I’m offering the Turkish perspective on three hot-button issues that are in the news lately. (See my last posting for their take on the “Armenian Holocaust.”)
About the Kurds:
Turkey is sensitive to issues relating to its 10 million Kurdish people. When we took tours through southeastern Turkey, the Kurdish colors (red, green, and yellow) were the most politicized colors I remember encountering in my travels. (Our guide forbade us to endanger our tour by picking up simple knickknacks with these powerful colors in the villages we stopped in.) Later, I spent a week filming a TV show in Eastern Turkey. It seemed every time we pulled out the camera, military police zoomed in on their jeeps and stopped us. We once even got taken into a commander’s tent to (sip tea and) explain that we weren’t working with the Kurds.
With the seemingly imminent breakup of Iraq and the virtual autonomy of a Kurdistan now just over the Turkish border, the issue is back in the news. Here’s how my Turkish friends explain it:
Turkey’s citizens are officially called “the Turks” — there are no other ethnic groups or minorities recognized by Turkish law. (On paper, every citizen shares equal privileges and responsibilities.) Among the country’s various “unofficial” ethnic groups, the Kurds are significant, making up about 20 percent of Turkey’s population. They live mostly in the southeast, just across the border from their ethnic cousins in Iraq and Iran.
In Turkey, a militant Kurdish separatist group — the PKK — has fought a bloody campaign against the government off and on since 1984. While the PKK had been fairly quiet for the past decade (even agreeing to some pretty successful truces), the prospect of Iraq falling apart — and Iraqi Kurds forming an autonomous nation — has reignited PKK activity.
While my Turkish friends claim (perhaps correctly) that the majority of Kurds in Turkey do not support any separatist movement, the PKK has found fertile ground to reorganize in Northern Iraq, and now the Turkish government wants to send its troops across the border to eliminate the “terrorist threat.”
And speaking of 400-pound gorillas in the room, Turkey fears that a potential Kurdish State of Northern Iraq will tempt otherwise happy Kurds living in Turkey to become Kurdish Kurds rather than Kurdish Turks. Turkey has made it very clear that it will go to war rather than allow that to happen.
I hope the nightmare brought on by the break-up of Iraq–as predicted (before the Iraq War) by people who understood the complex ethnic situation in the Middle East–is not approaching.
Your friend’s explanation is eye-opening. With the poiticial unrest in Turkey, travel would be more of an experience out of the norm. Some people would like that. Take care, Rick.
When the UN was formed, about 60 years ago, I felt the most important job they had was to create borders for the “homeless†people, of countries that no longer exist. That is the people exist, the borders do not.
I find it hard to believe that Turkey, for example, can not see that the millions of Kurds and the Armenians do in fact exist, and will continue to exist in spite of not having a recognized border.
Don’t they see that if they just cut off a portion of their country, and helped establish a land with borders, for people with other cultures, their problems would disappear.
I know that the borders that now enclose country are important, but wouldn’t it be better if the people who seem to hate, or are hated, by others, were not imprisoned within a border they don’t want, everyone would be better off.
The Israelis and the Palestinians would forget their problem, if borders surrounded their cultures.
A border and a culture do a country make.
Jim: While a border may work for the Kurds (I don’t know too much about the subject), it certainly won’t work for the Israelis and Palestinians since they both want the same piece of land. Rick, I love this sort of post — we don’t often get to hear the viewpoints from actual citizens (as opposed to what the media chooses to cover).
Rick: thanks your views from the Turkish perspective, it makes for real interesting reading material.
I am still interested in having a guide book on Greece, I have read your son’s blog on his european travels and he has his dad’s knack on writing….please send him to Greece this summer, visit all the ancient places including Meteora and then travel to Chania and all of Crete, Corfu, Rhodes and Symi and obviously Santorini and Mykonos–It would be interesting to see Greece through his eyes….
Rick, I never knew you were so very prescient. How does your Democrat Party’s move to inflame the US-Turkey relationship play out with you?
Al, One can ask you the same question… how does your Republican parties dismal failure in it’s Iraq ‘Adventure’ inflame the entire world ? talk of ‘prescience’….
I think it’s wishful (and unrealistic) thinking that a nation like Turkey would “cut off a portion of their country” to establish a homeland for one of their citizen ethnic groups. This is very rare historically. But that does not mean the Kurds have to give up or even compromise their culture, especially in a relatively secular and forward-thinking nation like Turkey. Many ethnic groups have maintained and are maintaining their cultures within the boundaries of other countries; witness the multiple ethnic festvals, neigborhoods, etc. in the U.S. As citizens of the world, we must work to ensure all countries allow some freedom of varied cultural expression. That’s what makes the world interesting!
People complain that I emphasize the fact that a country consists of a border and a culture, and they can not imagine why I am so much against multiculturalism.
My concern with multiculturalism is that it often destroys a culture. That does not mean that some country where people live in shacks, and have little to eat, and no good jobs, cannot adopt cultural items to improve their country.
Eggs, Milk, Flour, and Butter are each special items (cultures), and if you combine 2 1/2 cups of flour, 2 Eggs, a 1/2 cup of a Milk, a tablespoon of Butter, and a sprinkle of salt, you have created the wonderful new “Culture†of Noodles.
But if you combine 2 1/2 cups of eggs, 2 cups Milk, a tablespoon of flour, and a 1/2 cup of salt, you have not only created a mess, you have eliminated the original culture of flour, milk, butter, and salt.
Just to combine cultures willy-nilly, completely eliminates the original culture, and results in something else, mostly a total mess.
One of the problems with Rick’s frequent political statements (and not very balanced) is they violate his stated goal of bridging gaps through better understanding. His unsolicited pronouncements not only fail to recognize that many of readers do not agree with his politics, they unnecessarily antagonize the same (at least 1/2 of his readers), and re-inforce European misunderstandings about Americans. Rick is entitled to have and to state his political opinions, but travel and politics have never mixed. Rick should know better than to try.
Well, that’s the thing about culture — it is a living thing that changes over time whether or not there are outside influences. I agree with the other poster about it not being possible, nor desirable, to cut off a hunk of a country and give it to one group. The next step would be to close the borders and not allow people, products, or ideas in. Then: xenophobia at its worst! Next: everyone is at war because they want to impose their own ideas on the world and they don’t understand or want to understand or maybe are afraid of conflicting viewpoints. I know I carried this pretty far out, but I’m just theorizing. One last thought…our ancestors tried cutting up pieces of the country and giving them to a particular group. They were called ‘reservations’. We see how well that worked out, didn’t we? LOL — I just saw the word that I have to type to verify I’m not a spammer. It is absurdness, which pretty much fits this thread!
Alan, it’s my experience that travel and politics can mix very well. When I first traveled to India as part of a study abroad program, we were given the (horrible) advice to not discuss sex, politics or religion. As soon as I landed, everyone wanted to talk about sex, politics and religion. (This was during Clinton’s impeachment, so sex and politics went together even more than they usually do.) I had many wonderful conversations about all three topics, some of which still continue via email. It was done with sensitivity to the local culture and the people involved. We didn’t always agree, but we tried to understand.
Sara, I agree that politics and travel can mix well, but Rick’s way of mixing does not work. Your method will. If Rick showed half as much respoect for Americans who disagree with him as he asks his readers to respect those in Europe who disagree with them, his writings would be much less hypocritical. I have found also that when done with mutual respect, anything can be discussed. I have also found that as many Europeans do not understand American politics as Americans who do not understand European politics. Rick appears to show respect only to those who agree with him. Thanks for your thoughts.
I, being a Turk, disagree with your Turkish friends. Turkey is not afraid a Kurdish state formed from Iraq will pose a threat, but such a state will JOIN Turkey. Turks have historically always been the watchful brother of Kurds, so many of the millions of Kurds in Turkey that you speak of, do call themselves “Turkish”- by choice. We don’t segregate by race and ethnicity like they did in Europe and the Americas. The West would rather have people believing so, but if anybody read authentic historical documentation on these subjects, instead of listening to PBS and the “Midnight Express” claim whatever oppression they can.
Official and Unofficial ethnic groups? wow and these laws don’t reflect an racist past? the only reason gringos like Turkey because its a nice candy coated east for fanny pack wearing “temporary european” to gawk and skeet all over. don’t get me wrong Rick steves puffs tough so much respect to the homie. but way to sound like an ass by taking “neutral stances” on issues with two clear sides.