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[insan]

But this flip-flop as we say in the United States or U-turn as the term goes in the United Kingdom has not come, for a man who is in his late fifties, without its costs. Just as his ideals have gone through changes, his heroes too have had to play their musical chairs. Those of you who have read some of his 500 plus books, that is the figure he dictates to his personal secretaries, will admit to his affinity for people like Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin up until his arrest. When he landed in Italy in November 1998 the Med TV hailed the news as, “Modern Spartacus has landed in Rome.” Today, those names are no longer honored in the paeans of Mr. Ocalan. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has taken over their place as a giant of a man knowledgeable on all things under the sun. The orphan of Tsaloniki, says Mr. Ocalan, was the embodiment of the ideology of Rousseau, the politics of Robespierre and the military genius of Napoleon. Reading the passage, you are left with the inescapable conclusion, and Mr. Ocalan is not even subtle about it, that it takes a genius, Mr. Ocalan, to recognize another one, Ataturk. When the Turkish state was on its knees, the Turkish general saved the day and did so with the help of the Kurdish tribal chiefs, he crows. Only two other Turkish figures were as visionary as Ataturk and they were Alparslan, who according to Mr. Ocalan, would never have made it to Anatolia from Central Asia without the help of the Kurds; and Yavuz Selim who sealed a strategic relationship with the Kurds to expand Ottoman power into Europe and Africa. These three periods were the glorious times in the history of the Turks, he muses, and the “fourth” is at hand, can be jumpstarted, if only Ankara paid some attention to him.


You are probably wondering what do the Turks make of these unwashed, sordid, and bewildering declarations of Mr. Ocalan. To say that they totally disregard them would be to repeat what they always do and that is that they don’t talk to the “terrorists” or their leader. But I suspect there is more to these pronouncements than meets the eye. Mr. Ocalan has already noted, at least on several occasions, of a high-ranking Turkish official who confided in him, “Let’s put an end to this game. The Greeks delivered you to us not as a favor, but to sow the seeds of a hundred year conflict between the Kurds and the Turks; let’s stop this war of brothers.” Mr. Ocalan then goes on to note, “I thought about it and decided to go along with it.” Or when the same official, apparently, said, “We won’t keep you here for long.” To date, no Turkish official has stepped forward to confirm or deny these allegations. My own hunch is that these exchanges never took place, and if they did, they only prove that Mr. Ocalan has entered his second childhood now. I don’t know how else to put this, but to state it the way it is, and that is Mr. Ocalan has had an uncanny ability to “imagine truths” and lead the Kurds on all kinds of fantasies, some successful and others suicidal in terms of their consequences. That is why these latest “imagined” stories of Mr. Ocalan, where Turks play magnanimous roles and the Kurds, poor simpletons who are easily manipulated by the Greeks, cannot have a basis in fact and will not, for long, hold a sway over the Kurdish masses. What they say for now though is that Mr. Ocalan has allowed himself to become the megaphone of the Turkish military against the Kurds.


I don’t know about you, but as someone who has been cursed with a secondary school education in Turkey, I have lost sleep over Mr. Ocalan’s choice of characters, as his favorites, from the annals of the Turkish history. The sleepless nights have paid off and I am here, to paraphrase the presidential hopeful John Kerry, to report to you that what Mr. Ocalan is doing is cherry picking at best or disingenuous to say the least. Ataturk gets the lion’s share of his attention and most people would agree with him that he is betting on the right horse to ingratiate himself with the Turks. The Turks worship the man and Mr. Ocalan has now decided to join their ranks. His other two heroes are Alparslan and Yavuz Selim. The reason Mr. Ocalan likes these individuals has nothing to do with them per se, but everything to do with himself, and his everlasting desire to be free and lord over the Kurds again. Ataturk, says Mr. Ocalan, in addition to being a great statesman, was a magnanimous soul, for in the Turkish war of liberation, he freed a captured Greek general, Nikos Trikopis. But what he did to Shaikh Said, a Kurdish rebel, is conveniently brushed aside. Alparslan, Mr. Ocalan goes on to add, went even further and freed not a general, but a captured emperor, Romanus Diogenes. He doesn’t say it, but makes you wonder, if Caesar did anything like it. Yavuz Selim, as far as I know, didn’t forgive anybody; in fact, he is known to have beheaded some 40 thousand mostly Allawite Kurds, hence his nickname, Selim the Cruel, but the reader is left with the inference that the cooperation of the subjugated Kurds in the person of Idris of Bitlis with Yavuz Selim, -- the Kurdish collaborator’s name never comes up, -- was what made the Turks great in the world. In other words, Mr. Ocalan wishes to be forgiven a la Ataturk and Alparslan so that he could serve the Turkish state a la Idris of Bitlis.


But this farce is already crumbling in spite of Mr. Ocalan’s Herculean efforts and machinations. “Imagined truths” do not have a long span of life. In one of his periodical meetings with his lawyers, Mr. Ocalan talks about getting hate mail from the Turks. One of his newly “discovered” Turkish brothers has threatened him with a disease that will cause his skin to peel off leading to a slow and painful death. He tells his attorneys he is not feeling well and adds, ominously, his skin is coming off. He is wondering if something sinister is in the making. No one needs to second-guess Mr. Ocalan here for something sinister has been going on from the very beginning. This second act of his life, that started on a warm evening in Kenya or cold morning in Turkey, has seen, so far, extraordinary agility, breathless servility, outrageous pomposity, and worst of all, venomous reaction to everything Kurdish in the world. If wonders were named after humans as opposed to monuments, as they were in antiquity, I have no doubt in my mind that Mr. Ocalan would have qualified as the eighth wonder of the world. Just in case you are not fully convinced, let me shower you with a few of his other priceless gems from his latest “Meeting Notes.” He now calls Kurdish nationalism the “cancer” of our times, and declaring himself a physician in the same sentence, has vowed to eradicate it from the face of the earth. Patriotic Kurds, he says should support Turkey, but if they support Kurdistan, he calls them “primitive nationalists.” And in a low that will forever be associated with his name, he quotes the Turkish generals, his new buddies, to inform his supporters that Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani are “selling” their wives and daughters to the Turks in exchange for favors. Now I know why Cicero says, “Fear of all emotions is the most brutalizing,” or what the psychologists call, “[It] drives people to madness.” And if I could set aside Mr. Ocalan’s half-cooked Kurdish-ness for a bit, I truly feel sorry for him as a human being.



I have finally made it to the end of my presentation. When Mr. Ocalan was free, alone among the Middle Eastern leaders, he loved forcing his associates to engage in self-criticism sessions in front of the video cameras reminiscent of what Mao did, apparently, with his party faithful, in his times. But Mr. Ocalan always exempted himself from those sometimes hilarious, often dreary, and always-repetitive self-condemnations. The other day, as I was getting ready to put together my thoughts for this conference, I had a flight of fancy and imagined him doing one himself, in front of the Kurdish people, and saying the following things. I hope you will find them instructive. I ask for your indulgence.



“To the people of Kurdistan,



“I apologized to the mothers of the Turkish soldiers at the outset of my trial and apparently left the impression that I did not care about your losses, the children of Kurdistan. I do. Belatedly, and sincerely, I extend you my apologies and condolences as well. Now that this misunderstanding is out of the way, I want to address you, as promised, on my shortcomings. I have had six years to reflect on them. There is no other word for it; I am one of the biggest liars in the history of Kurdistan. Most politicians are. But I went way overboard and lost track of what is proper and what is not. Last month, I read The Brother Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. I got stuck on page 43. I thought the Russian writer was talking about me. Because Dostoyevsky is a better writer than I am, I want to read you a short passage from it. It is from the address of Father Zossima to Fyodor Karamazov, the patriarch of the family whose life is chronicled in the novel. It is bitter, as true medicine often is, but it is good. Here is Father Zossima: ‘The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions, and coarse pleasures, sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and himself.’ With my imagined truths, I am guilty of these charges as well. I have lost my way. I don’t even know who I am. I have said I have the patent to Kurdish nationalism; nothing could be further from the truth. I have declared Ataturk the senior God and myself the junior; both are lies. I have said I support Turkey and oppose the liberation of Kurdistan; this qualifies for the father of all lies. James Madison once noted, ‘There can be no doubt that there are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of mankind are unequal.’ He too, the founding father of America, has me in mind when he refers to the bulk of humankind. I thought I could outrun truth, science, skill and ability, but there is no such thing. Look where it has landed me. It is not the place to be. I am truly sorry for the pain and suffering I have caused you. I ask for your forgiveness.”

http://www.kurdistan.org/Current-Update ... 90305.html

[insan]

I myself have always argued that Ataturk himself if he were alive today to see what bankrupt policy concerning the Kurds was being carried out in his name would settle the issue quickly and fairly.

Indeed, two days before I spoke with Ocalan, Andrew Mango the British expert on Turkey who is completing a new biography of Ataturk that will probably replace Lord Kinross'8 as the standard work on the great Turkish leader told me in his London home just this. The Kemalist policies seemingly set in stone concerning the Kurds, Mango said, were established in a different time, for a different situation. Indeed, when Ataturk established his policies on the Kurds in the 1920s, said Mango, he did not have a "clue" regarding the Kurds. But if the great man were alive today, argued Mango, he would "allow some local government and expression" for the Kurds, while seeking to keep them "under the Turkish roof."

Certainly such a position is suitable for opening a dialogue with the Kurds. Ocalan told me that I could say that he agreed that "if Ataturk were alive today, Ataturk would change Turkey's policy." In other words, in the name of Ataturk and to preserve and strengthen Turkey, Turkey should open a dialogue with the PKK! Ocalan added here the obvious analogy between such a dialogue and what earlier had transpired between Israel and the PLO and in South Africa with Nelson Mandela.

http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/JCS/bin/get ... Gunter.htm

[GreekForumer]

Here's my answer to ur question, GF.

It's not really an answer at all. You are avoiding answering the most basic questions. Why don't you support your original claim instead of giving justifications of betrayal ?

Let me try again.....

Do you concede that YOUR statement that "Turks and Kurds fought together and founded Republic of Turkey" is a grossly misleading characterisation of the true history ?

What did the Kurds think they were dying for on the battlefield in 1919-1922 ?

It's not misleading at all, when u take into consideration then the circumstances...

You say it isn't. I say it is. Fortunately for us, your statement is one which can be easily tested to see if it is misleading or not. But before I give you some of my suggestions on how to do this..... I want you to try to answer, as honestly as you can, this question :

Which of the following 2 statements is closest to the truth?

1. Kurds were persuaded to fight for a secular republic.and in accordance with their wishes, they got a secular republic
2. Kurds were deceived to fight for a Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood state and against their wishes, a Kurd-free secular republic was violently forced upon them.


Do you think these 2 statements say essentially the same thing or are they completely different ?



Now back to the issue of how to demonstrate if your statement is misleading or not. Here are some of my suggestions of how we can go about doing this.

CYPRUS FORUM POLL
We can do a poll, right here on Cyprus Forum, asking the forumers if your statement is misleading or not. This may not be a good test because the votes in the poll might not be honest and instead would follow ethnic biases.

POLLING AT RANDOM INTERNET FORUMS
Let's do a poll in a number of other internet forums, chosen by random, and report the results back here. But you may argue that the people in these random forums don't have a clue about Turkish-Kurdish history. So such a poll would be meaningless. Not if we create 2 polls like this,

Question 1 : Consider the following statement "Turks and Kurds fought together and founded Republic of Turkey". In your imagination, do you perceive that

a. Turks and Kurds lived happily ever after
b. Turks used discriminatory laws violence to force Kurds to accept the Republic of Turkey

Question 2 : Consider the following statement "Kurds were deceived into fighting for a Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood state and against their wishes, a Kurd-free secular republic was established. In your imagination, do you perceive that

a. Turks and Kurds lived happily ever after.
b. Turks used discriminatory laws and violence to force Kurds to abandon their ethnicity and accept a kurd-free secular republic

Perhaps we shouldn't be asking randomly selected people these questions at all. We should be asking people who have actually studied this history.

HISTORIAN SURVEY
OK, then. Let's get some email addresses and survey historians and get their answers to our questions. Here is a sample questionnaire.

Dear Sir/Madam Historian,

please help settle a dispute.

On a public internet forum one poster claims that "Turks and Kurds fought together and founded Republic of Turkey". Another poster claims that this statement is misleading and instead asserts that "Kurds were deceived to fight for a Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood state and against their wishes, a Kurd-free secular republic was violently forced upon them.".

As a historian, the question we would like to put to you is "which of those 2 views is the most honest way to describe the founding of the Republic of Turkey"?

A brief statement outlining the reasons for your answer would be most appreciated and with your permission we would like to reproduce your comments on our website.

Thank you for your participation.
Forumers at www.cyprus-forum.com

Anyway, that's just a few of my ideas. How about you Insan ? How do you think we should test your statement for "faithful characterisation " or "misleading-ness" of history ?

"Atatürk" has been praised by former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt, and last October Mango was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the Senate of Süleyman Demirel University in Isparta. Deniz Baykal, the chairman of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), attended the ceremony and congratulated the university for honoring Mango. I too greatly appreciate Mango's studies on Turkish history and politics, which have significantly contributed to a better understanding of Turkish affairs in the West.

One of Mango's articles on Atatürk that is not so well known in Turkey is the one titled "Atatürk and the Kurds" published in the 35th issue of the journal of Middle Eastern Studies in 1999. In this article, on the basis of meticulous research on the subject, Mango reaches the following conclusion: "To sum up, during the years of the War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal recognized specifically the multiethnic character of the Muslim population of Turkey, while insisting on its fraternal unity. He also promised that local government would accommodate ethnic specificity. After 1923, any idea of the self-rule of individual Muslim ethnic communities dropped out of Turkish political agenda. Mustafa Kemal devoted his energy to the consolidation of his power and to his cultural revolution. He had little time for the Kurds … Thereafter, the requirements of creating a modern nation state took precedence. It is true that Atatürk's cultural revolution was an additional obstacle to the preservation of distinct ethnic cultures, let alone to the introduction of local self-rule. But there was no vocal demand in Turkish society for either. In the circumstances, Atatürk could delegate the management of the Kurds to his government." (p. 22)

Mango observes that, with the adoption of the Law on Resettlement in 1934, "assimilation of all the country's citizens to Turkish culture" became "official government policy … The model was, as ever, France, where Bretons, Occitanians, Savoyards, Flemings, etc. had all been assimilated into French culture." (p. 20-21)

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/colum ... kurds.html

Kurds thought it was a war to protect muslim homelands against the non-muslims.

Firstly, "to protect muslim homelands against the non-muslims" is not a political system is it ? What type of regime did Kurds think would emerge after the Muslim homelands were protected ? They certainly did not think a political vacuum would exist in the protected Muslim homelands for eternity. Do you really think the Kurds were fighting to establish a Kurd-free Secular state ? Did the Kurds know the Muslim homelands would be secularised ? Did the Kurds know the Muslim Caliphate would be destroyed ? Did the Kurds know a campaign to destroy Kurdishess would take place in these homelands ?

Secondly,.......I forgot what I was going to say

A proper understanding of Atatürk's policies after the War of Independence requires not only the consideration of the example of the French model and the influence of Namık Kemal, but also the fact that even among 19th century European liberals, the prevailing view was that a modern nation-state necessitated either forced assimilation of national minorities or the redrawing of borders. It may be argued that in the case of Turkey, the obvious choice was the first one since the aim was to create not only a modern state, but also a nation out of the many ethnic groups that were the legacy of the Ottoman Empire.

Similar policies were carried out all around the world during the establishment of nation states.

In Greece, hundred thousands of ethnic minorities were expelled and the remaining ones denied all their cultural rights, language and many other basic human rights.

Now it's ur turn to tell us abt why and how ethnic minorities in Greece were expelled and denied all their basic human rights... start with Pomaks, Chams and Macedonians...

Why should I ? Where I did I make statements like "Chams and Greeks fought together to establish the Republic of Greece" ?

and what's that got to do with your RoT claim that is the subject of this thread ?

I have more to say but I'll leave that for tomorrow.

[GreekForumer]

Insan, do you concede your statement is misleading ?

If not, devise a simple test poll or questionnaire to prove it isn't. Ball is in your court.

Then we can put this thread to rest.

[insan]

Insan, do you concede your statement is misleading ?

If not, devise a simple test poll or questionnaire to prove it isn't. Ball is in your court.

Then we can put this thread to rest.

There's nothing misleading in my statements...

During the Turkish War of Independence, a significant number of Kurds joined the troops of Mustafa Kemal who repeatedly appealed for Kurdo-Turkish unity. The religious connection was not the only reason for the absence of a strong Kurdish national movement during this period: rivalries between different Kurdish groups (primarily Alevi and Sunni), the fear of Armenian expansion against Kurdish-populated areas, and the low expectations of international support for an independent Kurdish state demobilized ethnic activists and diverted local support towards Atatürk’s forces.17

İt is crystal clear that Kurds fought together with Turkics to establish ROT...

http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewconten ... s_loizides


As I stated previously, how much Ataturk was a Turk; that much those who claim Kurdishness were Kurds in a geography that the people mingled with various ethnic groups through out milleniums...

In the age of antionalism, the dissolution of Empires and establishment of nation states; in such a geographic area; Ataturk did the most feasible and exerted to unite all of it's people under the national consiousness of Turkishness because the dominant culture was Turkic...

However; international(imperialists) and local interest groups(collabortaors of imperialists) undermined the efforts of Ataturk governments to build a nation state united under the national consciousness of Turkishness...

In between 2 world wars things were very difficult for Turkey to democratically focus on Kurdish problem... it continued to be difficult until the collapse of soviet union... although still it's too difficult; Turkish government and democratic forces of Turkey, now focused on solving the Kurdish problem...

MEQ: If Atatürk were alive today, what do you suppose he would do to solve the Kurdish
problem? Andrew Mango, a British historian writing a biography of Atatürk, says he would allow some local government and expression for Kurds while seeking to keep them under the Turkish roof.

Öcalan: We have two Atatürks, the one before and after 1925. Before 1925, Atatürk took a more positive attitude towards the Kurds. But after that date, he began a very negative policy. If Atatürk were alive today, however, he would not act like the Turkish leaders are now. He would see the bankrupt result of his policy and change it. I agree that if Atatürk were alive today, he would change Turkey's policy.

http://www.meforum.org/399/abdullah-oca ... everywhere

May your turn comes with Macedonians and Chams in Greece...

[GreekForumer]

Insan, do you concede your statement is misleading ?

If not, devise a simple test poll or questionnaire to prove it isn't. Ball is in your court.

Then we can put this thread to rest.

There's nothing misleading in my statements...

Really? Which of the following 2 statements is closest to the truth?

1. Kurds were persuaded to fight for a secular republic and in accordance with their wishes, they got a secular republic
2. Kurds were deceived to fight for a Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood state and against their wishes, a Kurd-free secular republic was violently forced upon them.

[Lit]

The Kurds used turkey to help them fight their age old enemy the Armenians.....If the Kurds get their own country then the Armenian genocide's will have to fall on the laps as well...They were put in charge of marching the Armenians out of the empire!!!

I believe Apo has already apologized for the Kurdish part in all this. Why dont the Turks follow his foot steps and do the same?

[runaway]

The Kurds used turkey to help them fight their age old enemy the Armenians.....If the Kurds get their own country then the Armenian genocide's will have to fall on the laps as well...They were put in charge of marching the Armenians out of the empire!!!

I believe Apo has already apologized for the Kurdish part in all this. Why dont the Turks follow his foot steps and do the same?

Latest we heard from Apo was that he liked Turks and that he was half Turkish himself. such a coward

[SKI-preo]

Ha ha ha " to establish Rot". This "rotten" country now thinks it will join the EU.

[Lit]

The Kurds used turkey to help them fight their age old enemy the Armenians.....If the Kurds get their own country then the Armenian genocide's will have to fall on the laps as well...They were put in charge of marching the Armenians out of the empire!!!

I believe Apo has already apologized for the Kurdish part in all this. Why dont the Turks follow his foot steps and do the same?

Latest we heard from Apo was that he liked Turks and that he was half Turkish himself. such a coward

You do not listen. I stated that Apo apologized on behalf of the Kurds for the crimes committed against the Armenians. Isnt it time for the Turks to do the same?