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WHAT'S IN THE KURDISH ASPIRATIONS FOR THE ARMENIANS?


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#1 Yervant1

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Posted 16 October 2015 - 11:09 AM

WHAT'S IN THE KURDISH ASPIRATIONS FOR THE ARMENIANS?

Mirror Spectator
10/17 Oct 2015

By Edmond Y. Azadian

The Kurds in the Middle East are within shooting distance of reaching
their historic national aspirations; Iraqi Kurdistan is already
a political reality because Iraq's territorial integrity has been
compromised to a nominal value only and the province of Kurdistan
operates as a sovereign state within a fractured federation.

The partition of Iraq is a fact; the three entities it comprises it
are held together out of political expediency for and by the forces
which dominate the scene in the Middle East.

In the first place, the West is temporarily assuaging Turkish fears
of a rising independent Kurdistan. The other component of the Kurdish
drive for independence is the recapture of the Kobani region in Syria,
by local Kurdish forces, creating another threat to exacerbate Ankara's
projected fears in the region.

But the main battle is fought within Turkey itself. President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan precipitously abandoned peace negotiations with the
Kurds and unleashed a war against the latter both in Turkey and Iraq
with the short-term goal of intimidating the Kurds and gaining a
parliamentary majority in the November 1 elections.

Although the Kurds, including jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, had
compromised their political goals by settling for autonomy within
the Turkish state versus full independence to facilitate peace
negotiations, Mr. Erdogan threw aside his gains in his rush to win
the elections. The bloody war that ensued may have some unintended
consequences, which may include full Kurdish independence.

At that point, a historical Pandora's box will be opened, as the
Kurds will try to revive the Sevres Treaty, which had promised them
independence. The same treaty, of course, has provisions for the
Armenians. But since the Armenians were wiped out of their ancestral
lands, it would not be easy for them to validate their treaty rights,
while the Kurds have been inhabiting the territory, winning 90 percent
of the argument.

Though there are no official statistics from the Ottoman era, the
Kurdish and Armenian populations in the empire seemed to be roughly
equal. Today, the Kurds are estimated to constitute one third of
Turkey's population, accounting for 20-25 million people.

During the Ottoman era, the Kurds came to rule over semi-independent
principalities in historic Western Armenia. Ottoman modernization
and centralization efforts directed against them were supported by
the Armenians with the promise of forthcoming reforms, but as soon as
the principalities were defeated the Armenians were cast aside. The
Armenians attempted to involve the Kurds at times in their efforts
at cultural and political progress. Attempts were made to use the
Armenian alphabet for writing Kurdish, and some of the Armenian
political parties at the end of the 19th century wanted to work for
the liberation of oppressed Kurdish as well as Armenian peasants.

Nevertheless, the Kurds were used conveniently by the Sultan to
expropriate the wealth of Armenians as well as massacre them. They
also became executioners in the hands of the Ittihadists who organized
the Genocide of the Armenians on their historic lands. Only a small
part of the Kurdish population helped save some Armenian lives.

The Kurds as a group only realized that they had been ill-used when
Kemal Ataturk rose to power and began his racist policy of homogenizing
Turkey's population.

As Hitler was clamoring for power in Europe to develop and implement
his theory of Aryan supremacy, Ataturk was already at work on the
same policy. His motto was "Ne Mutlu Turkum Diyene," which roughly
translates to "envy the person who claims to be a Turk."

Of course, there was no room in this paradigm for the Kurds and the
Alevis, who were being persecuted and whose identities were being
denied.

After the Kurds realized that they had been betrayed, they began
to apologize to the Armenians and began to protect the surviving
Armenians, even when they were being bombed into submission during
the 1930s.

Armenians have seldom banked on Kurdish resentment against the Turks.

They have even less participation in their fight against the Turks.

Although the Kurds have been apologizing to the Armenians in
individual or group bases, they still don't have a sovereign entity
that can subscribe to that apology. We may guess what kind of policy
that virtual entity may adopt but we do not have a claim of any
participation in their struggle.

The Kurds themselves did not maintain sufficient documentation
about their participation in the atrocities perpetrated against
the Armenians.

Prof. Nikolay Hovhannisyan, one of the few Arabists among Armenian
historians, has reviewed a book in the October 2 edition of Azg
newspaper in Armenia. The book was written by a Kurdish historian in
Iraq and published in Arabic in 1977 in Baghdad. The author, Kamal
Mazhar Ahmed, does not mince his words in portraying the Kurdish
participation in the persecution of the Armenians in Turkey, but he
tries to shed light on the historic contradictions which have led to
Kurdish association with the ruling power.

First, he dwells on the factors which united the Armenians and the
Kurds, chief among them being exploitation by the government. But
dividing factors outnumber those unifying them. There is the religious
factor, which has been used to pit the two against each other. Then
there was the policy of the Sultan to divide and rule. The historian
underscores that the Armenians were advanced in terms of education and
had amassed considerable capital, whereas the Kurds were the opposite.

He also mentions that the Sultan encouraged fears that the Armenians
may aspire toward independence.

The Hamidian military units which the Sultan had created to quell
ethnic unrest were mostly composed of Kurds.

The author does not justify the Kurdish role in the Armenian
massacres, as he writes in his conclusion: "We have to confess that
blind fanaticism and cultural backwardness were those two major
factors which motivated the Kurdish majority to participate in the
extermination of the giavurs (literally heathens, meaning Armenians)."

At the conclusion of his review, Hovhannisyan mentions his discussion
with a Kurdish activist, a PKK representative in the former Soviet
republics, to whom he has posed a question about the future Kurdistan:
"'How do you and your party figure out the creation of a future
Kurdistan? What territory do you have in mind?' Guessing the thrust
of my question, the Kurdish leader answered that their leader Ocalan
believes that the Kurds and Armenians are friends; when the time comes,
everything will be revealed."

Professor Hovhannisyan, frustrated by the ambivalent answer, remembers
French statesman Charles Talleyrand about the ruling French dynasty,
theBourbons, that "They have not forgotten anything and they have
not learned anything."

This pretty much outlines the prospect that Armenians should bear in
mind as history moves towards the creation of an independent Kurdistan
in the heartland of historic Armenia.

My more recent personal experience sheds more light on Kurdish
aspirations. During the centennial commemorations, many Turks and
Kurds arrived in Yerevan to publicly apologize to the Armenians for
the Genocide. They placed wreaths at Tsitsernakaberd, and even cried
with the Armenians. I was staying at the same hotel with the Kurdish
groups and thus we had many discussions about the ongoing political
situation in Turkey. During one of our discussions, I asked a direct
question to one of the Kurdish leaders: "I know that at this time the
odds are against the Armenians receiving their territorial rights in
present-day Turkey, but at least in principle, what is their perception
of Armenian claims?"

The Kurdish leader looked into my eyes and said, "You mean to say
that after so much bloodshed, we have to take those lands and turn
them over to the Armenians?"

Therefore, the Armenians must not hold their breath as to what Ocalan
has to "reveal;" we already know his answer.
 



#2 onjig

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Posted 17 October 2015 - 03:28 PM

Your mentioned in the above the documentation of the Kurds involvement in the Armenian Genocide. I read on the internet few years ago a Kurd describing what they did, saying: The Turks are now doing that same thing to us. They the Kurd have it in Verbal Tradition. The same way we had the Bible until it was written down.

 

The part of Iraq the may become Kurdistan unless the Turks go take it from them are one thing. Western Armenia is Another.


Edited by onjig, 17 October 2015 - 03:32 PM.





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