By: Xebat Serhadi
April 13, 2006
 
Being a Kurdish activist in early 1990s in North Kurdistan or Turkish cities, which have a large Kurdish Population, was a very dangerous. We were reading large number of disappearances and torture of Kurdish activists for simply reading pro-Kurdish newspapers like Yeni Ulke (New Country). I, as an activist, became familiar with the brutal side of the Turkish Republic on May 17th where I was tortured inhumanly and after a more than a decade; I still feel both physical and emotional impact of the torture. Those of us from North Kurdistan and Turkey know that May 19th is a national holiday in Turkey, which is dedicated to the Youth. On this day, many sport activities are organized and speeches made to highlight importance of the youth in the advancement of the society and the nation. After my torture incident, which almost paralyzed me, I told my self that Ataturk founded a nation that tortured youth, not emphasized importance of youth’s achievement.
 
Then coming to the West with the above perception about Turkey, I learned that Demirel (From 1960s to 1990s, took various government positions including Prime Ministership and the Presidency) had asked Tansu Ciller (a Professor at University of Connecticut) to be became the Prime Minister. I became very happy to hear that she was going to be the Prime Minister of Turkey because she had been a professor in the West and I thought she had learned the values such as freedom of speech/association and basic human rights principles, which West cherishes. To my dismay, I shortly founded that she was going to represent the worst era, as far as Kurds concerned. If we categorize the brutality, which Kurds faced during each Prime Minister for last two decades or so, Ciller’s era will beat all the others by a magnitude of order. It was during Ciller’s time, we lost great Kurdish writer and journalist Musa Anter (Ape Musa), Politician Vedat Aydin and thousands of more great Kurds. After Ciller’s conduct, I began to ask myself about reasons that made her to be so cruel and I concluded that the "system" (or some people called it "Deep State") had made her so vicious.
 
Was it the system which made Ciller so cruel or did she represent a typical Turkish view? So, I began engaging discussions with a number of Turkish students in order to answer the above question. I saw mini Cillers in every one of the students as soon as I opened the Kurdish issue. When discussing other issues, you would think that they were raised in the West, but the moment you mention Kurdish issue, they suddenly turned into a Middle Eastern, which West became familiar with the September the 11th.
 
Fast forward to the current Prime Minister, Erdogan, who is known to be anti-anything Kurdish. When he took the office, one of the first statements he made was that he was against a Kurdish State in South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq), which was discussed during the pre-Iraqi Freedom War. He said, "if a Kurdish state was born in Latin America, we would still be against it". Erdogan also gave green light to his generals and police to kill Kurdish children and women during the latest struggle in last three weeks.
 
Because of the above reasons, I was very surprised to read that Kak Lukman Barwari’s article on Kurdistanobserver.com, "An Interesting Kurdish-Turkish Encounter!" about Turkish Counselor General’ s attitude (positive!) toward them during the protest (for latest massacre of Kurds) in Los Angeles. International Peace Brokers such as George Mitchell (For Good Friday Accord in Northern Ireland) and the Norwegian Delegation (which has been trying to make peace between Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers) and the Turkish side need to know that if Turkish side takes one step, Kurds will take 10 steps to bring peace to Kurdistan and Turkey.