Gulan: Turkey one week after the elections

The text in Kurdish.

Gülcihan Simsek, Ahmet Türk and Aysel Tugluk in Wan, December 2006. Photo: Kristiina Koivunen

The hot issue of last week was of course Turkey's elections. The Islamic AK Party got almost half of the votes and more than twenty Kurdish DTP politicians entered the parliament.

Last week I wrote about Kurdish internet pages. There is an active virtual Kurdish community discussing daily politics. Internet is like an answer to the needs of the nation which is spread all around the world. But the available technology is just one step in creating Kurdish community in internet. More important is the national awakening process among the people. If the Kurds would not want to communicate with each others even the best technology could not help.

Times are changing in Turkey. Just compare the present situation to the one of last decade. First example: During 1983-1998 Turkish troops went 36 times to South Kurdistan. And now? Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken about a political solution to the Kurdish question. Before the elections his tone became a little bit hawkish but immediately after them the tension on the boarder decreased.

And the second example: the group of Kurdish parliamentarians was crushed down in Turkey in the early 1990s. Mehmet Sincar was murdered 1993 and many other Kurdish politicians were put to prison for ten years. Now it happens the opposite. The new MP Sebahat Tuncel came out from Gebze prison two days after she was elected to the parliament. Mehmet Sincar's widow Jihan Sincar is now the mayor of Kiziltepe and in parliament sits Mrs Pervin Buldan whose husband Savas Buldan disappeared last decade. Internet community follows everything what the Kurdish politicians say and discuss what they should do next.

Kurds have been controlled for decades by the principle of "divide and rule". When there are more and more contacts between the Kurds they notice how they benefit of co-operation with each others. Internet is one method for this, satellite televisions is another, and third is travelling and meetings, also among the Diaspora Kurds.

European people do not understand much about the change process what is now going on both in Kurdistan and in Turkey. Finnish newspapers see it as a paradox that Mr Erdogan speaks for Islamic values and is in Turkey the biggest supporter of EU membership. They think that Erdogan's target is to make Turkey an Islamist state. People here do not understand that Erdogan's main vision is to change Turkish system from the military rule to a democracy. It is a shame that Europeans are afraid of an Islamic country becoming a member in European Union but they have nothing against a country controlled by the army.

What will happen next in Turkey? During this spring and summer it has become clear that Turkey's army is not voluntarily giving up its power. But also Erdogan has strong will. Times are changing not only for the Kurds, but also for the Turkish army. Before AK Party no other political party has been strong enough to stand against the military. The army has to accept that Turks are tired on it and want to return to the pre-Kemalist time when the state and religion were not separated from each others. Now it is time to separate the state and army.

Congratulations to Kurdish parliamentarians!

Aysel Tugluk (in the middle with flowers) in Wan Airport December 2006. Photo: Kristiina Koivunen

All Kurdish bloggers have written their comments about Turkey's elections - except me! In addition of having a full time work for one month in City of Helsinki Social Department I have been busy writing my analysis to Helsingin Sanomat. It is Finland's biggest daily newspaper with a circulation of 430 000 (we are five million people in this country).

My article was published today in the editorial page (page number 2) of the newspaper with my picture. It tells about the rocky road what Erdogan's new government will have. The text is not translated to English and I do not have time to translate it. I will comment the elections in Gulan next Monday the 30th July and put the same text in English to this blog.

Now I say just the same thing every else has already said: this is really great! Once again something which gives the Kurds hope for the future. Things can change! They are already changing.

During recent years my articles about Turkey have been published in the editorial page of Helsingin Sanomat about a dozen times. There has been also some unofficial dialogue with the Turkish Embassy as Ambassador Reha Keskintepe has sent twice his answers to my articles and they have been published in the page for readers' letters in Helsingin Sanomat. Despite until now this dialogue has not been very fruitful (last year Mr Keskintepe claimed that I distribute terrorist propaganda) I hope it will continue. Now it has become time in start political dialogue in Turkey to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question. It will benefit also Turks, not just Kurds.

Gulan: Virtual Kurdistan

The text in Kurdish.

I write this column one day before the elections in Turkey, and it is published one day after them. What a condition to write a column! You will hear my comments about Turkey's elections next week.

I follow Turkey's elections and the tension in the boarder of Iraq and Turkey in almost real time - from internet and satellite televisions. And so do millions other people. Kurds in Europe and Kurdistan and their friends. They get information from their own perspective, not from an Arab or Turkish view.

Last week I wrote that at the time of the Sèvres Treaty the perspectives of most local Kurdish leaders did not go beyond the own lands. This is understandable. Travelling and getting information from the outside world is not easy in a mountainous country. Even if the aghas had been in Bagdad, Constantinopole or Tehran, most of their people had hardly been in the neighbour village. The development of national identity is different process among mountain people than in the plain lands. The Scottish people is a good example of this. But now this process happens among the Kurds faster than the same process earlier among other nations.
Internet is different to traditional mass media in many ways. It is faster and it reaches whole the world. But it is also interactive and connects people to each other. Readers can send comments to articles. Other readers continue the discussion. There are hundreds of Kurdish internet pages and discussions groups. The world's largest nation without a country has found a forum for communication which suits to their distribution around the world. Kurds build now virtual Kurdistan.

Internet is easy to use. Here in Europe it is not expensive and we have electricity all the time. Now the virtual Kurdish community wonders whether Iraq will be divided into three parts. Can the problems in Southeast Turkey be solved if Kurdish DTP party gets seats in the parliament? Which group arranged last week the twin bombing in Kirkuk?

Last decade thousands of villages were destroyed both in South Kurdistan and North Kurdistan. People were deported to slums of big cities. It took years before the world knew what atrocities were happening. Nowadays such things can not any more be hidden. In Turkey three provinces are under the state of emergency rule (OHAL) but there are every day reports in internet about things which happen there.

Distributing information to all parts of Kurdistan is just the first step in the process. Commenting it quickly is the second step. This makes internet unique. Readers get information from many sources. They compare it and make their own conclusions. Many people write their opinions to internet. There are many different ways to do it. Some people write with their name, other are anonymous. Many associations and people have their own internet pages, others send comments.

The oppressors of the Kurds try to stop this communication. They hack Kurdish internet pages. Turkey banned for a while the popular You Tube where everyone can distribute videos. But it seems that Kurds are always one step ahead the ones who try to close their pages. They are very creative to find new ways to use internet for the Kurdish national movement. Virtual Kurdistan develops quickly. Later these ideas will be used also in real Kurdistan.

Gulan: The second change for Kurds

The text in Kurdish.

At the time of the Sèvres Treaty Kurds did not have enough national unity to protect their rights. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was a historical opportunity which the Kurdish aghas failed to use. The perspectives of most local leaders did not go beyond the land which was their personal property.

Nationalism arrived to the Kurdish mountains some centuries later than to Europe but finally it arrived there. And it seems that now there is the second change for Kurds to get control over their land, natural resources and cultural heritage. One artificial land, which was created at the beginning of last century, is now in danger to collapse. This land is Iraq.

A soft partition of Iraq is already going on, claimed Michael O'Hanlon and Edward Joseph in a panel discussion at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Thursday, the fifth July. They both are researchers and Mr Joseph is also Iraq war veteran. Iraq would be split up into Kurdistan, "Shi'astan" and "Sunnistan". O'Hanlon and Joseph said partition should only be considered as a final option if nothing else works. US army will not stay for ever in Iraq. Demands to withdraw American troops from there grow at the same rate than the amount of dead American soldiers increases.

Kurds missed their change during the first world war but now they are well prepared for the second change. But times are different. It is not only the Kurds who have changed, also the world is now different that ninety years ago. Nationalism and national states do not have the same meaning than during those days. In the global world nationalism is one value among other ones like democracy and civil society. When I have followed the Kurdish movement in Turkey and in Europe I have seen how creatively Kurds and Kurdish associations take modern information and process it. Now they get new information at the same time than other nations.

And it is not only the state called "Iraq" which seems to be near its end. There are signs that also the period of Kemalist rule will not last for ever. A power struggle is going on in Turkey between AK Party and the army. I think the Kemalist rule will be replaced sooner or later by democracy or by Islamist rule. Will this be the change for people in North Kurdistan to get their rights?

I hope that Iraq will not be split into three parts. It would happen by a civil war. But look at Bagdad: what the present situation is if not civil war? Even less I hope a partition process in Turkey. It would be terrible bloodshed. The change must happen in peace negotiations.

The situations are very different in Turkey and in Iraq. In Turkey the Kurdish question is the country's biggest problem. Because it has not been solved there has occurred lots of other problems. In Iraq the main problems are caused by other reasons but since 1991 Kurds have been clever to use the chaotic situation for their own benefit.

It is up to the Kurds how they use this second change. There are also other ways than to build a national state. But one thing is sure. What ever Kurds do the result will be better than during the days of the Lausanne Treaty.

Detention of Haydar Isik

This appeal of Dr. Zaradachet Hajo was published in the internet pages of the Kurdish PEN.

Appeal to the International and German Public to intervene against the Detention in Germany of the Kurdish Writer Mr. Haydar Isik

by Dr. Zaradachet Hajo, the President of the Kurdish PEN Centre

Bremen, Germany, 9th July, 2007


On 5th July, 2007, there have been large-scale search and detention operations in several German federal states aimed at the Kurds allegedly belonging and/or supporting the People’s Congress (Kongra Gel).

Amongst other detainees there is Mr. Haydar Isik, a prominent writer, one of the founding members and former President of the Kurdish PEN Centre. On the same day, i.e. 5th July, 2007, 69-years-old Haydar Isik, who is married and has three children, appeared in front of the investigating lawyer and was imprisoned on remand.

In order to realise Mr. Haydar Isik’s critical approach towards social and political situation in Turkey, which is a major topic of his numerous literary books, one would be advised to look into his biography. Mr. Haydar Isik’s homeland, a region called Dersim (Tunceli), that is populated by the Alevite Kurds, is one of the main centres of Kurdish resistance and as such has been subjected to the Turkish military aggression for dozens of years. Indeed, the Turkish state has continuously been exercising extremely brutal oppression of the local Kurdish population in Dersim.

In spite of repressions against his home region and its language and culture, Mr. Haydar Isik has never chosen the means of violence, not even in his young years. After having settled down in Munich, Germany, Mr. Isik started to work as a school-teacher in a junior high school and free-lance writer and journalist. It has to be pointed out that Mr. Haydar Isik had been teaching Turkish to the pupils and working as a columnist for several Turkish daily newspapers.
His first novel in Turkish entitled The Agha from Dersim would be banned in Turkey only three weeks after its publication. His next book The Destruction of Dersim has been published by late Mrs. Ayse Nur Zarakolu in Istanbul and won the 1998 Publishers’ Prize in the International Frankfurt Book-Fair. Yet, this book was also banned in Turkey. Mr. Isik’s other books have been created in Turkish and German. Remarkably, in a clear violation of the established freedom of opinion in Germany, one of his books would also be seized here.

Mr. Haydar Isik, who lives near Munich, has been often subjected to anonymous threats, blackmails and slander. Even the Turkish officials found it appropriate to take actions against one of his articles. We know Mr. Haydar Isik as a person with active vocabulary who has always been denouncing violence in all its forms. Neither in Turkey, nor in Germany has Mr. Isik ever used force. His only legitimate weapon of self-defence is writing. Therefore we are extremely surprised to learn about the alleged reasoning behind his arrest at the age of 69, as if Mr. Isik in any form supported violent actions of a banned Kurdish organisation. We suspect that by punishing Mr. Haydar Isik, a thorn in the eyes of the Turkish right-wing political circles, the German law and order institutions serve anew the Turkish state interests in the Federal Republic of Germany. As a result, Mr. Isik himself becomes a victim of the Turkish political attempts to show him as an offender.

It is rather conspicuous that it is the Federal Republic of Germany that more than any other European state tries to take measures against Kurdish organisations. This happens place against the background of a generally peaceful co-existence between Kurds, Turks and Germans in the country. It is worthy to note that for many years there have been no serious facts proving Kurdish violence against the German state and society. At the same time, around 800,000 Kurds living in Germany are not recognised as a distinct ethnic group, despite the 1991 decision of the Bundestag, the lower chamber of German Parliament.

We appeal to the International PEN Congress in Dakar, Senegal, as well as to German and international public opinion to intervene against the detention of the Kurdish writer Mr. Haydar Isik. We call on the German government not to privilege the Turkish interests on the costs of the freedom of opinion and immediately release Mr. Haydar Isik from custody.

Dr. Zaradachet Hajo

Helsinki Summer University distributes false information about Turkish language

Text on the top of the mountain tells Kurds of Wan that they are happy when they speak Turkish. Unfortenately the picture is not very clear.

Helsinki Summer University arranges August 2007 a course in Turkish language. They claim in their internet page that 70 million people speak Turkish as their mother language.

From where Helsinki Summer University has taken the number? The Turkish national censuses stopped collecting data on the basis ethnicity after 1965. Before that, people were asked about their mother tongue (source: Kirisci, Kemal and Winrow, Gareth M.: The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of Trans-State Ethnic Conflict. Frank Cass. London 1997. pages 119-120). So at the moment no one knows how many people in Turkey speak Turkish as mother language.

There are 71 million people in Turkey. Even when remembering that there are native Turkish speakers in Bulgaria, North Cyprus and Europe the claim of Helsinki Summer University can be understood only in one way: that most Kurds in Turkey speak Turkish as their mother language. This is one example how the linguicial (=linguistic genocidal) policy of the Republic of Turkey is distributed also abroad.

Last year a Turkish language course of Helsinki Summer University was cancelled due to lack of participants. If the language training in the course is in the same level than the it’s presentation in the internet, it is no wonder that people do not go there.

Gulan: Trial in Istanbul and bomb in Beytüssebap

The text in Kurdish.

Thousands of people protested on the streets of the Turkish cities after the murder of Hrant Dink last January. He was the chief editor of the Armenian newspaper Agos. The shock united Turkish people for a while. There was mutual will to discuss the wounds of the past. But it lasted very short time.

Now, half a year later, eighteen people suspected of Dink's murder go to court in Istanbul. Their trial started last Monday, the second July. But Turkish media has lost interest on the murder case.

After Hrant Dink's murder there was in Turkey demands to abolish Article 301 of the Penal code. It is the biggest obstacle for freedom of speech in Turkey. But also these speeches have vanished in the ultra nationalist heat.

Once again it has happened same thing than so many times earlier, for example after the Semdinli bomb attack: when activities of the Deep State have become evident people have first demanded to find information. But case after case, public discussion has ended after some weeks. Also the Semdinli trial went just like this. For example the removal of prosecutor Ferhat Sarikaya just before the trial got very little attention both in Turkey and abroad.

The Semdinli trial ended to prison sentence of two JITEM agents. JITEM is the intelligence service of the gendarmerie. Amnesty International commented the decision that "Court convicted two, but questions remained unanswered". Here is in nutshell the key question also of the Hrant Dink's murder trial. It is not enough that seventeen years old Ogun Samast and other suspected persons are punished for their crime. Dink's lawyers assert that there was a big and organized group behind the eighteen suspects and they had links to members of the police and gendarmerie forces. It is the right of Turkish people that all this will be public.

There are frightening signs that Turkey is turning back to the dark times of early 1990s. One example is the bomb which was found in Beytüssebap before it exploded. Beytüssebap is in Sirnak province, forty kilometre from Iraqi boarder. Its mayor Faik Dursun is from the Kurdish DTP party. Like last decade, Sirnak province is now state of emergency region.

Early morning last Tuesday, the third July, someone called Faik Dursun to tell him that there was a suspicious package on the road. Dursun called the special prosecutor. A couple of police came, went onto the roof of a nearby house and shot into the package with their guns. This caused the package to explode, which made a big crater in the ground and broke the windows of several nearby houses. Faik Dursun says this was an assassination attempt against him because the bomb was located on the road which he uses every morning when going to work to the municipality house.

During 1990-04 sixty four Kurdish politicians from HEP and DEP parties were murdered in Turkey. After a period of democratic and peaceful development Turkish people should not accept the return of political murders and other atrocities. The first step to prevent it is to find out the truth of the past crimes. This must happen in the murder trial of Hrant Dink, in Beytüssebap and in many other places.

New Kurdish blogger Hevallo

There is in blogspot new, very active Kurdish blogger Hevallo. He is very productive: in June he made 84 posts. In July there is nineteen of them until now (the 7th July at 16.15 GMT). In addition to information in almost real time there are interesting pictures and lots of links. So I warmly recommend to follow Hevallo’s blog.

I add him to my blog list on the right side.

Mala Dengbejan

There is a new association in my links on the right side:
Mala Dengbejan is an association in Van. It works with dengbej music and other traditional Kurdish culture.

Gulan 11.6.2007: Meeting about the Kurdish Question in the British Parliament

The text in Kurdish.

Europe has not understood how serious the crisis between Turkey and South Kurdistan is. Mass media does not tell much about it. But there are signs that some people are waking up to see the crisis. One example is the meeting which was held in the British Parliament last Wednesday the 6th June. The topic of the meeting was "EU, Turkey and the Kurdish Question - What change now for a peacefull resolution of the conflict?"

It was hosted by Mr Elfyn Llwyd, a Welch parliamentarian who is the Vice-Chair of the Parliamentarians for National Self-Determination (PNSD). One practical step to distribute information about the Kurdish question is that there will be a group which follows the situation and prepares reports for British parliamentarians.

One of the speakers was Mrs. Maureen Freely. She has translated Orhan Pamuk's books to English. She told how the imperial Ottoman history still affects the feelings of the Turkish people. It is difficult for them to accept that their country is no more the superpower of the world. And Turks have been manipulated to believe that they are surrounded by enemies and they need a strong army to protect them.

Mrs. Freely said that Turkey has been very succesfull in distributing wrong information about the situation to Europe. When one hears news from Turkey one should allways ask what is the source of information and who keeps silent.

I think Turks are not able to face their own history. But Turkey can not develop without a public discussion about the collapse of Ottoman Empire and all the tragedies which happened at the beginning of last century.

Lawyer Mark Muller said that we are witnessing now such a crisis which we have seen never before. I think that the present crisis is still one step in the collapse process of the Ottoman Empire. Anyway Mr Muller was optimistic. He said that there are many possibilities for a good development. Often there are seeds for solution and a new way of thinking even in the biggest crisis when a country must change.

Muller believed that if the Islamist Party AKP does not win the elections in July, Turkey will fall to a very deep crisis. The Turkish government and army are arguing whether Turkey should attack South Kurdistan. They use hard words. But they know that when the Turkish army has entered South Kurdistan it has never reached the targets.

I want to share the optimism of Mark Muller. The situation is now very dangerous but there are powers in Turkey which understand that this crisis can not be solved by military methods. Europe must carry its responsibility in solving the crisis and not close the eyes from it. Mr Muller said that the government of Tony Blair has experience of very complicated peace negotiations in North Ireland. This knowledge could be used in solving the Kurdish question. It is the responsibility of Great Britain because it was one the main actors behind the Lausanne Treaty.

Pictures from London

I was in London at the beginning of June. I went there to a seminar about Turkish nationalism and visited interesting places. Here are some pictures from London with the principle ”better late than never”. Thanks to Ryan Air which has made the distance between Helsinki and London much shorter than earlier!
Place: Big Ben and the Parliament
Activity: EU, Turkey and the Kurdish Question - What chance now for a peaceful resolution of the conflict? the 6th June 2007

Lawyer Mark Muller (left) and MP Elfyn Llwyd

Maureen Freely

Mark Muller and Margaret Owen (Widows for Peace)

Place: Halkevi
Activity: Hackney Schools and the Turkish, Kurdish and Turkish Cypriot Child 2007, the 9th June 2007

Hackney mayor Jules Pipe (left) and MP Diane Abbott

Garden of Ugur Kaymaz

Aziziye Camii, Hackney

The growth of Kurdish cities

Batman, North Kurdistan.

The text in Kurdish.

Next year half of world's population - 3,3 billion people - will live in towns and cities. Almost half of them are under 25 years old. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released last week a report about urban development. Until now most people have lived in the countryside. States have tried to prevent immigration to cities. UNFPA draws clear conclusion: this strategy does not work. It is better to develop urban life than to try to prevent the cities growing bigger.

Well, the United Nations report tells about global development which has happened in countries which are not hit by war and UN's economical sanctions. In South Kurdistan the conditions are different. Saddam Hussein did not want Kurds to stay in the countryside. Totally the opposite: he emptied thousands of Kurdish villages and forced people to move to cities against their will.

Anyway, in Kurdish cities many of the consequences of the rapid growth are the same than in cities in other developing countries. One thing is that cities grow bigger because of high birth rate in slum areas, not because of immigration from villages. The percentage of young people of city dwellers is high in all developing countries. And they do not want to live in country side because life is more free in cities than in villages.

I have not been in South Kurdistan but this is absolutely true in North Kurdish cities, for example in Diyarbakir and Wan. Kurds in Turkey have experienced the same forced, violent migration to towns than the Kurds in Iraq. The most massive village destruction occurred in Southeast Turkey at the beginning of last decade. Now there is one generation which has grown up in urban environment. And despite they are surely not happy with their conditions, the young people do not see their future in country side. It is the elderly people who dream of returning to their villages.

The problems are enormous but UNFPA searches solutions and tries to see the future optimistically. Better conditions and more rights for women is the key issue when aiming at low birth rate. This is necessary to prevent cities growing bigger. In South Kurdistan the families are not so big than in North Kurdistan where there seems to be ten children in every slum house.

Vice chairman of UNFPA, Mari Simonen, said last week in Helsinki that there exists lots of research information about urban problems. Politicians in the grass root level should have access to this knowledge.

Mrs. Simonen suggested that representatives of cities should meet each others to discuss their experiences and learn from each others. This is very good idea. When talking about South Kurdish cities it is easy to see with whom they should discuss their problems. There are very near towns and cities which have similar history of forced migration. They are their neighbours on the other side of the Turkish boarder. And in addition of representatives of Hewler and Sulaymania meeting people from Diyarbakir and Wan, also the representatives of smaller towns should meet each others.