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For Nick and whoever's interested: a bit more background on the Kurds and the possibility of a Kurdish state. Summary and transcribed highlights of an NPR story I heard yest'y:
More than half of the world 25 million Kurds live mainly in southeastern Turkey: the rest are scattered throughout parts of Armenia, northern Iraq, Syria, and Iran.
Scientific surveys, however, show that fewer than 10% of Turkey's Kurds harbor separatist aspirations: by and large they consider themselves Turks first and foremost, insisting that their interests have nothing to do with the Kurds of northern Iraq.
But there are worries among the Turkish establishment nonetheless. The head of the Eurasian Center for Strategic Studies says, "In the long run, there's going to be a pan-Kurdist aspiration in this region, which is going to be a threat to regional stability."
Part of the suspicion is borne out by recent history: there was guerilla warfare between pan-Kurdish separatists and the Turkish army throughout much of the 1990s.
But part of it seems to be down to a sort of nationalist/cultural paranoia woven into the Turkish psyche—at least, that's how reportere Guy Raz seemed to characterize it: "For Turks, who are raised on the idea that outside forces have historically sought Turkey's disintegration, the idea of Kurdish independence plays right into their deepest suspicions." (emphasis mine) |
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