pope urban 2 wrote on Jun 12
th, 2008 at 6:43pm:
Malik, I know you will deny it but how many Armenians and Kurds has your precious Turkey killed and how is the PKK going in that peaceful part of the world, I guess America is to blame for that as well.
i'm not afraid to admit that turkey needs to change its policy on the kurds, since 1924 there have been more than 10 military uprisings by the Kurds, some kurds wish to be recognised as a minority, some want an independent kurdistan reaching from northern iraq, south eastern turkey and north western iran plus some other parts of the middle east.
i do believe that turkey refuses to recognise the kurds as a minority for a few reasons. the main reason is because they don't want turkey divided up more than it already has been as many kurds want a separate state drawn from turkish land.
at the end of WW1 turkey was going to be made far smaller than it is now, perhaps only a quarter of its current size with large parts of turkey going to britain, greece, france and armenia.. the turks fought hard to retain the borders it currently has and don't want to break up their nation like the arab nations were broken up and colonized.
The turks recognize jews, armenians and greeks as minorities and i think they would recognize the kurds if there was a change in the attitude of the Kurds.
You see the PKK which you mentioned has been fighting against turkey for more than 28 years, more than 30,000 people on both sides have lost their lives. Turkey doesn't like the kurdish culturalistic attitudes where they prevent their daughters going to school, circumcise their daughters, force them to work, marry them off as early as 12 and also do honour killings, so turkey intervenes in kurdish communities and forces girls to go to school. as a result the PKK kidnaps, tortures and murders teachers in south eastern turkey who teach kurdish kids, they raid villages and kill those inhabitants etc.
the turkish security forces arent perfect either, sometimes they act in very barbaric ways. bringing collective punishment to all the kurds in the area, further giving the PKK more recruits. It's a cycle of violence that needs to be stopped. The turks always over react and it is really sad to see. I might add that the PKK recieves funding and training by the US and Israel.
In my opinion there should be a referrendum done, if the Kurds want their own home land taken from turkish land, then exile them to northern iraq and let them be someone elses problem. If they want to be part of turkey let them be part of it and start adhering to the laws of the land and let them be recognised as a minority.
there's already been far too much violence and bloodshed..
in regards to the armenians, i am not totally sure what happened there. if turkey was guilty of genocide then they need to recognise that and steps need to be taken to compensate them.