Ray: This is Talk of the Nation, I'm Ray Suarez. An OP-ED piece in this 

weekend's New York Times might have summed it up well: the Kurds are the 

new Palestinians. Long trapped between competing states, the Palestinians have 

finally gotten a patch of land, albeit small, they can run. Should the Kurds get 

one too? They're said to be the largest people on earth without a state to call 

their own. They stretch from Central Turkey into Iraq and Iran, and small groups 

stretching into Syria and  Armenia. They are not Arabs but more closely related 

to the Persians of Iran. The largest Kurdish groups are in Turkey and Iraq. While 

no supporter of Kurdish aspirations, American policy makers were ready to 

support Kurdish insurgencies when it gave their enemies, Saddam Hussein, a 

headache but were not as supportive when it came to backing the Kurds against 

their NATO ally, Turkey. The capture of Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya was a major 

propaganda victory for Turkey, a thumb in the eye of the hated Greeks who had 

been protecting him, a trial for the head of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the 

PKK and his threatened execution may solve one short term irritant for the Turks 

but it doesn't answer the wider persistent demands of a people whose very 

existence was denied for a long time by the Turks and isn't even fully 

acknowledged today.  Speculation started to rise after Ocalan's capture it might 

have make an opening for the Turks to deal with their simmering political 

problem but Turkey's Prime Minister has ruled out any prospect of autonomy 

for the Kurdish region and has refused any negotiations with rebels loyal to the 

imprisoned warlord Abdullah Ocalan. The Turks have not generally responded to 

outside pressure regarding the Kurds, and they've been unsuccessfully lobbying 

for entry into the European Union for a generation but there was not a tone of 

accommodation when they answered a recent E.U. call for a fair trial for Ocalan. 

E.U. ministers said while they accepted Turkey's territorial integrity, they 

expected the country to resolve its problem by political means and with full 

respect for human rights. In the wake of Ocalan's arrest Turkish forces launched 

an offensive against his rebels in the southeast of the country. Turkey insists 

Ocalan will receive a fair trial but this has not convinced campaigners who 

condemn Turkey's human rights record. Meanwhile back in Iraq, Kurds have 

been trickling back into their villages, the ones they were pushed from by the 

Iraqi military in one of the largest forced migrations in history. We're going to 

look at the Kurds this hour on the program and what stands in their way of self-

determination. Earlier we talked with NPR's Jennifer Luddon who just returned 

to her home base in Paris from Istanbul where she's been covering this 

unfolding story. I asked her if the Kurdish issue has been troubling to Turkey 

because the Western countries have been trying to bring the Turk into the fold 

for decades.



Jennifer: They're in a tight spot, I mean, they're between the Middle East and 

Europe and they've got allies and enemies in each camp. I put this question to a 

human rights activist about gee, don't they want to play their cards right given 

that they do want to be part of European Union and she said "you know, we're 

hearing that from the government but frankly it doesn't seem to me to be a 

debate in society and I don't think they mean it, I think they just say it." I'm 

sure there are some who sincerely want to be part of the E.U. community but 

they're also very nationalistic, very independent,  they really resent -- it's really 

ruffled their feathers all this interference from the E.U. and other international 

voices saying this is how we should carry out this trial. They want to do it the 

way that their system calls for. And you have to give them credit for that. 



Ray: The Prime Minister has been quoted in the press giving two distinctly 

different messages. The first one about there might being openings for a 

discussion about some form of autonomy and then other ones being very tough 

and uncompromising about the Kurds in Turkey.



Jennifer:  Again the rhetoric is very strong. It's sort of against the Turkish 

psyche to single out a single ethnic group for any particular privilege. It's in the 

way their constitution is written they were founded as an antithesis for the 

Ottoman Empire which was based on communal rights. And so to admit that 

you're going to give one group anything goes against what the country sees 

itself as being all about.  However, Ocalan's arrest has opened up this debate 

even more. Some people feel slowly, a sense of autonomy might come through 

the back door in terms of cultural rights, freer use of their language and so forth. 

But it will take time.



Ray: Jennifer, thanks so much.



Jennifer: Thank you.



Ray: That was NPR correspondent Jennifer Luddon she spoke to us by phone 

from Paris. With me for the rest of the hour, Michael Gunter, a professor of 

political science at the Tennessee Technological University, and author of many 

books including, "The Kurds and the future of Turkey" and "The Kurds in 

Turkey: A Political Dilemma." He joins us by phone from Cookville, 

Tennessee. Welcome to the program.



Michael: Thank you.



Ray: And with me in Washington studio 3A are Kani Xulam, the director of the 

American Kurdish Information Network based in Washington. Good to have you 

with us. 



Kani: Thank you.



Ray:  And Guler Koknar, the executive director of the Washington based 

Assembly of Turkish American Associations. Welcome to the program.



Guler: Thank you.



Ray: Our number in Washington is 1-800-989-8255. Michael Gunter, is the 

Ocalan arrest almost a separate issue that should really be detached from talking 

about the future of the Kurds, not only in Turkey but across the region?



Michael: Well, certainly there's partial truth to what you're saying. Turkey 

would be making a grave mistake to assume its Kurdish problem has been 

solved by the capture of Mr. Ocalan. I think that Ocalan's arrest should signal 

the beginning of a meaningful discussion in Turkey on the issue of Kurdish 

rights. It's time to acknowledge the existence of the Kurdish people in Turkey, 

which the late Turkish President Turgut Ozal himself once estimated to be more 

12 million people.



Ray: And what, when you hear that there's been a renewed offensive against the 

PKK is there another track that were not hearing about as readily of a more soft 

approach from the government of Ankara trying to find other elements in the 

Kurdish population to talk to, trying to build another force in Turkish policy?



Michael: I wish I could say yes. To some extent in the recent years there has 

been a willingness on the part of the Turks to move a little bit towards settling 

this problem. For example, about five ten years ago the very word Kurd was a 

four letter word in Turkey,  you couldn't even mention it, Kurds were referred to 

as "Mountain Turks". And today the language is allowed to be spoken privately 

although there's a lot of trouble in trying to publish legally in Kurdish. The 

Turks have made some halting first steps which if they had been taken ten years 

ago, they might have gone a long way toward solving the problem but 

unfortunately they seem to be too little, too late.



Ray:  Guler Koknar, when you hear Michael Gunter say that some of these 

measures might have found a more receptive audience some time ago, are you 

inclined to agree?



Guler: Well, first of all let me clarify to say that the Kurdish Turks do have a 

voice in the multi-ethnic social spectrum of Turkey, and they have a voice in the 

political spectrum of Turkey as well. As most American listeners might not 

know or hear, the fourth of the Turkish Congress, called the Turkish Parliament, 

is comprised of  parliamentarians of Kurdish origin and they represent the region 

where a large number of Kurds live, which is Southeastern Turkey. Although 

today the city with the largest Kurdish population is actually Istanbul.  So, I 

would really object to the notion that Kurds are not represented in politics in 

Turkey. I have in front of me a New York Times February 21st editorial that 

quotes an ethnic  Kurdish parliamentarian and his name is Has Hasim Hasimi, 

and he is from the Kurdish town of Cizre in Southeast Turkey.  And "he's as 

close to Kurdish nationalism as is possible," says the New York Times but he 

says that the Turkish society will be able to  put away the tragedy and the rest of 

that human suffering that the PKK terrorism has created for Turks and Kurds 

particularly in Southeastern Turkey and he says, and I quote, "The feeling of 

brotherhood is still very strong here, we're going to live in peace again." Again, 

this is another Kurdish voice that doesn't necessarily get through. So, I also 

would like to say that the Kurds might have been denied a minority status but 

they have something much better in Turkey: they're first class Turkish citizens. 



Ray: When Suleyman Demirel was on this program a couple of years ago he 

really would not talk very thoroughly about this problem and I was trying to 

find out if what we're hearing in the West was totally fabricated, totally not true: 

we hear about deportations and displacement, we hear about whole villages of 

people being moved, the Kurdish schools being closed, Kurdish language rights 

being suppressed, the presses smashed.  He professed to know absolutely 

nothing about any of this, except in the concept of assault against the PKK -- 

that there were no legitimate aspirations --



Guler: I would like to say that of course I can't speak on behalf of President 

Demirel but there has been substantial reforms and changes in terms of granting 

the entire Turkish populations' greater civil rights, political rights, and what 

have you. And in this respect, first of all, in 1991 the ban on speaking Kurdish 

publicly has been totally lifted. There have been many Kurdish publications, 

newspapers, music cassettes widely distributed and produced in Turkey. There 

have been closures of Kurdish newspapers, and you're right about that but they 

were not closed because they were published in Kurdish, but because of their 

content, which were deemed as being supportive of terrorism, inciting people to 

racial hatred, and inciting separatist feelings among the population. So there 

needs to be a distinction between the ordinary right of a Kurd to write a Kurdish 

poem, and distribute it in Turkey which is absolutely free now, and the right to 

write to support some form of violence that is under the guise of Kurdish 

nationalism.

 

Michael: I agree that Turkish citizens of Kurdish ethnic origin have a freedom 

that all the  citizens of Turkey have, but all it is if a freedom to be a Turkish 

citizen.  You cannot say that "I am a Kurd" and that the Kurdish as such do not 

have any cultural rights in Turkey, that's the problem. As far as the journals 

being closed, to me, the interpretation of what is supportive of terrorism would 

delve into what we call freedom of press in the West, thought crime, that people 

in Turkey have been put into prison for in Turkey, just because of their desire 

for Kurdish cultural rights and this is called supporting terrorism.



Guler: I would like to object to that. We would have to look at it case by case 

and since we can't do that right now, I would submit that nobody has gone to 

prison for just Kurdish rights but if that person happens to be a sympathizer or a 

member of the PKK, then the security forces might look at it a little differently. 

And I agree with you that publicly in the future the rights for Turkish citizens of 

all ethnic origins including the Kurds will be enlarged but no government in 

Turkey can do that under an atmosphere of suppression by-- rather, -- an 

atmosphere of terror by the PKK. The Turkish public opinion would never 

support granting more autonomy to any ethnic group if it is threatened by 

widespread violence and terrorism. I think this is understandable, once the coffins 

of soldiers, policemen, and ordinary citizens,   stop coming out of the Southeast 

I think we'll find a much more conducive public opinion for reform in all 

spectrums of Turkish political life.



Michael:  That means that we can now maybe move forward--



Guler: Hopefully, that is every Turkish citizen's hope.



Ray: Kani Xulam, does the portrait of Turkey that comes out of Ms. Koknar's 

description match with what you know is happening in the Southeast of your 

country?



Kani: Unfortunately, it doesn't. I spent twenty years of my life in Turkey. I 

carry a passport in my pocket that says I am a Turk, not a Kurd. She referred to 

us as Kurdish Turks, we're Kurds. A different ethnic group, indigenous to the 

region way before the Turks came to the area, one thousand years ago. She talked 

about over one hundred members of the Parliament, the Parliament that is called 

the Turkish Parliament. All of them, all 118 of them apparently, are silenced 

Kurds. Leyla Zana is one who spoke up. She came here and spoke in front of [a] 

Standing Committee of the United States Congress. When she went back, the 

speech that she gave here was used in her indictment that was lodged against her. 

She now serves time in a Turkish prison in Ankara. So if a member of 

Parliament cannot speak her mind, cannot speak to express the aspirations of the 

Kurds, what kind of a democracy are we talking about? What kind of a civil 

society are we talking about? I want to also make a reference to a Turkish 

professor, Ismail Besikci, he is now in prison, and he has [a] prison sentence of 

over 100 years . He is not a Kurd, he is a Turk. But, he has written about the 

Kurds. That's a crime in Turkey. 



Ray: But let me take your first point, which is that your passport says you're a 

Turk, but you consider yourself a Kurd. We can look over the map of the world 

and find large ethnic minorities that live within other nation states, their legal 

status, citizenship might be one thing, but they may feel another, but they 

certainly live within that society. They pay taxes. There are Brettons living in 

France, and Basques in Spain, and various ethnic groups scattered across Central 

Europe and parts of the Soviet Union that borders on Asia. And what it says on 

their passport and the language that their tax return is written in does not change 

what their sense of who they are or do violence to that sense of who they are. 

Why is it that important for you to make the distinction that you're a Kurd and 

not a Turk?



Kani:  If I had been given a choice , I might have opted to forget my Kurdish 

identity and to become a Turk. But I was forced to forget it, I was forced to leave 

it behind, so to speak. Today, we're talking about a constitution that expressly 

does not allow the expression of the Kurds. The analogy that I can make for you 

is: during the second world war, if Japan had succeeded in taking over California, 

let's say, and forced the people living in California, Americans, to say that you 

are Japanese now, that you cannot speak English but [only] Japanese, that San 

Francisco is not San Francisco anymore but is new Kyoto now, that Los 

Angeles is little Tokyo. People in California would have  rebelled. They 

wouldn't have accepted this new hegemony of [a] power that was not of their 

own making. This is the issue. This is the struggle of the Kurds: to remain 

Kurdish. And they have been living there for four thousand years. That identity 

is very important for us. I want to be able to name my daughter, or my son, if I 

have one, a Kurdish name. As it stands, I cannot name my daughter a Kurdish 

name. I want to be able to teach her a Kurdish song. As it stands I cannot teach 

her a Kurdish song. I want to be able to tell her about the Kurdish heritage, or 

Kurdish literature. As it stands, I cannot do that. One of the experts on Turkey, 

John Tirman, the Time  writer, the author of the book called Spoils of War , 

talks about the US arms sales to Turkey, and how Turkey is waging this war of 

genocide against the Kurds. And he calls it a slow motion genocide of the Kurds. 

We have look at it in this sense. The Kurdish culture is slated for extinction the 

way things go, if there're not challenged.



Guler: Ray, can I just add something here? Many of the things that Kani has 

submitted is just one side of it. I use the word Turkish Kurd, the way I would 

use the word Turkish American. Turkish-ness is not necessarily an ethnic 

connotation. As a matter of fact, as your reporter pointed out, Turks have refused 

a superseding religious or a racist connotation to their citizenship. Because 

Turkey is not a homogenous country, not a homogenous society, we have three 

million people who trace their origins to Bosnia, about two [million] who call 

among themselves Albanian, and my family is from the Basiri region who call 

themselves Laz. You have people of Georgian, Circcasian, Abkhasian, Azeri, 

Turkmen origin, Arab origin and Kurdish origin. How could Turkish society call 

itself a nation of Turks if there's so many ethnic groups who trace their origins 

to other countries?



Ray: But this is the largest of the national minorities.



Guler: Yes, by all means.



Ray: And one that because of its transitional nature, because of the aspirations of 

the Kurds who are across the border in other countries, I think it's fair to say that 

the countries with large Kurdish minorities had no interest in encouraging the 

separatist tendencies, the desires for a self-determination.



Guler: Sure, you're absolutely right about that. It was a big struggle for the 

nation of Turkey to become a nation state. That is primarily the reason why the 

Turkish founding fathers of the modern  republic didn't have anything to do with 

ethnicity and with religion they said Turkey is a secular country where 

Christians, Jews,  and Muslims should be able to live together. While there have 

been aberrations from that, and not always has the government been wise and 

smart. In building social cohesiveness, I think in this issue, in granting new 

minorities or creating new minorities in Turkey, you will find that it has 

primarily been opposed because we want everybody to be first class  Turkish 

citizens.



Kani: Ms. Koknar made a reference to founding fathers -- there was one -- 

Ataturk. And he really wanted to create one nation, one government, one 

language. You know I want to make a reference to Europe. In Europe today, 

there's peace, stability, security because the nations of Europe respects each 

other's borders. We don't have Germans occupying half of France and calling 

them French Germans. We don't have Italians occupying another portion of  

France and calling them Italians. 



Ray: Well, we haven't for fifty years, but for centuries before these last fifty 

years we did --  



Kani: I'm talking about the peace, prosperity, the engine of progress that is now 

there. In the Middle East, we don't have that for the Kurds. If peace is the desire 

of the peoples of the Middle East, respect for Kurdish rights must be accepted 

and respected. 

 

Caller: (Dave, Irvine, California) I'm a little confused here, the program opened 

up by comparing the Kurdish situation to the Palestinian situation. But, as far as 

I am aware, there's not been a Kurdish nation in that region for many hundreds, 

if not thousands of years, and I don't understand how the two are relevant. If 

what you're saying is that the status quo of a thousand years ago ought to take 

place today the entire map of the world would change. America would be turned 

back over to the Indians, if we went back to a couple of hundred years, the 

Southern portion of the United States would be French, the west coast would be 

Spanish. I don' t understand the rationale there, can you explain that to me?



Ray: Michael Gunter, let me just get you in there ... because there was a time 

not that long ago when the map of West Asia and East Europe was very much 

soft clay and people who were writing lines on maps didn't write around a place 

called Kurdistan. Why not, Michael?



Michael:  Idea of nation states is a modern European idea. Into the 20th century 

the entire Middle East was still ruled by the Ottoman Turk Empire which was a 

multi-ethnic, multi-cultural empire and modern nation states were only created 

after WW1 in the Middle East. Now, this illusion to the Palestinians. The 

Palestinians are an ethnic group who had no state of their own and have never 

had a state of their own. Yet, came to be recognized in world politics as a global 

problem which could only be solved if Palestinian rights, leading to the creation 

of a Palestinian state were granted. And that's the comparison we're making with 

the Kurds here. The Kurds are a large nation, the largest nation on earth without 

its own independent state and increasingly will become a problem for the Middle 

East and the world as the 21st century dawns unless we somehow satisfy these 

Kurdish aspirations. 



Ray: But, Michael Gunter, when Sykes and Picot were sitting there with a big 

map, drawing lines and making countries that had never existed before into 

countries, why didn't there at that point become a Kurdistan?



Michael: Well, there was a possibility but the Kurdish nation was very 

underdeveloped compared to the Arabs, the Iranians, and Turks, and were lost out 

in the scramble to create a state.



Guler:  May I make an addition to that Ray? First, let me mention something 

that has not been mentioned at all in this discussion that the Great Powers had 

given the Kurds a country after WW1 and the Turks scrapped that. As a matter of 

fact, in that scrapping, there were involved many Kurdish groups in Eastern 

Turkey who fought side by side with the Turkish Liberation forces in order to 

build an independent Turkey and they're still involved in that nation-building 

campaign. I would like to submit that those, the percentage of Kurds in Turkey 

who would opt for succession from Turkey is a very small number. And that is 

also obvious from the very small response that the arrest of the PKK leader has 

received in Turkey among the Kurdish population.    



Caller (Selim, Riverside, California):  Good afternoon. My question is: Turks 

have been there for almost two thousand years since 1071 when the Seljuks 

came to Anatolia, where Turkey is right now, Asia minor, Anatolia, is a major 

part of Turkey. We have been through many wars and millions of soldiers have 

lost their lives just to protect every square inch of this land. Do they really 

expect Turkey to give up that land, that easily? 



Gunter: May I answer that please?



Ray: Well, no I want to hear from Kani.



Kani: You know, --



Caller (Selim): I would go and fight till the last drop of my blood to prevent 

something like this. I would leave my life as a comfortable person here to 

prevent that from ever happening. We should all try to live in peace. You cannot 

accomplish anything with terrorism, shedding thousands of lives.



Kani:  Selim, I hope you would find it in your heart to reach out to your 

Kurdish brothers who have been sharing that land with you since 1071. And I 

want to point out that they have been there 3000 years before that. Xenophan 

makes a reference to them, the Old Testament makes a reference to them, you 

are, if you will, "the new kids on the block." Not us. So let's share that land, 

let's enjoy its riches, let's respect each other.  You respecting my language, me 

respecting your language. You respecting my culture and me respecting your 

culture.  You live in America, in a free society. Let us live free there too. It will 

be good for you, it will be good for us. We will progress, we will go ahead with 

the task that's called building civil society that is lacking there, that we need 

there. I hope you'll find it in your heart to see the Kurds as human beings rather 

than as terrorists. 



Ray: But what do you want that isn't there on the ground now? What has to 

happen for the kind of dry "tinder" that becomes a revolution to be taken away, 

there has to be a spark, there has to be pressure that creates this impulse to fight 

back. What would take away that pressure? 



Kani: The impulse to fight back, or not to fight -- it simply requires this: for the 

Kurds to exist, constitutional guarantees need to be implemented, our culture 

needs to be allowed to flourish, our language needs to be respected, and if the 

Kurds want to stay part of Turkey, let them be part of Turkey. And if Selim 

wants to embrace the Kurds, let him embrace them. You cannot deny the 

existence of 15 to 20 million Kurds in the 20th century, without a massive 

genocide. You cannot do that. 



Guler: Ray, I'd like to add something to that. Nobody denies that Kurds are 

living in Turkey.  I had two neighbors, upstairs and downstairs who were Kurds 

one was married to a Turkish lady from a completely different ethnic origin.  

Kani is really diverting this issue. There have been in the past restrictions but I 

think the more Turkish society grows to appreciate diversity and the moment a 

terrorist threat or blackmail is taken out of this equation you will find progress. 



Ray: But Ms. Koknar, --



Guler: Can I also point out something, very quickly.... First of all, what kind of 

Kurdish should we allow? There four different, very different, as different a 

English and German dialects, and I'm quoting from a book written by Mrs. 

McDowall written in 1945 where there wasn't such a controversy about this 

issue. She says there are four, at least four, --



Ray: I would submit to you that the Kurds would probably take care of that -- 

what kind of Kurdish to allow. But you know, to say that they're terrorists --



Guler: I am not saying Kurds are terrorists. 



Ray: But, but many people do and make all references to Kurds dismissively as 

terrorists and I'm not claiming you do that but for terrorism or even an 

insurgency to exist there has to be some action in the first place that creates this 

insurgency. The Basques of ETA didn't suddenly get a notion in their heads in a 

bar in Bilboa and say let's start blowing things up. The IRA didn't come out 

from mass one day and say you know maybe we ought to become a terrorist 

organization. There have been separatist movements, there have been 

insurgencies all across the world that start out when somebody can't get 

something they want, sometimes it's a separate country, sometimes it's 

something as simple as just being left alone. 



Guler: Can I respond to that? I would like to say that the attention that the Kurds 

have been getting has been brought about by the capture of Abdullah Ocalan, the 

leader of the PKK, so that's my frame of reference, I'm not referring to Kurds as 

terrorists at all I'm just saying that PKK terrorism brought about many 

problems that now appear un-solvable.  And I have to submit to you, I 

appreciate your point, but I have to submit to you that the PKK which is the 

source of terrorism that is being called Kurdish terrorism not by the Turks but 

by Westerners who want to equate PKK terrorism with Kurdish nationalism it 

was a deliberate and organized movement by the KGB starting back in the 1960s 

which fermented all this terrorism.



Ray: So, there would not have been no resistance on the part of the Kurds on the 

absence of --



Guler: Of course, but --



Ray:  Part of the problem is that we have groups like the ANC that in the face 

of current political situations in their country revert to  violent or underground 

army activities when none under other circumstances would have happened. So, 

today is Nelson Mandela the president of South Africa, yes. He was in jail for 27 

years in part for being part of a plot to set off a bomb somewhere in 

Johannesburg but nobody, well, a few people, refer to him as a terrorist. 



Guler: But has there been a Black president in South Africa? Has there been a 

118 Black Parliamentarians in South Africa? The most famous, the star of 

Turkish folk songs being of Kurdish origin, does that not tell you that the 

problem here is not that you had signs in Turkey that said, "Kurds need not 

apply" as we had had in this country and that you had separate buses for Kurds 

and Turks.  That was never the problem in Turkey. 

Ray: Michael Gunter, you want to get in here?



Michael:  I am probably one of the few Americans who probably met Abdullah 

Ocalan. We were talking about this very issue when I met him just under a year 

ago.  He told me that if the Turks would simply accept the Kurdish cultural 

rights, 70% of the Kurdish problem would be solved.  And that' s what we're 

talking about. We're not talking about an independent Kurdistan, necessarily. 

We're talking about Turkey taking the necessary steps to becoming a full fledged 

democracy that would allow Kurdish cultural rights, linguistic, educational, and 

political rights to live in Turkey as Turkish citizens. 



Guler: May I pose a question to Prof. Gunter? Prof. Gunter I think you have a 

rather oddly naive interpretation of Ocalan's goals. I am quoting from the report 

from the Le Institute Criminology de Paris, the Criminology Institute of Paris, 

obviously a French institute is a friend of Turkey necessarily.  And as Counsel, 

Francois Haute, to that Institute says, "As a matter of fact behind a political 

process that would look altruistic, the PKK kills and finances its guerrilla 

operations with criminal activities. The PKK gathers all the necessary 

components for this statement : murders, extortion, illegal immigration, children 

trafficking, all types of influence on the Kurdish Diaspora, drug trafficking, and 

money laundering. A cause that consists mostly of heavy guerrilla activity 

coupled to blind terrorism shaking countries that may be members of NATO or 

associated with the European Union. For the PKK a Kurdish revolution means a 

revolution in Turkey."  And I can submit this report to Ray for him to verify 

that it is an independent report. 



Michael: OK, but certainly this whole problem was caused by the Turkish 

government's refusal to allow even the barest Kurdish cultural rights. We have 

seen a gradual improvement but the Turkish government itself has documented 

abuses the system of scandal shows how the Turkish government itself hired 

right wing criminals on the lamb to murder civilian Turkish citizens of Kurdish 

ethnic heritage for simply voicing support for Kurdish rights.  



Guler: That investigation is still underway. 



Kani: Miss Koknar made a reference to the mistakes of the founding fathers of 

this country in terms of the blacks not having rights. And it took a civil war to 

correct that mistake. The founding fathers of Turkey did the same mistake of 

denying the Kurds an identity, forcing them to become Turks against their will, 

and it's taking a mistake of this generation, three generations later, a war that's 

going on in Southeast Turkey. We're talking about 3 and a half million Kurds 

driven away from their homes, we're talking about 3 432 Kurdish villages 

destroyed by the Turkish armed forces, we're talking about 37 000 mostly 

Kurdish civilians killed by Turkish armed forces -the civilians that were forced to 

become village guards -- and now Turkey is shedding crocodile tears for these 

village guards! 



Caller (Sid, Minneapolis): First of all, I would just like to say that the attitude 

of Turks like Selim from California would prevent any kind of compromise. My 

main point is the Turks have a dismal record of dealing with non-Turks living 

within Turkey as well as outside of Turkey unless there is some kind of pressure 

from the US especially and the E.U., the Kurds will be eliminated either through 

forced assimilation or mass murders like they did to the Armenians in the early 

1900s. And, in 1974 they invaded  Cyprus and killed 5% of the population and 

they're still there! They took 2 000 prisoners and they have never been seen and 

among those, by the way, are about 10 Americans. Now, why isn't anything 

being done about this problem? 



Ray: Sid, let me suggest to you that perhaps things have changed in Europe in 

the last 25 years when we contrast the sort of ho-hum and yawn of the partition 

of Cyprus with the slow but eventual action over at Bosnia over what's going 

on in the Kosovo province right now. There's an international force on the 

ground in Macedonian and making sure the territorial integrity of that state is 

being maintained. Do you think that maybe there's a different spirit abroad in 

Europe? Those things that you suggest we should fear couldn't happen today. 



Sid: No, there's nothing being done to get Turkey to comply with some of these 

other things that we're talking about in America. At the same time, they're 

occupying Cyprus an independent country and they're eliminating the Iranians -- 

I mean the Kurds. 



Guler: I would like to respond to that. It's really sad that all ancient and 

contemporary enemies of Turkey seem to be in synch in these. I really am sad to 

witness that Greece, a NATO ally of Turkey, has supported a terrorist, named as 

such by the United States administration. He and his organization are called the 

international terror organization that sponsors terrorists acts worldwide and that 

Greece, an ally of the United States and of Turkey, has harbored this terrorist and 

has tried to give him asylum as is said development.  But I would like to submit 

that if it had not been for Turkey's intervention on Cyprus which was based on 

two international agreements that stipulated that Turkey is a guarantor power to 

the once bi-communal state or  republic of Cyprus. The Turkish community 

there, the Turkish Cypriots would have been entirely killed off by the junta in 

Greece and by the junta that threw off  Macarios Samsun, who was actively 

engaged in a campaign to ethnically cleanse Cyprus of Turkish Cypriots an 

island to Cyprus. The Turkish intervention was entirely based on the fact to save 

Turkish Cypriots  and to comply with its own international obligations and of 

course in its strategic interests that it has in the Mediterranean. 



Michael: May I jump in briefly? I largely agree with Guler with the Turkish 

position in Cyprus. I would just like to point out that in Cyprus, only about 

20% of the population is Turkish, yet the Turkish government not only demands 

democratic, cultural rights for them [that 20% of Turkish population] but even 

an administrative, bi-zonal federal state. Yet, for the Kurdish population in 

Turkey, the Turkish government won't even recognize anything but the most 

elementary rights. And this is a total inconsistency.



Guler: Well, I think that we should refrain from comparing apples and oranges.  

The Republic of Cyprus was founded by two international agreements that gave 

Turkish Cypriots equal rights in the governing of the country. And Turkey, 

Greece, and Britain undersigned those treaties.



Michael: I agree with that, what about the Kurds' rights?



Guler: The international law applying to the two cases are entirely different. And 

as a political scientist, I guess, you should have really known that. 



Michael:  I can say that the difference is that nobody has ever guaranteed the 

Kurdish rights. But that doesn't mean there should not be Kurdish rights.



Kani: You know, to call, to ask or to demand the rights of the Turkish minority 

in Cyprus and to say that they are human beings and that they deserve these 

rights and in the same breath to say that the Kurds of Turkey do not deserve 

these rights, do not deserve federation, do not deserve equal treatment is really 

not right, it is making a mockery of the facts that are on the ground. It is the 

source of this impasse that we have in this society, this dysfunctional state 

called Turkey. It will not go anywhere without solving this problem. Sid made a 

reference to Selim in [Riverside] who said I'm willing to shed my blood to keep 

that territory intact, he didn't say he was willing to shed his blood to keep the 

quality of life for the peoples who live on that territory, beautiful [meaningful] -- 

meaning, the rights of the Kurds respected, the rights of the Turks respected. 



Caller (Zana): Good evening. I have a comment. I have a teenage daughter, she 

[wrote] a poem after the arrest of Ocalan and it says that Turks arrested only a 

part of Ocalan. There's a part of Ocalan left in every Kurd.  So, another 

comment I want to make is that PKK and PKK activities are the product of 

Turkish aggression. Not the other way another. Thank you.



Ray: Zana, before you go, what solution can you see down the road to the things 

happening now between people who live in the same country? For now its the 

same country and the people are there. How can in the short future both people 

continue to be there and there not be suffering or violence or struggle? 



Caller: Well, we have to look at a solution from Switzerland. Switzerland is 

combined of three nations -- Italian, German, and French. And they fought one 

another for many years, and they lived in very poor conditions. But when they 

stopped fighting one another, now Switzerland has the highest standard of living 

in the world.



Guler: Ray, I'd like to come back to one point which I think we need to  restate 

here to American audiences. You see now on TV demonstrations all over Europe 

with a few scattered demonstrations in Turkey. Let's picture this, there are 850 

000 Kurds living in Europe if you add on all the people who have been 

demonstrating you will see that they would not exceed 3 to 4 thousand people.  

If you look at the demonstrations in Turkey -- let's say the demonstrations in 

Turkey are repressed -- why don't we see in Europe thousands and hundreds of 

thousands of people, of Kurds and their supporters, walking down the streets. 

That shows that the PKK is --



Ray: I don't know what significance to attach to the size of the demonstrations, 

I'm sorry.



Kani: Zana made a reference to a poem his daughter has written, I actually got 

[another] poem this morning from a woman in Montreal who says that her 13 

year old daughter has written it for [the] Kurdish girl who burnt herself in 

London when the demonstrations started across Europe and across the world. And 

with your permission I'd like to read it, it really sums up the situation: 

 

Can't You Hear Me?



It's as though I'm in a prison so lonely,

Screaming, crying, but no one can hear me.

Destined to preach my sorrow,

All alone in a world so hollow.

Fifteen years down this road of pain, 

If only my problems would wash off with the rain.

Help is what I'm looking for, 

Someone who'll open a door,

A door to freedom and love so sweet, 

Someone who'll take me off these awful streets.

I need to let you know I'm here,

So I set my body and soul on fire.

You must hear me out,

Can't you see I do this with no desire?

The fire burns me slowly, but yet I can't feel a thing.

Trying to get your attention, I don't even feel a sting.

The crowd huddles around me, 

Trying to take me away,

But I want to be heard so I struggle to stay.

The ugly world as I have known it hasn't yet come to an end.

I can sadly say I'm still without a single friend.

My battle doesn't finish here, you see,

Because I'm still here, can't you hear me?