Mustafa Akinci is NOT a Hypocrite!

Mustafa Akinci, the leader of the Turkish Cypriot minority in Cyprus, strongly advocates:

• the political equality of Turks and Kurds
• Turk-Kurd rotational presidency in "Turkey"'s (RoT) new charter
• exclusive Kurdish education for RoT's Kurds
• external guarantees for RoT's long-persecuted Kurds
• Kurdish veto rights in RoT
• that Kurds, unlike Turkish Cypriots, have a legitimate claim to contiguous land
• a new flag & charter for RoT that recognizes the reality of two peoples
• PKK's armed struggle as a way to secure Kurds' rights in RoT
• the UN presence in RoT to secure the safety of the Kurdish people next to Turks

If this ... why not this?

The over four fifths Christian majority of Cyprus, its historic community with non-stop cultural dominance on the island that spans millennia, wanted union with Greece. The British, the colonial power at the time, said no. Along with "Turkey", the patron of the circa 18% Muslim minority, they devised a political apartheid solution to grant Cyprus a crippled independence in 1960. The 1960 charter was never put to a vote.

A short video highlighting Erdogan's war on HDP

Ecevit – Erdogan Dreadful Analogy: Consistency in Expulsion and Internal Displacement - INTERNATIONAL SECURITY FORUM

Mar 22, 2016, Dr. Yiorgos Leventis

Before the week closes a fresh suicide bomb explosion hits Istiklal - the famous pedestrian high street in the heart of Istanbul (Constantinople). Known to most historically aware European travelers as Rue du Pera, Istiklal is frequented by scores of world class tourists. The German and other European governments have already advised their traveling citizens who found themselves in Istanbul to stay in their hotel rooms. Clearly, the security situation in western Turkey hits red alert. Terror rules supreme. Both Ankara and Istanbul city centres have become prime targets of attackers.

On the other hand the situation in the eastern provinces of the country is dreadful. Tens of thousands of repressed ethnic Kurds are forced to flee their ancestral homes in search for relative safety. The modus operandi, the goals, and the results of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) operations in Turkey’s Southeast targeted against the courageous Kurdish population are reminiscent of the Turkish ‘Peace Operation’ in Cyprus in July-August 1974.

Vladimir Putin, Godfather of Kurdistan? - THE NATIONAL INTEREST

Kurdish ambitions fit into Russia's plans for the Middle East.
Michael A. Reynolds
March 1, 2016

If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thought last November that by downing a Russian Su-24 bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border he could contain Vladimir Putin’s Middle Eastern ambitions, he is certainly regretting that now. An incensed Vladimir Putin vowed that Turkey would come to rue its actions. He warned that Russia would not settle its accounts with Turkey with mere economic sanctions, adding, “We know what we need to do.”

What Putin meant is becoming clear. Earlier this month, in what can only be described as a menacing signal to Ankara, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (or PYD) formally opened a representative office in Moscow, its first in a foreign country. Meanwhile, inside Syria, the PYD’s armed wing has been using Russian arms and Russian air support to aggressively expand the amount of territory it controls along the Syrian-Turkish border. Ankara is alarmed, and rightly so. Despite possessing its own acronym, the PYD is a subsidiary of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane), or PKK, which is currently intensifying the insurgency it is waging in Turkey’s southeast. There, PKK activists have declared Kurdish self-rule and PKK fighters are holing up in cities, digging trenches and taking on Turkish security forces with everything from snipers and rocket propelled grenades to improvised explosive devices.

Why We Can't Afford to Abandon Turkey's Kurds | HUFFINGTON POST

Stefan Ihrig, Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 01/18/2016

JERUSALEM -- The history of Erdoğan's presidency will be written as one of creeping, sometimes galloping, autocratism and of renewed violence in the Kurdish southeast. Erdoğan's new presidential palace and declarations about Muslims discovering America seemed like loony signs of a leader simply not ready to give up and slightly out of step with the rest of the world. They amused but also scared us.

The rejection of calls to recognize the Armenian Genocide during last year's 100th anniversary seemed merely like reflexes of a Turkish strongman who inserted himself not only into the republican tradition of denial but who also continually tries to connect himself back to Ottoman times. With the renewed war against the Kurds, however, we should recognize him for what he is: an autocrat in the making who will not be removed by democratic means should the Turkish people wish to do so and who is willing to sacrifice the lives and freedoms of Turkish citizens for his goals.

The List of Kurdish Demands If They Followed Akinci's Example | Gatestone Institute

Many would agree that it is one thing to stand for the respect of the human, political and cultural rights of people and communities, but it is totally another to allow a minority to dictate the fate of an entire nation. Since 1960, the majority Greek Cypriots have felt hostage to what they regard a sort of tyranny by an 18% minority.

What if the 20% Kurds of Turkey were to follow the Turkish Cypriot example and demand for themselves "rights" commensurate to those demanded by the Turks in Cyprus? What if Turkey's Kurds, as preconditions to lay down their arms and drop all talk of an independent Kurdistan, applied the same Turkish logic to Turkey's majority-minority dispute?

Crime boss Peker threatens academics who made joint statement on Southeast | Today's Zaman

Sedat Peker is seen while addressing an anti-terror rally in the Black Sea
province of Rize in this file photo. (Photo: DHA)

January 13, 2016, Wednesday/ 13:19:42/ TODAY'S ZAMAN | CONSTANTINOPLE

Sedat Peker, a notorious figure who has been convicted on organized crime charges, has threatened academics who recently called for an end to violence in Turkey's Southeast, saying on Tuesday that their blood will be spilled.

If Not Obvious, Then Inevitable

"Turkey", but Turks also, must face the OBVIOUS and the INEVITABLE.

It's OBVIOUS that there are at least two peoples and a number of minorities inside the geography we call "Turkey". It's INEVITABLE that unless Turks accept Kurds as EQUALS then the Kurdish people (who already have their own land, and it is part of "Turkey" today) will take it and walk away.

Wise up Turks. The sooner you do, the better for all of us in the region. After all, you've been dishing POLITICAL EQUALITY in Cyprus for decades. Don't you think It's time to taste it?

If it's not OBVIOUS, then the INEVITABLE will occur with great suffering.
My two cents' worth. Read more here

Non-Assimilated Kurds

"We Are Not Terrorists But Non-Assimilated Kurds" - North Kurdistan

The Mood In The Region After Russia's Decision To Go After "Turkey"

Beyond perfect! Rhymes with my geopolitical mood too.

Everyone knew "Turkey" is a trouble maker & a facilitator of terror and the mass migration flow into Europe. Now someone has decided to take action. And he ain't joking. Kurds, Syrians, Egyptians, Armenians, Greeks, Israelis, Cypriots, and many others are happy. And they should be.

Zorba from Mikis Theodorakis. OPA !!!

Exclusive Kurdish Education

There was a time, not long ago, when all Cypriots spoke Greek, including the Turkish Cypriot minority.

This all changed when a "Turkey"-supported (UK too) constitution was imposed on Cypriots which stipulated exclusive education in Greek for the Greek Cypriot majority and in Turkish for the Turkish Cypriot minority.

The Only Voice of Reason Out of "Turkey" (10 minutes you must listen to)

Selahattin Demirtas responds to Davutoglu on Ankara bombing - English Subtitles, 10 minute video.

Open letter to NATO secretary general over Turkey’s policy against Kurds | EKurd Daily

September 29, 2015 by Aziz Baran | Special to Ekurd.net

Mr Jens Stoltenberg
Secretary General, NATO HQ
Bd Leopold III, B-1110 Brussels
Belgium
Fax: +32 2 707 4232
Email: Stoltenberg.Jens @hq.nato.int

Dear Mr Stoltenberg,

Your recent expression of solidarity with Turkey against “terrorism” is tantamount to unleashing attack dogs against Kurdish citizens with a decidedly racist subtext.

Kurdish Demands

Many would agree that it is one thing to stand for the respect of the human, political and cultural rights of people and communities, but it is totally another to allow a minority to dictate the fate of an entire nation. Since 1960, the majority Greek Cypriots have felt hostage to what they regard a sort of tyranny by an 18% minority.

What if the 20% Kurds of Turkey were to follow the Turkish Cypriot example and demand for themselves "rights" commensurate to those demanded by the Turks in Cyprus? What if Turkey's Kurds, as preconditions to lay down their arms and drop all talk of an independent Kurdistan, applied the same Turkish logic to Turkey's majority-minority dispute?

Kurds, after all, fought alongside the Turkish majority for independence, and they have a historic claim as the native people of the entire east of the country. Turkish Cypriots can make no such claims.

This might be a hypothetical list of the Kurds' demands:

For Kurdish youth in Turkey, autonomy is no longer enough | The Christian Science Monitor

Youth in Diyarbakir, the Kurdish 'capital' in Turkey's southeast, have been celebrating triumphs on the battlefield and at the ballot box, even as a peace process with Turkey unravels.

By Dominique Soguel, Correspondent AUGUST 17, 2015

DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY — In her flowing dress, leather sandals, and sunglasses, Ozgur Yesha, whose name means “Live Free” in Turkish, looks a lot like an American hippie from the sixties.

The teenager doesn’t strike you as someone ready to rush off to battle. Still, her parents lose sleep over the idea that she might run off with the peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters rolling back Islamic State militants in northern Iraq.

Her ideological zeal exceeds that of her parents and is emblematic of a generational divide among Turkey’s Kurds that is crystallizing in a time of turmoil. In recent months, Kurds have celebrated victories over IS across the border in Syria and made unprecedented political gains in Turkish elections, only to see the unraveling of a three-year peace process between Turkey and the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Turkey's Racism Problem | Gatestone Institute

by Uzay Bulut, August 16, 2015 - Turkey's authorities keep saying that the Turkish "security" forces do what they do -- arrest or kill Kurds -- only when Kurds carry out "terrorist" activities, or only when the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) attacks targets in Turkey. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. Turkey's attacks against Kurds have always been intense, even when the PKK declared unilateral ceasefires.

Regarding 2014, when there were no clashes between the Turkish military and the PKK, Faysal Sariyildiz, a Kurdish MP for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), said, "During the last year, regarding the Kurdish issue, 3,490 people have been taken into custody, 880 people have been arrested and 25 people have been killed with police bullets."

Kurdish leader blasts Turkey’s president | Washington Post

By David Ignatius August 13 - Turkey’s political tensions were sharply evident Thursday, as the country’s leading Kurdish politician accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of “supporting ISIS” in the past. He said that Erdogan wants early elections as part of a strategy of “attacking the Kurdish movement” and reversing its recent political gains.

Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, made the charges in an hour-long telephone interview from Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey. He lived up to his reputation as an outspoken opponent of Erdogan and champion of Kurdish rights. His comments framed some of the big issues in the parliamentary campaign that is likely this fall.

Why deny Political & Cultural Equality to Kurds?

The Republic of "Turkey" has been demanding POLITICAL & CULTURAL EQUALITY for the 18% minority community of Cyprus for the last 60 years! In other words it used military force and threats to secure POLITICAL STATUS, 50-5O share with the 82% Greek Cypriot majority as well as exclusive education in Turkish. Its efforts continue unabated to this date.

Why then has it been denying the same to its own Kurds for almost a century? The Kurds who make up 20% of the country's population. The Kurds who shed blood along Turks to secure the country's current borders. The Kurds who have a historical claim to the entire eastern part of the country.

Why is neither POLITICAL EQUALITY between ethnic Turks and Kurds nor CULTURAL EQUALITY even discussed in the mainstream Turkish news outlets?

Perhaps more importantly, why are the Kurds (HDP/KCK/PKK) not using the Cyprus issue and Turks' own arguments in favor of the minority to promote their own cause? It seems a no-brainer to me, regardless what the evenyual goal may be.

The Guardian view on Turkey and the Kurds: putting peace at risk | The Guardian

Protesters in Brussels denounce
attacks on Kurds in Turkey and Iraq  

Friday 31 July 2015 - Turkey has ended its tentative reconciliation with the Kurds. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s political ambitions could be the key. | Ankara’s decision to throw away years of negotiations with the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey is both irresponsible and perverse. It seems likely to add to the dangers and uncertainties that the collapse of state authority in Syria and Iraq have brought to the wider region and it could have ominous implications for Turkey’s internal politics. Since the emergence of the modern state after the first world war, the relations between the ethnic Turkish majority and the Kurds, the country’s largest minority, have been the single largest problem faced by the country. Ankara originally tried to solve it by suppression and compulsory assimilation, hoping that in time Kurds would become indistinguishable from the rest of the population. The predictable result was resistance, in the early years in the form of sporadic revolts and, in the late 1970s, in the form of the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, an armed separatist movement.