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Take away the label and you live without prejudice.

Your other comments are fine, Shirin. We are in agreement there, albeit differing interpretations.

Turkey is unique in the way it views and treats its Kurdish citizens, and you really cannot equate that with the situation for Iraqi, Irani, or Syrian Kurds. I believe the primary reason for this is that, unlike Iraq, Iran, and Syria, Turks have big problems with any citizen who is not ethnically/culturally Turkish, or at least willing to pretend to be ethnically/culturally Turkish. Therefore, they have severely repressed any expression of Kurdish ethnicity and culture. Iraq, Iran, and Syria, on the other hand, have always accepted that they have ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse populations, and so one does not have to be ethnically Arab to be a fully acceptable citizen of Iraq or Syria, or ethnically Persian to be a fully acceptable citizen of Iran. Kurdish language, history, dress, music, traditional art, and other expressions of Kurdish and other ethnicities and cultures have always been fully accepted in Iraq, as have those of Iraq’s numerous other ethno-linguistic-religious groups.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish has always been legally taught and used as a language of instruction in Iraqi government schools. Educated Iraqi Kurds grew up bilingual, and literate in both Kurdish and Arabic. Not so in Turkey where Kurds are forbidden to teach Kurdish language or even to speak it in any official situation.

And I have never heard even the most racist Iraqi say the kinds of things about Kurds that come out of the mouths of ordinary Turks every day.

The problems for Kurds in Iraq have always been political rather than social, and stem not from a sense that they are ethnically inferior, as in Turkey, but as a direct result of political separatism, which by the way, has historically NOT been shared by all Kurds. Many, probably most Iraqi Kurds have historically not favoured a separatist agenda, and have defined themselves first as Iraqi, then as Kurdish. That has unfortunately changed as a result of circumstances, particularly since 1991 when Kurdistan was to a significant extent isolated by the Americans from the rest of the country and turned into a semi-autonomous zone (this was done ostensibly to protect Kurdish people, but there were other, more important motivations for it).

“The Turks have been ruthless, in every sense of the word. But the Kurds have been ruthless back. They haven’t passively taken abuse. A tit for tat battle has been going on.”

You can call it a tit for tat battle if you like, but some think of it in quite another way. Some think of it as a battle for equal rights, a battle of self-defence, and in some cases a battle for collective survival.

“…at least part of the problem was Kurdish inflexibility.”

Again, I would say that this is true of Iraq, and possibly of Iran and Syria too (I have less familiarity with the latter two countries). However, the situation for Kurds in Turkey has been and remains different, and the issues are therefore different.

“The major issue with multi-culturalism is microcosm’s within society. Problems with visible connection in the wider community creates friction, leading to mistrust and eventally ostracisation and worse.”

And here, once again, we have to be careful not to equate politics with society in every situation. In Iraq, unlike in Turkey, diversity is generally accepted, and considered a strength by most people who think about it at all (and for most people it is a non-issue that they rarely if ever even think about). Iraqis tend – or at least tended before 2003 – to mostly ignore one another’s ethnicity and religion. Very few use ethnicity or religion as a basis for whom to associate with, do business with, take as a friend, and intermarriage, is so commonplace as to be mostly unremarkable. Very few extended families in Iraq can realistically claim to be purely one thing or another.

Iraq has also easily accepted and incorporated additional groups into its society. The best example here is the Armenians who fled the Turkish genocide (yeah, I WILL use the “g” word here) by the hundreds of thousands. Iraqis took them in, often at great risk to themselves, and gave them food, shelter, assistance, and in some cases jobs. Within a generation or less Armenian-Iraqis became an important part of the society. And let us not forget that the Turks were trying to kill off the Armenians largely because they were not ethnically Turkish.

“Maybe Japan has it right – deport anyone who refuses to be Japanese.”

Maybe this was intended as an ironic statement. Either way, it is a silly analogy. People can accept or refuse to be part of a political entity, but they cannot change their ethnicity, nor should they be required to. A Kurd cannot accept or refuse to be an ethnic Turk or an ethnic Arab or an ethnic Persian, because they are not those things. Turkey has demanded that Kurds suppress their ethnic identity. They even have insisted upon referring to Turkish Kurds as “Mountain Turks” rather than acknowledge that they are not ethnically Turkish and have their own historical and cultural identity – and name. Therefore, it is not a matter of refusing to be Turkish, it is a matter of demanding to be treated as an equal citizen of Turkey with equal rights no matter what one’s ethnicity.

In the case of Iraq, there has not ever been the demand that Kurds (or Assyrians, or Chaldeans, or Mandaeans, or Turkmens, or Armenians, or [fillintheblankians]) should be or pretend to be Arabs. There has been no demand that any of Iraq’s many ethno-linguistic-religious groups suppress their identity or their culture – on the contrary, in fact. And in Iraq there has been no more than the normal level of racism that one sees in any diverse population, the United States included. The problems for Kurds in Iraq have been almost entirely political as a result of the activities of the separatists among them.

You said..

“..the United States owes hundreds of billions to Iraq, which should not take the form or aid to Iraq, but should be paid in the form of reparations that are determined, enforced, and administered by a neutral third party. Iraqis should be in the driver’s seat in deciding exactly how those funds are to be used, and what the priories are for their use.”

I agree with you and thank you for pointing this out so succinctly. In fact I have often thought about this before.

I naively imagined a day when the President of our country on behalf of the so called “coalition” would announce that we were withdrawing all our troops, our civilian contractors and everyone else who was associated with the “occupation” ,except various humanitarian groups, as soon as possible.

He or she would further publicly apologize first to the Iraqi people and then the rest of the world for what we have done.

Then lastly he or she would announce that the US alone, as you said would pay monies, ” in the form of reparations that are determined, enforced, and administered by a neutral third party,(and that) Iraqis should be in the driver’s seat in deciding exactly how those funds are to be used, and what the priories are for their use.”

Sadly though, I do not think this will ever happen, because although you and I believe along with lots of other Americans who see this invasion for what it was, what is has become and looks like it will continue to be, are powerless to change anything.

Why?

Because the people who we elected who have the power to change anything are arrogant, self serving, and treasonous cowards. They hide behind rhetoric and bullshit and spend countless hours blaming everyone except themselves. They will not do the “right thing” which is stand up, admit their mistakes and then fall on their swords.

Where will we find new leaders who will do the “right thing”? I don’t know, I don’t if there are any. (Maybe Gindy Sheehan, Ron Paul, or Valerie Plame Wilson?)

However I believe that if we as Americans, most of who believe our country should be the leading shining light in the fight for all the “right things” the founding fathers believed in, do not wake up and realize that we are on a path of destruction, then we will continue down that path of destruction, which will eventually lead not only to the destruction of the world as we know it, but the destruction of mankind itself.

it is not when the suffering is in another country that things change

For change, we need to wake up to the up close and personal reality that we are all connected.

James Carroll
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/authordetail.cfm?authorID=1380
refers to this in Forgotten faces of war