The Armenian Genocide—Time for Acknowledgement and Healing

"As April 24, the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide is nearing, many countries are going to take the opportunity, again, and prove their moral superiority by judging Turkey. The morally superior even include countries such as Germany that was involved in more than one genocide in the beginning of the last century. As perpetrators of the first genocide of the 20th century against the Herero in Namibia, Germany may have also had a role, the extent of which is still unclear, in the deportation of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Often praised for her dealings with the Holocaust, it took Germany over 100 years to finally acknowledge the genocide against the Herero in 2015. Countries such as France, Switzerland, Slovakia, Cyprus, and Greece have so far shown their moral superiority by suppressing speech and making it a crime not to acknowledge the [Armenian] genocide while very comfortably judging Turkey for her shortcomings on freedom and democracy..."

For full article, please visit: Tikkun Daily Blog

There’s only one solution to Turkey’s ‘Kurdish problem’

The foundation of Turkey’s difficult relationship with its Kurdish minority was laid after World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into various nation-states. The area where the Kurds, a nomadic tribe, used toroam freely was divided into what is today known as Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. There has been friction with the Kurdish minority in all four countries since.

Deconstructing myths

In Turkey, the frictions are mainly based on two factors. First is that Kurds feel betrayed. They claim that the Treaty of Sèvres promised them an independent Kurdish state. However, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, allegedly “tricked” them into fighting against the allies, either by promising Kurds their own territory or a common state. Since neither materialized, proponents to date feel that they have a right to create an independent or autonomous Kurdish state within Turkey’s borders.

The allegations against the Turkish state, however, are not entirely true. Even though the treaty included a provision for a Kurdish state, according to Article 64, the provision had many conditions, one of which would have required Turkey’s consent for a Kurdish state to materialize. Moreover, such a Kurdish state would have been put under British control. A majority of Kurds rejected this due to religious concerns. When the Turkish Nationalist Movement decided to fight the allies and the conditions of the Treaty of Sèvres, the majority of Kurds chose to fight alongside Atatürk. Three years later, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed and Turkey’s current borders were legally established.

Since the Republic of Turkey was legally established, any form of Kurdish state in Turkey — independent or otherwise — is obviously less than feasible. Yet, proponents of a Kurdish state incorrectly refer to the Treaty of Sèvres to make their case. This brings us to the second challenge: the lack of human rights in Turkey.

No one can change history. What can be changed is how minorities are treated — regardless of who they are, when people are treated with respect and dignity, and are granted full-fledged human rights, concerns about ethnicity or race become secondary, or may even vanish. After all, the purpose of constructs such as race or ethnicity is unequal treatment.

In this regard, Turkey has failed miserably — however, not only her minorities but her entire population. A constant crack-down on free speech has been on the political agenda since the establishment of the country and only continues to intensify with the increasingly autocratic direction of the current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime.

Erdoğan’s opening

After President Turgut Özal, who suddenly became ill and died in 1993, Erdoğan became in 2005 the first Turkish president to show interest in dealing with the Kurdish problem more openly. However, any signs of progress were short-lived. Although the ban on broadcasting in Kurdish was lifted in 2009 and Kurdish was finally allowed to be taught in public schools in 2012, even the attempts to grant Kurds the most basic rights have been inconsistent, as the recent crack-down on Kurdish schools and news outlets illustrates...

For full text, please visit Original article published in The Hill: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/322535-theres-only-1-solution-to-turkeys-kurdish-problem