The Turkish Government's History with Kurdish People - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15043389
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish%E ... %93present)

I don't know much about Turkish conflicts but very basic information like the Turkish government in the early 20th century did an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Armenian people and they have had territorial and invasion problems with the Greeks in the past.

I wish to understand the history of it more. Especially with the Kurds and the present government of Turkey.

All opinions on either side are welcome. I just want to understand it more.
#15043412
How far do you want to go back?

Admin Edit: Rule 16

Basically: a lot of it is to do with late, resurgent Ottoman nationalism and a blame-factor. And WWI + Kemal's attempts to reform the Empire into modern day Turkey, the Allies tried to invade Turkey but failed and IIRC part of the resistance was from ethnic minorities so you can imagine the subsequent repression. Anyway, the Greek-Turkish animus goes back to the Turk Greek conflicts leading up to the fall of constantinople.
.(The Byzantine Empire, the greatest Empire there ever was..fell to the turks).
#15043452
Both Turks and Kurds were part of the Ottoman empire, which was dismantled as a result of WWI. The Allied Powers decided to cut up Turkey in the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920, which provided for a Kurdish region:

Image

This led Ataturk to fight the Allies in the Turkish war of independence at the end of which Turkey was formed in its present borders in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, in which the Kurdish territory was divide between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurds have suffered repression in all 4 countries, which has led to Kurdish rebellions and attempt to form an independent country. There are around 40 million Kurds in the ME and the diaspora, the bulk of them in Turkey.

Erdogan has questioned the Lausanne treaty in his attempts at resurrecting the Ottoman empire.
#15043457
Thank you @Atlantis I wanted to understand the Kurdish position. It is then an artificial border created without a real land base for the Kurdish people and their culture and their history. Divided by borders imposed by Allied Powers probably interested in buying oil and controlling that resource from afar?

Interesting. 40 million is a lot of people. Enough for a medium sized nation for sure. How would Kurdish people and Turkish people describe their political histories? Controversial or conformist? Religiously orthodox or secular? I am just speculating?

I know a lot more about Greek history than I do about Turkish history. I wish I knew more Turkish history. Armenian people I really enjoyed reading about a lot. I find them simpatico.

I just wanted to understand why such repression? Why use such inhumane tactics against a cultural group that is within your sphere for such a long time?

I want to find the explanations.
#15043458
Atlantis wrote:Both Turks and Kurds were part of the Ottoman empire, which was dismantled as a result of WWI. The Allied Powers decided to cut up Turkey in the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920, which provided for a Kurdish region:

Image

This led Ataturk to fight the Allies in the Turkish war of independence at the end of which Turkey was formed in its present borders in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, in which the Kurdish territory was divide between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurds have suffered repression in all 4 countries, which has led to Kurdish rebellions and attempt to form an independent country. There are around 40 million Kurds in the ME and the diaspora, the bulk of them in Turkey.

Erdogan has questioned the Lausanne treaty in his attempts at resurrecting the Ottoman empire.


Anyone trying to resurrect empire from the past? Is always going to be problematic with power hungry behavior. I know that is a mistake.

Turkey has an issue with many refugees pouring in. At the same time? How is the economy responding to the pressure Atlantis?
#15043460
Presvias wrote:How far do you want to go back?

Admin Edit: Rule 16

Basically: a lot of it is to do with late, resurgent Ottoman nationalism and a blame-factor. And WWI + Kemal's attempts to reform the Empire into modern day Turkey, the Allies tried to invade Turkey but failed and IIRC part of the resistance was from ethnic minorities so you can imagine the subsequent repression. Anyway, the Greek-Turkish animus goes back to the Turk Greek conflicts leading up to the fall of constantinople.
.(The Byzantine Empire, the greatest Empire there ever was..fell to the turks).


Yes the Byzantine Empire--I am a very very strong anti Imperialist so I don't like Empires.

The culture of Turkey I find absolutely beautiful in the extreme. Everything about it I find beautiful.

The art, the music, the food, the history, the literature, the religious practices, and the people and how they cope with family, love and life.

The politics are complex and heated as well. I wish I knew more....

I found this leader of the Kurdish PKK very interesting. Who is he? He sounds very interesting...when they isolate you on an island where you are the only prisoner? Hmmm. It means you are a threat of some kind that the powers that be don't want people to know much about. Apoism? I wonder what that is about eh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan

Abdullah Ocalan.
#15043477
Tainari88 wrote:Turkey has an issue with many refugees pouring in. At the same time? How is the economy responding to the pressure Atlantis?


The economy is in a mess, not because of the refugees, but because Erdogan stimulated the economy to win the elections and when the time came to pay, he fiddled with the central bank. The Lira lost half its value in the last couple of years.

The refugees poured into Turkey because Erdogan fueled the Syrian proxy war by supporting anti-Assad rebels. He is using the refugees as pawn to expand Turkish influence in the region. But funding terrorists can easily backfire, as the Americans found out with the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan.
#15043484
In Iraq, Moscow used the Kurds as a trump card not just against Washington but also against Baghdad. The Soviets supported Kurdish demands for national autonomy. Throughout the 1950s, when Moscow had an opponent in Baghdad, this support became a lever to keep the central government in check. But even in the case of pro-Soviet governments that followed the 1958 revolution, Moscow wanted to preserve the Kurdish trump card. In the 1960s, Moscow led international efforts at the United Nations charging Iraq with conducting a genocidal war against the Kurds. In 1970, Moscow mediated between Baghdad and the Kurds to sign a peace agreement that provided for the autonomy of Iraqi Kurds. After 1973 when the Kurds adopted an openly pro-Western stance due to growing ties between the Iraqi and Soviet governments, the Soviets supported Baghdad’s war against the Kurds, which generated demand for Soviet weapons. No matter which direction they leaned, the Kurds served as Moscow’s leverage in Baghdad.

During this period, the Soviet Union established close relations with Turkey’s Kurds as well. In the 1970s, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was established as a Marxist-Leninist and Kurdish nationalist organization. The works of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin became the “main, if not the only, ideological sources of the PKK’s assumptions, beliefs, and values.” After the extensive repression that followed the 1980 military coup in Turkey, many PKK members left the country for Syria, a close Soviet ally, where they received considerable support from the Hafez al-Assad regime. Moscow provided material support and training through their proxies but the political support to the PKK was public.

After the Cold War, Russia kept the Kurds as a trump card to exert pressure on Turkey. In an effort to close its widening foreign trade gap and fill the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey sought to cultivate closer ties to the new republics in Russia’s backyard. To restrain Turkey’s influence, Moscow played the Kurdish card.

https://warontherocks.com/2017/12/why-i ... ian-kurds/


We need to look at this conflict from a Cold War perspective, which is more than a blood feud between the Turks and the Kurds. The Soviet Union supported both the PLO and the PKK to go after American allies in the region as Moscow saw the Kurds as a trump card to exert pressure on Turkey, a NATO member, while the PLO terrorized Israel. When the PKK was transformed into a paramilitary group in the 1980s, PKK members started to get training by the members of the Palestine Liberation Organization who themselves were trained by Soviet personnel. The Kurds have been utilized as puppets by outside powers to wage a proxy war and Trump supported Kurdish militias to dismantle ISIS strongholds in northern Syria as well.
#15043492
ThirdTerm wrote:We need to look at this conflict from a Cold War perspective, which is more than a blood feud between the Turks and the Kurds. The Soviet Union supported both the PLO and the PKK to go after American allies in the region as Moscow saw the Kurds as a trump card to exert pressure on Turkey, a NATO member, while the PLO terrorized Israel. When the PKK was transformed into a paramilitary group in the 1980s, PKK members started to get training by the members of the Palestine Liberation Organization who themselves were trained by Soviet personnel. The Kurds have been utilized as puppets by outside powers to wage a proxy war and Trump supported Kurdish militias to dismantle ISIS strongholds in northern Syria as well.


What would the Kurdish people themselves prefer for themselves without any puppet string stuff going on? What do the Kurds want? An independent nation and sovereignty within Iraq, or Syria or Turkey or another land base?

I am interested in what that community would like. It seems to me that political repression by the Turkish government where they are not allowed to speak their language and be who they are within Turkey's territory is extremely divisive.

What do the Kurds want for their own people?
#15043602
The Turks, Mongols and Arabs committed evil on an almost unimaginable scale. The Turks and Mongols, like the Arabs, were terrorists, murderers, rapists, child rapists, women murderers, child murderers, slavers, genociders, imperialists and occupiers. We Greater European people suffered the most terrible injustices at their hands. The Turks and the western invading Mongols couldn't believe their luck, when they discovered Islam. That was because Islam was created by terrorist parasites for terrorist parasites.

The Kurdish Muslims were full collaborators with the Turkish genociders against the Armenians and other decent hard working peoples. A significant part of what the Kurds claim as Kurdistan is in fact Armenia. However the indo European Kurds like the Semites and the Iranians are indigenous peoples of the region, unlike the Turks and Tartars who are not.
#15043630
Rich wrote:
The Turks, Mongols and Arabs committed evil on an almost unimaginable scale. The Turks and Mongols, like the Arabs, were terrorists, murderers, rapists, child rapists, women murderers, child murderers, slavers, genociders, imperialists and occupiers. We Greater European people suffered the most terrible injustices at their hands. The Turks and the western invading Mongols couldn't believe their luck, when they discovered Islam. That was because Islam was created by terrorist parasites for terrorist parasites.

The Kurdish Muslims were full collaborators with the Turkish genociders against the Armenians and other decent hard working peoples. A significant part of what the Kurds claim as Kurdistan is in fact Armenia. However the indo European Kurds like the Semites and the Iranians are indigenous peoples of the region, unlike the Turks and Tartars who are not.



If history was easy, anyone could do it...

Europe invaded the ME, before the ME invaded them...

You do realise that the West inflicted horrible atrocities on much of the world during the empires of Spain and England.
#15043638
late wrote:If history was easy, anyone could do it...

Europe invaded the ME, before the ME invaded them...


What do you mean by Europe?

If you mean just a geographic region, then the Persians invaded first before the Macedonians conquered what we now consider the ME.

If you mean Europe in the modern sense, we skip over the Muslim conquest of Spain and Sicily, the reconquista, the Normans in Sicily, the Crusades, the early Ottoman wars with the Hospitallers and Venetians, and on to the two sieges of Vienna. In which case the ME invaded first. And they monopolised trade with the Far East forcing the Europeans to set out on open ocean voyages leading to the colonial era.

Or are you just talking about 19th and 20th century European imperialism? At which time the Algerians were engaging in piracy and the Turks were silly enough to join the wrong side in WWI.


If it is just a question of who started it, then the ME doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on.
#15045330
rich wrote:The Turks, Mongols and Arabs committed evil on an almost unimaginable scale. The Turks and Mongols, like the Arabs, were terrorists, murderers, rapists, child rapists, women murderers, child murderers, slavers, genociders, imperialists and occupiers. We Greater European people suffered the most terrible injustices at their hands. The Turks and the western invading Mongols couldn't believe their luck, when they discovered Islam. That was because Islam was created by terrorist parasites for terrorist parasites.


:roll:

I don't understand why Turks and Arabs are put in the same league with Mongols in this pseudo-hypothesis of yours.

80 million people in WW2 were killed mostly by Christian Europeans, not by Turks or Arabs.

6 million Jews were brutally murdered in concentration camps by Christian Europeans, not by Turks or Arabs.

20+ million people in WW1 were killed mostly by Christian Europeans, not by Turks or Arabs.

30 million people were massacred during the colonization of America by Christian Europeans, not by Turks or Arabs.

4 million people were slaughtered during crusades by Christian Europeans, not by Turks or Arabs.

8 million Christian Europeans were killed during Thirty Years' War by Christian Europeans, not by Turks or Arabs, just because their understanding of Christianity was different from one another.

If my memory is not failing, you were a German nationalist.

Be a good nationalist, and search for how many German cities and towns were razed to the ground by sweet and blond Swedes alone in Thirty Years' War.

Then come back here and repeat your initial pseudo-hypothesis with a straight face, if you can.

Nope, you cannot.

If you are looking for some ethnicities to be framed together with 13th century Mongolian hordes in terms of their genocidal and imperialist nature, you don't need to look far.

Find a mirror. And look into it.
#15045334
@Vanasalus, Rich is British and not a German nationalist as you claim.

The crimes committed by Christians were just as bad as those committed by Muslims. The difference is that some recognize their crimes (like the holocaust) while others don't (like the Armenian genocide).

Past events are water under the bridge, but the interpretation of history can serve to justify future crimes. That is what we need to be concerned about. And you should be concerned about Erdogan who fans a wave of jingoism to fuel his neo-Ottoman ambitions.
#15045657
Atlantis wrote:@Vanasalus, Rich is British and not a German nationalist as you claim.


My bad.

Yet it doesn't affect the validity of my arguments a bit.

Atlantis wrote:The crimes committed by Christians were just as bad as those committed by Muslims. The difference is that some recognize their crimes (like the holocaust) while others don't (like the Armenian genocide).


With all due respect, Muslims cannot compete with the efficiency and creativity of Christians in this matter at all.
#15045668
Vanasalus wrote:Yet it doesn't affect the validity of my arguments a bit.


You didn't have a leg to stand on from the very beginning. :D

With all due respect, Muslims cannot compete with the efficiency and creativity of Christians in this matter at all.


That is pure garbage. The only difference is that the Muslim world today is stuck in a brutal and violent past with religious fundamentalists and clan rivalry that the West has passed centuries ago.
#15045985
Atlantis wrote:That is pure garbage. The only difference is that the Muslim world today is stuck in a brutal and violent past with religious fundamentalists and clan rivalry that the West has passed centuries ago.


Well, I must disagree.

To our credit as Muslims, the most "brutal and violent" homegrown thing we could come up in our 1400 years long history was the emergence of the Hashashin order stationed in Alamut fortress, an order composed of opium addicts terrorizing the ruling classes of the Muslim world through bloody assassinations.

Whole of 1400 years till few decades ago.

I don't need to mention how the destructive Western adventures in Afghanistan turned the place for a breeding ground for Taliban and Al-Qaeda, or in Iraq turned the place for a breeding ground for ISIS. God knows what evil is currently brewing in the dungeons and prison camps across Syria, Libya, Egypt, S. Arabia and Yemen right now.

But, what I must underline is: Those truly brutal and violent elements wreaking havoc across Muslim world today are not of our creation, but of yours.
#15045987
Vanasalus wrote:Well, I must disagree.

To our credit as Muslims, the most "brutal and violent" homegrown thing we could come up in our 1400 years long history was the emergence of the Hashashin order stationed in Alamut fortress, an order composed of opium addicts terrorizing the ruling classes of the Muslim world through bloody assassinations.

Whole of 1400 years till few decades ago.

I don't need to mention how the destructive Western adventures in Afghanistan turned the place for a breeding ground for Taliban and Al-Qaeda, or in Iraq turned the place for a breeding ground for ISIS. God knows what evil is currently brewing in the dungeons and prison camps across Syria, Libya, Egypt, S. Arabia and Yemen right now.

But, what I must underline is: Those truly brutal and violent elements wreaking havoc across Muslim world today are not of our creation, but of yours.


What is your opinion on what is going on in Turkey between the Kurdish people and the Erdogan Turkish leader? What is their idea to survive?

And in your opinion @Vanasalus what do you think all the intervention by the European and American powers has wrought in the Middle East all this time? What is your opinion on all that?
#15045999
Vanasalus wrote:But, what I must underline is: Those truly brutal and violent elements wreaking havoc across Muslim world today are not of our creation, but of yours.


:lol:

The victim mentality is your greatest problem because it prevents you from addressing the real issues. As long as that doesn't change, Muslim countries will forever remain impoverished underdeveloped tyrannies, and the only hope for Muslims to find peace and prosperity will be to migrate to the West. What a total failure!

Europe didn't invent imperialism. Long before the colonial period, Muslim rulers converted by the sword. Islam expansion was from the very beginning a very bloody affair, while Christianity spread without military expansion for the first few centuries.

Muslims are just salty because the West has been better at expansion during the last 5 centuries. Given half a chance, Muslims will resort to the most violent brutality to pursue their expansionist project. But as I said, historical crimes are water down the bridge. What matters is that you are stuck in a violent past and religious fundamentalism.
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