The "Kurdish question" can't be understood ignoring the Armenian genocide

Not "only" a genocide to Armenians but also to Syriacs, Pontic Greeks and Kurdish Yezidin

The first definition of genocide was created by Raphael Lemkin and has been inspired by the extermination of the Armenians, Syriacs (also called Assyrians), Pontic Greeks and Kurds of Yezidin believe in the Ottoman Empire from 1912 to 1922.
Modifications have been made after the experience of the holocaust in the 3rd Reich.
Only one of many, but a sadly impressing evidence for how similar these two crimes against humanity were carried out, are the mass graves of about 40.000 Armenian and Syriac genocide victims surrounding the chapel of Margadeh in the Syrian desert Deir ez-Zor.

The photo was taken by the German eyewhitness of genocide, Armin T. Wegner
It shows an Ottoman state servant humiliating Armenian children being close to starve by presenting them a loaf of bread

Thanks to more than 400 internationally well-reputated historians it is now broadly understood that the Ottoman Empire's policy of monoethnisation fullfils all criteria of genocide.
Outside Turkey there are only about five historians denying this prooven fact by spreading some really strange conspiracy theories.
The European Union (Parliamentary Resolutions adopted in 1987, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005) as well as 20 countries confirm the recognition.
Even Turkey's recently founded most democratic parties BDP and HDP recognize it and are persueing a policy of seriously meant reconciliation.


The uselessness of Turkey's proposal for an "international group of historians"

Turkish governments proposal for an "international group of historians" to examine the contents of it's state archives is completely useless, because historians already prooved that all criteria of genocide are fullfilled.
Furthermore this group would depend on the transcription from Arabic into Latin letters by Turkish civil servants. The Ottoman state archives had been written in Arabic letters.
It is worldwide standard that historians have to learn two of the following three languages, Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit at university.
In addition, the results of analyzing numerous time whitnesses as well as German, American, French, Italian, Scandinavian and Russian state archives already lead to the conclusion that the Ottoman Empire clearly did genocide.
This is already scientific consensus. Only some governments and parliaments hesitate do accept this, because of NATO interallied policies.
Two years ago, Taner Akcam even found evidence in the obvioulsy not that well censored Turkish archives. They express clearly that the aim of the Ottoman policy of monoethnisation was to create a 90% Turkish population in each county. The other 10% were ought to be absorbed. While Kurds of Sunni and Alevi believe were considered to be absorbable before 1922, the Christians and Yezidin weren't. So, the result was that the Young Turks chargered a committee to process a plan for the extermination of these minorities. One of this plan's main architects was Baheddin Cakir, the Turkish equivalent to Adolf Eichmann in Nazi-Germany.


Suppression of the Kurds began shortly after the genocide

Futhermore, after all Christian minorities had been exterminated or expelled and disappropriated, the numerous massacres and suppression the Turkish state did to it's Kurdish population from the 1930s (Zilan) over Dersim (Turkish: Tunceli), Kahranmaras and Sivas to 2011 (Roboski), especially those of Alevi confession such as in the province of Dersim 1938 and 1939, when more than 30.000 Kurd civilians had been massacred, show a causal relationship with the not "only", as if it wouldn't be bad enough, Armenian (Armenian call it "Aghet") but also Syriac (call it "Sayfo) Pontic Greek and Kurdish Yezidin genocide.
Some historians even say that one reason for the massacres in Dersim carried out by the Turkish army, is the fact that Kurds there helped Armenian and Syriac refuges such as many Dutch people did with the Jews in 2nd World War.
Another historical fact in the same causal relationship are e.g. the mass killings of Jews in 1934, the Thrace pogroms.
Kurdish language and cultural customs had been forbidden in general for nearly 8 decades.
Before the so called "Turkish War of Independence" Mustafa Kemal promised autonomy to the Kurds in order to get them allied. Soon he broke his promise and continued where the Young Turks had been stopped at the end of World War 1.
Although some reforms have been executed to enhance the rights of the Kurds, in Turkey their language and culture is still not equal, but restricted by e.g. §222 of the Turkish penal code (Türk Ceza Kanun), and far away from fulfilling minority standards according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Kurdish civilians and BDP politicians commemorating the victims of Roboski airstrike, also known as the Uludere massacre

Turkish attempts to justify an ethnocentric policy and the resulting crimes against humanity are always the same, no matter if it is about the genocide to the Armenians, Syriacs, Pontic Greeks and Kurdish Yezidin or the massacres and suppression to the Kurds.
They consist of nothing but historical falsification, inaccurate stereotypes of strange conspiracies and racist criminalisation and defamation labelling four entire ethnical groups as aggressors, terrorists or even traitors to the nation ("vatan hayni"). Even in official Turkish educational books, Syriacs (also Assyrians) are still called traitors to nation.

So, if you want to understand the ‘Kurdish question’, you need to consider the genocide that the Ottoman Empire did to its Christian minorities, providing plenty of evidence of Turkey’s ongoing policy of monoethnisation and globally-unparalleled nationalism.


Read this article in French / Lisez cet article en français: La «question kurde» ne peut être compris sans tenir compte du génocide arménien


Recommended literature(only a small choice) on which this article is based


Doumanis, Nicholas: Before the Nation: Muslim-Christian Coexistence and its Destruction in Late-Ottoman Anatolia.

Alexander Laban Hinton, Thomas La Pointe, Douglas Irvin-Erickson (Eds.): Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory.

Kostos, Sofia Kontogeorge (Ed.): Before the Silence: Archival News Reports of the Christian Holocaust That Begs to be Remembered.

Üngör, Uğur Ümit; Polatel, Mehmet: Confiscation and Destruction: the Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property.

The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos und Eastern Thrace, 1912-1922.

The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey: And of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery.

Taner Akçam: Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire.

Raymond Kevorkian: The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History.

Dündar, Fuat: Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878-1918).

Sarafian, Ara: Talaat Pashas Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1917.

Besikci, Ismail; International colony Kurdistan.

Besikci, Ismail; Tunceli Kanunu ve Dersîm Jenosidi (only in Turkish language; "The Tunceli law and the Dersim genocide")

Besikci, Ismail; Wir wollen frei und Kurden sein - Brief an die UNESCO (in German language "We want to be free and Kurds - letter to the UNESCO")

Hans-Lukas KIESER; Dersim Massacre, 1937-1938.

When the Armenians fled from Marash to Uruguay (Translation of Ferda Cetin's publication “Maraş'tan Uruguay'a Kaçabilen Ermeniler ")

The text below is a translation.
The article was originally written and published by Ferda Çetin in Turkish language and can be read under the following link:
"Maraş'tan Uruguay'a Kaçabilen Ermeniler" by Ferda Çetin

Uruguay is located at the other end of the world. The current state of technology allows it to get to the country within just one single day by plane. A hundred years ago there was no alternative to overcome the unbridgeable distance, but to go on a long voyage by ship that took five to six months. A few years ago the journalist Ali M. Doğan visited Uruguay while reporting from Latin America. When he heard about a large number of Armenians living there, he explored their background, found the history of a hundred- year-long exile and decided to make a documentary about it.

The majority of today's 70 to 80 year olds generation of Armenians from Marash knows each detail in the lives of their fathers and mothers. Each of them tells about genocide, the start of their youth in a refugee family and personal tragedies.
The emigrants succeeded in rebuilding a new life in Uruguay. Nevertheless, they did not forget anything. No matter what has been necessary to keep their memories alive, they did it. There is a very active club. On certain days three generations meet there.
The club bears the name "Maraşlılar Derneği " ("Club of those who are from Marash"). When an old Armenian asked M.Ali Doğan, where he comes from, he answered "I am from Marash" and cheers broke out. "Maraşlı olsun çamırdan olsun" ("Those who come from Marash must be made of clay").
Once the people were forced to escape from their homes and it would have been logical to seek sanctuary in a neighboring country. But the massacres and the violence the Armenians had to face were so cruel, that they fled as far away as they could to the most inaccessible places on earth that could be imagined in the historical context. Therefore, they preferred to emigrate to Uruguay, Argentina or the United States. They did everything they could in order to move away from oppression, barbarism and ruthless cruelty.
Despite dozens of government changes after the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish state, including the AKP, does not recognize it. Quite the contrary, they try to tell a story about accidental victims of necessary resettlement marches and Armenians who murdered Turks. Furthermore, they intend to make the world believe, the number of massacred Armenians would not amount to 1.5 million, but it is plausible to quantify the number of victims to 350.000, as if that was an excusable number of taken lives. Official Turkish State Historians wrote hundreds of books to make the people believe these lies. However, more and more Armenian authors published their memories in the last years in rapid succession. What they tell emphasizes the absurdity of this discussion about the number of victims and shows us the truth plainly.

Vahan Totovents, born in 1889 in Mezre (province of Elazig) describes his tragic story in "Yitik Evin Varisleri " ("The heirs of the lost house ") as it follows:
"When we were kids waiting for Santa to bring us our gifts on a New Year's Eve, the death knocked on our door and I held my father's hand .
They shook our hands politely. Arm in arm we walked out of the house. During the march through the crisp white snow, we lost sight of each other. Those who were gone now, never returned...
The loss of Rebeka, one of his cousins Vahan Totovents loved the most, he describes as follows:
Rebeka , the daughter of my aunt was a strong, healthy and hard-working girl with the spirit of a poet. Her large, pure blue eyes seemed to be able even to stop the sky from falling down. But, this sky collapsed right over the previously sprouting and growing white lilies Rebeka had planted. Rebeka was deported to the Arabian deserts. The sun had burned birthmarks in her forehead and cheeks. Knowing that you had to suffer all this breaks my heart. Rebeka, I wish I could take the abominations which you have experienced from you and bear them myself. I salute you and beg you to see the tears of your brother…"

Hagop Mintzuri from the village of Armi in the province of Erzincan, describes the events from 1897 to 1940 in "İstanbul Anıları" (Memories from Istanbul) as follows:
“In April 1915, the deportation and expulsion of the Armenians in Istanbul began, when I was there as a soldier. In May, no more letters arrived from my ancestral village. I sent a reply telegram twice, but did not receive any answer. To the third one I got the following answer: "They are not here but elsewhere on an unknown route". My grandfather Melkon was 88 years old. My mother Nanik was 55 years old , my children Nurhan, Maranik, Arahit and Haco were 6, 4, 2 years and 9 months old. My wife Voğıda was 29 years old. How should they survive a march? My grandfather would not have even made it to the fountain of Suazeg. One day Temer, a Kurd from Gamıh had come to visit me. He was a farmer at Lusnik's land, the aunt of my cousin. As far as I can remember, he has tilled the fields around her house. He spoke Armenian as well as we did. He brought me the news that all Armenians were deported from the village on 4 June. He told me that they kissed the doors of their houses and the door of the church, before they had to leave the village. If a beloved one died in your house, wouldn’t you wish to die together? Could you still work, doing your business as usual? Could you continue day in and day out and go to work, as if nothing had happened? I was a soldier and I had to obey military orders. How would I have to resign myself and let them go?"

With the memoirs of Hagop Mintzuri, we want to tell, how he survived as the only member of his family.
The Armenians in Uruguay whose ancestors once fled from Marash miss the earth and the people in their native country. With words like "Maraşlı olsun çamırdan olsun" they express, how they yearn for it. Vahan Totovents from Harput summarizes the love and longing for his birthplace in the following words: "In this ancient land the sun summons the fruits to grow, it breathes breath into an inexhaustible vegetation covering the soil; rivers are lapping gently, it dawns evenly until the sun sets in the arms of the evening lights, a silver bowl full to the brim with fresh milk swims on blue water, the nights are animated by spirits with the voice of the stars, the trees float towards the horizon and all the flowers vibrate whispering" (Vahan Totoventes studied in the U.S. before he moved to the Soviet Republic of Armenia. He was imprisoned by Stalin's regime from 1936 to 1937. Afterwards none ever heard from him again).

All we did to the Armenians was cruelty and genocide. This has caused incredibly deep wounds to the survivors. The people here in this country (Uruguay), we have punished with never ending loneliness. That's what we did to those who were our good neighbors, and they have left us neighborless. Our distrust and their inner turmoil avoid us from being redeemed out of our loneliness.