Cyprus-Forum.com

[insan]

The Tragic Arrogance of Nation Building



The Emory Wheel - By Stanton Abramson - February 22, 2008



The last remnants of the former state of Yugoslavia were finally swept away on Sunday when Kosovo proclaimed its independence from Serbia.



The disaster of a Serbian-dominated Balkan regime met its demise nearly 90 years after the signing of the fateful Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The European consolidation of the mountainous Balkans, where deep ethnic and religious tensions triggered World War I, into one state did not permit the self-determination espoused by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.



Rather, the South Slavic peoples found themselves placed under a single government led by notorious authoritarians such as Josip Tito and Slobodan Milosevic. Their dictatorial rule kept the Yugoslavian experiment intact for longer than it should have been, but the break-up of the country was inevitable from the start.



But it was the diverging destinies of the nation’s peoples that eventually sealed the country’s fate. Referring to the bloodshed common in the region, Winston Churchill once proclaimed, “The Balkans produce more history than they can consume.”



And so Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo declared their independence. Only the core state of Serbia, ruled from Belgrade, remains today. As New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote on Feb. 14: “There [was] no other way. Serbia lost a nationalist gamble on Kosovo a long time ago; the differences stemming from it are unbridgeable... Serbs will kick and scream, but Kosovo is just the last piece of a dead state to go its inevitable way.”



Now, as Kosovo’s 2 million citizens celebrate their independence in the new capital of Pristina, attention should shift to the other failed states drawn without regard for ethnic or religious cleavages. These states capture newspaper headlines daily: Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, Pakistan and a number of sub-Saharan African states.



The ethnic and religious warfare consuming Sudan, for example, illustrates the lunacy of placing hostile populations within the same political boundaries. In an investigative piece in the January/February edition of The Atlantic Monthly, Jeffrey Goldberg calls Sudan “one of the most disastrous countries created by Europe.”



With Yugoslavia’s blundered creation serving as a model, the current U.S. policy in Iraq appears absurd. Like Yugoslavia, Iraq lacks a national political history and consists of populations hostile to one another.



Demographically, Iraq’s Shiite Muslims reside in the south, its Sunni Muslims in the center and its Kurds in the north. Just like with Tito and Milosevic in Yugoslavia, it was the personal might of Saddam Hussein that kept his patchwork country together.



The three groups of Iraqis lack the resolve to work together within the framework of a unified state. Like Croatians, Slovenians, Serbs and Bosnians in Europe, they aspire to their own political destiny in the form of a sovereign state.



In particular, the Kurds already consider themselves an independent entity. Goldberg writes: “In the two main cities of the Kurdish region, the Iraqi flag is banned from flying; Arabic is scarcely heard on the streets... and Baghdad is referred to as a foreign capital.”



Echoing Cohen’s judgment of Yugoslavia, Goldberg predicts that “independence for Iraq’s Kurds seems, if not immediate, then in due course, inevitable.”



If Iraq’s break up is unavoidable, why is the U.S. continuing to hope that a peaceful democracy can and will emerge from the banks of the Euphrates? This policy lacks an understanding of both history and reality.



The surge, begun in January 2007, deserves credit for drastically improving the security situation in Iraq. But are the benefits of the surge sustainable?



As longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll pointed out on Jan. 29, “wherever we put troops, insurgents will just leave the area. When we pull the troops out, the insurgents will return. So the only way to ‘win’ is to stay there forever.” Indeed, Senator John McCain, the Republican frontrunner for the 2008 presidential election, envisions U.S. troops in Iraq for 100 years.



But like Yugoslavia, the deep, emotional yearning for self-determination does not yield. The desire for independence only grows as years pass. Neither dictators nor the federation-style democracy planned for Iraq can extinguish the flames of desire for statehood and self-determination.



Bringing Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations together is analogous to keeping Yugoslavia intact. The act of recognizing Kosovo’s independence from Serbia while denying Kurdish self-determination is an American act of hypocrisy.



Worse yet, it places the United States on the wrong side of history.



Stanton Abramson is a College sophomore from Raleigh, N.C.

[insan]

Athens - Jailed Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan is seeking thousands of euros in compensation from Greece for Athens' role nearly a decade ago in his capture and imprisonment by Turkey, reports said Thursday. Ankara blames Ocalan for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up its fight against the Turkish state in 1984.

He has been held since his 1999 capture and conviction in an island prison at Imrali, south of Istanbul.

Turkey accused Ocalan of leading a violent campaign for Kurdish autonomy and has lashed out at Greece for its support for Kurdish rebels.

The Greek government has rejected Turkey's criticism, saying it has acted humanely and denies it has helped the rebels.

Ocalan was captured by Turkish commandos as he left the Greek embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was being given shelter and protection.

Greece later granted asylum to two Ocalan aids, who were whisked from Nairobi to Athens by Greek agents in a clandestine operation.

Ocalan's Greek lawyer was quoted by the Greek daily newspaper Eleftheros Typos as saying that his client was seeking damages of 20,100 euros (25,700 dollars) for the Greek government's role in getting him captured by Turkish commandos, even though Athens had assured him of its protection.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show ... urkey.html

[Oracle]

Reh Insan ... are you wind-up or battery driven?

[insan]

I found it on that new website I discovered today ... Great isn't it? ... Packed full of facts you Turks keep from us normally!

U should also look for other websites that contains Kurdish news happy with being a Turkish citizen in Turkey. Otherwise Oracle u will be considered as an ordinary, galimatias lover, Turk-hater propagandist. If u have really cared abt human rights; at least u would have talked abt the human rights violations of Greece and so-called Roc. poor lady.

Turkey, the Kurds and Islam

Turkey, the Kurds and Islam
Jan 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition

A SIGN adorned with Ataturk's favourite adage, “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk”, hangs in Diyarbakir, south-east Turkey, as a reminder of Turkey's decades-old policy of forcibly assimilating the region's Kurds. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) party might prefer “Happy is he who calls himself a Muslim”.

“Uniting around our common Islamic identity is the only way to solve the Kurdish problem,” argues one AK leader. “Islam bound us in Ottoman times and during the war of independence, why not today?” Religion has become the mildly Islamist AK's most potent weapon as it seeks to snatch control of Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkey's estimated 14m Kurds, from the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DTP) in next year's local election. …

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.c ... 1_TDGDJNNP

Of course I take on board any positive views, but they are few and far between and even as an example, yours falls far short of denying the problem Turkey has caused the Kurds ....

When people are shot dead, by Turks, for speaking up for the Kurds, it makes you question any positive comments. Oppression is a poor bed fellow of Freedom of Speech!

It is a well known fact that Turkey failed on nation building process of an ethnic group of Turkish people namely Kurds because of various reasons. This nation building process wasn't only towards Turkification of Kurds of Turkey but all people of Turkey that have some 54 different racial ethnic backgrounds. The main reason Turkey failed to Turkify Kurds is religious. The other reason of Turkey's failure is that her enemies(especially Hellenes and Armenians) discovered her most vulnerable weakness and abused the Kurdish problem to divide her and weaken more. Harsh counter-actions towards seperatist groups by Turkish governments worsened the situation more.

Lately, it seems the situaion regarding Kurds of Turkey going better day by day. However as long as enemies of Turkey provoke Kurds to divide and destroy Turkey, I'm sure the problem will persist.

It seems to me if you had your way, you would label every ethnic group as being of Turkish people, and if they wish to call themselves by a different name (e.g. Kurds), that you call this a failure of "Turkish nation building"!

You really are the pits!

First of all there are no racial groups.

Secondly, there are ethnic groups, that have a HUMAN RIGHT to identify themselves and not have TURKEY impose its wish to label them ALL as TURKS.

Yes Turkey needs to let go of some of the territory it has acquired by unfair means.

It is the only way forward and the only sign that Turkey is finally joining the Human Race!

Discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin may
undermine the achievement of the objectives of the EC
Treaty, in particular the attainment of a high level of
employment and of social protection, the raising of the
standard of living and quality of life, economic and
social cohesion and solidarity. It may also undermine the
objective of developing the European Union as an area
of freedom, security and justice.

This is a link to the EU Council Directive 2000/43/EC of June 2000 on " implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin ".

http://europa.eu/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/ ... 220026.pdf

You may wish to consider it for inclusion.

Regards

bill c


I believe that there r no racial groups too. What I believe is shown below.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

[Oracle]

I notice you have no willy ....

Good! ... End of your progenitor dreams, you racist!

[insan]

I notice you have no willy ....

Good! ... End of your progenitor dreams, you racist!

How could my willy be visible while an ugly goblin was right in front of me.

[Oracle]

I notice you have no willy ....

Good! ... End of your progenitor dreams, you racist!

How could my willy be visible while an ugly goblin was right in front of me.

Seems your problems run deeper than that ...

i'm a male and i'm married too. My wife began loosing her sex appeal. Maybe me too?

Maybe you should switch from Mongol Girls to Mongol Guys ....

[CopperLine]

Nameless Kurds of Turkey

The government's fears of a separatist rebellion start with the young.

Even baby names in the ethnic group's native tongue are taboo.

(C.P. Hughes / For The Times)

By Richard Boudreaux, Times Staff Writer

Any reasonable person reading the posted article above might believe that this was an article in The Times and that it was current or recent account of Kurdish politics, after all it is placed in a discussion of current language politics. But such a reasonable reader would have been misled : this article does not appear in The Times, but is originally posted in the Kurdistan Observer, a now defunct English-language separatist reporting service, and the article was published in just over six years ago in 2003. Why is the date important ? Because a number of constitutional and legislative changes have come into effect regarding the Kurdish language.

I know that you wouldn't want to be misleading anyone would you Oracle or, god forbid, being dishonest.

[Oracle]

Nameless Kurds of Turkey

The government's fears of a separatist rebellion start with the young.

Even baby names in the ethnic group's native tongue are taboo.

(C.P. Hughes / For The Times)

By Richard Boudreaux, Times Staff Writer

Any reasonable person reading the posted article above might believe that this was an article in The Times and that it was current or recent account of Kurdish politics, after all it is placed in a discussion of current language politics. But such a reasonable reader would have been misled : this article does not appear in The Times, but is originally posted in the Kurdistan Observer, a now defunct English-language separatist reporting service, and the article was published in just over six years ago in 2003. Why is the date important ? Because a number of constitutional and legislative changes have come into effect regarding the Kurdish language.

I know that you wouldn't want to be misleading anyone would you Oracle or, god forbid, being dishonest.

Why don't you make yourself useful and tell us what those Constitutional and Legislative changes which have come into effect are, and perhaps post some evidence that they are practiced, and not merely brandished?

Could you do that? Since anyone can source an article which was presented in full and the access website stated!

[shahmaran]

Why bother convince the inconvincible Oracle.

The above is absolute rubbish any Turk or Kurd would know that, you can happily continue dwelling in your ignorance you are a lot more entertaining that way