November 11, 2007

Turkey's wording issues

Turkey has a lot of problems with the words used for labeling political matters linked with the fall of the Ottoman empire.
First is the use of "Kurdistan" by the terrorists of the PKK organization or also by the Kurdistan Regional Government. This upsets turkish politicians and nationalists since there is no way they may accept that a Turkish Kurdistan exists (like an Iraqi Kurdistan exists). This combat on words is very archaic since the variables of this old debate had considerably changed and that the first city of the kurds (in number) is Istanbul. There is little use of combating the words while installing the facts. There are some incentives that could be developed with the leaders of Northern Iraq to create cultural exchanges with Turkey. In fact there is a lot of ignorance in the relation between turks and iraqi kurds, including between turkish kurds and iraqi kurds (who speak and write different dialects). This does not mean independence should be recognized but positive outlook of Iraqis on Turkey would favor taking into account some sensitivities beyond the "Kurdistan" word. The first aim Turkey should have is to help lowering the corruption in Northern Iraq.

Same can be said about the famous "genocide" word. A fight for words that has helped little to understand the positions of the participant to the heated debate. There is no highlight that labeling the facts, crimes of intent should require some grounds. That the armenian of Istanbul and Jerusalem should logically have been also targeted. That population destabilizing the eastern front line were risking the existence of a threatened empire. That some armenian were engaged in political activities and propaganda (publishing mostly in Europe). That armenian lobbies often slips to territorial claims, to competition in the horror, to hatred for turks (no crime - whichever - should be answered by a crime). Yes, little remains of all these facts except a denial of genocide.

Let's make Turkey move to the content of the debates. Let's make it no longer a problem to use "sensitive" words. Let's make ideas more free and sharing information easier..

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