THE MIRACLE A True Story Gürsel, invented a slogan which he insisted should be used: "Anyone who calls you a Kurd should have his face spat upon!" Any person who was brave enough to insist on claiming he was Kurdish was tortured and faced economic annihilation.    The Turkish mass media never provide any information about acts of state terrorism. On the contrary, from time to time the Turkish state is presented as a compassionate and caring body that actually offers assistance to the wave of Kurds "voluntarily" migrating (according to a report in the newspaper, Milliyet, on 6th November, 1990).    The hypocrisy and cant displayed in 1990 was no different from that of 1916 when Mehmet Talat issued an edict requiring those who were forced "by any legal or illegal means" to flee their homes to sign a statement to the effect that they were migrating "of their own free will".    On the one hand, we have Turkish police raiding the camps at Kiziltepe in October, 1990, confiscating textbooks, pencils and notebooks and banning the education of Kurdish children, who were terrorised and left illiterate.    On the other - and at almost the same time - the then Turkish president, Turgut Ozal, took part in a United Nations Conference on the Rights of the Child and apparently felt no embarrassment at all in claiming that "Turkey takes all young children under its wing - and is even celebrating a special Day of the Child on 23rd April!"    So far we know of no written ordinance stating that "the Turkish government has agreed on the total obliteration of the Kurdish population", as happened in 1915 with the Armenians. But it is a widely-held belief that "whether you kill a Kurd or an animal amounts to the same thing".    At one time, the Kurds were repeatedly exploited in the expansionist plans of the Young Turks. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk succeeded in using them against the Greeks and the Armenians with the promise that "after we have won, the Kurds will be granted their national rights."    However, instead of the Kurds acquiring their national rights, the south-eastern part of Turkey - which takes in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan - now finds itself under a regime of tyranny governed by martial law, special decrees and prohibitions, where the provincial rulers have unlimited administrative and military powers conferred on them to act oppressively. There are special courts that have the right to make and carry out decisions that take no account whatsoever of the most basic human rights. Kurdish place-names in Kurdish areas have been forcibly changed to Turkish names: thus Dersim, where Atatürk put down yet another bloody Kurdish uprising in 1925, became Tunceli, Meydin became Seslie, Berkavir became Tekcinar, Spivyan became Karagecit, Osyan became Doganli, and so on, in an unending list of new names by means of which the Turks have been endeavouring to remove all trace of Kurdish place-names from the map.    The only option for so many peoples around the world living under such conditions is to resort to armed conflict. When the Kurds announced the National Struggle for the Freedom of Kurdistan on 15th August 1984, 300,000 armed Turkish troops poured into the entire Turkish-occupied region of Kurdistan, along with 40,000 men specialised in difficult missions and 10,000 men belonging to the special forces. Their purpose, once again, was to stifle the Kurdish struggle for freedom.    This orgy of torture is aimed at forcing the Kurdish civilian population to flight and to eradicate popular support for the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, which is the political party faction of the Kurdish uprising. The head-hunters positively relish going after the reward offered by the Turkish government, which is from time to time announced quite blatantly in the Turkish press. These head-hunters, whose official title is "defenders of the villages", receive weapons and payment from the Turkish state; their mission is to denounce, apprehend or exterminate Kurdish freedom-fighters.    Communication with the Kurdish population living in neighbouring Iran and Iraq is prevented by every possible means, including the use of electric fences and observation 117 and 118 Leonidas Koumakis THE MIRACLE A True Story If you prefer a hard copy of the book, please send an email to HEC-Books@hec.greece.org Previous Page | Initial Page | Site Map | Next Page (119th of 204) © For Internet 2001 HEC and Leonidas Koumakis. Updated on 19 June 2001.