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Ethnic Kurds compose a significant portion of the population in Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye'deki Kürtler, Kurdish: Kurdên li Tirkiye). Unlike the Turkish people, the Kurds speak an Indo-European language. There are Kurds living in all provinces Turkey, but are primarily concentrated in the east and southeast of the country, which largely resembles the historical region of Kurdistan.
In the 1930s, Turkish government policy aimed at assimilating Kurds in Turkey, sometimes forcibly; many have resisted these measures and today Kurds make up around 20% of the population of Turkey. Since the 1980s, Kurdish movements included both peaceful political activities for basic civil rights for Kurds in Turkey as well as violent armed rebellion and guerrilla warfare, demanding a separate Kurdish state.[1] According to a Turkish opinion poll, 59% of self-identified Kurds in Turkey think that Kurds in Turkey do not seek a separate state (while 71.3% of self-identified Turks think they do).[2]
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The leadership of Young Turks allegedly planned to eliminate Kurdish identity by deporting Kurds from their ancestral land and displacing them in small groups.[3] In this era, deportations and death marches took place in order to foster Turkification.[3] The Young Turks partially implemented these plans in WWI and 700,000 Kurds were forcibly removed where approximately 350,000 of these displaces Kurds perished.[3] These Kurds were forced by the Young Turks to go on death march resembling the Armenian marches[3] which was part of a plan to eliminate Kurdish identity.[3]
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After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, which ended the caliphates and sultanate in Turkey, there have been several Kurdish rebellions since the 1920s: Koçkiri Rebellion, Sheikh Said Rebellion, Dersim Rebellion, Ararat rebellion.
In 1937–1938, approximately 50,000–70,000 Alevi Kurds[6][7][8] were killed and thousands went into exile. A key component of the turkification process was the policy of massive population resettlement. Referring to the main policy document in this context, the 1934 law on resettlement, a policy targeting the region of Dersim as one of its first test cases, with disastrous consequences for the local population.[9] The Dersim massacre[6] is often confused with the Dersim Rebellion that took place during these events.
After the 1960 coup, the State Planning Organization (Turkish: Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, DPT) was established under the Prime Ministry to solve the problem of Kurdish separatism and underdevelopment. In 1961, the DPT prepared a report titled "The principles of the state's development plan for the east and southeast" (Turkish: Devletin Doğu ve Güneydoğu‘da uygulayacağı kalkınma programının esasları), shortened to "Eastern Report". It proposed to defuse separatism by encouraging ethnic mixing through migration (to and from the Southeast). This was not unlike the policies pursued by the Committee of Union and Progress under the Ottoman Empire. The Minister of Labor of the time, Bülent Ecevit of Kurdish ancestry[10][11], was critical of the report.[12]
During the 1970s, the separatist movement coalesced into the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which is listed as a terrorist organization internationally by many states and organizations, including the United States, United Nations, NATO and the European Union. From 1984 to 1999, the Turkish military was embroiled in a conflict with the PKK. The village guard system was set up and armed by the Turkish state around 1984 to combat the PKK. The militia comprises local Kurds and it has around 58,000 members. Some of the village guards are fiercely loyal to the Turkish state, leading to infighting among Kurdish militants.[13]
Due to the guerrilla war much of the countryside in the southeast was depopulated, with Kurdish civilians moving to local defensible centers such as Diyarbakır, Van, and Şırnak, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and even to western Europe. The causes of the depopulation included PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans they could not control as well as Turks and Turkish military, the poverty of the southeast, and the Turkish state's military operations.[14] Human Rights Watch has documented many instances where the Turkish military forcibly evacuated villages, destroying houses and equipment to prevent the return of the inhabitants due to alleged but unlikely PKK membership. An estimated 3,000 Kurdish villages in Turkey were virtually wiped from the map, representing the displacement of more than 378,000 people.[15]
The epitome of this conflict was during the 1990s, when the National Security Council sanctioned a covert war using the special forces, village guards, mafia, and contract killers, while the PKK increasingly attacked the Turkish civil population using, among other things, suicide bombing attacks. The conflict soon wheeled out of control, resulting in the Susurluk scandal. The conflict tapered off after the capturing of the PKK's leader, Abdullah Öcalan.
In 2010, after PKK rebels killed five Turkish soldiers in a series of incidents in eastern and southeastern Turkey, several locations in Northern Iraq were attacked by the Turkish Air Force .[16] The tense condition has continued on the border since 2007, by both sides responding to each others every offensive move, mostly initiated by attacks from the PKK to the Turkish military bases on the border, reported by witnesses in the border villages.[17]
Following Turkey's electoral board decision to bar prominent Kurdish candidates who had outstanding warrants or where part of ongoing investigations for terrorist-related crimes from standing in upcoming elections,[18] violent Kurdish protests erupted in April 19, 2011, resulting in at least one mortal casualty.[19]
Between 1982 and 1991 the performance or recording of songs in the Kurdish language was banned in Turkey, affecting singers such as Şivan Perwer and İbrahim Tatlıses. However a black market has long existed in Turkey, and pirate radio stations and underground recordings have always been available. Although there is no ban on performing Kurdish language music, it is effectively prevented from being broadcast on radio or television through censorship.[20]
Some of the foremost figures in Kurdish classical music of the past century from Anatolia include Mihemed 'Arif Cizrawî (1912–1986), Hesen Cizrawî, Şeroyê Biro, 'Evdalê Zeynikê, Si'îd Axayê Cizîrî and the female singers Miryem Xanê and Eyşe Şan.
Şivan Perwer is a composer, vocalist and tembûr player. He concentrates mainly on political and nationalistic music - of which he is considered the founder in Kurdish music - as well as classical and folk music.
Another important Kurdish musician from Turkey is Nizamettin Arıç (Feqiyê Teyra). He began with singing in Turkish, and made his directorial debut and also stars in Klamek ji bo Beko (A Song for Beko), one of the first films in Kurdish. Arıç rejected musical stardom at the cost of debasing his language and culture. As a result of singing in Kurdish, he was imprisoned, and then obliged to flee to Syria and eventually to Germany.[21][22]
There is no existing evidence of Kurdish literature of pre-Islamic period. Some sources consider Ali Hariri (1425–1495) as the first well-known poet who wrote in Kurdish. He was from the Hakkari region.[23]
Since the 1970s, there has been a massive effort on the part of Kurds in Turkey to write and to create literary works in Kurdish. The amount of printed material during the last three decades has increased enormously. Many of these activities were centered in Europe particularly Sweden and Germany which have large concentrations of Kurdish immigrants. There are several Kurdish publishers in Sweden, partly supported by the Swedish Government. More than two hundred Kurdish titles have appeared in the 1990s.
Well-known contemporary Kurdish writers from Turkey include Mehmed Uzun, Mehmed Emin Bozarslan, Mahmud Baksi, Hesenê Metê and Rojen Barnas.
Yılmaz Güney was a famous film director, scenarist, novelist and actor. He directed and starred in the film Umut (1970) (Turkish for "Hope"), and his most famous movie is 1982 film Yol (Turkish for "The Road" or "The Way"), which won Palme d'Or in Cannes Film Festival in 1982.
Some other films by Kurdish people in Turkey are Hejar (aka Big Man, Little Love) by Handan İpekçi and Klamek ji bo Beko by Nizamettin Arıç.
Yılmaz Erdoğan is another famous film director, screenwriter, poet and actor from Turkey of Kurdish ethnicity.
Most Kurds live in Turkey, where their numbers are estimated at 11,400,000 by Turkish sources[24] and 14,000,000 by the CIA world factbook,[25] people.[26] both figures including Zaza people as Kurds.[24] Kurdish nationalists put the figure at 20,000,000[27] to 25,000,000.[28] These figures are for the number of persons who identify as Kurds, not the number who speak a Kurdish language.[29] Estimates based on native languages place the Kurdish population at 6% to 23%; Ibrahim Sirkeci claims the closest figure should be above 17.8%, taking into account political context and so the potential bias in responses recorded in surveys and censuses.[30] Also the population growth rate of Kurds in 1970s was given as 3.27%.[31]
Today, Kurdish populations remain highest in the traditionally Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey, corresponding with Turkish Kurdistan, as well as the more developed and industrialised northwestern provinces due to significant migration in the late 1980s. There are also Kurds in the Central Anatolia Region, concentrated to the west of Lake Tuz (Haymana, Cihanbeyli, Kulu, Yunak) and also scattered in districts like Alaca, Çiçekdağı, Yerköy, Emirdağ, and Zile, as well as in significant to high numbers of the northeast, most importantly the large presence in Kars and surrounding provinces of the South Caucasus wherein many Kurdish villages scatter across the borders into Armenia and Georgia. According to a March 2007 survey, Kurds and Zazas together comprise an estimated 13.4% of the adult population, and 15.68% of the whole population.[24]
The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) reports that (as of April 2010): "The public use by officials of the Kurdish language lays them open to prosecution, and public defence by individuals of Kurdish or minority interests also frequently leads to prosecutions under the Criminal Code."[32]