Dear Ladies & Gentlemen:I hope you address the following questions at your 9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON "EU, TURKEY AND THE KURDS" to be held later in 2012.
Q1. - While Turkey expects international support for its Cyprus solution, based on a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation with political equality between the 90% Greek and the 10% Turkish communities, it argues the precise opposite for its own Kurdish citizens, who not only number 25% of Turkey's population but have also lived on their historical lands long before the first Turk ever set foot, thus bi-zonality being a natural state as opposed to an outcome of an illegal invasion (Cyprus, 1974). Why?
Q2. - Why did Turkey insist & threatened to go to war unless accepted, that the Turkish minority of Cyprus be granted equal political status, full cultural rights with the Turkish language recognized as official, veto rights, guaranteed representation in the state apparatus with as much as 2.2 times its population size, and foreign guarantees for its security, AS FAR BACK AS 1960, whereas for the country's Kurds it refuses even a small subset of these rights in the year 2012?
Q3 - While many Kurds are ready to remain within a unitary state, perhaps renamed to Turkey-Kurdistan, so long as they can have full cultural and political rights, for most Turks the idea of Turkish Cypriots accepting simple minority status in a Greek-Cypriot dominated Republic of Cyprus is anathema. Why?
Q4 - If armed conflict, supported and financed by Turkey in the 1950s, led to the "necessary", albeit apartheid, community/political rights for Turkish Cypriots (18% at the time), why is armed conflict to be ruled out completely as a justified means by Kurds to pressure the terrorist state to grant them rights, political and cultural, that otherwise the ethnic Turkish establishment will never give?
Q5 - Don't you find it astonishing that no Turkish journalist addresses the obvious question in relation to their country's most urgent and difficult problem:
"Why not try granting Kurds those rights we feel the Turkish Cypriots must enjoy in Cyprus?"
Is it not impressive that analogies are drawn by the Turkish press for the Kurdish issue to just about every minority struggle in the world, while ignoring the by far most applicable and relevant minority cause, in which Turkey played and continues to play to most determining role for its resolution and in which the principles Turkey finds suitable for the resolution of majority-minority conflicts are revealed?
Both countries, Rep. of Turkey and Rep. of Cyprus, are in need of a constitutional overhaul of their 1982 and 1960 charters, with the main issue being how to address the rights of their double-digit ethnic minorities.
Turkey is the link between these two issues. In one case, at home, using its impressive military might and state apparatus to suppress the ethnic Kurdish minority, whereas in the other it uses the same tools to secure for the ethnic Turkish minority apartheid like rights.
Any discussion about the rights of 16-25 million ethnic Kurds of Turkey that does not entail the level of rights Turkey supports for less than 80.000 Turkish Cypriots in EU Cyprus is lacking in effectiveness.
Please stop ignoring this very important, perhaps crucial dimension for the resolution of both Turkey's Kurdish and Cyprus's Turkish problems, in your conference's deliberations.
Thank you,
Antifon
Q4 - If armed conflict, supported and financed by Turkey in the 1950s, led to the "necessary", albeit apartheid, community/political rights for Turkish Cypriots (18% at the time), why is armed conflict to be ruled out completely as a justified means by Kurds to pressure the terrorist state to grant them rights, political and cultural, that otherwise the ethnic Turkish establishment will never give?
Q5 - Don't you find it astonishing that no Turkish journalist addresses the obvious question in relation to their country's most urgent and difficult problem:
"Why not try granting Kurds those rights we feel the Turkish Cypriots must enjoy in Cyprus?"
Is it not impressive that analogies are drawn by the Turkish press for the Kurdish issue to just about every minority struggle in the world, while ignoring the by far most applicable and relevant minority cause, in which Turkey played and continues to play to most determining role for its resolution and in which the principles Turkey finds suitable for the resolution of majority-minority conflicts are revealed?
Both countries, Rep. of Turkey and Rep. of Cyprus, are in need of a constitutional overhaul of their 1982 and 1960 charters, with the main issue being how to address the rights of their double-digit ethnic minorities.
Turkey is the link between these two issues. In one case, at home, using its impressive military might and state apparatus to suppress the ethnic Kurdish minority, whereas in the other it uses the same tools to secure for the ethnic Turkish minority apartheid like rights.
Any discussion about the rights of 16-25 million ethnic Kurds of Turkey that does not entail the level of rights Turkey supports for less than 80.000 Turkish Cypriots in EU Cyprus is lacking in effectiveness.
Please stop ignoring this very important, perhaps crucial dimension for the resolution of both Turkey's Kurdish and Cyprus's Turkish problems, in your conference's deliberations.
Thank you,
Antifon
