Friday, October 29th, 2004

I just had a fascinating conversation with a Kurdish friend of mine in the political science department, along with another poli sci guy. We were talking about American politics, and my Kurdish buddy said he is worried about Kerry because the Armenian-Americans support him. Turkey has a very messy history with Armenia; both sides are still very concerned with a lot of violence that happen around 1915 and who was more bad during that time. Anyway, we ended up talking a lot about Kurdish rights in Turkey and the problems that surround that issue.

I asked if they thought that an independent Kurdish state could ever form. My friend thought yes; he thinks we’ll see it during our lifetimes. Perhaps as part of the Iraq mess we could see land given up in northern Iraq and south-eastern Turkey. I was surprised at this and questioned whether Turkey would ever willingly give up their borders. The other guy said he fears that in the future there will be a rather messy conflict that mirrors what happened in Yugoslavia. We talked about the equal rights movement in America and the steps that it has taken there. They were very envious and said that the Turkish government would kill and jail anyone involved in that before it ever built momentum.

The Kurdish issue is so interesting here. I can hardly comprehend the history, feelings and emotions that are behind it. Turkey has made some steps in recognizing the Kurdish people as legitimate people with equal rights, but I don’t really see those being realized in everyday life here. There is still great prejudice in the way people think and act towards Kurds. There are also many other ethnic groups here in Turkey that aren’t even recognized by the government as official minority groups. I think currently the government only acknowledges religious groups as minorities (please someone correct me if I’m wrong). I see this as a serious issue that has to be tackled if Turkey ever hopes of joining the EU. It will be difficult because so many Turks don’t even see it as an issue. One person said something interesting: “How would you feel if the black population in the US starting vying for independence?” Truthfully, I would be sad because it means our equal rights movement would have been all for nothing. I also don’t believe it would happen.

And wow, an independent Kurdish state would have enemies on all sides, with no support from superpowers like Israel receives. It would be very hard going.

There is so much here that I know so little about!!!

Also, this morning I went with Fatih Balci to the Middle Eastern Technical University campus, where he is studying Civil Engineering. This is actually an American school started in the 1950’s sometime. It really did remind me of an American campus, which was very strange. Anyway, Fatih is really friendly and nice. We only hung out for a few hours but it was a very good time. I hope to see more of him in the future.