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KurdistanObserver.com
Response
to Dr. Hawramany’s Op/Ed
"Turtles
Can Fly: Distortion Of Facts and Negative Image For Kurds"
By: Fredrick Cloyd
July
27, 2005
Dear Readers and Dr. Nazhad
Khasraw Hawramany;
This is a short response to the
Op/Ed piece on the movie Turtles Can Fly that Dr. Hawramany has written. I
believe that we shall critique and endlessly question ourselves and the world,
making for a better world, a more just and powerful and compassionate world,
more full of questions than answers.
I, as a scholar-activist myself,
agree with the facts you present in your Op/Ed piece regarding how ‘the Kurds’
are ‘more modern’ than people think and that Turtles Can Fly represents the
Kurds as anti-modern or ‘primitive.’ Also, you mention the movie’s
anti-American’ points.
Firstly, as an scholar of
social-cultural anthropology, people know that there is no ‘one’ Kurdish
experience. I have found, in my experience, that many people in one area, of one
socio-economic class, will not know of and/or experience the same things as in
other areas. This is always true. So to say that ‘Kurds’ do not experience
something or know something or not know something—is also a distortion of the
reality of the diversity of Kurdish experience. In my experience so far, as an
American, very often the most privileged people—albeit in the most kindest and
empowering of intentions, speak for everyone in that group. But the privileged
–even as a Kurd, may carry the residuals of colonial oppression: the wish to be
the master.
To struggle against the
Master—the privileged, sometimes the colonized want the same for all of the
oppressed, wanting what the master has and props him/herself up to be. So all
Kurds are Middle Class and educated? I think that this also is oppressive
against Kurds. We must honor the Kurds who did not have the privilege (or the
curse) of being educated, who were forced to not be educated by the villagers,
their families, or the police, or simply because they had to work to eat. There
were villages—as you may know, whose men were killed or taken away and were left
with women and children. In Northern Kurdistan, in my knowledge so far, many
Kurds were controlled by fundamentalist Muslim indoctrination—one of the many
strategies of the United States government, a few European countries, and
Turkey. This would keep the Kurds divided. However, it is not only political.
This is *lived.* Not all Kurds are middle class and educated. As
horrible oppressions were experienced in Southern and Eastern Kurdistan, the
experiences in Northern Kurdistan exposed Southeastern Turkey to more
psychological brutalization at the hands of government-appointed Kurds,
government-appointed village leaders, the village guard system, and the
US-inspired Islamicization of areas in Kurdistan and Central Asia—as buffers
against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. Even in the US, where I
live, I see the effects of people who *do not speak English* and are *not
educated* and have horrendous stories to tell.
It is a travesty to make their
experiences subordinate to privileged Kurds’ experiences and words. Privileged
Kurds could do a better service by including all Kurdish experience and speaking
for a peaceful solution and justice for all Kurds and all people everywhere, not
privileging a certain perspective that wants to make the Kurds middle class, and
thus, trying to make the Kurds more like everyone else so as not to be ashamed.
We must acknowledge that the devastation of the indigenous cultures,
populations and traditions by modernization and the primacy of ‘nation’ is not a
stranger to Kurds. Assimilating all Kurds under a single identity and experience
is not a fruitful exercise, demoting and oppressing village Kurds, Kurds who do
not speak English, or Kurds who are not educated enough, etc. I feel it is
important, possibly, to create unification for Kurds. Can this *not* be
done without AGAIN oppressing certain Kurds because they are supposedly ‘not
primitive.’ Whose idea is the concept ‘primitive’? Why are Kurds using the
categories of language such as ‘primitive’ –which is used to oppress people and
make it seem that certain people are unworthy? Can we not examine our own
assimilation—as educated people, and to create better ways of uplifting the
Kurds, making certain Kurds invisible because we, ourselves, are ashamed of them
being those terms such as ‘primitive’?
Also, regarding Anti-American
representations in the movie—as an American citizen, those of us who speak
against our own government’s policies are also watched closely and made abnormal
and second-class. The section of Dr. Hawramany’s Op/Ed piece that speaks of
America’s ‘good’ points is simplistic. To be sure, without the US and its
allies’ ‘No-Fly Zone’, the Kurds in that area of Kurdistan would possibly be
further annihilated. That area is thriving in large part, due to the Americans.
But it is also because of the
industriousness, strength, creativity, and fortitude of the Kurds in that area
and around it that have allowed survival. Do we know how many Kurdish orphans
there are? How did they survive? Were they in nicely-built schools or in nice
orphanages? And even so, were those buildings and organizations built in a
day? Oppression has effects. How did the Kurds survive? By middle class
ways? Did all Kurdish children speak English? Do all adults care for a
stranger’s children? Even in the United States, this is not possible. ‘Turtles
Can Fly’ presents a portrait of *strength* not primitiveness. So
children who sell guns did not exist? How else were they supposed to eat or
care for their little brothers and sisters? How were young boys creating their
sense of manhood? It is closely related, is it not?
To say that these are ‘false’
representations is a way of oppressing certain Kurds, while making other Kurds
who are more privileged as the only ones who can speak ‘the truth’ about the
Kurds. How can there be a single truth? Why are certain Kurds unwilling to care
about the Kurds who do not have the privileges of the others who have privilege
and who can speak the ‘right’ languages or have the right religion or be the
right way to be a woman? Secular Kurds who may have had the privilege of being
secular, may not understand that certain religious doctrines are not primitive,
they are part of the person’s identity and must be challenged with care.
My last comment is on the fact
that ‘Turtles Can Fly’ is a movie. The director *never* said or intended
for the movie to represent *all* Kurds. How many Kurdish filmmakers are
there? Not enough. But to speak of one of the few directors there are in the
world who speak to certain Kurdish realities as misprepresenting is at best, a
misrepresentation of the filmmaker’s intentions and focus. When I circulate
amongst Kurdish friends, they speak of how realistic the movie was. Are they
lying?
It is true that most movies about
Kurds are mono-dimensional. They portray poorer Kurds, they portray their
oppressions—violence, state power, racism, dominant religious practices, etc as
well as the aspects of community cooperation, dignity, and strength. To show a
movie, then, of the more privileged Kurds would help, perhaps, in making the
Kurds less mono-dimensional, showing the diversity of Kurdish lives and
aspirations. But it would be sad, Mr. Hawramany, if all movies, now, were to
portray Kurdish villagers in a way that seems to be suggested in your Op/ed
piece on July 10, 2005. Would that not be another form of oppression? How
shall educated people write? For whom? Who do we leave out and oppress (make
angry, sad, and vengeful as a consequence) in our wanting to uplift our people?
I am simply saying that we need
to pay attention to the diversity of our communities and not be so quick in
determining what is best for everyone in a way the makes lives invisible. The
poor must be given a chance. So far, from most of the Kurdish politicians’
words, there is not much said about the poor and the hungry and the illiterate.
They are not important. Assimilation is a dangerous and complex game. The game
can be won if we are paying attention to the diversity and the complexity of
experience and to empower the voices of their concerns rather than covering them
over with our own.
Thank you Dr. Hawramany, for your
care. I am just an American, but I wanted to voice my unity with you in loving
the Kurdish people and want freedom. I am differing with you on your wish to
make one-sided points regarding the movie “Turtles Can Fly.”
In Solidarity,
Fredrick Cloyd
San Francisco, California, USA |
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