Romancing A Turk

Kani Xulam

December 10, 2002

A number of writers of good standing have recently come forward to goad Europe to dance and romance with Turkey.  Richard C. Holbrooke, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, warns that a spurned Turkey will become “a radical or fundamentalist” one.  Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, usually a sober man, let go of his reins and unleashed his fury at the former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, calling him an “insufferably arrogant” man, for saying things like those who support a “union” with Turkey are the “enemies of Europe”.  Others, including some in the Bush administration, are already sounding the alarm bells, noting ominously, that they will not be a party to a political debacle called “who lost Turkey?”

Because I am a Kurd from the Turkish misruled Kurdistan, this talk of possible dance and romance with Europe -- over my head, so to speak, and with American guarantees no less -- is very alluring indeed and has kept me awake for months now.  What would this courtship be like?  Would it be something akin to a blind date?  Or, as my mom would put it, will it be like an arranged marriage?  Will my prospect be a German Hans, or a French Pierre, or an Italian Antonio?  Will I be able to wear my favorite dress of green, red and yellow?  Do I have to tell my date that I am a Turk or a Turk but “of mountain …”, no, no, the newer version, “of traditional” origin?  Will there ever come a day when I could just tell him, and the whole world besides, nothing but the whole truth, that I am a Kurd pure and simple, without being somebody’s tail?

Ah, if only the two writers of good standing were right about their “keen observations”.  Then I would not have had the need to ask any of the questions listed above.  Their threats and animus towards the old man of France, I have an eerie feeling, have more to do with their blind love of Turkey than with their unspoken appreciation of Europe.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am all for courting the Europeans.  For one thing, I would then be freed of reading headlines such as “dingy boat sinks in Mediterranean; hundreds of Kurds feareddead”.  Imagine telling millions of internally displaced Kurdish refugees in Turkey -- who invariably hold the number one position on the refugee lists of Europe -- hurry no more, Europe is coming to the mountains of Kurdistan.  The nightmares that I have been having of drowned Kurdish women and children serving as food for fish off the coasts of Greece, Italy and France would eventually subside.  The odious lists that my people have topped, in terms of numbers of torture survivors, disappearances, prisoners of conscience, stateless peoples and their endangered cultures could give way, at long last, to the other equally “deserving” peoples.

But the Europe that I know is not best renowned for its charity.  The Turkey that I was born into, as an enslaved child, is not what Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Zakaria portray, or should I say dangle, before a reluctant Europe.  Even America’s own embrace of Turkey is far from healthy.  Kurdistan, the land my ancestors have inhabited since the dawn of history, suffered its greatest calamity, its’ partitioning -- imagine hacking a living person limb from limb -- in the hands of primarily Europeans.  That ignoble legacy, a sacrifice on the altar of oil, continues to stain, shame and discredit the history of modern Europe.  Turkey, the largest beneficiary of the spoils, views the Kurds as anything but a people with a will of their own.

Putting the Kurdish Question aside, the Europeans are leery of embracing Turkey because they know Turkey far better than the above-mentioned authors.  Only last year, Angelika Beer, a German parliamentarian, was rebuffed by her Turkish colleagues when she showed up for a meeting in the Turkish parliament, only to be told that the meeting had been cancelled because -- put your coffee aside and read this very carefully -- she was wearing a hairpin with the Kurdish national colors of green, red and yellow.  And if you think that was cruel, wait until you read the stranger-than-fiction story in the next paragraph.

Pauline Green, Claudia Roth, and Catherine Lalumiere, ranking members of the European parliament, visited Turkey in 1995 to discuss the Customs Union and human rights with their Turkish colleagues.  To say that they were dumbfounded is an understatement.  In the course of their meetings, they raised the case of Leyla Zana, Turkey’s most famous Kurdish dissident in jail since 1994, and the recipient of the European Parliament’s highest civilian prize, the 1995 Sakharov Freedom Award.  Ayvaz Gokdemir, a member of the cabinet, felt impugned by their interest.  He called them, “prostitutes”.

If you expected the Yale educated western-“leaning” former Turkish Prime Minister, Tansu Ciller, to demand the resignation of her haughty minister, think again.  What followed was another bizarre twist to an already burgeoning scandal that became news in much of Europe.  Claudia Roth, a member of the delegation, sued the Turkish minister for libel and the Court awarded her 17.000 German marks.  And to top the odd story with one more loop, Ms. Roth donated her award to a charity in Istanbul that helps local prostitutes.

Much has been said of Turkey’s August reforms -- as if Ankara landed its own spacecraft on the moon.  A careful reading of the laws in the Official Gazette published on September 20, 2002, brought a grimace to the faces of Turkey’s friends and a glee to those of her adversaries.  It is a pity that Mr. Zakaria hailed them as revolutionary in nature.  He would have served his readers better if he had bothered to read them.  The laws that supposedly lifted the restrictions on the Kurdish language, called it, “one” of the traditional languages of the Turks.  Such is the depth of the disrespect towards the Kurds that the Turkish parliamentarians did not even bother to honor their language with its proper name, Kurdish.

Such blatant romancing with the facts can only be termed as holding onto ignorance with both hands.  It is an outright lunacy that some of America’s loudest voices portray this, as an example of what should be embraced by Europe.  Goethe once said, “The scariest scene in the world is to see ignorance in action.”  For those who want examples, the Kurds offer not only lacerated bodies, but also castrated spirits.  Never has the history of the modern world witnessed a lie so atrocious, hatred so rabid, and domination so through as that of the Turks over the Kurds.  The callous world at large has simply come to accept it.