Yeah, Turkey has never liked the Kurds
Everyone in the region seems to fear the formation of a Kurdish state. :(
So much that Kurds can spend 24/7 assuring they only want autonomy within some provinces, and every neighour still has nightmares of an independent Kurdistan…
…which, to be fair, they should have got - when the Ottoman empire fell apart - but everyone kind of forgot them.
Hard to trust the kurdish rebel when they are supported by Israel and the US. My fear is that they will become another protection for Israel
Which is kinda weird since they’re all NATO buddies with Turkey. Friend of a friend?
More like never liked terrorist supporters.
Turkey’s population consists of roughly %18 kurds, claiming Turkey doesnt like them would be an outrageous claim considering they are citizens of the country and their votes make a significant impact in the selection of the governing parties.
They have pushed the government enough to try out a peaceful resolution against the PKK, only for PKK to bomb trap civilian buildings while the peace negotiations were going on. After that whole ordeal, a significant amount of the Kurds in Turkey see PKK as a terrorist organization that does more harm than good.
SDF is pretty much a sidearm PKK located in Syria, and it’s pretty understandable why Turkey doesn’t want them right next to their border.
I am not the best person to characterize the situation, but…
…it seems that Turkish authorities have always felt very threatened by any ideas of Kurdish autonomy (even cultural autonomy). Domestically, they have been locked in a fight with PKK, that is true. But in recent times - since the civil war started in Syria - they have great difficulty telling PKK apart from YPG. One is an underground terrorist organization, the other is a uniformed military. But when the PKK does something, very often as a result - YPG get bombed.
On the brighter side, Turkey has had a president of partly Kurdish ancestors (Turgut Özal). But the darker side of the coin is: he died of poisoning right before he could negotiate for peace with the PKK.
I have a guess. When Turkey starts approaching peace with PKK, either PKK members commit an act of terror to break down negotiations, or Turkish special services kill their own negotiator. Because both organizations contain people who - tragically - think that peace would not be good for their business. Their business is war and they don’t want it entirely stopped.
I hope I’m wrong - or that I have gradually become wrong as times have changed.
They are threatened, look at the Wikipedia page for the current Kurdish party, and then check the past parties and what they have been accused of
If anything is a plus, making 20% of the nation a direct enemy is never good so they have never gone beyond banning parties with plausible reasons, they have always been able to reform them back again and the Kurdish language has been preserved and culture deeply integrated.
Turkey’s population consists of roughly %18 kurds, claiming Turkey doesnt like them would be an outrageous claim
How can there be Kurds in Turkey if Kurds don’t even exist? And this is not a thing of the past, school books denying an independent identity of Kurds were printed as recently as 2021.
Turks do happen to suck at acknowledging their genocides. The Armenian is often spoken about outside of Turkey, everyone always forgets the Kurds.
This is outright misinformation. Kurds are specifically mentioned in history classes as in “ethnic groups that lives in various regional areas of Turkey”, I recall this from my college times, roughly 2016.
There is nowhere close to a genocide against Kurds considering the amount of Kurds that live there; however Turkey has every right to stop a extremist rebellion idea that would make it lose territory and distrupt the unity between its citizens.
I’ll post the same thing the last time you tried covering up your government’s history of ethnic cleansing.
“Since the conflict began, more than 40,000 people have died, most of whom were Kurdish civilians.[”
“Turkey has depopulated and burned down thousands of Kurdish villages and massacred Kurdish civilians in an attempt to root out PKK militants.”
“The initial reason given by the PKK for this was the oppression of Kurds in Turkey.[81][82] At the time, the use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names were banned in Kurdish-inhabited areas.[83] In an attempt to deny their existence, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as “Mountain Turks” during the 1930s and 1940s.[83][84][85] The words “Kurds”, “Kurdistan”, or “Kurdish” were officially banned by the Turkish government.[86] Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life until 1991.[87] Many who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned”
This guy is just a rabid ethno nationalist.
Ethnic cleansing is killing off the majority of a population solely because of their ethnicity. Turkey has sent various ambassadors to get as many civilians possible to not get involved in the revolts and helped them relocate; then used the army to surpress the revolt movement. How does this constitute as ethic cleansing?
“Kurdistan” refers to an imaginary territory claim inside Turkey, it is obvious why the term is banned. It promotes a seperation idea in a country built with the idea of national unity.
“Kurdish” and “Kurd” were never banned, however referring to PKK as these terms are. Terrorist groups do not represent the entire view of the Kurds as a whole; it would be the equivelant of calling al quada as Arabs.
Restriction of speaking Kurdish was never applied to private life. It’s restricted in public displays and official documentation; in a similar manner to every country enforcing their home language. However 80s coup were significantly different times; as even mosque prayer calls were forced to be said in Turkish at that time. It’s possible at that time this was enforced more harshly, and that’s fair. No one looks back at those times with fond memories.
The Kurds in Turkey are policed by the military, not allowed to speak their language, and largely forced to the bottom of society. They’re treated worse than the Isrealis treat the Arabs who legally live in Israel proper. We’ve also seen what military reprisals look like in Turkey and Northern Iraq.
The Turks never wanted peace. They wanted Genocide but the Kurds armed themselves.
