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.