“Hey! I can dig it. Millions of Mexican citizens here are asking for their rights, too! All they want is their culture, their language, their government. . . Hey, what a deal!”
There are big differences between the situation of millions of Mexican immigrants in the United States and the millions of Kurds in Turkey.
The accepted borders of modern Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran were determined by Europeans in the aftermath of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the end of WWI. Just as in Africa, those borders were predicated on the “divisions” acceptable to others, mostly France, Britain and Russia and with no regard to the actual and natural divisions of the people in the Middle East.
In that process, the Kurds, a distinct ethnic group with an identity as old as the Jews, saw their lands divided and placed under the power of others - a king in Iraq, a Shah in Iran, a dictator in Syria and a “new” Turkey. Their basic lands have not changed. They were the dominant population in them at the time Europe carved up the Middle East, for its interests, and they remain so now, whether those lands are said to be part of Turkey, Syria, Iran or Iraq.
The Kurds in “Turkey” were there, since at least the 5th century B.C. if not longer, and thus at least more 1,400 years before the “Turks” arrived in the 9th and 10th centuries A.D.. While ruled over in the following centuries by various empires that the in-migrating “Turks” built - mostly the Seljuks and the Ottomans, the Kurdish people - their ethic identity, language and culture - remained unassimilated into their rulers cultures, as remains true today.
RE: "There are big differences between the situation of millions of Mexican immigrants in the United States and the millions of Kurds in Turkey."
Yes Mexican citizens living here ILLEGALLY and making cultural/language/etc. demands do differ. The response is even a bigger difference. While Ataturk absolutely refused to concede on anything (If you live in Turkey, you are a Turk. Period) we blench. Regardless what one thinks of that and Turkey in general IMO it fair to say that Islam in Turkey went through a reformation -- and the Army with popular support intends to keep it that way.