Posted on 11/29/2001 5:41:13 PM PST by Turk2
The leader of HADEP (Peoples Democracy Party), the largest Kurdish political party in Turkey, Murat Bozlak has made a number of surprising comments in a press conference today.
...
"We also see the presence of 5000 armed PKK members as a potential threat to Turkey. This is a correct assesment. What must be done is to determine how to disarm these 5000 people with guns."
In response to the question from a reporter as to what he thought about recent scenarios about a military intervention to Iraq he said:
"The US, as the sole superpower in the world, wishes to make new arrangements all over the world. We want the operation if Afghanistan to be ended. We do not wish it to spread to Iraq. We do not believe that it is right for Turkey to enter Iraq either."
In his evaluation of allegations of intervention into Iraq, he stated that they opposed a forceful Turkish entry into Musul and Kirkuk.
However, Bozlak also made a surprising proposal:
"If the people there wish that Kirkuk and Musul join Turkey, Turkey should not go there and take the region by force. We think that there is nothing wrong with the case that if prior to an arrangement being made there, the people express their wish to join Turkey on their own free will and make such a decision. In fact, we believe that such an event would be beneficial."
pray tell, why can't 40% of the population of the Turkish Pennisula (ie the Kurds) have normal civil rights ?
Why does the turkish state need to expend so much energy in supressing 40% of its population ?
By the way, weren't we supposed to be talking about a solution to the Cyprus problem in another thread?
I won't even bother to answer vooch. He probably lives in a different parallel dimension connected to ours only through the internet.
To the non ethnic Turkophiles: Don't you guys ever read up on history or has the Ottoman legend so enflamed your boring lives with visions of slave girls and boys serving the harem and eunuchs and slaves from all corners of the world. Oh, I forgot "Ataturk" and his fondness for little boys, a throwback to the "good old days" of oppression and domination of the Christian world.
Turks will never live in peace as long as compensation and acknowledgement of atrocities, pogroms, and genocide are not made. The Turks need to come to grips with their past just as Germans and Japanese are beginning to. Are they up to it? Probably not - just denial denial denial.
No justice no peace!
The fact is that the vast majority of the Kurds despise the Marxist PKK-- evidenced not only by the fact that the PKK's atrocities were largely confined to the Kurdish population, so they could have the aurua of sole spokesman, but by the fact that more Kurds fought against them than for them.
Back when I was a college student with a limited view of the world, I bought a lot of the clap-trap put out by the PKK. In the years since, the PKK has been unable to shed their Marxist doctrine even while the world has moved on.
It is no surprise that the Kurds in Iraq would prefer to live under Turkey than under Saddam Insane or what's left of the PKK. The only surprise is that they've finally worked up the nerve to declare it openly.
I am in danger of over-posting this thought, but the creepy Balkan thing on FR is twanging my nerves.
The Balkans were not merely subjugated militarily by the Turks but were also brutalized, enslaved, and culturally almost destroyed under the Ottoman Turkish oppression. Turks have perpetuated their horrors and propaganda campaign into this century and continue butting in Balkan affairs even in contemporary times. So, when you criticize Balkan intrigue, hatreds, and instability...you need to take into account the five hundred plus years of Ottoman Turkish persecution and dementia.
As far as the brutalizing of the balkans peoples. Isn't it interesting that every group who has had anything to do with the balkans has brutalized them or had to rule them with an iron fist? Could it be that the fact that those people when not fighting with the latest ruler would just assume fight each other also? The most peacefull it was there was with Turkey and then Yugoslavia.
Something about their upbringing? Or maybe they just never wanted to join up civilization wise with the modern world and their neighbors because of their own problems of state management.
Maybe they need firm (not brutal) governance. Some peoples seem to be like that.
As far as your comment about Balkan peoples, your knowledge of history is dismal. And I just don't have the time...
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