Who I am

I am a Kurd from Turkish Kurdistan.

I was born in 1968.

I am married and have a 2 year old daughter.

I have a grocery store in New York.

What I have done

I graduated from high school in 1985.

I moved to Istanbul that same year and found a job as a mechanic on a ship.

Through my job, I traveled to some 50 countries mostly in Latin America and the Far East.

I learned about the world and how fortunate other peoples are relative to the Kurds.  I vowed to help my peopleís liberation struggle in whatever way I could.

Some things I cannot forget

As a child I was asked to count up to 100 in Turkish.  I tried to do so but could only do it up to four and then continued in Kurdish, the language I spoke at home.  I was beaten severely for speaking an ìillegalî language.

I lived in a Kurdish village.  The Turkish soldiers would visit it often.  They would always collect the male members of the village in the school yard and torture them on the flimsiest of charges.

What I want

I want the dirty war in Kurdistan to come to an immediate halt.  I want to see democracy respected in Turkey.  I believe the Turkish people and the Kurdish people want to live in peace as equals with one another.

I want the duly elected Kurdish parliamentarians released from prison immediately.