"Middle East in Focus"

FACILITATOR: Don Bustany (DB)
PANELISTS: Dr. Merhdad Izady (MI), Kani Xulam (KX), Dr. Vera Saeedpour (VS), Dr. Robert Olson (RO), Dr. Bulent Basol (BB)

DB: Today we focus on the plight of the Kurdish people, approximately 25 million living in an area of the Middle East called Kurdistan, a non-country overlapping parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own. All they've known for generations is domination by other peoples. Their story is coming up.

We have a busy show today: five panelists, all by phone from different parts of the country, painting us a picture of the Kurdish people who live in the land of Kurdistan, a land with no borders. The Kurds are about 25 million people who live in about four or five different recognized nations. After the Ottoman Empire disintegrated about 80 years ago the British and the French took charge of large parts of the Middle East, and there's no similarity between the borders then and the borders now.

In 1935, when some of today's borders were being drawn, Great Britain's great statesman Winston Churchill addressed the British Parliament about the way it had split up Kurdistan. He told them this, "By the division of Kurdistan in this manner you have planted the seeds of a war for the next 200 years." That was 60 years ago. Was Churchill right? Let's ask first an eminent historian who specializes in that part of the Middle East and who is from that part of the world. Professor Merhdad Izady taught at Harvard for five years, is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Kurdish Studies, and is one of the editors of the Kurdish Encyclopedia. Currently, he's a professor of history at the State University of New York in New York City. Dr. Izady, welcome to Middle East in Focus.

MI: Thank you Mr. Bustany.

DB: Please tell us, was Winston Churchill a righteous prophet?

MI: Well, it wasn't that much as a prophecy. The war that he's talking about and the seed of discontent were already in action as he was speaking. And it had been so for the previous 60 years or so, since the 1860s. Therefore, it wasn't so much a prophecy as an observation of what was going on and projecting it into the future.

DB: I estimated about 25 million Kurds in Kurdistan. Is that about what you...?

MI: More or less. I would go a little bit higher because of course that is the projection for 1990. As we know, in the Middle East, the population is galloping into what demographers call a population explosion and therefore, the population is increasing by about one million every year. Nevertheless, that is the correct figure, close enough.

DB: In what country is the majority [of the Kurds]?

MI: The largest group is found in the Republic of Turkey; probably, about 52% of all Kurds live in Turkey.

DB: And what percentage of the total population of Turkey do they constitute?

MI: This figure has been changing very rapidly. The figures fell to about 17 1/2 % in 1960 because the Turks were actually increasing much faster than the Kurds and ever since then it has reversed itself. Now we are talking about perhaps a quarter of the population of the Republic of Turkey is actually Kurdish.

DB: That's a large minority - 25%! In Israel, the Arabs, who are citizens of Israel proper, are just under 20% and recognized as a large minority. Just by way of comparison: Black Americans constitute about 12% of our population; Hispanic Americans about 9%. So, we have a criterion now to get a feel [for] the 25% Kurds in Turkey, as compared to the rest of the population.

MI: About 25% of the population of Turkey being Kurdish, but 52% of the Kurds live in Turkey.

DB: Okay, good, that's nice and clear now. Where do the rest of them live?

MI: The rest of them live in another eight countries that include the second largest group living in Iran, about 25% followed by...

DB: Excuse me, you are from where?

MI: I am from Iranian Kurdistan.

DB: I have learned this week, speaking to many Kurds, to speak of Kurds and of Turkish occupied Kurdistan, rather than to use terms Turkish-Kurd, and the like. So, I'm sensitive to that now and I hope that our listeners...

MI: I suggest not to be sensitive to that because to hide the fact only would dilute the victim, rather than confuse the ones who impose it. It should be called Iranian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan and what have you until the day that these people free themselves. They should not hide the fact and they should not dilute themselves. You are very accurate in calling them Iranian Kurds, Iraqi Kurds, and Turkish Kurds.

DB: All right, thank you for that. I may be corrected by another member of our panel but that's okay. The second largest is in Iran and the third largest [Kurdish population]?

MI: The third largest is in Iraq. It is about 16 1/2% would be living in Iraq if we include also the Iraqi Kurds who have since 1975 been pushed out of the Iraqi state and now living in Iran, Syria, and in Europe and the United States. And in the territory of the state of Iraq, probably only about 12% of the Kurds live.

DB: You are an American citizen, right?

MI: Right.

DB: About heritage and stuff and about sympathies and the connection we all understand. Let me introduce now another Kurd. Based in Washington DC is an office called the American Kurdish Information Network. Its director is Mr. Kani Xulam, a Kurd from, in his words, Turkish-controlled Kurdistan. He has a degree in history from the University of California at Santa Barbara and he is on the line with us from his office in Washington. Mr. Xulam, welcome to "Middle East in Focus".

KX: Thank you Mr. Bustany.

DB: The perception of Professor of History, Dr. Izady, differs or harmonizes with yours?

KX: We don't really have much disagreement. The problem is that there are variations in terms of how one looks at it. You quoted a statement by Churchill, you know I've read another one by Herodotus where he says, "When a people are enslaved they lose half of their manhood." It was a sexist society in those days so he used the word, "manhood".

DB: Excuse me, some people, some observers would say that men find their manhood in enslavement when they overthrow it. Anyway, go ahead please.

KX: I guess the reference I was trying to make was to corroborate with Professor Izady's statement that we cannot really hide the fact that we are there, we are in place, we are under control...there are various ways of defining it but whatever it is, we are subject people of Turkey, of Iraq, of Iran, of Syria, and of some former Soviet Republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

DB: Let me mention to our audience that all during the week I have been talking to a lot of people interested in the subject, including the Turkish Embassy, whom I invited to participate in today's discussion, and they stated categorically that because your organization, Mr. Xulam, the American Kurdish Information Network, they perceive to be a front for the rebel group of Kurds in southeastern Turkey, and they said they could not appear on the same platform as you. And so we have no representation from the Turkish Embassy, but we will have a Turkish view presented by a Turkish civilian a little later. They regard the rebel group, known as the PKK, as a terrorist organization. And our State Department, to whom I also spoke, also regard the PKK as a terrorist organization. The one thing that's murky is what your relationship might be with the PKK.

KX: You know Samuel Adams used to say [that] nationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. I'd like to say that terrorism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The embassy may chose not to take part in a discussion to shed light on this issue, on this tragedy, on this human drama and that's their prerogative, but I think they would have helped their people and helped the American public by coming to the air and addressing the problem that unless it is addressed will never be resolved. And if it is not resolved it will just linger and the Turks and the Kurds will play a heavy price for it.

DB: Further, I don't think that any patriotic, red-blooded American would ever impute ethical motives to our State Department and the makers of our foreign policy. So, that's just a part of the mechanism of making world economics work in our favor, in U.S. favor. In terms of terrorists, I think that everybody on the panel today could make a long list of terrorist organizations and groups who later became the heads of respectable, recognized governments. There's some obvious ones. Do you model your movement on any of them Mr. Xulam.

KX: The winners write the history, they say. When the rebel movement is successful it will be honored by those who are not shunning it. I don't know; comparisons have been made with the PLO...

DB: What about the Zionists?

KX: The Zionists, to a certain degree, given the early history of that movement, one could make that comparison too.

DB: There's a difference, though. Because the Zionists were not invaded and suppressed by some outside source. Whereas, the Palestinians had been. So, there's not an exact parallel there. But, now we have East Timor and the Indonesian government. We have the American Indians on this continent and the settlers from Europe. There are plenty of examples. Please go ahead; there was another point that you wanted to make on this.

Let me ask you this: what is it that your office is doing now? What is the main mission of the American Kurdish Information Network?

KX: I can really sum it up for you in two sentences. One is that we try to hold a mirror to the developments that are taking place there in the hope that the American public, American scholars, American policy-makers will make better decisions. Kurdistan is part of us. We are from that part of the world. The Kurds who live in this country support us. They provide us with our expenses. The other mission is at the bottom of our stationary which is we "...provide a public service to foster Kurdish-American friendship and understanding". If you look at the history books or the world map there is no Kurdistan. So, as far as Americans would be concerned well, we foster friendship with whom? But we refuse to accept the history or the verdict of world geography in terms of the map that has been drawn. We want to change that and when we change that we will have our own country. To that effect, whatever we do here is to foster that friendship and that understanding for future generations of Kurds and Americans.

DB: Okay. Another member of our telephone panel is an American woman whose late husband was a Kurd from Iran. She is Dr. Vera Saeedpour, director of the Center for Research of the Kurdish Museum and Library in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Saeedpour, welcome to Middle East in Focus.

VS: Hello.

DB: Do you approve of the way our discussion is going so far? Are we perceiving...

VS: I find it always interesting, anything that relates to a Kurdish topic. For the last 20 years it has been of interest to me.

DB: What about the movement of some Turkish Kurds? I presume not all consider themselves rebels against the Turkish state. Is that correct?

VS: You know this is a very interesting question that you ask because the Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey have been dubbed "terrorists", first by Turkey and then by Turkey's western allies who simply acquiesce because it's a small enough price to pay for their alliance.

DB: Right, as a NATO partner.

VS: These Kurds, really, of all the Kurds, the Kurdish movement, in modern times, these really have been, started out at least, as Kurds who told the truth, and for that they were considered the Kurds most dangerous. Because they said, "We want an independent Kurdistan, we want our homeland back." And that was so threatening to the west that it was eagerly anxious to go along with Turkey to give the Kurds the kind of the designation that would diminish any sympathy that would come from anyone in the west. There are Kurds in Turkey who consider themselves more pragmatic, and they are much more willing to tell the west what the west wants to hear, and that is that the Kurds simply want a few cultural rights, and maybe to have a few political parties, but nothing that would in any way threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. And so, one never know whether or not their statements, which are meant and designed for western approval, are also partially a rivalry with the group that has literally been laying down its life to further this objective of the Kurds. And it's the PKK that has been the only group in Turkey where the people have put their lives on the line. The Kurds themselves, even though many of them are fearful of speaking out, are fearful of the controversy, they know very well, in their heart, who dies for them.

DB: Let me ask the three of you this, Professor Izady, Mr. Xulam and Dr. Saeedpour: are there not Kurds in Turkey who "play the game", who have assimilated economically, professionally, business-wise, and would find themselves materially more advantaged by remaining Turkish citizens, and who don't support the rebellion to establish an independent Kurdistan.

MI: There's no doubt that if Kurdistan was going to become independent, not very many Kurds who live outside the boundaries of the eastern part of Turkey would move back into Kurdistan, simply because they have become economically and probably even socially integrated into the place of their refuge, which is western Turkey. We have other priorities, not as Kurds, but as human beings. It is not just nationalism and the love of the old mother country. That doesn't mean, however, that they have forgotten who they are. I mean, how many Irish people live in England? A whole lot of them. That does not mean that they do not vouch for the independence of Ireland, nor have they forgotten who they are, but have they moved back into an economically depressed Ireland? Of course not.

DB: And two-thirds of the world's Jews don't live in Israel.

MI: Yes, fortunately.

DB: Okay, the principle is made. Let me bring in our fourth panelist here, batting in cleanup position, is an American scholar who has no racial or ethnic ties to the Middle East, but it's his area of study. Let's welcome Dr. Robert Olson, professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Hello, Dr. Olson.

RO: Good afternoon, Dr. Bustany.

DB: No "Dr." here, just Don. What else should the American people know about Kurdistan and the Kurds?

RO: I think that the American people should know that the Kurdish question and the problem of Kurdish nationalism in the Middle East is the foremost problem in the contemporary Middle Eastern history, and in Middle Eastern politics. I think if the Arab-Israeli conflict, it doesn't seem like that to the participants because it is still ongoing. I think some of the geopolitical, and the strategic aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict are less now than they were 10 or 15 years ago. And the Kurdish question which is the question of all of the Kurds in the various countries that my colleagues have discussed, as well as the individual Kurdish problem in each one of these countries. As has been mentioned each one of the countries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and some of the former countries of the Soviet Union all have a substantial number of Kurds. And so this poses tremendous problems.

DB: Yes, Dr. Olson excuse me, could you go back and embellish what you meant regarding the geopolitical factors regarding Israel and the Palestinians and then come back to the Kurds.

RO: Well, I think that the geopolitical problem...two strategic things regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict are: the protection of Israel, which also facilitates the access to keep accessible oil in the Middle East. It also allows of course, to suppress nationalism, at least in many of the Arab countries, as we've seen also in Iran. We saw that as far back as the Musadik crisis of 1950 where a rather conservative nationalist Iranian movement was suppressed.

DB: Excuse me, which crisis?

RO: The Musadik crisis back in the 1950s.

DB: And who was he?

RO: Musadik was the prime minister of Iran whom the United States with the cooperation of the British overthrew in 1953 because he wanted a nationalist government which in the minds of the Europeans, especially the British and the Americans, meant that the Iranians would also want to have more control over their oil and the marketing of that oil, which was judged to be a threat to Western national interests back in that time.

DB: So, our country deposed a democratic regime, elected by the people at large, and put in the Shah?

RO: Well, the Shah was already in power but he was not really in control of the government, given the type of government that Iran had back in the 1950s. And so, of course, the Shah became much stronger after 1953, after the deposition of Musadik. The point being I think that since that time, right up until the Allied War, which was led by the United States against Iraq, was, of course, to control, in all aspects, the oil resources and the marketing of that oil in the world. And that's still a very chief policy. I think what happens now is since this has been secured since the Gulf War (I say secured because Iraq has been destroyed. It is not a very powerful country. The Arabs basically have aligned with the United States as a result of the Gulf War. They agreed to get into the Oslo Courts [sp?]..., which many are unhappy with now, but nevertheless they agreed to do so as a result of the Gulf War. And so, therefore, the Kurdish question, that is if you were to have a stronger Kurdish movement, especially in northern Iraq, let alone northern Iran, all of this of course offers once again the potential threat to the oil fields and also to some of the stability of these countries as they presently exist. I think that the thing that is most [specific?] as a result of the Gulf War, something which was very surprising to Western, to American policy makers is that even though much of Iraq was destroyed Saddam Hussein still stayed in power. But the thrust of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey accelerated much beyond what they had anticipated to the point that it offered a substantial challenge to Turkey, which is a member of NATO [and] which is a Western ally. Its been the foremost problem that Turkey's had to confront since 1991 to the present. Just an indication of that challenge is the fact that Turkey probably has, the estimates vary, but maybe 350,000 to 400,000 troops deployed and this is probably not considering all of the other village guards, that is Kurds who cooperate with the Turkish government and other police activities. So, this has been a tremendous drain on Turkey's national resources and it has inhibited Turkey as a NATO ally from playing the strong role that it would have liked or some of its allies at least, would have liked for it to have played in the Balkans vis a vis Russia, the caucuses and other places. Also, it has played the role of the coming to power of an Islamist government, which is not particularly Islamist, but which is not a political party espousing the Kemalist ideology which had been the legitimizing ideology of almost every political party.

DB: What is the Kemalist ideology?

RO: The Kemalist ideology was an ideology emphasizing Turkish nationalism and the Turkey-ethnic component within Turkey after the Republic of Turkey was created in 1923. Since that time, almost all political parties, whether they're of the left, the right, or the center, have espoused this ideology, but now when you have a party which is called the "Prosperity Party" or the "Welfare Party", it doesn't emphasize this. The fact is that some scholars think that one reason why the Turkish elite, that is the Turkish bourgeoisie, as well as the military, albeit somewhat reluctantly, did not stage a coup and at least let the Welfare Party be one of the members of the government (it's in coalition with another party called the True Path Party?...was because they thought that perhaps the Kurdish nationalist movement, within Turkey particularly had become so powerful, that maybe an Islamist government that espoused a Kemalist ideology might be able to co-op some of the Kurdish nationalist movement within Turkey. So, this in itself suggests how really significant and important the Kurdish nationalist movement in general, and particularly in Turkey, has become especially as a result of the Gulf War, which is looked upon as a great heroic thing still in the West but which of course is still unraveling in the Middle East, in particular in Iraq and Turkey.

DB: Okay, very good. Let me go back now to Kani Xulam. Let me ask you whether you find that Turkey has a case in this conflict. Do they have an argument. I understand, we all understand your argument, promoting an independent Kurdistan, independent of Turkish control. Do you find that the Turks have an argument?

KX: The argument that the Turks are offering is the Kemalist ideology that Professor Olson was referring to: one nation, one language, one country. In our mind, in my mind, it is an outdated concept. I think that scholars could make a point that the origins of this conflict goes back to Europe in 1648 with the treaty of Westphalia. The wars of religions ended; the wars of people began. Basically, before it was the Catholics versus the Protestants, and then all of a sudden the French would fight the Italians or the Italians would fight the Germans. The consciousness, the nationalist consciousness came to the fore. That was transplanted to the Middle East years later, with the coming of Ataturk. He wanted to adopt that ideology or that concept of the nation, but he had a large segment of Kurds in the country, in the Turkish republic that he created. And he said [paraphrasing], 'Well I will just decree that the Kurds don't exist and that they should just become Turks.' That's when the rebellions began. The president of Turkey, President Demirel, has gone on record that the Kurds have risen 28 times before and this rebellion that's now underway since 1984, under the leadership of the PKK, is the 29th time. We have crushed the Kurds 28 times and we're going to crush them this time too. By crushing them, what he means is really eradicating the very culture of the Kurds, the very essence of the Kurds. He looks at the land, and he doesn't see the Kurds there. He sees a piece of land which has natural resources, considering the arid-ness of the Middle East, for example, the Tigris and the Euphrates, two of the biggest rivers, originate from the land of the Kurds.

DB: Let me say, who and what we are here. You're listening to "Middle East in Focus" on KPFK FM 90.7. My name is Don Bustany. Our guests are: Professor Merhdad Izady, professor of history at State University of New York, Kani Xulam, who directs the American Kurdish Information Network in Washington DC, Dr. Vera Saeedpour, the director of the Center for Research of the Kurdish Library and Museum in Brooklyn, and Dr. Robert Olson, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic history at the University of Kentucky. Time now, to bring in a Turkish view. We have on the line a representative of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. He's Dr. Bulent Basol. Dr. Basol, welcome to "Middle East in Focus". Are you representing the government of Turkey?

BB: No, in no way. Our organization represents the Turkish-American community living in this country. I should point out, of course, the Turkish-American community includes many Turkish people of Kurdish origin. I heard many things during the last half hour, the last one and most interesting from Mr. Xulam who said [that] the concept of one nation, one country, is an outdated concept. I don't know how we, as Americans, can handle this. But I want to really touch upon two important points: one, being a person of Turkish origin, I will of course talk about the Turkish people of Kurdish origin within Turkey. I am really not an expert about the Kurdish people of other areas. And then, the other point is the violence in external forces that are working against the Turkish people, including Turkish people of Kurdish origin. Let's cover some undeniable facts. Turkey, among the states with Kurdish populations that have been mentioned in this program, is the one and only functioning democracy. Everybody in Turkey, without regard to their race or ethnic background, enjoys the rights of citizenship, and of course this includes the right to vote, to elect.

DB: Dr. Basol, what do you mean Turkey is the only democracy; where?

BB: Among the countries that the Kurds live [in], Syria, Iraq, Iran, and we all know the kind of democracy [that exists] in those countries. Therefore, Turkish people of Kurdish origin, naturally, within that democracy, has all the rights that all the other ethnic backgrounds - and there are many in Turkey - enjoy the rights. But I will now come to the subject of external forces and terrorism and violence, with regard to the PKK organization that Mr. Xulam was suggesting tries to "foster friendship and understanding". Now, the PKK is based outside of Turkey, they wage a guerrilla war against the state.

DB: Based where outside of Turkey?

BB: We know Syria, we know Greece, we know Iraq. There have been many reports in the U.S. media on this issue. They [the PKK] know they do not have any popular support among the Turkish people of Kurdish origin within Turkey. They know that, and that is the reason that they terrorize, and they try to gain support by fear. The claim that they represent the Kurds of Turkey, when they attack and kill, most of the people they kill in southeastern Anatolia are Turkish people of Kurdish origin. So when they attack and destroy the infrastructure, the roads, the things that the government brought there to bring prosperity to the region, they hurt Turkish people of Kurdish origin. When they burn schools, schoolchildren and teachers, they kill people who are trying to bring education.

DB: Let's have Kani Xulam respond.

KX: I want to finish a remark I was making. You know, in the Middle East, there's a reality, the reality of the people who occupy, who inhabit the land. The Kurds, the Turks, the Arabs, the Persians. In Europe, relatively speaking, there's peace and prosperity, because these people respect each other's customs, each other's language, each other's borders, and that's the reason, in my mind, and historians actually say that too, that the balance of power, the respect for one another has enabled the continent to prosper and progress. When we look at the Middle East, the Turks have their country, the Persians have their country, the Arabs have their country. The natives of the land--in the Bible, there is reference to the Kurds, historian Xenophon makes reference to the Kurds, they number some 25 million in the area, and there are countries with 100,000 people and they have seats at the United Nations, and when it comes to the Kurds, we say, Well, listen, they're of Kurdish origin and citizens of Turkey, of Kurdish origin and citizens of Iraq and Kurdish origin and citizen of Iran and well, I don't want to be of Kurdish origin a citizen of Turkey.

DB: Let me ask you this then, Mr. Xulam. Would you respond to the specific point that Dr. Basol made that the PKK does not represent a large segment of Kurds in Turkey.

KX: I have listened to Mr. Ocalan, the president of the PKK, on a videotape, saying that if he were allowed to go to Diyarbakir, the capital of Kurdistan and presently a city in southeastern Turkey, he would expect a half a million people come to pay respects to him and welcome him. In 1991, I was there when Vedat Aydin was killed. He was the party chief for Diyarbakir HEP, the People's Labor Party. One hundred thousand people showed up for his funeral. The Turkish army was literally so flabbergasted by this outpouring of emotion for a Kurdish leader who had spoken Kurdish in a Turkish court in defending himself against the state that the army literally, and the human rights organizations have reported and chronicled this, attacked the mourners, and 14 people were killed on the spot for expressing their sympathy to this Kurdish leader. Dr. Basol said that the PKK has no base, he should know that most of the rank and file of the PKK are the Kurds of Turkey.

DB: Let's get Dr. Basol's response to that.

BB: Mr. Bustany, Mr. Ocalan can dream all he wants, but we really have to get back to the reality. There is a political party in Turkey, one party, that very clearly identifies itself with the Kurdish ethnic identity, a puppet of the PKK, and this party is called HADEP. In the last elections, as I said, since there is democracy, people can tell what they want to tell through the democratic process. In the last elections, this party joined with another party and got less than four percent of the vote. Where is the 25 percent of the people that you are talking about? A great majority of Turkish people of Kurdish origin voted for the mainstream parties that would be corresponding to the Democratic Party and the Republicans, because they know that through the democratic process, they have a voice. There are over a hundred representatives with a Kurdish background in the Turkish Parliament, which has 450 representatives.

DB: The Turkish Parliament has 450 seats, and how many are held by Kurds?

BB: Over a hundred. There is no way of giving you exact numbers, as the previous speakers talked about percentages, because the Turkish system does not really differentiate Turkish citizens by their race or ethnic origin. But if a representative comes out and says, "I have a Kurdish background", that way we know that there are over a hundred. Actually the previous president of Turkey's mother was of Kurdish origin. This is not a big deal within Turkey. It is just like here, we talk about being American. I am American, but my ethnic background is Turkish.

DB: The percentage is consistent with Dr. Izady's estimate earlier that about 25 percent of the Turkish population are Kurds, and that's roughly the proportion in the [Turkish] Parliament. Let me ask Dr. Saeedpour to step in and sort out what we've been hearing the past few minutes.

VS: I find it very interesting, because what the Turkish gentleman is making reference to is precisely the problem. He says that we have Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin. They're not simply of Kurdish origin, they're Kurds. I don't say I'm an American of Jewish origin; I say I'm a Jew living in America. I'm an American citizen. There is something in the Turkish psyche that developed since 1925, when Kurdish existence was outlawed, that absolutely cannot mention without some pain that the notion that there are Kurds. This inability, which has become a psychological malaise, still exists very much in Turkey. If the PKK had no representation, if the PKK was simply a few people hiding out in Iran or in Syria, Turkey wouldn't be spending seven billion dollars a year and deploying several hundred thousand troops and asking all of the Europeans for help and throwing them out of Europe, if they had no representation in Turkey. Because the PKK are supported by other Kurds. They're not simply supported by foreign governments.

DB: Let's do it this way: Dr. Basol first, then Professor Izady, and then Professor Olson.

BB: I think there is a misunderstanding here about the term "Turkish". Just like "American", "Turkish" means someone who is a citizen of Turkey. Turkishness does not represent ethnicity. There are Turkish people of Bosnian origin, of Russian origin, of Albanian origin, of Kurdish origin. Turkishness just represents nationality, it does not represent race. I want to make that clear. We are talking about micro-nationalism. If every ethnic group in the world had the possibility to found their state in this world -- and there are over 10,000 groups without states -- we would have thousands of states. Unmanageable. Micro-nationalism is a great danger for peace a stability in this world, and Turkish people of Kurdish origin know that, and through the democratic process, they feel that they are partners in Turkey, they are establishes of the Turkish Republic. Let's not forget that when Kemal Ataturk was fighting to establish the Turkish Republic, Turkish Kurds were with him. They established this republic, they established this democracy, they have a stake in that democracy, and they will stick by it no matter what the external forces, like the PKK, says.

MI: I would actually like to make an observation as to whether or not Turkey is a democracy. Dr. Basol would of course like to make us believe that this is the best thing that happened to the Middle East, namely the state organization of Turkey. Iran is very much as much a democracy as Turkey, for as all the parties that are allowed by the government to function can, of course, bring out candidates, and when they're elected they will go to the parliament. Those that the government doesn't like will end up in jail. This country, the United States, wasn't a democracy for the first hundred years of its history, and held slaves at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. If we define democracy by the right of people to vote for those organizations that the government approves of, or the individuals that the government allows to vote, then sure, a lot of countries are democracies. But if democracy means liberty, that country has as much liberty as any fascist state you can imagine that has existed throughout history. Here we are talking about "democratic Turkey", while over 2.5 million of its own citizens during the past four years, have been uprooted, namely the Kurds, out of their homes and villages, which have been set on fire and people kicked out, killed, maimed to the order of 20,000 people. This is the figure the Turkish Government itself puts out. Therefore, if this is democracy, then obviously we really need to redefine democracy. By just allowing people to vote for what is put out by the government, I don't think that is what we normally mean by democracy. Mr. Basol should probably think more about democracy in those terms, rather than who is allowed to vote by the government and who ends up in the parliament.

RO: I think the conversation that we have just witnessed bears out what I said earlier in the program, that the Kurdish question or the Kurdish problem, in general I like to generalize the Kurdish nationalist movement, which has been around for some time, but has increased tremendously, in my view, as the result of the Gulf War, is indeed one of the foremost political problems and the foremost conflict currently in the Middle East. With due respect to all my colleagues and what they've said, I think it's very important for your listeners to understand that all of the arguments which they have presented take place in a larger geopolitical context. That is, particularly, the need for water in the Middle East. When everyone talks about the Middle East, they talk about the oil. Most people who have studied the Middle East realize that water is also very important. Much of the water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, I think as Mr. Xulam pointed out, have their headwaters in eastern Turkey, which is predominantly a Kurdish dominated area, especially in the southern portions of it. Of course, this water, many people speculate, is needed to go down to the central Middle East, to Israel, to Palestinians. If they're going to fuel the so-called Arab-Israeli peace process, which means that this will be quite dominant in the area, and nevertheless they'll need the water to make this into a vast industrial technical area. Therefore, the Arab-Israeli condominium of power over the next 20 or 30 years as it develops, underneath, of course, the hospices of the United States and Europe, is quite dependent on these water supplies. It just so happens that's where a lot of Kurds live. Therefore the Kurdish nationalist movement, particularly in Turkey but in the other areas as well, offers certain kinds of challenges and dilemmas for all of these countries and these origins, of course for the Kurds themselves in terms of which direction they want their nationalism and their societies to go, as well as the Europeans and the Americans. So, you have these incredible international pressures that are asserted as well, over and above the states themselves involved, in addition of course to the Kurds. You have some conundrums for example, you talked about the Zionist movement a little bit earlier, but in fact as we have seen, the need for Israel to play a central role in the Middle East, by and large for the West and the United States, it wants these waters through Israel. So Israel, for example, which formerly had supported the Kurdish Nationalist movement in various ways, of course now is very much in league with Turkey. they signed two great big defense pacts and also trade pacts in 1996, and those will undoubtedly continue. You have the additional dilemma, if you will, of the Palestinians, who are dependent upon Israel to get the water they need to develop their communities, also who would not have much sympathies for the Kurdish movement for their own development. So, everyone is involved in this. What I think is very important for your listeners to realize, and I will stop here and let some of my learned colleagues comment on this, is that there is a very direct connection to the momentum of the Kurdish nationalist movement in all of its manifestations, and I'm not just talking about Turkey, in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria is very much connected to the Arab-Israeli peace process. Just let me end here by saying that when you no longer have [Operation] Provide Comfort now and if the forces of the Baghdad government in line with the Kurdish Democratic Party, forces of Mesut Barzani are able to cooperate to expel the PKK force from the northern part of Iraq, this in turn puts pressure on Syria, because the leader of the PKK is head-quartered in Syria, Abdullah Ocalan, and puts pressure upon Syria to expel him to meet the dictates of the United States and Israel in terms of their peace process. So you see on a political level as well as the geo-strategic level in terms of water these things are intimately connected.

DB: Very quickly, let me ask Dr. Basol, if you Dr. Basol, as an American, would have any objection to a nationalist movement by a component of the total Turkish population who identified ethnically as differing from the rest of the population and wanted to be independent. Can you give me a quick response to that?

BB: Of course. The Turkish Constitution does not allow damage to the territorial integrity of Turkey.

DB: No, the flavor of my question is different. Do you, as an American, have an objection to if an ethnic group in Turkey, in this case the Kurds, petition for independence from greater Turkey.

BB: You mean, through the democratic process? They certainly can! Through the democratic process existing in Turkey, they certainly can.

DB: In the couple of minutes we have remaining, I can give each of you about 20 or 30 seconds for a quick final comment. Would you please start, Professor Izady?

MI: My final comment is that you, at the opening of your statement, noted that Winston Churchill had said that we are probably going to have probably another 100 years left of Kurdish nationalism and Kurdish discomfort, until the time that these people eventually become independent, become equal to other nationalities of the world. Their nationalism goes back many centuries; it is not the invention of the Europeans. I should disagree with Mr. Xulam that nationalism was not invented by the Europeans, but rather Kurds themselves. Four hundred years ago they were talking about an independent, unified Kurdistan. And we will not rest until the day that it is achieved.

DB: Thank you. Dr. Saeedpour, are you handy?

VS: I would like to concur to what Dr. Olson said. I think that to look at the Kurdish issue, the tangled web that exists, because of international interests, geopolitical, strategic, and economic interests is extremely important when dealing with the Kurdish issue, which is why since the inception of the problem in Turkey, Turkey has had allies abroad and Iraq and Iran at times have had the same allies in smothering the Kurdish issue.

DB: Okay, thank you. Kani Xulam, I'm going to have to give you the last word here. We've run out of time. Please go ahead for 30 seconds.

KX: Thank you. I want to say to the listeners that we have a website: www.kurdistan.org in terms of more information about Kurdistan. Also, this issue will come to an end. We will get our rights. We will get our freedom. We will get our liberty. I have no doubts about it.

DB: Very good. Thank you all: Professor Robert Olson of the University of Kentucky, Professor Merhdad Izady of the State University of New York, Dr. Vera Saeedpour of the Kurdish Museum of Brooklyn, and Kani you just spoke, and Dr. Bulent Basol representing the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. This has been another edition of "Middle East in Focus".