Turkey’s Kurds: Guests at a Bitter Feast: They’re Little-Known Victims of Poverty, Violence, Oppression, Exploitation

          
          Turkeys Kurds Guests at a B tter Feast The re L ttIe Known V ct ms ot Po ert , V oknce, Oppr
          Aliman I D
          Los Angeics i,nu s (1923 CuitentFilc), D c c 13, )79
          ioQues H s oncal Ne papers T os Ange es Ti 1 es (I I 1 9S7)
          pg Dl i
          Turkey's Kurds: Guests at a Bitter Feast
          yT ft ALLMAN
          IVER L Turkey—It s 835 am in this
          medieval Kurd h town and the stark
          morning light makes the unsheathed
          bayonets of the Turkish so1dier glint like
          Ottoman swords. There seems to be soldier
          in the doorway of every shop. Three Kurds
          already have been shot dead on the main
          street today.
          ‘Yes yes three ar dead, nd t,s n even
          9 a.m ” Th local leader of Prime Minister
          Bulent Etevit' Repubh an P op1&s Party
          roars with laughter, and walks with a limp.
          You see ” he said, “that s only breakfast here
          rnSiverek .”
          The problems of the 4 million Kurds in Iran
          .nd the 2 m on . 1r a. h2ve rpceived f r
          more attention But Turkey s 6 miUioi Kurd
          also find themselves unwilling guests at a
          bitter fees of poverty and violence. foreign
          cppre 1on and feudal exploitatrnn by their
          vm kind.
          “You Am&rnans condemn Khomeini
          because he stands ICurd up against the wall
          in Iran and shoots theme” complains Au R. a
          I9 y ar old I urdish youth who 1earn d bi
          fluent German while he was a guest worker in
          Europe. ‘ But of course Turkey is too demo
          cratie, too Western too progressive too much
          your precious NATO ally for you to notice
          wha goes on bere,”
          Like a1m st U Kurds wham one meets in
          Turkey Au is eager to talk, and afraid to gve
          h f l1 nair Ws b tterne5 i unde standab1e.
          This town is only 375 miles southe t of the
          Turkish capital of Ankara but rn terms of
          social justice it irnght be a m llion nules The
          contrast between Turkish Kurdizt n and the
          rest of urkey is shoddng as shocking as the
          gap between Park Avenue and Selma, Ala.,
          once wa
          For 50 years Turkey has been a nation of
          ambitious, Western style ref rrns mass edu
          cation, universal suffrage, separation of
          church and staW, equal rights for women, free
          speeth trade union rights and sweeping land
          reform that, in most pam of Turkey, means
          those who till th knd also own t. But not for
          the Kurd .
          Here in Siv rak it s as though those two
          generations of reform never happened at d l i.
          Women cower behind the veil, Unschooled
          children run the streets. On the farms and in
          the villages there ar none of the tractors,
          insecticides, television sets and electric lights
          that oi e sees in other rural rea of Turkey.
          The young thildren, illiterate women and
          embittered men seen scratchrng the rocky soil
          are not Turkish farmers. They are Kurdish
          serfs landless peasants, rn constant deb to
          thc handful of Kurdish agas ,” or feudal lords,
          who own almost all the land and act as if the
          Dark Ages had never come to an end.
          Why have the reforms that have changed
          the face of the rest of Turkey gone uflimp1e
          mented here? Aside from Turkish chauvinism
          and neglect, th explanation goes to the eart
          f Turkey 's u1tradern rati farm f gov rn
          ment
          Thanks to prop i n l repre entatiQfl t is
          increasingly diffi u1t for either of Turkey's
          major, mainstream po1 tica1 parties to win a
          ruling majonty in p r1iainent Both Prune
          Minister E evit and his arch rival, Suleyman
          Demir l, head of the opposition Just Party.
          have found their social programS the hostag
          Cf sfl 1L arch onservative parties, with
          which they have been obliged to form coall
          tions in order to govern at all.
          “Siv rek, like the rest of Turkey, i caught
          in a vicious circle,” the local po1it ca1 1ead r
          said. The ga force their sei s to vote as
          they wish. The reactio 1ar1eS and landowners
          elected to p rh m nt here in eastern Turkey
          prevent either major party from forming a
          strong government in Mkara With no strong
          governmenl, land reform goes unenforced
          thus maintaining the powers of feudal lords”
          Though Eeevfl s party is somewhat to the
          left of the Den rat c Party in the United
          States,' clings to powcr only through a coah
          Oppression, Exploitation
          standards of all is Kurdish Turkey likely t
          explvdt mtu a mdJur as have Kurdish
          re s of Iran and Iraq
          It seems unlikely for several reasons, For
          al it economic soci I and political problems,
          the Turkish state is probably the strongest
          and most cohesive in the Midd'e East. And t
          also seems likely that th Kurds own internal
          divisions will cantrnue to exploit them even
          more cruelly than out ider do
          But there is one new element in th age old
          Kurdish history of rnt rna thv on and
          foreign conquest and cooptian Far the first
          tune in history, a whole gei eration f young
          Kurds is learning to read and wilte, and i
          seeing the outside world for it e1f,
          j worked in a cafeteria før two years rn
          Mu inter,” explained Mehmet Polat, a former
          guest worlcer “until the Germans bern me
          back I 've not juzt seen Istanbul, I 've seen
          Munich and Berlin He went on “Its all very
          clear how the world is connected, even here in
          Siverek . Because tb agas h4d all the knd and
          my family had none, my parents were never
          edu ted , And because they were ignorant
          teen ager when they married today we are
          12 brothers and sisters with n money, no jobs
          and no hope,”
          P nothcally the world deve1 ps a htt1
          sympathy for the Kurds—especially when
          their oppressors are people whom one does
          nDt like But rn th end, mere irnportan
          facwrs Ie ses on bases , supplies of oil,
          strategic stability —always outwe gh an
          ob ure if romantic case of human rights The
          Tur} s—1ike the baq s and ranian will
          alw3ys be left, once the headlines fade, to do
          with their Kurth what they Will But the time
          s long gone when the Kurd could be
          deceived as to the nature of th r fate 0
          7' D. Al2r,w., z contr fr t&n editor of
          Harper s m 2 ne. His artwle was slLpplied b
          P czfic News Service
          They're Little Known Victims of Poverty, Violence,
          tion with groups that would make nght wing
          Repub1i aflS seem a vacates of radical reform
          The right winge s' price for supporting Ece
          viV Thmds off the privileges that their main
          fin nciai backers mostly big landowners
          here in eastern Turkey—are amaous o retain
          The result s that the d mocrat c syStem
          that Turkey's Western friends so often admire
          a tive1y supports what even Turkish affici I
          here cncede z a gxossly un3ust social systeni
          While e1 ewhere in Thrkey the state serves
          as a force for devel pm nt and a court of last
          resort for the poor, here Turkey's code of civil
          law protects he ag s' property iights as uc
          essfu1ly as its Swig mod 1 protects a nuin
          bered bank account, in Zurich One s s Turk
          !sh gendarmes patr l1ing fields to p o ect the
          landlord? men from outraged peasants.
          The de facto alliance between the Io a1
          landlords nd the government in Ankara is as
          old as the prrnclpie of divide-and ru1e Like
          the Turks, the Iranians and Iraqis also have
          preferred policies of neg ect and of indirect
          rule through conservative Kurdish elites, of
          any real attempt to so.ve the social and
          economic problems that beset the Kurds no
          matter under what fbg they hve
          The result in Turkey is that if the Kurdish
          provinces were allowed to vote on th ir
          future rather than just elect depu i s to par
          hament it is doubtful whether anyone under
          40 would vote to reTi am a part of the Turkish
          state, We re not 1ik the Kurds in Iran ,' a
          member f the natio ial teathers orgaruzatlon
          said. ‘We want to a rndeo nd n
          So far the Turks rcmain unwilling even to
          concede officially that the Kurds are Kurds.
          They re called mountain Turks” in govern
          ment parlance Kurds are forbidden to speak
          Kurd sh in government offices schoo s and
          other public pIa s,
          With Turkey's Kurds in many ways worse
          off than thcse in Iran and Iraq where oil
          wealth, t least, s rve to raise the living
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