I can't ask now... What is Turkey's Kurdish problem?

2023年09月01日

ロシアのウクライナ侵攻を受けて、長年中立政策をとってきたスウェーデンがNATO加盟を申請した。 NATO加盟国のトルコが強く反発し、日本でも注目を集めた。聞いたことはあるけど説明できない「トルコのクルド人問題」。そんな問題を国際ニュースに詳しいポストサイエンティストの内藤陽介氏が解決します。(English) In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden, which has had a neutral policy for many years, applied for NATO membership. Turkey, a NATO member, strongly opposed it, which attracted attention in Japan. I've heard about it but can't explain "Turkey's Kurdish problem". Mr Yosuke Naito, a post-scientist well-versed in international news, will solve such problems.

I can't ask now... What is Turkey's Kurdish problem?

"Turkey" vague due to multi-ethnic culture

The Kurdish issue is one of the main reasons for Turkey's reluctance to join NATO. The Kurds are a mountain people living near the borders of countries in the Middle East, such as Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and are said to be the world's largest ethnic group without their state. Most Kurds live in Turkey.

The Kurds have repeatedly engaged in armed conflict with the Turkish government in their quest for autonomy and independence. And whenever the Turkish government violently suppresses them, Western countries criticise it as human rights abuses and inhumane.

When Sweden applied for NATO membership in May 2022, Turkish President Erdogan accused Sweden of being a hotbed for dissident Kurdish terrorists (and those identified by Turkey).

First, why is Sweden so profoundly involved with the Kurds that Turkey makes them "enemies"? The origin of the Turkish state is also related to this.

The modern Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, claiming to be the "Land of the Turks".

Today, we know the Anatolian peninsula and the area around Istanbul on the opposite bank as "Turkey". Historically, however, it was Central Asia where the Turks (the Turkic peoples) originally lived ("Turkmenistan" originally meant "the land of the Turks"). The Ottoman Empire that emerged from there expanded rapidly, conquering Constantinople, the former Christian capital, and turning it into Istanbul.

Until the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious country, and its inhabitants were allowed considerable freedom of religion. The inhabitants were roughly divided by faith and then into smaller groups by language to form ethnic groups.

In this case, people, such as Muslims and Christians, seek identity in the religious community to which they belong. As for the Muslims, not only were they divided into different mother tongue groups, starting with Turkish, but among the elite, there was an "Ottoman language" that incorporated Arabic and Persian vocabulary and grammar into Turkish.

Of course, the elite who used the Ottoman language included the so-called Turks and people of different ethnic backgrounds, such as Arabs, Greeks and Slavs.

Under these circumstances, "Turks" loosely refers to the Turkic-speaking Muslim peoples of Anatolia, and even though the Ottoman Empire did not call itself "Turkish", Europeans and other Ottoman people living outside the Empire called the Ottoman Empire to which they belonged "Ottoman Turks" or the "Turkish Empire".

Mustafa Kemal established the Republic of Turkey.

On the other hand, Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830, and in the 19th century, the rise of nationalism in the Balkan countries led to the movement for freedom from the rule of "the Turks" (as they perceived them). The definition of "Turks" was ambiguous on the part of the Ottoman Empire, which was the leading cause of territorial disputes between the surrounding countries and the Ottoman Empire.

In 1918, the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I. By then, most of the Arab region was occupied by the Allies, but all of Anatolia, eastern Thrace (part of Rumeria) and northern Syria. The Ottoman Empire still held Aleppo and Mosul in the north of Iraq. However, as soon as the truce came into force, the Allies invaded Ottoman territory. Anatolia was divided and occupied by Britain, France, Italy and Greece.

However, there were also resistance movements against the partition in various parts of Anatolia. For this reason, the Ottoman government sent Mustafa Kemal (Kemal Pasha) to suppress the outbreak of a large-scale rebellion. The imperial army and activists were brought together in the "Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Anatolia and Rumeria".

By the end of the same year, Kemal had effectively taken control of the Imperial Parliament in Istanbul. In January 1920, he passed a national pact declaring that the "Turkish" majority areas of the Empire were indivisible.

In response, the Allies, led by Great Britain, occupied Istanbul in March of the same year. The Treaty of Sèvres was signed with the imperial government in August. The treaty stipulated that only two-thirds of northern Anatolia would be left to the Turkish state while an Armenian state would be established in eastern Anatolia.

To this end, a "Grand National Assembly" was held in Ankara. The Grand National Assembly elected Kemal as its president, and a resistance government was formed with a cabinet and government separate from the Ottoman Empire.

The government of the Grand National Assembly then contacted the Soviet government in Russia. It repulsed the Armenian army and secured eastern Anatolia, while on the western front, the Greek army was repulsed in 1921. As a result, the Allies renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and decided to hold a new peace conference with the government of the Grand National Congress in Lausanne.

In response, Kemal's government in Ankara abolished the sultanate on 1 November 1922, separating the sultan as a secular power from the caliph as a religious authority. This ended the Ottoman Empire and forced the last emperor, Mehmed VI, into exile.

10)

In 1923, the government in Ankara concluded the Treaty of Lausanne with the Allied Powers. It succeeded in abolishing unequal international relations, including the recognition of Turkey's independence, the restoration of customs autonomy and the abolition of extraterritoriality. Kemal, who had established himself as the hero of the country's salvation through a series of successes, proclaimed the establishment of the Republic of Turkey on 29 October of the same year. Kemal became president.

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Turks'' and 'Greeks'' classified by religion

In this way, the Ottoman Empire was dismantled, and the Republic of Turkey was established as a "Turkish country". The division was based on religion.

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Specifically, even if you live in Anatolia and speak Turkish as your mother tongue (or first language), if you are an Orthodox Christian, you are a "Greek", and if you live in Greece and speak Greek, you are still a Muslim. If so, they were classified as "Turks" and forced to emigrate, "Greeks" to Greece and "Turks" to Turkey.

In this way, the Turkish-speaking Muslims living in Anatolia established their identity as "Turks".

13)

On the other hand, the Republic of Turkey, a "Turkish" nation, tried to forcibly assimilate and integrate minorities such as the Kurds, who are Muslims whose mother tongue is not Turkish, into the "Turkish people". Of course, from the Kurds' point of view, it is unacceptable that they, who do not speak Turkish as their mother tongue, should be arbitrarily "absorbed" by the "Turks".

However, the government promotes the policy of assimilation (Turkification) against the Kurds to create a nation-state as a "Turkish country", and the Kurds declare their ethnic identity by saying, "I am a Kurd". I've put pressure on them.

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In other words, the use of the Kurdish language in public places was banned (including publishing and broadcasting bans), Kurdish place names were changed to Turkish, and Kurdish books were confiscated and burned. (The peak was in the early 1980s).

In such a society, if you dare to declare that you are Kurdish, you are discriminated against. As a result, the issue of discrimination against Kurds has been raised along with the promotion of the assimilation policy.

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Kurds expelled from Turkey go to Sweden.

In response, the European countries respect the ethnic consciousness of the Kurdish people and allow the formation of Kurdish communities all over Europe to keep Turkey in check.

Since the 1950s, in the process of post-war reconstruction and economic growth in Europe, many "Turkish citizens" migrated to Europe as migrant workers, many of whom were Kurds. Since they were persecuted in Turkey, it is natural that they would try to leave the country.

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Furthermore, from the 1970s onwards, left-wing political refugees, who had been active as dissidents in their own countries, fled to Europe (mainly Northern Europe) worldwide. Sweden was particularly willing to accept them as a "receptacle".

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The number of Kurdish immigrants who came to Sweden from Turkey continued to increase after that, and eventually, a Kurdish community was formed in Sweden, and they began to spread information about Kurds from Sweden to the world. In other words, Sweden has become an essential base for transmitting "Kurdish nationalism" to the world.

Of course, this is not interesting for the Turkish side. That is why it has criticised Sweden as a "hotbed of terrorist organisations" and made it a "nemesis," especially in the issue of NATO membership.