From: ko@cns.umist.ac.uk (Kutluk Ozguven)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: The Kurdish Autonimous Region
Keywords: Kurds in Armenia / Kurds in Azerbaijan
Date: 6 Apr 92 14:39:55 GMT
Organization: UMIST, Manchester, England.

ahmet@eecg.toronto.edu (Ahmet Parlakbilek) writes:

>In article <ktj82sINNp9k@girtab.usc.edu> madjdsad@girtab.usc.edu (Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi) writes:
>>(taken from a chart handed out at a UC Berkeley symposium on the Kurdish
>>people held in 1988):
>>
>>The Kurdish Population is 26,000,000+
>>
>>Kurds/Turkey: 12,000,000+
>>Kurds/Iran:    8,000,000+
>>Kurds/Iraq:    4,000,000+
>>Kurds/Syria:   1,000,000+
>>Kurds/USSR:    1,000,000+


>I really did not understand what this guy _really_ wants..)

>Regards,
>Ahmet Parlakbilek 


Neither did I Ahmet, because

The Turkish Population [that live in non-Turkish countries]

Turks/Russian F:  15,000,000+
Turks/Iran:       15,000,000+
Turks/China:      15,000,000+
Turks/Bulgaria:    1,500,000+
Turks/Iraq:        1,500,000+
Turks/Afghanistan: 1,000,000+
Turks/[Syria,Greece,
Romania,Yugoslavia,
Moldavia, Cyprus]    150,000+ EACH
----------------------------------

With the worst calculations, we have landless Turkish 
communities scattered from Hungaria to China of over 60,000,000.

(I am not including the immigrant communities in Europe and
America which are over millions - but the populations that
has lived there over five centuries. I am not including the
newly independent Turkish republics either)

We are not shouting and crying for the establishment of a Turkish
state including this 60,000,000+ landless and 100,000,000+ independent
Turkish communities from Serbia to Western China because we know that 
there are other peoples living in between, and it would be irrational
to think that such a state can exist more than ten minutes. Instead
we are for establishment of good relations between the TUrkish
community and the titular community that govern them. 

So what does the Kurds think ? There will be Turks, Arabs, Turkomans,
Azeris, Zazas, Assyrians, Yezidis and many other small ethnic 
communities between 30 and 40 per cent  in *any* map of
Kurdistan regardless of its size. Can we establish democracy and
freedom in such a land that have little experience in government
and democracy. The day such a Kurdistan formed others will uprise.
Kurds will uprise for political and tribal differences too. 
I assure you, if there had been an independent Kurdistan that
covers Kirkuk, as proposed by Kurdish leaders, the oil-rich town 
with has a Turkoman majority and Arab minority will rise for its
independence (nationalism brings nationalism, see Balkans). 
And other than Kirkuk, there is almost no natural
resources in that region. The only economic prospect for Kurds is the GAP 
project of $ 30,000,000,000 in southeastern Turkey that is being
built by the taxes we pay in Western Turkey. So instead of
stupid tribalism, and provoked violence, Kurds should calm down, work
for their land to make it fertile together with Turkish government,
learn the rules of democracy and play logical role to bring the
countries in the region more close by trade, so as to form a 
no-borders trade zone that will form them a free country anyway.
The rest is the rhetorical melodrama: that PKK fights for justice
and good and for the Marx/Lenin/Apo line of peoples.

Geography and etnography does not allow us to have a country for 
every people, and if it did, the 60,000,000+ landless Turks have 
precedence over 26,000,000+ landless Kurds.

Kutluk