Turkish Attitude towards the Kurds: No Limit to Irrationality
Kurdishaspect.ocm - By Dr. Rashid Karadaghi
Sometimes one wonders how far man and the institutions he has created can go with their ridiculous and irrational behavior. It seems that in some instances the sky is the limit, or, more appropriately, the depths of hell.
A case in point is the reaction of the Turkish government to an incident that any rational government run by rational men and women wouldn’t even have bothered to waste its precious time on to investigate, let alone prosecute. Governments should have better things to spend their time on than matters such as this. But not in Turkey – especially if Kurds are involved!
The incident revolves around the Kurdish Youth and Children Music Group from Diyarbakir (Koma Denge Zaroken Amede), a group of fifteen boys and girls ranging in age from 8 to 17, singing a Kurdish song / anthem at a music festival in San Francisco last October. The group sang in seven or eight different languages, including Turkish.
When the members of group returned to Turkey, they were interviewed, harassed, and terrified by Turkish investigators. The Turkish government prosecutor claims that the song, “Ey Reqib,” meaning, “Hey, Enemy,” which the group sang among other songs, is a PKK anthem! The prosecutor has cleared most of the members except for three who, if convicted, could get up to five years in jail each. Amnesty International has, thankfully, adopted the case and issued a statement deploring the Turkish government’s action.
First of all, the anthem that the Kurdish group sang, and for which three of the members are being prosecuted, isn’t a PKK anthem, for anyone who knows the ABC of Kurdish history knows that it goes back about seventy years – long before PKK ever existed. A government must, indeed, be very weak and paranoid to feel threatened by a mere song, regardless of its content or origin.
Turkey never ceases to shock us with its irrational behavior and its paranoia about all Kurdish activities and its antagonism towards all things Kurdish – anywhere in the world. One can list hundreds of cases where Kurds have been prosecuted in Turkey for incidents as harmless as the one which is the subject of this article. One can’t help but ask, “To what end? How long will Turkey persist in this kind of hateful behavior? Don’t Turkish officials realize how ridiculous their actions and their attitude make them look in the eyes of the world?”
In a strange way, the more Turkey acts in this fashion, the more it hurts its own image in the eyes of the world, for it exposes its true nature for the world to see. The more Turkey acts in this mindless manner, the more publicity it provides for the justice of the Kurdish cause. The more Turkey behaves in this manner, the more international sympathy the Kurds get because the world sees more and more clearly how this so-called democratic country deals with the problems it has created for itself. By acting the way it does, Turkey becomes its own worse enemy.
The irony is that this dismal record on human rights notwithstanding, Turkey desperately wants to join the European Union! It wants to gain all the advantages of becoming part of the civilized world without behaving like that world at all. It wants all the privileges but none of the obligations. It wants to trick the EU by pointing to some meaningless and superficial so-called “reforms” that change nothing about its deplorable human rights record and policies towards the Kurds.
One wonders if Turkish society realizes that a Kurd can sing “Ey Raqib,” over which three Kurdish teenage musicians are facing trial and imprisonment, or raise the Kurdish flag in any European country, America, Canada, Australia, New Zeland, etc., not only without fear of prosecution by the governments of those countries but without anybody even bothering to see what he is doing. It is really ironic when we realize that a Kurdish refugee in any European country, or anywhere else in the West, has more rights than a Kurd anywhere in Turkey, especially in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, where Kurds have been the original inhabitants and where his ancestors have lived for thousands of years.
If Turkey wants to be a true and genuine partner of civilized Europe, it has to be a partner not only in name, through trickery, to get advantage, but in reality. It has to play by the rules of civilized Europe, not those of barbaric Turkey. Only when singing “Ey Raqib” and raising the Kurdish flag and myriads of similar activities become as natural as breathing will Turkey have passed the test and deserved the privilege of joining civilized Europe.
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June 22, 2008
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