid life marked by slow rhythms of the earth. It is interesting to know that every town, village, group of houses that you meet along the way is to have two names. The official name, the one written on the maps and records, is the latest, and turkish, invented a table diligent National Geographic. The other name has a sound that is clearly different, is a Kurd, is written in the air and on the stones, in memory, and you know it only by asking the local and only if you trust. Kurdish writer Musa Anter, in his autobiographical books, is committed to preserving the memory of the lives of Kurds crushed by a permanent denial, and recalls in his writings, even the old names transmitted from generation to generation, before the advent of the Turkish Republic: "D e are a look at my situation: Kurdistan is the most backward region of Turkey, the city of Mardin is the most backward city of Kurdistan, Nusaybin is the most problematic of the province of Mardin. Stelile (Akarsu renamed by the Turks) is the poorest village of Nusaybin. Zivinge (renamed by the Turks Eski Magara) is the most underdeveloped village Stelile according to the data archive and I was born on a Caye, No. 2 .(...) For 7000 years our caves were known by the name of Zivinge but now without consulting the inhabitants of a brutal government, as if giving a name to a dog or a cat, our village has renamed Eski Magara (old cave) ... so after 65 years I have become an inhabitant of the old cave! It is interesting to recall that when the independent Bulgaria began to change the names of Bulgarian Turks, there was a riot as if they were affected human rights. I wonder if the Bulgarians have learned this trick from the Turks? "
schizophreniaThis identification began well before the birth of the Republic. While the Ottoman Empire was crossed by riots in 1910, the desperate attempt by the central government to maintain the cohesion was to rename the villages that inexorably moving away from its orbit control, not only the Kurdish names, but also Greek names, Armenians and Bulgarians were changed. Not much use, the Empire was in terminal crisis, but the practice was also adopted by those generals, first of all Ataturk, who gave the task of founding a modern state. Yet the memory is not lost. Then as now, the presence of Kurds in Turkey is large, we are talking about 15 million. Of these, several thousand were forced to flee their villages during military operations in the east, emigration to the suburbs of big cities. Still anxious to return to their homes. About 7000 Kurds flock to the state prisons, with charges ranging from terrorism to separatist propaganda, for the most part only guilty of having participated in demonstrations or having distributed leaflets. They also expect amnesty repeatedly announced but not implemented. Until 1991, the Kurdish language was illegal, those who listened to music or read books in Kurdish was under arrest. It was not possible to produce any kind of culture, and it was even forbidden to give their children Kurdish names. In Turkey, the Kurds have been persecuted because of their different feel, they say the facts, the only possibility for the government was forced assimilation. But a culture can not be erased, he is living in people and is so deep that resist matches live. He told me an old lady who met in secret Kurdish families at night and in the light of kerosene lamps were talking in their own language until the morning, teaching the children the stories passed down from heroes and poets. The oral transmission of knowledge has been for millennia the only form of memory of the Kurdish people. Musa Anter is one of the intellectuals who tried to carry this memory in writing, and telling traditions and customs never abandoned. Its author was the turkish language, by fate rather than choice, irony of history. It was also politically engaged, in 1990 he participated with other members of the culture to create a party that was the expression of the Kurdish minority, the People's Labour Party (HEP; "hilkin Emek Partisi). Declared illegal, its representatives were arrested, on charges of "fomenting separatism." No need to break down confidence in Anter. Among many difficulties founded and directed the Kurdish Institute in Istanbul, came to life as an editor and two major newspapers: the weekly Yeni Ülke and the newspaper Özgür Gündem. To the last he was constantly engaged in the story of his time, from the standpoint of the Kurds. Until they killed him. In the city of Diyarbakir, during a cultural event, was taken from his hotel by someone she knew, and was brought along his nephew Orhan Miroglu in an isolated place. There, he was shot at least eight shots. It was December 20, 1992. For 15 years the surveys have been of an full stop. The files relating to the murder were classified as "state secret", even if the prosecutor has admitted that state agents were to act. In 2007, Sweden, the former guerrillas of the PKK and former member of JITEM (secret police apparatus used in the "war on terrorism"), Abdulkadir Aygan began to speak, revealing that the murder was done in ' context of JITEM, ordered by government officials. Why? A writer is armed only with words, and in his writings Anter spoke of the past. He had spent too harsh words against the PKK, accusing some members of harassing the Kurdish civilians with taxation, and to participate jointly element-state drug trafficking. To find the motive, we must look elsewhere, to the activities of secret organizations within the state acting (acting?) On behalf of their interests, in order to foment chaos and instability. Many bloody events with no apparent explanation of the recent Turkish history, viewed from this perspective, would perhaps a solution.
Musa Anter
hands raised to heaven and prayer, I am the mother of Baran's answer to my questions about his past. Village near Halfeti, province of Sanliurfa, the days of Kurban Bayram, or Eid, the feast of sacrifice most of the Muslim calendar. The language we speak in the streets is the Kurdish, the children grow up bilingual. The next morning at school with the teacher before class, profession of faith to speak the native Turkish: "Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene" "Happy the One Who Can Say Turkish", decision of Ataturk written in every corner of the country, while at night with the family singing the songs of their people, if you do not have TV to watch satellite channels Kurds. Political issues here are far away, and at the same time are next to the bread that we eat every day. Many families live a daily life difficult, made sacrifices and hardships that are not open to speculation. The desire of young people is mainly to find a job, leave the village, seeing the world. Not all. Some feed themselves in constant hatred for the Turkish tank in the dirt roads that pass, too big and threatening to this country of shepherds and farmers. On the skin of young Kurds to play a dirty game of propaganda cross: on the one hand, the assimilation at any cost, other guerrillas to death. The genuine spirit of revenge that can prove a Kurd aware of its history, is channeled by the followers of PKK also to actions not proper resistance. Distinguishing is difficult if not impossible. Deviated segments of the Workers Party of Kurdistan cooperate with men of the State in the drug trade in these parts is not a mystery. Some say to finance the war of resistance, but others are sure that there are secret agreements between the parties to the war never ends. The conflict often results in violent killings between the army and fighters, mines placed in the streets involving innocent civilians, and army shelling on the villages of shepherds. Where does the trail of blood? Finding a compromise between these two extremes is what we decided Baran. He studied hard at university history Gaziantep, and what does not make him study deepens it on their own. As the revolt and the massacre of Dersim, in the years 1937-38, where they were killed according to estimates downward from at least forty thousand Kurdish Alevis (a sect of Islam) and Christians. Today it is called Dersim Tunceli, but the old still remember. Yet, the faculty of history teachers have never heard of ... Baran lives his identity with courage, streets looking for revenge that does not pass through a rifle. Meanwhile, in his house, the mother can not help but keep on turning on the television channel broadcasting from Iraqi Kurdistan, perhaps a reminder that there are places where the Kurds are free to be yourself.
There are unmistakable signs of an ongoing change in policy and perception of the "Kurdish question ". Since in 2005 the turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his famous speech in Diyarbakir in which he recognized the existence of the question, it was like opening a pressure cooker where a lot of hope have emerged. Until then, the Kurds in Turkey and spoke of how "successfully integrated" or as "supporters terrorists ", denying the existence of any a priori shared problem. It seemed impossible to even imagine what is happening today. See, for example, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu turkish flags and surrounded by smiling Iraqi Kurdistan while shaking hands with President of Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, to send a message of friendship (published in Kurdish) and describing Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurds, like home. A truly historic moment and a step policy Davutoğlu "zero problems with neighbors, which is leading to changes in relations with the troubled Syrian government and led to the first tentative overtures to Armenia. Another event that breaks with the past was the creation Tuchia in early 2009, the first Kurdish-language television channel, started with the restrictions on playing times, but that is slowly gaining autonomy. Still, the opening of the first Kurdish language and literature department at the University of Mardin, which became operational after many delays and intimidation. An important role in this match had the pressure of the European Union, for which the expansion of cultural and linguistic rights is an indispensable prerequisite to the entry of Turkey into the European club. And the Justice and Development Party (AKP) by Erdoğan is increasing its efforts in this direction. In late summer it was announced a package of reforms to ensure the rights of minorities, first called "the Kurdish initiative" and the "democratic opening" and then sealed as the "project of national unity." 45% of the population, according to a recent survey, supports the process in place, too many years of war and too many deaths (estimates talk of 40,000 victims) are convincing the public of the inability to resolve the conflict with the PKK only with weapons. Even the commanding General İlker Başbuğ made history by being the first to recognize that the general turkish army alone can not solve the conflict. Some commentators, including Cengiz Candar (journalist with the daily Radikal ), connecting the series of reforms in place a strategy Anatolia economic stabilization and normalization of relations with the Kurds Iraqis. With the imminent departure of U.S. troops from Iraq (as announced at the latest by the beginning of 2011) the Turks will no longer have carte blanche to their raids across the border to "hunt terrorists" and the presence of hydrocarbon deposits in territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government requires the consolidation of alliances commericiali (tralatro in place for some years with investment in Turkish territory) rather than further conflict. There are major projects in the pipeline for the construction of pipelines through Iran and Turkey to Europe (the Nabucco project) and the turkish state has an interest in the pacification of Europe to prevent attacks during the work. Gas reserves that are coveted by the Europeans, to limit the nell'approvigionamento energy dependence on Russia, which are leading to a convergence of interests. The main problem, and the primary purpose of the 'Kurdish initiative "is the end of the war with the PKK, and the return of some 5,000 guerrillas from Mount Quandil and the mountainous terrain of northeastern Iraq. To reassure the combatants on the good intentions of the government, the president Abdullah Gül announced that those who were until recently considered "terrosti," if they return, will be reintegrated into society. And to test these opening words at the beginning of October, 34 fighters were handed over to Turkish authorities, beginning the descent from the mountains. Welcomed as heroes by many Kurds in Turkey, that has provoked bitter criticism from opposition parties, the ex-guerrillas handed over a declaration of the PKK, which wants to be a helping hand to the reforms implemented by the AKP. If the rights of Kurds in Turkey will increase and if the ex-combatants will be pardoned, the PKK is committed to cease hostilities. Even Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader, from prison of Imrali where he is serving a life sentence, has sent his lawyers a road map to peace-building, currently under investigation by the government.
A major player, whose fate is uncertain, it remains the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which represents the legal Kurdish party in parliament in March elections and that has increased its political base. Two years ago, and begin any legal proceedings dall'Uffcio the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals against the DTP, accused of fomenting separatism and to maintain relations with the PKK. The party may end the exclusion from policy of 219 members for five years. The hearing began on December 8 of the Constitutional Court which will decide the merits of the allegations. The timing is delicate, and the possible closure of the DTP could be a serious obstacle to the process of "democratic opening" supported by the AKP. In recent days, many cities in Europe and Istanbul, there were protests by Kurds in the streets resulted in clashes with security forces. The protestors also called by the proclamations of the DTP, accused the government of having worsened the conditions of imprisonment of Abdullah Ocalan, moved to a new cell that lawyers are said to be smaller and illumined the worst while the former Minister of Justice said to be in line with European standards. He has so much the smell of a pretext, and collected by the discontent of the Kurds became the casus belli parlamenteri DTP. This does not pose for them, while the Constitutional Court undertook to decide whether the actions and declarations of the party whether or not "contrary to the integrity of the state." The only thing at this point can save the DTP is a change of the "Law on political parties, long criticized for its anti-democratic aspects. But this is difficult, as it is also necessary to the contribute of the nationalist parties, which do not hide their strong opposition to the process of democratic opening. " How will the AKP in case the Constitutional Court decides to ban the DTP? The initiative of the government to extend its rights and democracy will suffer adverse effects? You will be able to expect a convergence of efforts in the project of national unity in the streets while the parliament is being fought and decimated by anti-democratic? In all this, the nationalist parties of the CHP and MHP are continuing their propaganda that demonizes the AKP, accusing him of conspiring to separate the country and come to terms with the terrorists. Further fuel to the fire in a tangle of tensions that you do not see the end.
There's a picture that speaks to this better than a speech. It is a picture of these days, one of the events in the east, which are bursts of anger and pride that come from afar, speaking of tragedies past and wishes for the future. There are children throwing stones, dozens of children. Are obviously too small to have political opinions, but not so unaware by unaware of the danger they face. They are asking to be taken into account. They do it in a violent way because for too long, the violence was the only language common to all the warring factions. Demand to be recognized, to have a story, happy to see the mothers, the brothers return. The road taken by some political parties and social groups can lead for the first time in a very radical change in relations between individuals in Turkey, a dialogue between differences, in an open discussion on issues common to reach shared decisions, free of schizophrenia authoritarian and dreams, nightmares, uniqueness and purity of identity. Sooner or later, the Constitution of this country must change, its assumptions are limits to ethnic co-existence of diversity and free expression of opinion. Today we see a little light in the darkness prevailing, feed and grow is the only wise thing to do.
