Tsarist Russia was the country where Kurdology was born as a new branch of science , by the middle of the 19th centuries, at the end of the Crimea war , in 1854 , with Saint-Petersburg becoming the international centre of Kurdish studies . Today’s Russian Federation is still willing to participate in Kurdish cultural undertakings. On 28 November 1994 , meeting at Moscow , I signed, as president of the Kurdish Science and Research Institute , seated at Berlin, together with Professor R. Rybakov , Director of the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Science , a co-operation agreement in matter of Kurdish studies . Then we agreed to prepare together a Concise Encyclopaedia of Kurdistan (CEK) , that should be published in three , say four languages , North Kurmanji in Roman script , South-Kurmanji (Sorani) in Arab script, Russian, and English . Meeting again in Brussels , in 1996 , I had the honour to be designated as the General Editor of CEK , with Russian , Kurdish, and international participation . Professors from the Universities of Arbil (Salaheddin) and Sulaimaniya , in Iraqi Kurdistan, accepted to co-operate , as well as scholars from USA , Canada , and Europe . Unfortunately, when everything was ready to begin work for the production of CEK , the promise of furthering funds to finance the undertaking was not honoured , and the whole undertaking crumbled to earth . The funds had been promised by Kurds . I am still feeling uneasy towards our Russian and other partners.

The Federal Cultural Autonomy recognised to the Kurds in Russia has a centre at Moscow called Kurdsky Dom in Russian, Mala Kurdan in Kurdish (the Kurdish House) , with a publishing house . Kurdsky Dom functions as a communication centre between the Russian Kurds , those of former Soviet Republics, and the Kurds in Western Europe. Despite the goodwill of the Russian Federation , the problem of the Russian Kurds, and of all the former Soviet Kurds , remains the same since 1929 , when Soviet Azerbaijan abolished the Region of Autonomous Kurdistan. The problem was still aggravated by the Armenian occupation of the region, in 1992. It is not to have a geographical area where these scattered Kurds could govern themselves by themselves . The so-called “scientific democracy” preached by Abdullah Ocalan as a “solution” for the 21-million Kurds in Turkey , would perhaps lead to a similar situation as that of the Russian Kurds. He makes abstraction of the 13 million Kurds making a majority of 85 % in Turkish Kurdistan.

8) Ocalan, Kemalism and Kurdistan :

Abdullah Ocalan proves to be rather mild and comprehensive as to the role of Mustafa Kemal . In chapter 6 , subtitle “The Kurds at the time of capitalism” , he writes : “The war of national liberation (of Turkey) led by Mustafa Kemal was a progressive war and responded to the common will of the two peoples, the Turks and the Kurds” . That is globally true, but this requires some explanation.

The peace treaty of Sèvres with Ottoman Turkey, signed on 10 August 1920, provides for an autonomous Kurdistan within Turkey, and for an indpendent Kurdish state if the Kurds demand independence within one year from the coming into force of the treaty and that the Council of the League of Nations decides to grant them this independence (Art. 62 to 64 : Kurdistan). The same treaty provides for an independent state of Armenia , somewhere to the north of Ottoman Kurdistan, without saying where its border line was to be . This state of Armenia was , one may say, a “ghost state” , or , as it had been put by le Comte , Earl , Lobanoff , minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, ‘An Armenia without Armenians’ . The Kurdish notables and religious chiefs were however alarmed , already in 1918/1919 , by rumours saying that six Kurdish provinces (vilayets) – Erzurum, Kars, Bitlis, Erzinjan, Mush , and Van – were to be ceded to Armenia . Kars had been annexed by Russia at the Ottoman-Russian war of 1878 , and was kept in the hands of communist Armenians in 1919 . The Kurds, told about atrocities committed by Armenians against their brethern fleeing from Kars, were preparing the defence of their areas against any penetration by Armenian “infidels” .

When Mustafa Kemal Pasha held the first congress of the movement wich was still to become the Kemalist movement for the liberation of Turkey , that was at Erzurum , in Kurdistan , from 23 July to 6 August 1919 . He presented himself as the “saviour” of Kurdistan, the defender of the Eastern Vilayets , and the champion of Islam and the caliphate . Most of the delegates were Kurds . Mustafa Kemal used to kiss the hands of Kurdish religious chiefs present at the congress, to show how a good Muslim he was . He was elected president of the movement at Erzurum , because the Kurdish chiefs preferred to be the allies of the Turks to the risk of being placed under an Armenian sovereignty . The first military victory of the Kemalist movement was on the front of the Caucasus , and achieved by the Kurds . These were to participate in the war of liberation on the Anatolian fronts as well . This is recognised by the Turks.

The “ Amasya Protocol ” of the Kemalist movement , dated 22 October 1920 , which was a reaction against the Sèvres treaty, reads : “ In order to circumvent the propaganda of lies by the foreigners under the disguise of the Kurdish people’s independence, it has been decided that the Kurds should be supported in terms of ethnic and social rights in a way and place where it allow their free development ”.

Again, on 10 February 1922, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT, parliament) passed an “ Autonomous Kurdistan Act ” , in which one can read : “ As a requirement of civilisation and considering the object to guarantee the progress of the Turkish nation, GNAT starts to establish an administration pertinent to the customs of the Kurdish people.”

The Kurds were betrayed by Europe at the conference of Lausanne , in 1923 , and cheated by the new Kemalist Republic of Turkey , which was internationally consecrated by the treaty of Lausanne .

Article 11 of the Constitution of 1924 reads : “ Every Turk over the age of 30 is eligible as deputy ” . Article 12 : “ Those who are not literate in Turkish could not be elected as deputy ”. Article 88 : “ Everyone bound to the Turkish State through the bond of citizenship is a Turk ”. These articles will be resumed in the 1961 and 1982 Constitution.

Article 3-4 of the Constitution of 1961 reads : “ The Turkish state, with its territory and nation, is an indivisible entity. Its language is Turkish . This provision shall not be amended, nor shall their amendment be proposed ” . “ Everyone has the right to express and disseminate his thought (…). No language prohibited by law shall be used in the expression and dissemination of thought ”. Article 11 reads : “ Fundamental rights and freedoms may be restricted by law (…) ”.

These constitutional devices mean there is no Kurdistan, no Kurdish people, and the ban on the Kurdish language . The Kurds, the name of whose homeland , Kurdistan , became a taboo under the republic, are just “Turks”, whether they like it or not.

In chapter 6 , under subtitle “The Kurdish question in Turkey and the democratic solution” , Abdullah Ocalan writes : “The national basis of the Republic of Turkey as founded by Ataturk is not racist (….) When the Republic uses the slogan saying How Happy is whoever can say I am a Turk ! the aim is only to keep the morals of the Turks” . The fact is that such racist slogans are used only in Turkish Kurdistan , never in central or western Turkey . They are written in huge letters painted in white at the slopes of the Kurdish mountains , and are so gross that they are readable at 15 or 20 k.m distance . Another of these slogans painted at the Kurdish mountains, for the ‘pleasure’ of the Kurds , is this : “One Turk is worth the world” . This is the seal of Turkish colonialism and military occupation at the forehead of the Kurdish people.

Again in chapter 6 , subtitle “The Kurds at the time of capitalism” , Abdullah Ocalan appreciates that the Kemalist Republic “adopted the positive European values” and “endeavoured to keep Mosul and Kirkuk within the Turkish National Pact , without renouncing its right on these areas” . In other terms , Mr. Ocalan congratulates Mustafa Kemal not to have renounced “the right” of Turkey on Iraqi Kurdistan . Yet he blames him not to have created a fully democratic Turkey , responding to the demands of “the people” . Ocalan’s readers were gratified with the existence of two peoples in Turkey , the Turks and the Kurds , the second of whom accepted , in 1919 , thanks to the comedy played by Mustafa Kemal at Erzurum, to join their forces with those of the Turks, for the liberation of Turkey from Western occupation . Now that republican Turkey has obtained an international consecration by the treaty of Lausanne, in 1923 , Mr. Ocalan grants his reader with the existence of only one people in Turkey , the people , the Turkish people , or “the people of Turkey”. He repeats that “Turkey is the mother homeland of the Kurds and the Turks.”

In his defence before the Turkish State Security Court, at Imrali, in 1999 ( published by the PKK in English under the title “Declaration on the Democratic Solution of the Kurdish Question” , mentioned above) , Abdullah Ocalan (p.23 : I am quoting him directly from the English text) , speaking about the events of 1919 , mentions “the extensive claims by the Armenians in the East” , then he adds : “It was obvious that national liberation had to be based on the two fundamental peoples , the Kurds and the Turks. If the two nations went their separate ways, and especially if they acted against each other, they would have ended up by losing all they had” . Abdullah Ocalan had the courage to say , before the Turkish court, that the Kurds and the Turks were two distinct nations , and that they needed union before the same dangers . All this is right . One can still agree with him that , in this union, the Turks played the first role. Mustafa Kemal Pasha was an Ottoman general and commanded regular Ottoman troops , while the Kurdish chiefs had no political organisation and no regular troops , but each had under his command a local force , his own people .

One cannot , however , agree with Ocalan when he says (p. 25 of the English text of his Imrali defence) : “The triumph of the national liberation movement and of the Republic must therefore be seen as an historic common country and a state for the two peoples” . He confounds “state” with “country” , but this is a current use , not to say a current mistake , in the English language . Since the Kurds and the Turks are two distinct nations , they can have a common state - provided it recognises them as such -, but they cannot have a ‘common country’ , one ‘mother-homeland’ .

The homeland of the Kurds is Kurdistan , not Turkey . The Kurds had Kurdish-Muslim states in Kurdistan prior to the arrival of the Turks into the area, coming from Central Asia. The educated Kurds , and good scholars in the matter , know that the Kurds were organised as orderly states in the Zagros , and in Northern Kurdistan , here under their Mervanid-Dostekid ruling house , beside the Shaddadid Kurds ruling over a mixed area in the southeastern Caucasus . When Alp Arslan , the first Turkish-Saljuqid sulultan to reach Northern Kurdistan , coming from Iran, delivered the battle of Manazkert , in 1071 , against Byzantium , the Mervanids and the Shaddadids were still ruling over their own states , and helped him to win the war .

In pages 52-53 of the same book of defence at Imrali , Abdullah Ocalan mentions that “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk recognises Kurds and Kurdistan at the very start of the national war for liberation” . He then cites Mustafa Kemal answering a journalist called Ahmet Emin Yalman , at a press conference at Izmir (no date mentioned) , in which the Turkish leader would have said the Kurdish population was concentrated in a few areas , and intermingled with Turks in other areas , and that “if one wanted to draw a border separating the Kurds, one would have to devastate Turkey” .

One may have doubt , but let us suppose this was Mustafa Kemal’s answer at that press conference . Why then to recourse , for the geographical definition of Kurdistan , to what Mustafa Kemal was thinking of , since it was under his presidency that the very nom of Kurdistan was very soon to be banned , or was already banned ? We have much older and more objective definitions of Kurdistan . Without going in history back to Antiquity or the Middle Age , one can point to ancient known Turkish writers such as Evliya Celebi , in his Siyahet-namesi , or Katib Celebi , in his Cihan-numa , or to the Kurdish historian and ruling prince Sharaf Khan of Bitlis, in his Sharaf-nama (completed in 1597) , who have left us such geographical definition of Kurdistan , schematic , but clear enough . We have still more precise definitions.

Yavuz Sultan Selim I beat the Safavid shah Ismail of Persia , at the war of Chaldiran , in 1514 , with the participation of Kurdish princes on his side , with their own forces . One of them was the grand-father of the author of Sharaf-nama . Sultan Selim was so satisfied that he recognised , in 1515 , the autonomy and the hereditary rule of the Kurdish principalities, by firmans signed in advance , filled up and distributed in Kurdistan by his Kurdish counsellor Mawlana Idris Bitlisi al-Hakim .

Joseph von Hammer, the Austrian historian of the 19th century, whose work entitled History of the Ottoman Empire is still the reference work on the matter , explains (in vol. 4 of the French edition) that the two extremities of the Empire, Kurdistan on the East , and Bosnia-Herzegovina on the West, were not submitted to the central administration , but left autonomous under their hereditary ruling families , because of the distance separating them from the centre , on one hand, and the difficult mountainous nature of the country , on the other hand . Then von Hammer adds that Selim I asked Idris Bitlisi “to go and gather the allegiance of the Kurdish beys and princes inhabiting the Kurdish country, from Urmia , which is the extreme eastern frontier of Kurdistan, to Malatya, which is the western frontier” .

Sir Mark Sykes left us in his book “The Caliphs’ Last Heritage” (London , 1915) a long chapter on Ottoman Kurdistan , with a map called “Map of the Kurdish tribes in the Ottoman Empire” , showing Turkish Kurdistan stretching over an area going from the border of Persia, on the east, beyond the sources of the Kizil Irmak river, westwards (between Sivas and Zara) , practically in accordance with the definition by von Hammer for the 16th century . Somebody would say Mark Sykes was a British serving British interests . His information are actually based , beside reading , on personal notes taken during his travels across Turkey and its possessions , between 1908 and 1913 , in the service of the sultan . He was bid welcome by Ottoman governors and military pasha , and free to move, with his own team , according to his will .

Many Kurds and Turks keep copies of official Ottoman maps – by the General-Staff of the Ottoman army , for instance – on which the name of Kurdistan is written at the right place and in bold letters , in Arab script . Some maps can be as late as the end of the Ottoman caliphate . I keep in my archive a few samples of such maps . One of them shows Kurdistan written twice , one covering in the north the larger area corresponding to today’s Turkish Kurdistan , stretching from the Persian border to Malatya , included , exactly as defined by von Hammer for the 16th century, and the other covering , to the south, the smaller area corresponding nowadays to southern , that is Iraqi Kurdistan . On another map the name ‘Kurdler’ (Kurds , in Turkish) can be seen written as northwards as the southeast of Artvin and north of Kars , not so far from Georgia .

According to the first census of population under Mustafa Kemal , in 1927, Turkey had a total population of 13'648'000 inhabitants , unevenly distributed . Western Turkey was much more populated than the central areas , and than Kurdistan , in the eastern areas . We don’t have figures or liable estimates as to the number of Kurds at that time . If one has to make an estimate , it can be said the Kurds could hardly represent 20 % , if not less , of the Republic’s total population. But they were still concentrated in the eastern vilayets , beside a few groups already established in central Turkey (area of Konya, the plains o Haymana, to the south of Ankara , and some others) , where they had their own villages and continued to speak Kurdish (as still today) . The Kurds at Istanbul were only a few families , remnants of the former Kurdish aristocracy , some intellectuals and merchants . It is from the 1950s on that the Kurds began growing in number at a rate of about 3,5 % per year, much higher than that of the Turks proper (about 2,1 or 2,2 %) , thanks to the Kurdish woman fertility, on one hand , and to a lesser rate of infantile mortality , on the other hand . At the beginning of the 21st century , as said above, the Kurds in Turkey should represent up to almost one third of the total population , and this is resented by the Turkish establishment as a threat menacing the future of the Republic . In the Turkish mass media there are sometimes debates about this threat , on “how to limit the population growth in the Eastern provinces”. The more the Kurds in Turkey are numerous the harsher is the policy of the Turkish establishment against them . This reflects fear of the future . Why to have fears regarding the numerical importance of the Kurds if their rights are duly recognised as a distinct nationality within a multinational democracy ?

9) A federation of Mideastern states ?

In chapter 6 , after having spoken of the solution he suggests to the Kurdish question in Turkey, Iran, Iraq , and Syria ( reviewed above in this paper under subtitles 5 and 6) , Abdullah Ocalan discusses the point about the unity of all the Kurds. He writes with this respect : “In the past the slogan of an independent, unified and socialist Kurdistan was launched , but it represented the national understanding of the question . Furthermore , whatever attractive it might be , it was not realistic . It will be more realistic to launch a slogan seeking : Democracy and freedoms for each state under the roof of which the Kurds live, each of these states being the mother homeland of the Kurds” . Then he adds : “the right strategy is to struggle for democracy and equality within the unity of each of these states , since their democratisation will mean democracy in Middle East and open the way for a kind of union between the states of the Middle East similar to that of the European Union.”

I began this paper by saying that a kind of union between the states of the Middle East within which the Kurds live , possibly with some others, could be envisaged for a later future , not before a real solution to the Kurdish question within the concerned states will have been found . We have seen Abdullah Ocalan more or less admitting a federalist solution for the Kurds in Iran and Iraq , but refusing it for the sole Kurds of Turkey . We know his real aim , and hope , is the accession of Turkey to the membership of the European Union . Here is he speaking about a kind of Mideastern union between the states of the area . He is just talking, and may say anything and the contrary. How could Turkey , with 21 or 22 million Kurds not recognised as a nationality within its borders, be at the same member of the European Union and of a Mideastern Union ?

10) Undue hopes put in the European Union

During the years of fighting between the PKK guerrilla and the Turkish state (1984-1999), especially in the 1990s, the European Parliament and the Legislative Assembly of the Council of Europe , by successive resolutions , launched appeals asking the Turkish government and the Kurdish people, including PKK , to reach a political solution to the Kurdish question by dialogue and peaceful means. When Abdullah Ocalan , thanks to an international conspiracy , had been arrested , handed over to Turkey, in February 1999 , and unjustly condemned to a death penalty by the Turkish State Security Court , the European Union stopped suddenly to speak about a political solution to the Kurdish question . That was a shame. The PKK had no other choice but uprising against injustice .

Over five years, as president of the Kurdistan National Congress , I have been writing letters and sending memorandums to the European institutions and their member states , demanding that prior to any negotiation with Turkey with a view to its admission as member of the EU , Turkey should have reached a political solution to the Kurdish national question, by dialogue with representatives of the Kurdish people, PKK included . As already said , in these documents , it was affirmed that the Kurds are a non-Turkish people , with a right to self-determination, and that a federalist solution would be the right option .

Unfortunately, at the European Helsinki summit of December 1999 , the name of Turkey was put on the list of states “candidate at membership” of the EU , without any reference to the Kurdish question . The European Commission , following the summit, adopted , in 2000 , the general criteria of Copenhagen , about democracy, respect for human rights and the rights of national minorities, as the basis for democratisation of Turkey , without any reference to a specific Kurdish question, on which the future of democracy depends . In the Turkish program for compliance with these criteria , no reference either was made to the question , not even to the existence of Kurds in Turkey . When the project “ Turkey 2000 Accession Partnership ” , prepared by the European Commission , was submitted to the European Parliament for discussion, the Parliament adopted on 15 November 2000 a document entitled “ Turkey’s Progress Towards Accession ” containing 29 points, which constitute addenda bringing precision to the project , or bridging its gaps. Several of these addenda concern the Kurds, especially points Nos 11 to 14 , which mention specifically ‘ the Kurdish people’ and the need of a ‘political solution’ to their question, demand “an international fund for the reconstruction of the Kurdish destroyed villages and the return of their inhabitants.” These addenda were not retained in the final document submitted to Turkey . In other terms, the EU has no respect for the resolutions of its own parliament . If the European Union , proclaimed as being based on the highest principles of justice, peace and democracy, has no respect for the European Parliament itself , how could it have respect for the Kurdish people and their rights ?

I do not make it a mystery , I was , and still am , as surprised as angry at the hypocrisy of the European Union . I denounced the Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi , and Syrian oppressive policy toward the Kurds, on the invitation of Canadian parliamentarians, at the federal Canadian Parliament, in Ottawa , on 6 June 2000 . What I think about the hypocrisy of the executive bodies of the European Union , regarding the Kurdish question in Turkey , I said it publicly in my speech at the meeting held at the House of Commons (British Parliament) , Grand Committee Room, London , on Tuesday 23 January 2001 , in the presence of British MPs , Lords , intellectuals , artists, friends of the Kurdish people , and before the Kurdish intelligentsia at the British capital . I repeated the same criticism at the meeting held the next day at the National Assembly of Wales, Cardiff, and , at another date, in a press conference held at the European Parliament , in Brussels . I presented the same criticism toward the European Union, in courteous terms, to Mr. Romano Prodi , president of the European Commission , in a letter in the name of KNK , dated 14 November 2002 . I requested in this letter the European Union to work for a real , and political , solution to the national question of the Kurdish people in Turkey , by peaceful means, in consultation with representatives of the Kurdish people. I repeated these criticism again at the KNK’s General Assembly of December 2002 , before our European guests and friends . Does not this attitude mean the Kurds in Turkey were considered by the European Union as a respectful people , worth of a political solution, as long as they were fighting by arms for their rights , and today that they have stopped fighting , and are just begging for peace and democracy, they are no longer seen respectable , but worth nothing ? Their name is not even mentioned in the conditions put by the European Union for a possible accession of Turkey .

But could wee indeed blame Europe for this volt-face , knowing that Abdullah Ocalan himself has done the same soon after his abduction, and that he does not demand more than peace and individual democratic freedoms , for the resolution of the Kurdish question ?

11) Undue hopes put in the European Court of Human Rights

Mr. Ocalan repeats at many places in his Democratic Civilisation a topic he calls “the superiority of the European civilisation on the traditional values of the civilsation of the Middle East” . We know how the hopes put in the European Union for a political solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey are undue. Ocalan’s hopes are now placed in the European Court of Human Rights .

In chapter 8 of his book , entitled “Can the European Law System Find a Way to Resolve the Kurdish Question ?” , he naively thinks that “to place the Kurdish question and my own case within the framework of the law system of the European Union furthers the possibility for a political solution to this important question , since Turkey is a party to this system, has ratified the European Convention on Human Rights , and accepts the competence of the European Court of Human Rights”. After having expressed his ‘highest respect’ for the Court , he adds : “The European Court of Human Rights is competent in matter of Kurdish question (…) since my own case is considered with the highest importance by the Court, given my leading position which is part of my popular personality among the Kurds”.

In the subtitle “The Kurdish Question, the Turkish Republic and the European Law” , same chapter 8 , Mr. Ocalan says the Europan Convention on Human Rights guarantees the free practice of the right of self-determination and the free expression of cultural life . Yet he does not ignore that in many cases which were presented by other Kurds from Turkey before the Court , the sentence was to allocate them a few thousands USD , as a reparation that he considers “scandalous”.

I have on my desk the (French) text of the European Convention on Human Rights : nothing in its articles concerns the right of peoples to self-determination. Title IV , Art. 38 ff of the Convention concern the European Court of Human Rights . There is no European or international institution that can say such or such people should practice their right of self-determination. The Trusteeship Council of the United Nations may decide as to the government of a dependent country, but Kurdistan , an internal colony in my own eyes, is not a dependent country in matter of international law. It is an integral part of independent states .

The European Court of Human Rights has no competence for the resolution of a political and national question . Its competence includes reparation of violations of human rights and individual freedoms . Besides , Mr. Ocalan confuses his own case , his rights as a human being, and the rights of the Kurdish people .

On 12 March 2003 , the European Court of Human Rights passed what should be a partial decision in the case Ocalan v. Turkey , which was a kind of an equilibrium sport (about detention : no violation of Art. 5.1 of the Convention , but violation of Art. 5.3 and 5.4 ; about fair trial : violation of Art. 6.1 ; about death penalty : no violation of Art. 2 and Art.3 …) . The case is otherwise still pending .

12) To offend Kurdish history and other political parties

Nothing is spared by the offending pen of Abdullah Ocalan . The Kurdish feudal principalities , torn between the Ottoman and Persian empires , are sharply rejected just because they were feudal and had to keep their existence between the two enemy empires , which were feudal themselves . Kurdistan became a battlefield between the two empires for about two centuries, and the country was ruined . The Kurdish national uprisings along the 19th centuries and the beginning of the 20th century , against Ottoman domination, looting and tyranny , are said rebellions by Mr. Ocalan ; all what is kept with respect in the collective memory of the Kurdish people, and is illustrated in the Kurdish folk songs , the uprisings by the Bedir-Khanids , the Babanids ,the Soranids , by Sheikh Ubeidullah of Shemdinan , by Sheikh Mahmoud Berezenji of Sulaimaniya , and the sheikhs of Barzan, all is repeatedly reviled . Today’s Kurdish political parties , other than his own , and their chiefs , are said agent of foreign powers , and the movement they lead is pretended to be but a primitive nationalism .

I do not say there is no matter for criticism in the other political parties, there is surely , maybe a lot to say, for instance about the relationship between KDP and PUK , once at war and once co-operating, their respective regional and partisan administration. But there is as much to say as to the conflicting relationship between the PKK and other Kurdish political parties .

Why to call the policy of PUK and KDP ‘primitive nationalism’ while they both seek to assure a federate government for Iraqi Kurdistan within the unity of a federal and democratic Iraq , when they have obtained about a federalist solution more than promises from the Iraqi Arab parties and the USA ? Is it not because Mr. Ocalan is, unfortunately , not in a position to assure a federalist solution , or at least an autonomy , to Turkish Kurdistan within a truly democratic Republic of Turkey, that he allows himself such an aggressive address to those who are in a better position ? Should not all the Kurds consider that any progress realised by a part of them , in the way of democracy and the legitimate rights of peoples, is good and benefit for all the Kurds and all the area ?

According to Ocalan’s concept , his party should open a section in each part of Kurdistan, be it under a different name . The first regional experience of PKK , by the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they created a section for PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan under the name of PAK , was a failure . This so-called “PAK” grouped individuals of different ideas having in common personal feuds to settle with PUK and especially KDP, the two main parties in the region. The other Kurdish parties limit their political programme to one part of Kurdistan , here the Iraqi part ; they however proclaim an obligation of solidarity toward the other Kurds and the right of the Kurdish people to self-deterimination, with the possibility of different political options. Even when they are homonymous , like the different KDPs , they keep independent organically and politically one from other .

Mr. Ocalan is very sharply critical too of the manner in which his directives to the executive staff of his own party are carried out , but this is an internal problem . To a few dramatic exceptions , the executive staff accepted criticism and followed the position and ideas of their leader.

Mr. Ocalan says his party should be open to criticism , whether it is expressed inside or outside the party , because exchange of opinion means intellectual enrichment ; yet if criticism represents a threat menacing the existence of PKK , it requires a response in accordance with the strategy of the party’s legitimate self-defence.

13) Ocalan’s party : a democratic or pyramidal structure ?

We have seen above the name of PKK was changed in the spring 2002 into KADEK, who stated the change was meant to abandon Leninism and the hierarchical structure of the party . That was done according to Ocalan’s directives . Then , in early November 2003 , together with some other persons , KADEK became KGK (People’s Congress of Kurdistan) , in order “to realise the Democratic Civilisattion , according to the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan , the leader of the Kurdish people.”

All these changes were ordered by Abdullah Ocalan by the way of his lawyers, going and coming between the prison at Imrali , the Qandil mountain, and sometimes Europe. These are Kurdish or Turkish lawyers from Turkey . Mr. Ocalan mandated European lawyers for his case pending at the European Court at Strasbourg.

To abandon the hierarchical structure by Ocalan’s party, the recourse to ‘civil society’ groups , the so-called “popular democracy” , all this is just words , all is done according to the will of one man , Abdullah Ocalan .

Mr. Ocalan does not content himself with giving general orientation. He has a network of unconditional supporters in Turkey , thank to whom he meddles in almost everything , even as to the choice of candidates at parliamentary or municipal elections . Any person who would not seem unconditionally faithful and obedient , or would prove to have some independence , some personality , and able to take initiative other than his , will be put aside , or removed, accused of deviation . Within the party apparatus , such a person could be declared a traitor . He wants himself to be and remain the sole and absolute master of the party and the Kurdish people.

14) On Ocalan’s strategy of legitimate self-defence

In chapter 6 , speaking of PKK under subtitle 4 , Mr. Ocalan presents the party as a “political organisation to propose solutions to the current situation in Kurdistan , on the basis of scientific socialism and the characteristics of the 20th century” . Then he explains that the PKK strategy of legitimate self-defence was misused by the party’s executive body , since its aim is not to work for the destruction of a terrorist state , but to resist it , if necessary by using arms , it is not to surrender , but to bring about the necessary state reform , without changing borders . He says this strategy , practiced from 1999 on , means for the PKK guerrilla to take position in mountainous areas , for the most beyond Turkey , to improve the quality of its military capability , but to use arms only in case of an attack , for self-defence . Yet at another place, Mr. Ocalan shows himself threatening , warning that “if Turkey persists in its policy of denial of the Kurds , it would suffice to resume the armed struggle , at a low-level fighting , to bring Turkey twenty years backwards.” . Abdullah Ocalan , although “open” to discuss with the government a “most modest solution” to the Kurdish question , allows himself to use the guerrilla of his party as means to exert pressure . He dooms the guerrilla to be just an instrument in his hands. He has no respect , no consideration for the guerrilla . A means pressure for what ?

In the 9th chapter , consecrated to his autobiography , subtitle “The search of peace” , Abdullah Ocalan resumes the topic . He says: “The PKK position of ‘no peace nor war’ , of ‘legitimate self-defence’ is the most difficult (…). The current situation does not allow the Kurds to launch a strategic offensive war (…) ; even if they had this possibility , it would not be necessary , since losses would be superior to gain . But the conditions for a legitimate war of self-defence are realised, be it for a long period , since losses will be low , and this should allow the Kurds to recover their dignity , their cultural rights , and , slowly , the will to live within this homeland (he means Turkey) , with more friends abroad.”

Abdullah Ocalan leaves no doubt about it , since he continues : “ The state cannot escape from peace with the Kurds (…) . All what the Kurds demand is recognition for their existence , cultural freedoms , and full democracy . One cannot imagine more modest demands . The PKK strategy of legitimate self-defence is a great responsibility ; it is the duty of the state or states to respond to it.”

I wish Abdullah Ocalan , and the guerrilla in their mountain fastnesses , long life, safety , and freedom . I wish Ocalan success in the strategy of legitimate self-defence , with one reservation : what is, where is the homeland of the Kurdish people ? Is it Turkey or Kurdistan ? . Furthermore , there can be other kinds of strategy , but here is not the place to speak about (see more about strategy , below under subtitle 22, regarding an offensive strategy.)

15) On PKK/KGK’s “national leader”, cult of Ocalan, and other topics

When the largest part of this paper was already written , news made public by Ocalan’s lawyers , in March 2004, said Abdullah Ocalan is not satisfied with KGK ( People’s Congress of Kurdistan), and that he wants it to be replaced by a new PKK , reduced essentially to seven or eight hundred young people, among his unconditional followers, perhaps trained by older members . Osman Ocalan, Abdullah’s younger brother , is apparently angry, what for I do not know, but he left with a small group the Qandil-based headquarters to Mosul . A statement by the responsiubles at Qandil was made public against his behaviour. Thanks to the bons offices of emissaries , Osman Ocalan returned back to Qandil , but the atmosphere at the headquarters should not be one of clearness and serenity . It is not serious that Ocalan’s party be repeatedly manipulated by its leader . But it is also the mistake of the guerrilla leaders at Qandil to accept manipulation . That the Turkish government allows Ocalan’s lawyers goings and comings between Imrali and Qandil , to make public such repeated upheavals within a vicious circle , storms in a teacup , may well say its aim is to discredit Abdullah Ocalan , his leadership and his party , and to put more fog on the way of the Kurdish people. Ocalan’s “scientific democracy” is already foggy enough .

If KGK , heir to PKK , is doomed to disappear and become again PKK, then why to dwell on its programme? This is because it does not make much difference whether the name is PKK, KADEK, or KGK , it is always the ideas of one man, Abdullah Ocalan. On11 November 2003 , the creation of KGK was proclaimed , at the Qandil headquarters , in four documents , all written as usual in Turkish , the “official language” of Ocalan’s party . They were translated by the party into English . I read the English translation. One piece is a general presentation called “Declaration of People’s Democratic Rights” , another is the “Final Declaration of the Founding Conference of KGK” , a third is its Programme and the fourth is the Constitution . In these pieces (beside the Constitution, which is an internal statute) the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan (including about the ‘neolithic society’) are repeated , and again repeated , as by parrots . The creation of KGK had been demanded by Abdullah Ocalan to make his party follow more clearly his ideas about the “Democratic Civilisation” and a “scientific democracy” . The KGK was founded to respond to Ocalan’s demand and espouse his ideas to work for ‘democratic Civilisation’ . All the points of criticism mentioned above in this paper, regarding this work, are therefore applicable to KGK. There is no need to dwell long on the matter , but two or three points could be added , or emphasis can be put on them :

a)- The first point is about the very function of a ‘national leader’ in a society supposed to be popular and democratic , a vanguard society . This function was made official in the KGK’s Constitution , where “Leadership”, “Assembly General”, and “Presidency” are three different things , under separate articles . In the “Final Declaration of the Foundation Conference of KGK” , reference is made to Abdullah Ocalan as “the undisputed leader of the Kurdish people” , and to his work , called “Manifesto of the Democratic Civilisation” , as the fundamental and guide work for KGK . This double reference to Mr. Ocalan and his work is repeated in the “Programme”.

To have a “President for life” , an eternal “National Leader” , an immortal “Father of the people” , whoever might be -- in the case of the Kurds Abdullah Ocalan or another person --, is something characteristic of some culturally backward and underdeveloped societies , presenting a serious deficit in matter of democracy . I often feel sorry for the Turkish people to have chosen in the person of Mustafa Kemal Pasha an irremovable and dictatorial “Father” . This is a serious handicap for spiritual elevation and intellectual progress , a barrier before the liberty of opinion . Do need the Kurds to have an alter ego of Atatürk , in a way the reverse of the medal ? Mustafa Kemal transformed the Ottoman defeat into a Turkish victory ; Abdullah Ocalan , unfortunately for him and for the Kurds , is the prisoner of the state founded by “Atatürk” .

The British did not make of Churchill , nor the French of de Gaulle , their “Father” . Churchill , who had practically won the war , lost the legislative elections before its end . De Gaulle , who incarnated the French honour at that war , had to quit power one year after its end . We do not find , in their respective country, their photography or their statute in the squares of cities and at every corner of street . That is democracy.

In the case of PKK , the concept and function of a “leader of the people” are inherited from the Leninist , if not Stalinist tradition . It is a culture . Abdullah Ocalan had the personality and the character to make the throne his . All the forms of cult of the personality , as they were in use in what was hitherto called the “Popular Democracies” , in Central and Eastern Europe , till the fall of the Wall of Berlin , were professionally practised by the PKK for the cult of Abdullah Ocalan . There is however a difference : the cult of Abdullah Ocalan was still ongoing ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall . That is how late are the Kurds on the way of history.

Abdullah Ocalan was obviously assisted , within PKK , by a teem of professionals in matter of his personal worship . Many Kurds remember or possess those Party-produced artifices showing Abdullah Ocalan as a supernatural being , such drawings where his head scrapes the sky , over the mountain summits, while the companions around him are far much smaller, just ordinary men; or this television clip showing him inside a huge cage for birds , with metal bars , and pigeons flying around him, picking grains on his hand . Like Ataturk in Turkey , his portrait is everywhere . There are illustration or television clips showing him in a mountainous landscape , greeting the guerrilla or receiving their homage, while he had never shared the difficult life of the guerrilla in the mountains of Kurdistan . I once read in a pro-PKK magazine articles in which Abdullah Ocalan was compared not only with prophets, but with such conquerors as Napoleon and Alexander the Great . This kind of comparison stopped after his abduction.

b)- In the Programme of KGK , among the aims to be attained , and conditions for membership , one can read these two :

b.1 : “To be in favour of accession of Turkey to the European Union . To strive for using this connection in favour of people and a Middle Eastern Union.” (Title IV, Art. 12) .

To work for Turkish accession to the European union is made a condition for membership , but still without any prior federalist or autonomy solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey , exactly as Mr. Ocalan has formulated it . The accession of Turkey to the European Union means Northern Kurdistan included , and this means the division of the Kurdish nation into two halves , one becoming “European” within Turkey, and the other remaining Mideastern . This is the negation of the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination , and is contrary to the aspirations of the Kurdish people for union. Besides , since another aim is to work for the creation of a Mideastern Union, how could this “European Turkey” including its “European Kurds” be at the same time member of a Mideastern Union ? Are then the frontiers of Europe going to extend over Kirmanshah , Tehran , and perhaps into Afghanistan ? I may resume below this topic ( see under point 18 , on Kurdish self-determination.)

b.2 : In the Programme (under B.g) another aim is the following :

“Civil society administration will come to the fore . Political institutions will play a bridging role between state and society. The nation-state and political borders drawn in accordance with this concept which have become an obstacle for global development will be transcended and new unions and institutions will develop appropriate to the character of democratic civilisation on a regional and international scale.”

Really ? Are then the comrades of KGK/PKK , guided by the directives of Abdullah Ocalan, going to ultimately and peacefully cancel the states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq , Syria, and perhaps some others, thanks to the patient , ant-like work of private civil society units ? Is not this to give false hopes to the Kurdish people ? Do they believe the Kurds to be so candid ? Would Turkey and the other states let themselves be willingly swallowed bit by bit , eaten inside their borders by the ant-like and angelically peaceful action of the civil society ?

16) A Leader with a prophet cloth, in a mission for the humanity good

We have seen, above , where Mr. Ocalan speaks about a solution to the Kurdish question in Syria, that he compares himself with the Biblical prophet Abraham , since both started their mission from Urfa (former Edessa, Ruha in Kurdish) , a province and a city in Turkish Kurdistan , to the north of the Syrian border. In our general presentation of his work, we noticed that Mr. Ocalan does not compare himself only with Abraham , but also Jesus Christ , and Muhammad . The book is full with such comparisons . Abdullah Ocalan is too clever to say crudely “I am a prophet” , but the aim is to let the common and pious Kurds believe it , for political use , thanks to a subtle art of wording . No need to say that the age of prophets is over. Mr. Ocalan is certainly among the first Kurds to know it .

This use of prophet’s image and religious feeling by a political leader , to let others believe he is invested with a somehow divine mission for the salvation of the people , and for the good of all humanity, is the summit of the art of self worship and cult of the personality .

Yet Abdullah Ocalan was perhaps overhung by his professional worshipers. He says himself not to be a hero . For a time he is modest and human , it is worth underlying . His aim is actually double , one and the contrary at the same time . On one hand it is a new utopia , a “scientific democracy”, a peaceful world without states , regulated by the civil society : we are back with Marx and Engels . On the other hand, it is exceedingly small , next to zero , regarding the Kurds of Turkey . This is not the programme of a political party. It is not in accordance with the legitimate aspirations of the Kurdish people, nor with the example of modern multinational democracies.

17) The modern type of states : Multinational Democracies

Speaking of Turkey joining perhaps the European Union, without requiring any prior and real solution to the Kurdish question , beside individual freedoms and civil society initiatives , which do not constitute a solution to a national question , Abdullah Ocalan keeps himself prisoner of the type of nation-state that was founded by Mustafa Kemal . This Turkish Republic is a bad copy , deprived of any real democratic tradition, of the archetypal model of the French Republic , as legated by the French Revolution. In the Kemalist Republic those who do not recognise themselves as “Turks” are excluded by law from any democracy and deprived of all rights, even the most elementary human rights .

We have seen above , under point 7 , other types of state , a review of the language and nationality issues in Spain, Switzerland , Belgium , as well as Russia . We also had a glimpse of the status of Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom.

A collective work entitled Multinational Democracies , edited by Alain-G. Gagnon and James Tully , with a foreword by Charles Taylor , all three Canadian academics, published recently at Cambridge, 2001 , resume these issues of several nationaities within one state , on both the theoretical ground and by the example. At the first page , this work is presented as follow :

“Multinational Democracies is the first collaborative , multiperspective critical survey of a new and distinctive type of political association that is coming into prominence in the twenty-first centurey , These are democratic societies that are not only multicultural but also multinational : that is, they comprise two or more nations , Fifteen leading comparative political scientists and political theorists from Europe and North America clarify the complex character and tensions of multinational democracies by reflecting on four exemplars – the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and Canada . The work offers a new approach to the study, understanding , and governing of multinational societies and, in so doing, of culturally diverse societies more generally . This volume will be of interest to those concerned with diverse societies , nationalism, federalism and democratic constitutionalism in conditions of pluralism.”

Charles Taylor, in the foreword, writes :

“ If a minority , for instance, comes to see the majority as concerned exclusively for its good , rather than that of the whole , they will begin to feel that they are no longer included in this ‘people’ . Then , according to the very logic of democracy , they are no longer bound by the decisions arrived at without any concern for them.”
“ ….. Any systematic inequality or mode of discrimination in a modern society is seen as a challenge to its right to exist . Now equality is not homogeneity , although it has been construed as such…. ”

“ We are moreover in an age of identity awakening . Peoples are demanding that differences , not hitherto acknowledged , be recognized , along with a host of diemensions – gender , religious , linguistic , and cultural…. ”

“ This book attempts to tackle these dilemmas in a very important category of cases, that of multinational democracies . This is important, not only because national differences are among the most powerful and intractable ; but also because the category of what can legitimately be called ‘multinational’ states is growing, as previously submerged groups begin to make identity demands.”

James Tully writes in his introduction :

“ A ‘nation’ is a ‘people’ with the right of self-determination . A multinational society is a ‘people’ composed of ‘peoples’ , a multi-peoples society or a multination (…) . When a demand for the recognition of one or more nations or peoples arises in a multinational democracy , it ‘problematizes’ the constitutional identity of the society. That is, the demand renders problematic the current (single-nation) constitutional identity of the society and proposes a change . Various solutions are then proposed to the problem in theory and practice . Looking back over fifty years of experience , three conflicting types of solution are standardly proposed around which citizens and government mobilize : (1) defence of the statu quo, with or without a degree of sub-constitutional change , (2) various forms of recognition of the nation or nations by changing the current constitutional identity , and (3) secession of the nation or nations and recognition as a new independent nation or nations , with or without some relation to the former society…”

Why should not be allowed for the Kurds to claim a solution as found in the modern type of multinational democracies , instead of remaining prisoners of – and oppressed by , the old and centralised type of nation-state , with hopes limited to hypothetical individual rights and civil society initiatives ? Are not the Kurds one of the oldest nations in the area ? They are a stateless nation, oppressed by nation-states. They have a thousand reasons to claim statehood , either within the framework of multinational democracies , should the oppressor accept to be a partner , or in full independence .

18) About self-determination of the Kurdish people

Abdullah Ocalan says to be against the right of self-determination for the solution of the Kurdish question . As an individual , he is free to think whatever he would like , but he cannot say this on behalf of the Kurdish people.

As this was said , the Kurds – today about 42 millions , with their diasporas - , who were partitioned between four mono-nationalistic nation-states without having been consulted, have the right of self-determination , as any other people . This right is , by definition, natural, inalienable , and imprescriptible . No individual Kurd, whoever might be, Abdullah Ocalan or another person , no Kurdish political party, PKK , PUK, KDP or any other , no Kurdish generation can renounce the right of self-determination , or bargain it, to the detriment of the future generations . The Kurds cannot be deprived of this right by any third party , by any other nation, by any state or association of states . But self-determination implies several options . One option is a facultative union , with full collective equality , between the Kurds and their neighbours , on the basis of federalism . The federalist option is the one adopted by the Kurds in Iraq from 1992 on ; it is the option that the writer has been advocating over decades for the resolution of the Kurdish question in the states dividing Kurdistan and, at a later stage, for the federalisation of all of Kurdistan while keeping the federalist ties between the Kurds and their neighbours (see I. Ch. Vanly , Le Kurdistan irakien entité nationale, Neuchâtel, 1970 , pp. 325-335).

To achieve such facultative unions does not put an end to the right of self-determination . If such facultative unions can be realised by peaceful and democratic means , that would be much better for the Kurds and their neighbours. If this cannot be realised , because of refusal of the concerned states , the Kurds have the legitimate right to fight according to their right of self-determination , and for their interest , including the creation of an independent Kurdistan .

The right of self-determination of all peoples , proclaimed by philosophers over centuries, was also consecrated , without condition , in many conventions of the United Nations . Along the 19th century and till 1920 , this right was interpreted , and instrumented , according to the ‘principle of nationalities’ , often with recourse to a referendum . Woodrow Wilson , in his proclamation in Fourteen Points , interpreted this right according to the principle of nationalities . The provisions of the Sèvres treaty with Ottoman Turkey, about Kurdistan , means international consecration of the right of self-determination of the Kurdish people , according to the principle of nationalities . If W. Wilson was to get weary of the imperialist policy of the main European Allied Powers , and if Europe was to betray the Kurds at Lausanne, thanks to Ataturk’s victory , this is not a juridical question, but a matter of realpolitik . Altough proclaimed universal , the United Nations limited the practice of the right of self-determination to the decolonization of dependent territories under the domination of Western Powers , through the Council of Trusteeship . Yet a limited practice by the UN changes nothing as to the universal dimension of the right of self-determination .

Furthermore, the international law , in its present scope , and the modern doctrine , have made of the right of self-determination of peoples – which is by definition a collective right liable to be instrumented by a referendum - , an integral part of modern human rights , which are by definition individual rights . This means, at least theoretically, any human group , any nationality , like the Kurds or others , can still decide of their own future , according to the will of a majority of their members . In other words , the right of self-determination of a people can still be practised thanks to the modern acceptation of human rights . Abdullah Ocalan does not mention this . He possibly does not know that the modern concept of human rights includes the right of self-determination of peoples . Despite too much talk , he in fact places the Kurdish national question , one of the most serious in the world by the violations of human rights it provokes , by its moral and geostrategical dimension , at the lowest level possible . He wants the Kurds of Turkey to keep being Turkish citizens , with no rights other than those that would be recognised by a state governed by a racist and corrupt establishment, with little hope of a true democratic change.

Antonio Cassese is a known academic in matter of international law . He defines himself as a ‘positivist’ author , that is partisan of status quo and current international state order ; in other terms he has a conservative position . He presents a recent book of his , entitled ‘Self-Determination of Peoples , A Legal Reappraisal’ ( Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995) as follow : “ The self-determination of peoples is a major issue in the modern community. Both radical and potentially subversive, it serves to grant statehood to oppressed people, but also to disrupt existing state structures. This book, the first comprehensive legal account of self-determination, sets out to trace how this political ideal has turned into an international legal standard ”.

An international legal standard ? Possibly , but with a double-standard policy in the field of practice . Bosnia-Herzegovina , numbering about two million inhabitants belonging to different ethnic groups, has become an independent state thanks to a military intervention by NATO and the European Union. But the Kurds in Turkey, who are ten times as numerous as the Bosnians , are offered nothing .

In his introduction Antonio Cassese says : “ self-determination is a powerful expression of the underlying tensions and contradictions of international legal theory ; it perfectly reflects the cyclical oscillations between positivism and natural law, between an emphasis on consent, that is, voluntarism, and an emphasis on binding ‘objective’ legal principles, between a ‘statist’ and a communitarian vision of world order ” . He defines himself to be of a “ positivist orientation – a coomitment to the ‘is’ ”.

Noticing the large number of peoples demanding self-determination and the small number of established states covering the limited surface of the Earth , Cassese continues the introduction , with a restrictive reference to the Kurdish question :

“ To explore self-determination, as this book will do, is therefore a way of opening a window towards a multifaceted, hugely important phenomenon. It is also a way of opening a veritable Pandora’s box . In every corner of the globe peoples are claiming the right to self-determination . Consider the most celebrated cases : Palestine, Western Sahara, South Africa , East Timor, Quebec. Add to these the Kurds ; the Basques ; the indigeneous populations of Australia ; Guatemala ; the United States and Canada ; the Armenians ; the inhabitants of Gibraltar and the Falkland/Malvinas Islands . Wich of these peoples actually have a right to self-determination ? ”

In a column of Le Monde , issue of 19 November 1998 , the French daily says : “ The Kurds, numbering between 25 to 30 millions , are the last grand people to whom self-determination is refused ” . The Time magazine , issue of March 1st , 1999, put it in these terms : “ The Kurds constitute the world’s largest ethnic community without a status of nationhood ” . The present writer would have said “ the world’s largest stateless nation. ”

Helmut Schmidt , the former social-democrat Chancellor of Germany, in an interview with a German daily , Berliner Tagesspiegel , dated 31 December 2000 , says : “ The Allied Powers committed a gross mistake at the Versailles Treaty of 1919 , in not deciding to create an independent Kurdish state.” Then , criticising the decision admitting Turkey as candidate at accession to the European Union , without a prior solution to the Kurdish question , Mr. Schmidt adds : “The Kurdish and Turkish communities are fighting each other in the streets of Hamburg , sometimes with arms . Are we going to introduce this serious conflict into Europe ? The admission of Turkey as candidate at accession to the European Union was a gross mistake . The price to be paid by Europe would be very high.”

Valerie Giscard d’Estaing , former president of the French Republic and current president of the European Convention , which laid down the draft Constitution of the European Union , stated repeatedly in 2003 and current 2004 that “Turkey is not European”. He said “only 5 % of the territory of Turkey is at the edge of Europe, all the rest belongs to Asia.” The political party representing the majority at the French parliament , which supports the government designated by the President of the Republic Jacques Chirac, issued in March 2004 a public statement proclaiming its opposition to the accession of Turkey to the European Union .

The possibility of using the right of self-determination to get access to statehood is not merely theoretical. How many nations hitherto oppressed and exploited , how many territories previously dependent and made colonies under foreign domination , have become, thanks to their struggle, independent nations since the end of the second World War ? India , Vietnam , Algeria , Erythrae, Bangladesh , former British, French , or Portuguese colonies ... No need to mention more examples . Another option for statehood is federation or confederation. All is a matter of will , perseverance , organisation , interest , and perhaps opportunity . One may say peoples deserve what they deserve, they merit what they can achieve by their will, but not more , nor less . If a nation has not the will and the imagination to strive for a place in the world , it will have no place in the world.

Brother Abdullah Ocalan was right in creating PKK to try to liberate Kurdistan , by armed struggle, from Turkish domination . The ‘Apoci’ ( partisans of Apo , ‘Uncle’ in Kurdish, surname given to Abdullah Ocalan by his followers) were not terrorist , but fighters for liberty . All Kurdistan was under domination. The Kurds in Iraq and Iran, in Turkey too, had recourse to armed struggle for liberation , or to obtain an autonomy status , prior to the start of the Apoci movement. In spite of the tyranny and corruption of their administration , Ottoman Turkey and imperial Persia did not deny the diversity and the identity of the peoples under their domination. The name of Kurdistan was recognised and officially in use . Under the Turkish Republic, Northern Kurdistan lost its name and became a nameless and internal colony of the worst species, denied in its heritage , to have ever existed , militarily occupied and economically under-underdeveloped, with a ban on the Kurdish language . Africa has never known such an inhuman and humiliating colonisation.

The Apoci party could be reproached for a lack of clarity as to its aims, for a double objective, whence ambiguity , on one hand, the liberation of Kurdistan, with guerrilla forces called Popular Liberation Army of Kurdistan (ARGK – after the Chinese example) , and on the other hand, the democratisation of Turkey . Turkey cannot get access to democracy without the liberation of Kurdistan and recognising it , be it within its borders in the form of a regional autonomy. In other words the democratisation of Turkey can be only a consequence of Kurdish liberation , and not the contrary . As long as Turkey keeps Kurdistan as an internal colony and proves to be fearful of any kind of Kurdish political consecration, be it in the form of a simple autonomy within its borders , it will not become democratic . If the Kurdish aim is national liberation and decolonization , then this should be the sole aim , and never changed . In the Algerian war of national liberation, the Algerians did not much care about the kind of government in Paris . The war for keeping Algeria as a French colony was decided by a French socialist government pretending itself to be democratic. If the aim is to obtain an autonomy status within the state , which is the lowest , the “most moderate” , the “most modest” form for a solution to the Kurdish question, then this aim should be kept and not changed every day . If it is a federate status within a state that would have been transformed into a federation , the aim should again be kept . To change the aim depends on the attitude of the state . If the state refuses any autonomy status for Kurdistan , the struggle for secession and full independence is legitimate .

There is something pathetic about the situation of the Kurds , the position of Apo and the Apoci in today’s Turkey. Here is a chief who had the courage and the will to create a party and organise a guerrilla for the liberation of the Kurds . After his kidnapping , thanks to an international conspiracy, and having become prisoner of Turkey, he reduced his demands about Kurdish liberation to “next to zero” , denied in fact the existence of a Kurdish homeland , saying “Turkey is the common mother-homeland of the Kurds and the Turks”. Despite this “policy” , which I called “kissing the hands of the Turks” , Turkey, Europe and the USA continue to call him and his partisans “terrorist”. Even if Turkey spares his head , thanks to European pressure , it will never negotiate with him . Yet Mr. Ocalan continues to say he is “open to negotiate” , sends directives to his partisans , who obey , and behaves as the leader of all the Kurds. This is a deadlock. As a Kurd , I resent this situation as humiliation. It is unacceptable. The Apoci have put the Kurdish people in the fog . News from Turkey and Turkish Kurdistan tell the Kurds in their millions are in despair and do not know what way to take.

19) Turkey’s Turks and Kurds are Eastern, not European peoples

We have seen above (under point 18 ) Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor of Germany, saying it was a big mistake that the Versailles Treaty of 1919 did not decide the creation of an independent Kurdish state in Ottoman Kurdistan , and that the decision by the European summit , in December 1999, to admit Turkey as a candidate state at membership , without a prior solution to the Kurdish question, was another gross mistake . We have also heard Valerie Giscard d’Estaing , former President of the French Republic, and present president of the European Convention, saying “Turkey is not European” , but belongs to Asia for 95 % of its territory.

The Kurds in Turkey demand actually much less than the independence that Helmut Schmidt blames Europe not to have imposed on Turkey by the Versailles Treaty . They do not demand independence, but they cannot demand less than what is represented by the structure and principles of Multinational Democracies . The government of the Province of Quebec twice had recourse to a referendum for independence by self-determination , while the federal government at Ottawa kept powerless before the will of the Quebec people. Twice the people of Quebec preferred to remain within the federal state of Canada, by a majority hardly more than 50 % . That is democracy .

Not to be European for Turkey is not merely a matter of geography , but also of culture. Only a thin layer of the Turkish society , the ruling establishment , decided by the will of Mustafa Kemal that it should look European. That was a façade behind which the two main peoples of Turkey, the Turks and the Kurds, kept to be Eastern and Muslim.

In Western Europe , the large Kurdish and Turkish communities live side by side in full rupture; they ignore each other , but both continue to be Muslim and share the same oriental culture . To the exception of the generation born in Europe , they live at the heart of Europe in Muslim and oriental ghettos without being integrated . After some thirty or fourty years of existence , most of them ignore any European language . They read only Turkish or Kurdish papers , they eat , marry, live in family, according to the tradition and the code of honour of the Muslim Near East . Valerie Giscard d’Estaing is right , he said publicly what almost all Christian Europeans think about . If the Turkish ruling establishment insists so much, since 1963 , to accede to the European Union , it is a matter of money , to let a few more millions of Turks and Kurds fill up the space of Shengen , as workers.

As said above in this paper , an accession of Turkey to the European Union will extend artificially the border of Europe, across Turkish Kurdistan , to the borders of Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria , and this means the artificial division of the same Kurdish nation into two halves , one becoming “European” with Turkey – without any prior solution to the Kurdish question –, and the other remaining Mid- , or Neareastern , within Syria, Iraq, and Iran . This is not only aberration , but contrary to the right of self-determination of the Kurdish people . The right of the Kurdish people on Kurdistan , their mother-homeland , prevails over the right of any other foreign party on this land .

One could imagine other solutions, a kind of association, a partnership between Europe and Turkey - as there is one between Switzerland and the European Union . Instead of talking about accession of Turkey, while shamefully ignoring the existence of 22-million Kurds within its borders, the European Union would better do to seek such a partnership with Turkey , and to play a positive role for the resolution of the Kurdish national question .

20) The Kurds , a flock of sheep or an adult people ?

Without going back to ancient times, the Kurds over centuries have been living, in their homeland , according to the unwritten rules of a very hierarchical society, from the summit down to the base. Once the summit was represented by a ‘Mîr’ , a feudal and hereditary prince and his administration, then by the chief of a tribe or confederation of tribes, then by a religious dignitary , shaikh of a ‘tariqa’ , and today by a political party, or parties . The Kurds were illiterate people in their overwhelming majority.

Meanwhile the Kurdish society has changed . We have several cities with a population between half a million and one million, well educated men and women in their thousands , an important intelligentsia , a large and fairly well politicised working class . Yet something of what one should call ‘the hierarchical mentality’ has subsisted in the Kurdish society . When each year , in the cities of Turkish Kurdistan , millions of civilians Kurds celebrate peacefully Newroz , in their Kurdish national colours - one million in Amid/Diyarbekir (I never write “Diyarbakir”) - , one can say hopes for a better future are not undue . This is largely the consequence of 15 years of armed struggle by the guerrilla , under the PKK emblem . The Turkish government is powerless to do anything against the Kurdish Newroz demonstrations. But when Kurds live outside their mountains, amongst the Turks, they feel lost , become powerless, and behave as Turks . I do not think the PKK was able to organise them.

Nevertheless , the deadlock is always there . Abdullah Ocalan , with his “Democratic Civilisation” , can never convince the Kurdish people that their mother-homeland is not Kurdistan , but Turkey . To cherish one’s homeland is legitimate, normal, natural , in accordance with human rights , and by no means a “primitive nationalism” .

The deadlock continues to be there also because the Kurdish masses have acquired, across centuries, that ‘hierarchical mentality’ . They are the people , but have never been accustomed to take decision and initiatives , to decide themselves of their future , to chose the way they should follow for a better future .

The Kurds are not a flock of sheep , but a ‘teenager’ , not yet a fully adult people . Every Kurd , the smallest group of Kurds, should feel responsible for the future of their people . They have the right to take initiatives , to do it in full liberty , without awaiting orders from anybody ; they should co-ordinate their action for the higher interest of the nation.

21) An unjust peace means injustice and subjection

The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , 4th paragraph , reads : “Whereas it is essential , if man is not to be compelled to have recourse , as a last resort , to rebellion against tyranny and oppression , that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”

This means a contrario that if human rights are not protected by the rule of law , man would have recourse to rebellion against oppression and tyranny . The human rights of the Kurdish people , including the right of self-determination (see above under point 18) , are not protected by any rule of law ; then the Kurds should not be blamed if they recourse to armed struggle against oppression and tyranny.

Albert de La Pradelle , French professor in international law , in a book entitled ‘La Paix moderne’ (Modern Peace, Paris , 1948) , published at a time when world peace was a universal concern, writes that to maintain world peace requires two conditions, on one hand social justice , within a nation, and between nations, and , on the other hand , political justice , that is decolonization , the right of peoples to self-determination . The author adds : “ if a nation is threatened in its existence , the war is not only licit , it is moral : the life of a nation is worth a war” .

On the moral and even juridical ground , to preserve the life of the Kurdish nation , as for any other nation, war is therefore not only licit, it is moral. To fight for the dignity and liberty, for the existence and normal progress of this nation cannot be classed as terrorism . Those who would pretend the contrary are the oppressors , and their partners . It is the right of the Kurds to defend their existence, their dignity of human beings, the honour and the heritage of their nation .

22) A strategy of self-defence or an offensive strategy ?

The normal objective for a colony , whether it is an “official” colony and recognised as such, or an unofficial colony, a nameless one of the worst species , like Turkish Kurdistan , is decolonization , to practise the right of self-determination. This aim cannot be “next to zero”. If the Apoci are no longer in a position to struggle for decolonization and the right of self-determination , if they are careful not to demand even a simple geographical autonomy, because Leader Apo is imprisoned by the Turks , this is unhappy , but it is their affair . The Apoci have the right to keep being unconditional partisan of Apo . Nobody would blame them for it . But the right of self determination of the Kurdish people belongs to the Kurdish people , not to ‘Apo’ . The Apoci should not consider the Kurds as a flock of sheep , bound to march behind their party leader , according to a Leninist hierarchical culture . Any Kurd or group of Kurds are free , and have the moral duty , to struggle for the right of self-determination of the Kurdish people . The Apoci should admit it . To have several Kurdish parties , with different aims , independent means , and peaceful coexistence between them , will complicate the task of Turkey , make difficult , if not impossible , for the Turkish establishment to crash the Kurdish liberation movement. Then Turkey might negotiate with one of them for a solution. Party hegemony is not the way to resolve the Kurdish question. Why not to adopt an umbrella political organisation, constituted of different independent groups , similar to the Palestinian PLO - , similar in structure , but not as to the means used ? The Kurds are less mature than the Palestinians .

The strategy of legitimate self-defence (see above under 14) , says Abdullah Ocalan , is the most difficult to follow , yet it is the best , adds he in substance.

I should say this defensive strategy is a useless strategy ; it cannot lead to any solution to the Kurdish question . For how long the guerrilla , seen as terrorist, should keep hidden in the mountains, in a state of “no peace nor war” ? And what for ? To be used as an instrument in the hands of the Leader ? For a “next to zero” solution ? To return back to the situation prevailing before 15 August 1984 ? Abdullah Ocalan has not the right to use the guerrilla as an instrument in his hands . One day he begs the pardon of the Turks, and the next day he threats Turkey with the guerrilla . The guerrilla are our sisters and brothers, our children, and not a toy to play with .

I am going to sum up what I wrote nearly twenty years ago about the Kurdish political and military strategy. The Kurds have been accustomed across ages to a defensive , guerrilla warfare in their mountains, and have acquired , as a consequence, “the mentality of besieged people in their fortress”. This “war strategy of grandfathers” , as I called it , was perhaps salutary in the past , but militarily speaking , it cannot result in success face to modern state armies more numerous and equipped with a sophisticated weaponry . The guerrilla , for instance , can never seize , keep , feed and defend a large Kurdish city, of several hundred thousand inhabitants . The remedy to this situation is to renounce the guerrilla defensive warfare in the mountains, and to adopt an offensive strategy beyond Kurdistan, by small units, against state military , economic , or symbolic targets , to punish the killers and the oppressors , to let them fear you , but never , never to target innocent civilians. Somebody said, the best defence is to be offensive.

That was in substance what I wrote in a long article entitled “On the political and military strategy of the Kurdish national liberation movement…”, published in the Arabic edition of Studia Kurdica , revue of Institut Kurde de Paris ( January 1985 : 7-41) , reedited in Iraqi Kurdistan . This reference to an offensive strategy is just for the knowledge of the future Kurdish generations. With imagination and will , great difficulties can be overcome.

Because the Kurds are far more oppressed than any “official colony” in Africa or elsewhere has ever been, they need far more determination , an unshakeable will , and much imagination as to the means , to make themselves in a position to practise their right of self-determination . Abdullah Ocalan is inviting them to do the contrary , to get asleep, to forget their right of self-determination , to be beggars , to kiss the hand of the Turks for a bit of their rights. Today that the Greek part of Cyprus is going to join the European Union , the fate of the Turkish part of the island , inhabited by about 200 thousand people, has become one of the important issues debated on the international field . But nobody , absolutely nobody cares about the fate of 22 million Kurds in Turkey . Contrary to what brother Abdullah Ocalan thinks , it makes already a while that the Kurdish question in Turkey is no longer an international issue. Nobody cares about . That is the a sad and revolting reality, it is the consequence of “the policy of begging and hand kissing” .

23) Side remarks about Ocalan’s ‘neolithic society’

The neolithic society has of course nothing to do with the Kurdish question , yet this does not seem exactly to be the opinion of Abdullah Ocalan , since reference to this society is found everywhere in his book . This should perhaps allow him to be seen as an unbelievably great scientist in the eyes of simple Kurds. We do owe to the neolithic society the beginning of the agricultural technology , with the domestication of some animals and plants , the use of appropriate stone tools , the building of primitive houses and the first villages, about twelve thousand years ago . We know it thanks to archaeology , the skill of specialists in prehistory, and the discovery of material relics by excavation (human and animal bones, cereals, stone tools, discovered at a same site) . Mr. Ocalan identifies this society with the ancient Kurds , while such relics were excavated not only at the foothills of Kurdistan , but at the foothills of other areas in the Near East, at the Syrian coast , Lebanon , Palestine and the valley of the Jordan river (see : Michael Roaf , Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East , Equinox, Oxford, 1990 ; R. J. Braidwood and B. Howe , Prehistoric Investigation in Iraqi Kurdistan , Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960).

Beside material relics, that could be touched with hand , measured , shot with a camera , we know nothing else , nothing immaterial of the neolithic culture , in matter such as language , social organisation, family , belief, relation between a village and another .

The evolution was relatively slow . Sparse families lived first in mountain caves , then began some cultivation at the foothills , while continuing at the same time , for several thousands of years , the more primitive mood of living , with hunting, fishing, gathering roots an wild fruits for subsistence. Michael Roaf writes : “The introduction of farming brought about other important changes. Houses became a permanent feature of village life , while settlers explored new materials and new technologies , such as metal-working , pottery and stone carving . Gradually , new forms of social organisation developed , leading , more than 5000 years ago, to the emergence of cities , ruling classes, established religions and writing – the standard ingredients of modern civilization . From the Near East the agricultural and urban ways of life passed to Europe…” (p. 19).

This city civilisation , with ruling classes , kings , clerics , established religion , and slaves for digging irrigation canals , started in southern Iraq , with the city-states of Sumer , about thirty centuries B.C. The Sumerians had adopted the agricultural technology born at the foothills of Kurdistan, and improved it according to their skill , the needs of their plain country, where flow the lower Tigris and the lower Euphrates . We know this thanks to writing , invented by the Sumerians and used to record their history, including some news about clashes with the “dragons of the mountain” , their eastern and northeastern neighbours , early ancestors of the Kurds , or the proto-Kurds. Writing is the landmark separating history from prehistory .

The trouble with brother Abdullah Ocalan , he makes Kurds all those who invented the agricultural technology twelve thousand years ago and ascribes them social and intellectuals characteristics , immaterial virtues of which the science of prehistory knows nothing . He does it , one may say , poetically : his “Kurdish neolithic society” is much embellished , made a paradise of peace , an ideal of justice , liberty , harmony, and equality , thanks, says he , to the prominent role of woman , the ‘mother goddess” .

Abdullah Ocalan does not say clearly – happily enough - that his “Kurdish neolithic society” spoke already Kurdish, yet he says it was an Aryan speaking people, and makes of prehistoric Kurdistan the birth place of the Indo-European languages , which is contrary to the generally admitted theory . In his imagination , after the rise of the repressive and class society of Sumer , the “Kurdish neolithic society” retired deep into the mountain areas , where it kept its original virtues as free and egalitarian Kurdish tribes , resisting invaders . We are almost back into the primitive communist society of Karl Marx and Engels. In a way , Abdullah Ocalan dreams of a Middle East that would have espoused the primitive, and supposedly inmate Kurdish, popular values of peace, justice , equality , free life , and free women.

Some Western authors speak vaguely of figurines (about 10 to 20 cm in length) representing a gross nude woman , perhaps pregnant , discovered at some sites in the Near East. They call it “mother-goddess” , as symbol of fertility and source of life in perhaps a matriarchal society practising polyandry (a woman married to, or having sexual intercourse, with several men) . The French archaeologist Roman Ghirshman (in L’Iran ancien des origines à l’Islam, Paris, 1951 : 32) , speaking of the “mother goddess” , says the autochthonous population of ancient Kurdistan (he named the Gutians) , and the ancient Etruscans of Italy, used to marriage between brother and sister and that Gutian women still commanded troops in the valleys of Kurdistan , at historical times.

I do not suppose Abdullah Ocalan had read Ghirshman , but he attributes the mother-goddess concept to his “Kurdish neolithic society”, with a prominent and leading role for women . He created a ‘Party of Free Women’ (Partiya Jinan Azad = PJA in Kurdish) as a feminist party for womens’ rights, parallel to PKK , but I won’t attribute him any plan about introducing a matriarchal society in the Near East . One may however wonder whether he knows that a free woman in an archaic society may mean polyandry : freedom of woman in matter of sex , lineage for children through their mother , since the father may be any of the men with whom the mother had sexual intercourse. These are only side remarks.

24) Conclusion ?

I do not know if I succeeded to be fair in the criticism above of Mr. Abdullah Ocalan’s ideas . I highly appreciate what he did before his arrest ; this will remain as part of Kurdish contemporary history. But I do not agree with all what he said and did once he was made prisoner of the Turkish state. I have the liberty, it is my duty , and I feel it as my responsibility toward the Kurdish people, to say in what I diverge in opinion with Mr. Abdullah Ocalan . The most important point of divergence is about what I called his “next to zero” policy for Turkish Kurdistan . Other important points of divergence are his aggressive attitude towards the other Kurdish political parties , and his propensity to impose his hegemony on the political life of the Kurdish society.

The “next to zero” policy , as a “solution” to the Kurdish question in Turkey, is unacceptable. The Kurdish people in Turkey have the right to govern themselves by themselves in Northern Kurdistan , according to their right of self-determination, and to the norms which are at the basis of this new type of modern and civilised states, the Multinational Democracies .

Contrary to what Abdullah Ocalan thinks, there is nothing in the legal order of the European Union that may compel a member state, or candidate at membership , to resolve its national questions , to become for instance a multinational democracy .

According to its present structure, the European Union is a confederation of ‘national states’, in which decisions are taken unanimously by the member states. Candidate states at membership are required to comply with the criteria of Copenhagen , which are inadequate by themselves to resolve national questions.

Spain became member of the Union with its already established constitutional system of autonomy for regions and nationalities (see above under 7) , while the United Kingdom granted Scotland and Wales self-government under the government of Tony Blair, when it was already member of the Union. France is member of the Union without having recognised any particular identity to the people of Corsica . Belgium was already member of the Union prior to 1993 , when it decided to become a federal state in order to settle the Flemish-Walloon quarrel.

Turkey tries to convince the European Union that it is advancing on the way of democracy and is steadily complying with the criteria of Copenhagen . It may perhaps get access to the Union , without having resolved the Kurdish question (see subtitle 10 above) . Individual Kurds can bring a dispute opposing them to Turkey before the European Court of Human Right and may obtain by a judgement the allocation of an amount of money by way of reparation, but this is not of course a solution to the Kurdish question (subtitle 11 above) . In other terms , if the Kurds in Turkey want a solution to their national question , it is up to them to struggle in order to obtain it from Turkey, and not to look for it in Europe.

The European institutions are powerless to make Turkey renounce its policy of national denial and violation of humnan rights of the Kurdish people . The Kurdish former MP Leyla Zana , the first Kurdish woman to win the European Sakharov prize of Human Rights, awarded in 1995 by the European Parliament , was stripped of her parliamentary immunity and sentenced , in 1994 , to 15 years’ imprisonment , because of a crime of conscience . Other Kurdish MPs , Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan , and Selim Sadak , all belonging to the pro-Kurdish Democracy Party (DEP), were similarly treated and sentenced at the same time as Leyla Zana . Her crime was to have expressed at the Turkish parliament, speaking in the Kurdish language , her wishes for peace and justice between the Kurds and the Turks . That was seen as a major offense to the Turkish Republic, and was to be interpreted by the State Security Court as separatism , co-operation with the PKK and, therefore , association with a “terrorist” group . No wonder, since military , “guardians of Ataturk’s Temple” , have their seat at the court . The European Court of Human Rights recommended a revision of Zana’s trial as having been unfair , so far in vain . That makes 10 years these former Kurdish Members of the Turkish parliament are imprisoned , for a crime of conscience. For this situation , which is an insult to the European Parliament , Europe itself is largely responsible . We have seen (under 10) that the summit of the European Union admitted Turkey as candidate at membership without having the righteous courage to require a political solution to the Kurdish national question . In 2000 , the European Parliament adopted a resolution to this end , but it was ignored by the Council.

I wish if Turkey could change , become a binational and multicultural democracy , with two federate states , one predominantly Turkish, the other predominantly Kurdish, and the liberty for all minority groups to keep their culture . Then there will be no problem between the Kurds and the Turks . I invite the Kurdish people in Turkey to struggle for this aim , as their right of self-determination may imply, if they want to recover their human and national dignity. I wish the Turkish people could struggle themselves for the same aim , for a civilised federal state, a union with collective equality, and true brotherhood, between the two main nations .

I wish Abdullah Ocalan long life , and freedom if possible. Good or less good , the Kurds are doomed, his partisans included , to have a common future.



25) Appendice: Estimate of Kurdistan area and Kurdish population (in 2000)

_____________Kurdish population by mid- 2000 (Estimates by millions)________

Kurds in Kurds out
States Total Kurds Kurdistan % of Kurdistan %
-Turkey ............ 21,0 13,0 : 61,9 % 08,0 : 38,1 %
-Iran ................. 10,2 07,6 : 74,5 % 02,6 : 25,5 %1
-Iraq ................. 6,1 05,4 : 88,5 % 00,7 : 11,5 %
-Syria ............... 1,8 01,2 : 66,6 % 00,6 : 33,3 %
Totals ............. 39,1 27,2 : 69,8 % 11,9 : 30,2 % of 39,1 millions.
Kurdish external
Diaspora.......
-In Europe 01,6............................................. 01,62 (52 % in Germany)
-Russian Fed. 00,3 ............................................. 00,3
-Former SSR
republics ....... 00,7 3............................................. 00,73
-Elsewhere ....... 00,3 ............................................. 00,3
-Total Kurds ..... 42,0 ............................................ 14,8 : 35,42 % of 42,0 millions.
-Non-Kurds in

Kurdistan ( average 13 %) ............. 04,0

Total pop. of Kurdistan . ......... 31,2 millions................................................. ………..

1 Including Kurds implanted in Khurasan by shah Abbas in 17th cent. (now more than one million).
2 Including Kurdish nationals of different European states, and non declared workers.
3 More than one half of these are practically assimilated, in Turkistan and Azerbaijan.

To be remarked that the Kurds who suffered the most from dispersion and deportation are those of Turkey , over a period of eight decades, from 1925 on. Another remark is the urbanisation of the Kurdish society, because of the worldwide trend , and the destruction of Kurdish rural areas. Several Kurdish cities have a population between half a million to nearly one million – Kirmanshah reportedly 2 millions -, but life is hard . City-dwellers in Kurdistan should represent more than 60 % of the population, while about 30 years earlier the ratio could hardly be 40 % . The topic would need a special research work. But the trend is known and ongoing. It is favourable to the Kurdish national movement.

I define Kurdistan , homeland of the Kurdish people , as geographically constituted of the contiguous regions that had a Kurdish majority at the end of the First World War . Its area is about 440'000 sq.km , as follow : 224'000 sq.km for Turkish Kurdistan (known as the Northern) , 124'000 sq.km for Iranian Kurdistan (said Eastern), 75'000 sq.km for Iraqi Kurdistan (said Southern) , and 18'000 sq.km for Syrian Kurdistan (in three regions) . These estimates are based on governmental data for the administrative units making part, totally or partially , of Kurdistan , according to that definition. The population figures, in the table above, are based on the results of official census for the concerned provinces . An error margin , for the areas and their population, of about 5 % , is admissible.

Ismet Cheriff Vanly.
Lausanne , 30 March 2004.

دار نشر حقائق المشرق. جنيف
Editions ORIENT-REALITES, Genève