Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RIVISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASIN OZETi
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By FREDERICK
PAINTON
If only there were hal1nony among us,
If we were to obey a single one of us,
He would reduce our vassalage under
Turks, Arabs and Persians, all of them.
We would pelfect religion, our state,
And would educate ourselves in leaming
andwisdom.
-AHMED KHANE
17TH CENTURY KURDISH POET
THE WISTFUL LA.MENT FOR A QUARrelsome
mountain people rings as
true today as it did 400 years ago. It
is as if the Kurds-like France's
Bourbons-have remembered everything
but learned nothing from their
long, bitter history. E\'er di\'ided among
themselves by blood feuds and clan rivalries,
they still feel oppressed by the rulers-
Turk, Arab, Persian-whose kingdoms,
empires and governments have
claimed the Kurds' allegiance. Where they
live is known as the Land of Insolence, a
spine of mountains that curls through
southeastern Turkey into Syria, Iraq, Iran
and parts of Armenia. This is the Kurds'
fortress home-a forbidding country of
jagged peaks and deep valleys that nourishes
dreams of independence born of a
legendary past 3,000 years ago. Down the
centuries the Kurds have rebelled against
all their rulers. In just the past iO years
they have risen against the Turks 16 times,
only to be ultimately crushed; similarly.
they have sought to throw off Iraqi and
Iranian rule, only to meet the same fate.
This time, though, is different. What
began as a scattershot armed insurgency
nine years ago in Turkey's mountainous
southeast corner is approaching the dimensions
of a full-blown war that in the
past 12 months has spread from 10 to 20
provinces. It is the longest-running Kurdish
rebellion, the most successful and the
bloodiest in Turkish history.
The number of combatants and civilians
killed on both sides so far is officially
put at 11,000 and climbing at an average of
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TIME. DECDIBER 6, 1993
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