Page 338 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

K Kurds caught at crossfire

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish peo-
ple dispersed between Iraq, Syria and Turkey (divided into four

parts together with those in Iran) and experienced various pressures
and difficulties. Saddam in Iraq and al-Assad in Syria, or Ba'athist
regimes in other words, implemented repressive policies aimed at
eliminating the Kurds. Saddam inflicted mass killings by the use of
chemical weapons, while al-Assad refused to grant the Kurds their
rights and freedoms, refused to give them identity documents and
regarded them as non-people. In Turkey, meanwhile, at times when
the deep state mindset was ascendant, Alawites, devout believers
and conservatives as well as our Kurdish citizens were all harshly

repressed.
The 1990s were one of the most difficult periods for the South-

east of Turkey, when the PKK terror organization threatened and
oppressed our Kurdish brothers. Everyone also knows that this was
a time when the deep state apparatus replaced the official state
authority in the Southeast and inflicted terror through practices that

1988 The Halabja Massacre

336 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK