Posted on 03/20/2018 5:37:19 PM PDT by Texas Fossil
Not to be pedantic, but the Armenian genocide was, to a large extent, committed by Kurds under Ottoman direction.
PAR -- you said "There are just a few imams in the region who can wash and perform the religious ceremonies for these bodies." doesn't meet your definition of secular -- I don't think that's fair. A secular state doesn't favor any one religion over the othe. The USA allows priests etc to perform burials to military personnel. That's perfectly secular as long as the priests don't dictate military policy.
And Kurds are supporteres of israel and vice-versa
Many Turks claim Kurds are Turks, and that is why they suppress any attempts at self-determination. The Armenians were more clearly distinct and different from Turks.
See # 25; Wikipedia (FWIW) seems to link them to Iranians linguistically instead.
Anyway. but the Kurds were separate from various Irani empires from the time of the Seljuk migrations. They remained Sunni as they were not part of the Safavid Empire (the 1700s Iranian empire which forceably converted Iranians to Shia'ism -- though to note that the Safavids family was Persianized Turkic) and they were part of the Ottoman orbit especially in the early 1900s. This was not a problem until the "awakening of nations" in the late 1800s, early 1900s when "nations" felt that they needed ethnically "pure" lands for themselves - this was also the root cause of WWI.
Interesting history; I was just relaying the Turks’ spin on it (as justification for keeping the lands inhabited by Kurds).
prior to this the Ottomans ruled as both custodians of Islam (as Caliphs) and also generally "the rulers" -- they were hardly threatened until the rise of Russia in teh 1700s and the various "national awakenings" triggered by the French revolution that first hit the Greeks and then the Bulgarians, Romanians etc. before hitting the Arabs at the turn of the 1800 to 1900 century
Kurds are genetically and linguistically distinct from the "average" Turk.
Linguistically its easy - the Kurds are Indo-European speakers of Kurdish which is an Iranian language (of the iranian sub-branch of the Indo-Irani branch of the Indo-European language famiily
as you can see they are very closely related to Persian (the most popular Iranian language) - close but not quite mutually intelligible
Genetically the Kurds are Iranian fully. The "Turks" are hardly Turkic -- may be 3 to 5% of their genes as a whole "nation" can be tied to central Asia and that % drops drastically the further west you go of Ankara. "Turks" are genetically Indo-European mainly of Phrygian, Hittite, Galatian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian (including Kurdish) blood with admixture of Semitic and Georgian and "anatolian" (Hurrian?) genes.
The original Turks look slike Kazakhis or Mongolians. But by the 10th century they had already moved to Central Asia which was purely Iranian from 1700 BC (you can still see the ones who didn't mix among the Tajiks who are descendents of the Sogdians) or earlier and they mixed. So the "Turks" ended up looking like the present day Uzbeks - Most Turks are actually Greek, Armenians, Arab, and others who "went Turk" :)
Agree, but don’t support either of the 2 choices.
Yes, there were 400,000 Kurdish Jews that were moved to Israel from the Region. This was a tripwire with the Iraq Kurd Referendum. Turkey went crazy’er due to that. Went on a rant about Mountain Jews.
The divide in the Middle East now is interesting, who would have ever thought that Saudi Arabia and Israel would be cooperating?
And long ago, they admitted the involvement and have worked honorably with Armenians. The Kurds have received some of the same treatment the Armenians received.
A number of people here believe that the Kurds are in fact descendants of the Medes. Again, I not sure it is quite that simple. I think like most countries the mixture of races is pretty large. With the advent of DNA testing it is easier to appreciate that. Amazing technology, hope it is not mis-applied.
Many Kurds claim to be sons of Jonah. Not sure how I feel about that.
You seem very informed on the history of the Region.
What is your view on the history of the Alawites in Damascus?
The “Turks” are a made-up nation (well most “nations” are) with the conquered associating with the conquerors.
The Sauds and Israel have been cooperating since the 90s.
Correct about the admixture. Kurds are descendents of the Medes but alsohave Persian (Medes and Persians are both Iranis), other Iranians and Armenian, Greek, Turkic, Arab, Assyrian, Aramaic, etc. blood
They aren't very semitic though
That was more clear with the Ottomans (ruling the Arabs), but today it is more homogenous (and smaller). There are minority groups, but they are drops in the bucket.
Very few came and the result is the turks of today are mostly not "Turkic" in genes.
They only came to Damascus during the French protectorate
The reason they never came to DAmascus before that is, as heretics, they would have been killed on sight by the Ottomans - they were treated far, far worse than Shias and far far far,far worse than Christians
The Alawits since the 1920s have educated themselves (they were mostly illiterate except for the few elite who kept and keep the secrets of what they actually worship), and took the opportunity to get to power -- the reason is that if they are in power they would not be persecuted by the Sunnis.
Ever since Hafez Assad came to power, the Alawites have put on the outer garb of Moslems and called themselves Shia -- remember that the Shia are a bunch of different sects with the main theme being that they have "interpretors" of the Quran -- while Sunnis are sola scriptura (no insult to Protestants intended). So teh Alawites could pretend to be Muslims and ease the Sunni and Shia disdain for being ruled over by non-Muslims.
“There are some Muslims. There are many atheists among PKK. There are some Christians. There are some Lefties. I’ve seen some of them flash Che’ banners, I hate it.”
So in other word they’re pretty much like every other group of fools who fell for the communist bilge swallow throughout history.
I’ll sit this one out, too. There’s no vital American national interest here. Let them sort it out.
Then we can kick Turkey out of NATO and be done with it.
L
In my experience Turks physically look very different from Iranians; they are from a different part of Asia altogether.
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