Kurdistan and The Kurds A Divided Homeland and a Nation without ...

most of the Kurdish intellectuals and youth to military
service and fighting fronts… thus empting thousands of
households from their young men and leaving behind
only children, women and elderly in the name of military
recruitment. This led to the loss of half a million of the
best Kurdish young men falling as victims of the war, as
the majority of the Ottoman armies (the sixth, the ninth,
the tenth, the eleventh and twelfth) were from the Kurdish
people. In addition to that the Ottomans displaced more
than seven hundred thousand Kurds from Kurdistan and
forced them to go to the west of Turkey, causing the
death of majority of them on their way because of hunger,
illness and severe cold. Those of them who were from
Mosul came to the point to eat the flesh of their dead on
the road. What made the matters worse was the fact that
the Ottoman armies camping in Kurdistan forced the
Kurdish population to supply them with products.
It is very difficult to describe the real images of tragedy,
of the extent of destruction and devastation that occurred
in Kurdistan.
Another factor caused by the policies of the Ottoman
occupiers that led to a negative effect in the development
of the Kurdish struggle during that period was the fact
that many different factions in the territories of Kurdistan
in their internal struggle attempted to direct the Kurdish
anger in a direction that served their own interests and
against their own enemies. Such a phenomenon is still
affecting the situation up to now.
The Ottoman Turks even in those critical circumstances
had never tried to gain the loyalty of the Kurdish politicians
and religious leaders to their side. On the contrary, they
intensified their racism and barbarism by expelling and
disintegrating the Kurdish people. They erected hanging
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