denizaksulu wrote:Tim Drayton wrote:denizaksulu wrote:Oracle wrote:denizaksulu wrote:Oracle wrote:Well the presenters touched on the Political expediency this presents for the Turkish government to keep the Kurds impoverished and stuck further back into the Middle ages than the average Turk .... The Kurdish men are clearly "castrated" by Turkey. Left feeling inadequate at their lack of self-determination. So, self-esteem at an all time low, they take it out on their women!
Turkish atrocities of the most tormenting kind .....
I will tend to disagree with your interpretation for what you viewed and heard. The editing was poor. On four occasions what was said in Turkish and what was translated had no connection. Perhaps that WAS the bad editing. To blame the Tore (Honour killing) on to the Turkish gov is a bit harsh. The people themselves need the education. It was obvious that the men wanted the complete subordination of their women folk. The only way to change the mind set of these people is to chop their heads off. Then you would still find Turkey at fault.It is still sad.
I'm sorry Deniz ... I did not have the means to know what was said in Turkish. But why would the interviewer touch on the nefarious desire for the Turkish government to suppress these people and confine them to the sort of existence which allowed this sort of thing to fester and now GROW!
I dont think that I can anser that Oracle. Except that when I was studying we were told of the attempts of the Turkish goverment to improve the living conditions of the people of the SE. Attempts to build roads and hospitals were met with violence. Teachers and doctors were often murdered or sent back to where they came from. They chose to be insular and for many years the central gov left te to their own resources. I am talking of thirty or so odd years ago.
These despicable acts were conducted by the PKK and not the ordinary people of South East Anatolia, of course.
You might be right there Tim, but we had never heard of the PKK then. Until 1964, I did not know what a Kurd was, till my then girlfriend told me she was a Kurd from Kars (in 1964). They were referred to as Mountain Turks.
OK, I don't know how far back you are going. I can never forget a black and white photograph I saw in the Economist in the early years of the PKK which showed a young primary school teacher who had been hung in his own classroom. It sent a chill down my spine and it still horrifies me when I think of this photograph. This was before I knew anything about Turkey, and when you understand the working conditions in Turkish government service, and that people like teachers and nurses have to serve anywhere in the country to which they are posted until they can get a transfer elsewhere and that it is mainly recent graduates who do not have enough 'torpil' to wangle a posting to somewhere more attractive that end up in the south east, you realise how horrendous these murders were. These were generally young people who were a long way from their families for the first times in their lives and doing their best to serve the local community. I can understand how people fighting a guerilla war for national liberation can target the police and security forces, but to come to a school and string up an anarmed primary school teacher in his classroom is totally unacceptable. Think of the traumatic effect that this must have had on his tiny pupils - the very people the PKK claimed to be fighting for.
Kurdish nationalists argue that Turkey has oppressed the Kurds and kept them poor and this entitles the Kurds to fight for their independence. On the other hand, Kemalists argue that while the new Republic managed to accomplish major land reforms and break down feudalism in most of the country, they were unable to break the hold of the large feudal landowners in the south east and this is why the region has failed to develop and its people have remained backward. The weird thing is that the PKK, for all of its Marxist rhetoric, appears to have served the interests of the fuedal landowners in the region. The Turkish state sent in teachers and medical staff and the PKK murdered them. The Turkish state tried to build roads and other infrastructure and the PKK blew them up and destroyed the constrcution machinery. The result is that the people remained uneducated and employment opportunities could not be created which only kept the people at large in the clutches of the feudal overlords.
A Kurd from Kars? She must have been from Digor, as far as I know the only Kurdish speaking part of Kars. I once lived in an appartment where all my neighbours were Kurds from Digor. I have even been there, once. Interesting.
