and Alevi minorities, it’s no
more homogeneous than the
rump state of the Soviet empire
with the Tatars, Ingush, Sakha,
Chechens, and other large
numbers of non-Russian
peoples on its periphery.
When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
founded the modern republic in
the ashes of World War I,
Turkish nationalists attempted
to unite everybody under a
single identity for the sake of
national unity and to prevent
any more territorial loss, but
the Kurds refused to join up
because the Western powers
had promised them a state of
their own. To this day, they
remain the largest stateless
people on earth. Many feel far
more kinship with their fellow
Kurds in Iran, Iraq, and Syria
than with their nominal
countrymen in Turkey.
The Ottoman Empire was
loosely confederated, with a
space for the Kurds, but
modern Turkey was founded as
a strong Western-style republic
with a powerful center, and the
Kurds were forcibly
conquered, colonized, and
integrated.
The government’s response to
Kurdish nationalism was
tantamount to attempted
cultural genocide. Ethnic
Kurds were forcibly relocated
from the eastern parts of the
country, while European Turks
were moved to the Kurdish
region in the farthest reaches of
Anatolia. Even speaking the
Kurdish language was
forbidden in schools,
government offices, and in
public places until 1991.
Simply saying “I am a Kurd”
in Kurdish was a crime, and
it’s still considered scandalous
in official settings. In 2009, a
Kurdish politician created a
huge controversy by speaking
just a few words of Kurdish in
the nation’s Parliament
building.
Despite the fervor of this
repression, Turkey’s problem
with its Kurdish minority is
more political than ethnic. As
Erik Meyersson at the
JOY FEELINGS | DECEMBER ISSUE
175