Turkey’s (love) for the Kurds.
Washington Kurdish Institute
By: #Polat Can#

A response to recent comments by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish officials describing Kurds as (brothers) or expressing (love) for them.
Successive regimes and governments occupying all parts of Kurdistan (i.e., the parts of Kurdistan within the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey) have historically denied Kurdish rights and the existence of the Kurdish people, and persists to the present day. These various leaders and parties have often assigned the Kurdish people strange and insulting names such as “mountain Turks”, ”Persian nomads”, or “sons of ghosts”. Such descriptions have been used for decades to delegitimize, disrespect, offend, and degrade the Kurdish people within a society, denying their very identity and leaving the Kurds with no space for friendship or co-existence
These regimes and authorities who partake in the occupation of Kurdistan have also opposed and aimed to crush any Kurdish movements that demand basic cultural rights and equality. They have developed a special vocabulary to describe the Kurdish movements and their members, using terms such as “rioters”, “saboteurs”, “atheists”, “separatists”, “terrorists”, “traitors”, “remnants of the Armenians”, “a second Israel”, “reactionaries”, “communists”, “infidels”, “enemies of God” and more.
In the recent years, thanks in part to the tremendous developments in communications technology, the Kurds were able, to an extent, to reach out to the world and generate some international interest in and sympathy for the plight of their people. As a result of successive uprisings, the oppressive regimes have changed their tone toward the Kurds in their official speeches, despite not substantially changing their behaviour, which remains characterised by policies of persecution and subjugation. These regimes have started saying, “We are not against the Kurdish people, but we are fighting the terrorists/separatists,” or “We protect our Kurdish citizens” – all while continuing to kill hundreds of Kurds who they deem to be terrorists and restrict expressions of Kurdish rights and aspirations.
Of course, these oppressive regimes have little problem in finding some individuals who are willing to accept a financial reward to work for the institutions of the oppressor and against their own people. For example often, Erdogan is fond of one minister in his cabinet for being of Kurdish origin. Such people are labelled “good Kurds” by the oppressors, and these individuals are used for public relations purposes. Erdogan has said, “Supremacy is not being Kurdish or Turkish. He who is closer to Allah is supreme,” expressing a belief in Islamist supremacy while denying indisputably factual charges of ethnic chauvinism leveled against himself and his regime. The reality is that maintaining such state of hypocrisy, circumventing the truth and attempting to deceive the world, is a technique used by all such repressive regimes, states, and governments that occupy other peoples’ lands.
In recent history, there are many examples of how these regimes have imposed their brutality. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, for example, recruited some Kurds to serve in irregular military units against their own people. Saddam and his regime called these Kurds “fursan” (meaning “knights” in Arabic), though the Kurdish people derisively labelled them “jash,” a Kurdish term for a donkey foal used to refer to traitors. During these times, Saddam would often say that he is not against the Kurds, but only against uprisings led by Iraq’s two major Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, or, as he often called them, “the saboteurs.” From 1979 to 2003, Saddam presided over the killing of more than182.000 Kurds – leading the genocidal “Anfal Operations”, a multi-stage campaign of mass murder and displacement of the Kurdish people, and used chemical weapons against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. Saddam’s war against the Kurdish people in Iraq resulted in the destruction of hundreds of Kurdish villages and towns and the displacement of tens of thousands of people.
In Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic regime of Iran, also claimed that he was not “against the Kurds,” but only fighting the “enemies of Allah” in Kurdistan. During his war on the Kurds, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) committed tens of massacres against the Kurdish population. So did the state of Syria under successive regimes, arguing that they were not against the Kurds, but only against “the separatists and the agents of the imperialists.” Out of its own “love” for the Kurds, 283 Kurdish children were burned alive in Amuda during movie screening. The Syrian regime systematically pursued policies based in enforcing Arab supremacy, and stripped the citizenship status of a quarter million Kurds in the country and displaced tens of thousands of Kurds, replacing them with Arab tribes. Kurdish language, music, dance, and clothing were all banned in Syria.
In Turkey, over the past century, various governments have shown their “love” for the Kurds by pursuing a policy of genocide and Turkification of the Kurdish areas – erasing the Kurdish identity in various ways, changing the names of Kurdish towns and cities, banning the Kurdish language, jailing Kurdish politicians, and even executing Kurdish leaders. Turkey has previously restricted or banned Kurdish music, dance, and celebration of the Kurdish new year. Similar to other regimes oppressing the Kurdish people, Turkish officials repeatedly say “we are not against the Kurds, but the terrorists.” Turkish governments have executed several Kurdish leaders, such as Sheikh Said Piran in 1925 despite his status as an Islamic cleric, and the location of his tomb remains unknown almost a century later. The Turkish government also executed Seyid Riza at the age of 75 for leading an uprising in Dersim (Tunceli) against the Turkification efforts of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which aimed to forcibly promote cultural homogeneity in the country by various means, including involuntary relocations. The Turkish state has continued to use the same policies, and has committed additional massacres, such as those seen in Cizre, Colemerg (Hakkari), Amed (Diyarbakir), Sirnak, Nusaybin, and other areas.
Returning to the Kurdish issue in Syria and the sudden “care” shown by the Turkish state toward the Kurds within Syria’s borders, Turkey’s leaders have repeatedly announced plans invade the Kurdish region of Syria. As in other similar cases, Turkish officials now express their “love” for the Syrian Kurds and state a desire to invade the otherwise peaceful area to “save” the people from the Syrian Democratic Forces (who have actually protected the people of these regions from various threats for years). Indeed, the Syrian Kurds had previously experienced the love and care felt by Turkish authorities for them for five centuries under the Ottoman empire and their brutal system of governance.
The reality is that Turkey was the biggest supporter of the Syrian regime since Syria signed the Adana Protocol in 1998, agreeing to work with Turkey against the Kurds, using the pretext of opposing the PKK. After ending this agreement, Turkey opened up its borders to various jihadist groups and the extremists, allowing them to freely cross into Syria. Over the last few years, Turkey helped many terror groups attack the Syrian Kurds and attempt to remove them from their region. Later, Turkey chose to enter Syria with its own military, occupy Syrian land, and support terrorist groups under the framework of military operations known as “Euphrates Shield” and “Olive Branch”. Today, Turkey and allied jihadist groups control a swath of land along the border between Syria and Turkey which runs about 150 miles and includes a number of Syrian towns and cities such as Jarablus and Afrin. Turkey publicly expresses its desire to attack and invade more areas in Syria, including the city of Manbij and the eastern Euphrates area in order to further divide the country and introduce more chaos into Syria and the region.
Turkey’s claims to “love” and “have no problem” with Kurds, and Turkey’s claim to want to “protect” the Kurds is indisputably false. Even if we ignore the numerous Turkish atrocities committed against many thousands of Kurds in Turkey over the past decade, we cannot avoid a discussion of what Turkey has done in northern Syria since its occupation of the Afrin region on March 18, 2018, and its conduct in other Syrian towns over the past two years:
Before the Turkish invasion of Jarablus , Azaz, and al-Bab, there were 130 Kurdish villages with thousands of residents in these areas. Days after the invasion, the Turkish government emptied the Kurdish villages of their residents and replaced them with families of the jihadist groups that Turkey has supported in Syria’s civil war.
. When Turkey occupies territory in Syria, the Turkish flag is raised, and a picture of Erdogan is displayed.
. Turkey has changed the names of villages, towns, cities, and streets from Kurdish names to Turkish names.
. In Afrin, a city and region which formerly had a majority Kurdish population, Turkey has banned the Kurdish language, and only allows Turkish and Arabic .
. languages to be spoken. Additionally, soon after initiating their occupation of Afrin, the Turkish military and members of their allied jihadist groups destroyed an important Kurdish symbol, the statue of Kawa, a legendary Kurdish blacksmith who symbolizes the defeat of dictatorship and liberation.
. Turkey destroyed the Kurdish cemetery in Afrin that contained the remains of those who fell in the fight against the aggression of terrorist groups. This cemetery was hallowed ground for the people of Afrin, honoring the memories of the men and woman of Afrin who fought for freedom.
. As a consequence of the Turkish invasion of Afrin, Syria, about 400,000 Kurds were displaced, while their homes were taken over by the families of jihadists from other parts of Syria.
. Since the occupation of Afrin, Turkey and its jihadists allies have seized all of the olive farming land owned by the Kurds, and burned thousands of trees in Afrin’s forests.
. In addition to the Kurdish people, religious minorities as Christians and Yazidis have also been victims of the atrocities committed by Turkey-backed jihadist groups in Afrin, resulting in their displacement.

I think it is clear none of the Syrian people want Turkey and the jihadist groups supported by Turkey to take control to take over any part of Syria except those who also subscribe to a jihadist doctrine and accept neo-Ottoman rule of Syria. We, as Syrians, as members of all components of Syrian society, do not want anything from Turkey, nor do we wish to be enemies with Turkey. We simply want Turkey not to intervene in our affairs and occupy our lands. If they are truthful about their “love” and desire to treat Kurds as “brothers”, they should grant basic rights to the 25 million Kurds living within Turkey’s borders. They should release thousands of political prisoners, allow Kurds to freely participate in the country’s political system, recognize the massacres perpetrated against the Kurds in the past, and allow the Kurdish language to be spoken. For us Syrian Kurds, we would much rather reach agreements within Syria than being part of a dark occupation that slaughters civilians.
Polat Can is a senior adviser to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and former Representative of the People`s Protection Units (YPG) to the International Coalition.
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