Divided Kurds in Turkey and in other Nations

Although there are huge divisions among the Kurds themselves most Kurdish nationalists dream of a state that would embarrass all the areas in which there is a Kurdish bulk and all the Kurds, no matter which languages they speak or religions they practice. still the desire for a Kurdish state is much stronger among misfire's Kurds than among the residents of Iran and Iraq where, though frequently subject to considerable discrimination, "ethnic minorities have real official recognition" (Entessar 9).

The Kurds are an ancient people who indication their descent from the ancient Medes who ruled what is now Iran until 550 BC when they were conquered by the Persians. In the seventh century the Kurds, along with most of the region, were forcibly converted to Islam during the Arab conquests. After the sixteenth century the Kurds came "to the fore as important players in regional politics" during the struggles between the Persian Safavid dynasty and the pouf Turks (Entessar 3). Numerous small Kurdish principalities flourished and survived within the Ottoman Empire. After the empire's disintegration following World War I, "the Kurds step up their struggle for self-determination" (Entessar 3). But, unlike the Christian Armenians who gained from the European rest narrow downment, the Islamic Kurds "lacked both a national approach and global support" and were incorporated into the bare-assed Turkish state (O'Ballance 12).

The prideful European powers accepted in

Gunter, Michael M. The Kurds and the incoming of Turkey. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.

" mound But Far from Out." Economist 1 Aug. 1998: 44-45.

Some claimed that the return to civilian rule would improve chances for Kurdish rights. But the election of Prime Minister Turgut Ozal and his Motherland company in 1983, and their subsequent continuation of military law and marvelous military buildup in Kurdistan, convinced Ocalan and the PKK that there was nothing to be gained from participation in ordinary politics. By 1984 "a sloping war, the Turkish army against the Kurdish population, had a new holding [as] for the first time in 45 years, Kurdish rebels were guesswork back" (Ciment 49).

Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s the PKK mounted a double assault against Turkey--military and terrorist.

But Ocalan's efforts also received runty support because his stated goals were so unrealistic. None of the countries with Kurdish-majority regions "had, or has, the slightest invention of permitting chunks of its land be chopped off to represent another, rival, country" ("Down" 44). Yet the activities of the PKK served to bring the Kurds' problems to international caution as nothing else had. Although the United States and the rest of NATO consider Turkey an invaluable ally, and have, therefore, turned an official blind eye to the Kurds' problems, this new awareness led to a "shrinking" in Ocalan's demands as he began, in 1998, to admit to being "ready to settle for political and cultural rights rather than outright Kurdish statehood" ("Down" 45). Despite the change, however, Ocalan's capture in 1999 was greeted by the Turkish regime and people with joy and the hope that Kurdish terrorism had last ended. Yet when a Kurdish politician linked to the PKK was let out of jail in 1997 "30,000 people--mostly youngsters--turned out to meet him" and, as a local journalist noted, "these are all PKK members of the approaching" ("Unwinnable" 59).

The economic corruption of
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