Human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey

Kurds have had a long history of discrimination perpetrated against them by the Turkish government.[1] Massacres have periodically occurred against the Kurds since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Among the most significant is the massacre that happened during the Dersim massacre, when 40,000-70,000 civilians were killed by the Turkish Army and 11,818 people were sent into exile.[2] According to McDowall, 40,000 people were killed.[3] The Zilan massacre of 1930 was a massacre[4][5] of Kurdish residents of Turkey during the Ararat rebellion, in which 5,000 to 47,000 were killed.[citation needed]

The use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names were banned, and the Kurdish-inhabited areas remained under martial law until 1946.[6] In an attempt to deny an existence of a Kurdish ethnicity, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until the 1980s.[7][8][9][10] The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", and "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government.[11] Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life.[12] Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned.[13] But even though the ban on speaking in a non Turkish language was lifted in 1991, the Kurdish aim to be recognized as a distinct people than Turkish or to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction, but this was often classified as separatism or support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).[14] Currently, it is illegal to use the Kurdish language as an instruction language in private and public schools, yet there are schools who defy this ban.[15][16][17] The Turkish Government has repeatedly blamed the ones who demanded more Kurdish cultural and educational freedom of terrorism or support for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).[18]

During the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, food embargoes were placed on Kurdish populated villages and towns.[19][20] There were many instances of Kurds being forcefully deported from their villages by Turkish security forces.[21] Many villages were reportedly set on fire or destroyed.[22][21] Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, political parties that represented Kurdish interests were banned.[11] In 2013, a ceasefire effectively ended the violence until June 2015, when hostilities renewed between the PKK and the Turkish government over the Rojava–Islamist conflict. Violence was widely reported against ordinary Kurdish citizens and the headquarters and branches of the pro-Kurdish rights Peoples' Democratic Party were attacked by mobs.[23] The European Court of Human Rights and many other international human rights organizations have condemned Turkey for thousands of human rights abuses against Kurds.[24][25][page needed] Many judgments are related to systematic executions of civilians,[26][page needed] torture,[27] forced displacements,[28] destroyed villages,[29][30][31] arbitrary arrests,[32] and murdered and disappeared journalists, activists and politicians.[33]

  1. ^ Levene, Mark (1998). "Creating a Modern 'Zone of Genocide': The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878–1923". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 12 (3): 393–433. doi:10.1093/hgs/12.3.393. The persistence of genocide or near-genocidal incidents from the 1890s through the 1990s, committed by Ottoman and successor Turkish and Iraqi states against Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek communities in Eastern Anatolia, is striking. ... the creation of this 'zone of genocide' in Eastern Anatolia cannot be understood in isolation, but only in light of the role played by the Great Powers in the emergence of a Western-led international system.

    In the last hundred years, four Eastern Anatolian groups—Armenians, Kurds, Assyrians, and Greeks—have fallen victim to state-sponsored attempts by the Ottoman authorities or their Turkish or Iraqi successors to eradicate them. Because of space limitations, I have concentrated here on the genocidal sequence affecting Armenians and Kurds only, though my approach would also be pertinent to the Pontic Greek and Assyrian cases.
  2. ^ "Resmi raporlarda Dersim katliamı: 13 bin kişi öldürüldü", Radikal, November 19, 2009. (in Turkish)
  3. ^ David McDowall, A modern history of the Kurds, I.B.Tauris, 2002, ISBN 978-1-85043-416-0, p. 209.
  4. ^ Altan Tan, Kürt sorunu, Timaş Yayınları, 2009, ISBN 978-975-263-884-6, p. 275.[permanent dead link‍] (in Turkish)
  5. ^ Pınar Selek, Barışamadık, İthaki Yayınları, 2004, ISBN 978-975-8725-95-3, p. 109. (in Turkish)
  6. ^ H. Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-determination, 534 pp., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8122-1572-9, ISBN 978-0-8122-1572-4 (see page 186).
  7. ^ Gülistan Gürbey. 1996. "The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey since the 1980s". In The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, ed. Robert Olson. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 9-37.
  8. ^ "Turkey – Linguistic and Ethnic Groups". U.S. Library of Congress.
  9. ^ Bartkus, Viva Ona, The Dynamic of Secession (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 90–91.
  10. ^ Çelik, Yasemin (1999). Contemporary Turkish foreign policy (1. publ. ed.). Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-275-96590-7.
  11. ^ a b Baser, Bahar (2015). Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts: A Comparative Perspective. Ashgate Publishing. p. 63. ISBN 978-1-4724-2562-1.
  12. ^ Toumani, Meline. "Minority Rules". The New York Times, 17 February 2008
  13. ^ Aslan, Senem (2014). Nation Building in Turkey and Morocco. Cambridge University Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-1-107-05460-8.
  14. ^ Karakoç, Ekrem; Sarıgil, Zeki (June 2020). "Why Religious People Support Ethnic Insurgency? Kurds, Religion and Support for the PKK". Politics and Religion. 13 (2). Cambridge University Press: 251. doi:10.1017/S1755048319000312. hdl:11693/53234. ISSN 1755-0483. S2CID 202266557.
  15. ^ "Kürtçe okulda Kürtçe karne". Al Jazeera Turk – Ortadoğu, Kafkasya, Balkanlar, Türkiye ve çevresindeki bölgeden son dakika haberleri ve analizler (in Turkish). Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  16. ^ "Cizre'de Kürtçe eğitim verilen okulda öğrenciler karne aldı". CNN Türk (in Turkish). Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  17. ^ "İlk Kürtçe Karneler Verildi". Bianet – Bagimsiz Iletisim Agi. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  18. ^ Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove; Fernandes, Desmond (2008). "Kurds in Turkey and in (Iraqi) Kurdistan: A Comparison of Kurdish Educational Language Policy in Two Situations of Occupation". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 3 (1): 45–46. doi:10.3138/gsp.3.1.43.
  19. ^ Olson, Robert (1996). The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky. p. 16. ISBN 0-8131-0896-9.
  20. ^ Shaker, Nadeen. "After Being Banned for Almost a Century, Turkey's Kurds Are Clamoring to Learn Their Own Language". Muftah.
  21. ^ a b Gunes, Cengiz (2013). The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance. Routledge. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-136-58798-6.
  22. ^ Ibrahim, Ferhad (2000). The Kurdisch Conflict in Turkey: Obstacles and Chances for Peace and Democracy. Münster; New York: Lit ; St. Martin's press. p. 182. ISBN 3-8258-4744-6.
  23. ^ "'Lynching Campaign' Targets Kurds in Turkey, HDP Offices Attacked". Armenian Weekly. 9 September 2015.
  24. ^ "EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS: Turkey Ranks First in Violations in between 1959–2011". Bianet – Bagimsiz Iletisim Agi. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  25. ^ Annual report 2014 (PDF). The European Court of Human Rights. 2015. ISBN 978-92-871-9919-5. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  26. ^ "Case of Benzer and others v. Turkey: Final Judgment" (PDF). The European Court of Human Rights. 24 March 2014. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  27. ^ Aisling Reidy (2003). The prohibition of torture: A guide to the implementation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (PDF). Human Rights Handbooks. pp. 11, 13. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
  28. ^ Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch. 1998. p. 7. ISBN 9781564321909.
  29. ^ McKiernan, Kevin (2006). The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 130. ISBN 0-312-32546-0.
  30. ^ Neuberger, Benyamin (2014). Bengio, Ofra (ed.). Kurdish Awakening: Nation Building in a Fragmented Homeland. [S.l.]: Univ of Texas Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-292-75813-1.
  31. ^ Gunes, Cengiz; Zeydanlioğlu, Welat (2014). The Kurdish question in Turkey: new perspectives on violence, representation, and reconciliation. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. p. 98. ISBN 978-1-135-14063-2.
  32. ^ "Factsheet – Police arrest and assistance of a lawyer" (PDF). European Court of Human Rights. January 2020.
  33. ^ "Justice Comes from European Court for a Kurdish Journalist". Retrieved 1 January 2016.