There is a Turkey far from sandy beaches, all-inclusive, from the picturesque streets of Istanbul and the much-praised hospitality. In this Turkey the letters X, Q, W were banned from 1928 to 2013 because they appear in the Kurdish but not in the Turkish alphabet. In this Turkey you could go to jail for a letter. The Kurdish language was persecuted so brutally that women who spoke their Kurdish mother tongue in labor pains were thrown out of the delivery room. In this Turkey it was enough to simply hang green, yellow, red underwear (the Kurdish colors) on the line to be arrested. Traditional Kurdish clothing was also forbidden. Thousands of civilians were killed in this Turkey in the 1990s; many disappeared into torture prisons or were shot dead in the street.The military destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages. In this Turkey people are still looking for the bones of their relatives.
This Turkey already existed before Sultan-2.0 Erdogan moved into his palace. The anti-Kurdish racism was already applied when the republic was founded: "One nation, one flag, one language" was the doctrine from then on. The Kurds became "Mountain Turks", later "Eastern Turks". The idea of a homogeneous Turkish nation-state should become a reality through violence and cultural annihilation. This violence continues to this day. A few days ago, seven members of a Kurdish family were killed and their house set on fire in Konya. In May she was attacked by Turkish neighbors and seriously injured. She was told that no Kurds would be allowed to live there. Neither the police nor the judiciary did anything. It was a racist lynching and by no means the only one.
There is also anti-Kurdish racism in Germany: there are the Gray Wolves, with at least 18,000 supporters, the numerically largest right-wing extremist organization in Germany. They organize themselves in football and “culture” clubs, in the ATIB, a member club of the Central Council of Muslims. The Gray Wolves dream of a Greater Turkish Empire from the Balkans to China. They propagate the superiority of the "Turkish race". They are homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist towards Armenians, Greeks, Alevis, Ezidis and Kurds. In 2020, Ibrahim Demir, a short Kurd, was kicked to death by a supporter of the Gray Wolves in Dortmund.
In the 1980s the Turkish-Islamic synthesis developed into the official state doctrine of Turkey: Islamism and nationalism in one pot, mixed well. In 2018, the Islamist Erdogan party AKP entered into an electoral alliance with the far-right MHP. The state office for Turks abroad is campaigning for identification with Turkishness and Islam. “Become a German, stay a Turk,” it says under Turkish rights. Anti-Kurdish racism is firmly anchored not only among the gray wolves, but also in large parts of (German-) Turkish society. In German schoolyards, Turkish schoolchildren use “Kurd” as a swear word. Even when I was at school it was said that Kurds were “criminals”, “dirty” and that they would “never wash”. "The further you go to the east of Turkey, the more stupid the people get",I still heard as an adult.
The anti-Kurdish policy of the Turkish state was reflected in the German authorities. Certain rules were simply adopted because they did not want to endanger German-Turkish relations. For a long time it was almost impossible for Kurdish parents to give their children Kurdish first names. The German registry offices only permitted names that were used in the country of origin - but Kurdish names were forbidden in Turkey. When a relative of mine needed a translator in court, a Turkish-speaking was hired. When he was told that you need a Kurdish one, the judge said: "Why Kurdish - you are all mountain Turks anyway." Estimates speak of up to 1.5 million Kurds living in Germany.The federal government's corona information was translated into 20 languages - Kurdish was only added through public pressure. Anti-Kurdish racism is by no means a problem “among foreigners”. It is part of German reality.
Anti-Kurdish racism rarely plays a role in anti-racist initiatives. It does not fit into the dualism of a racist white German majority society and the people of color affected by racism. Anyone who talks about it is quickly branded as a splitter and polluter. They say we are all the same to a neo-Nazi. But simple dualisms will not get us any further. There is not just one type of racism. To some it may
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: A Turkish Nazi can be attacked by a German Nazi and still remains a racist. And every racism kills, just as here as in Konya: Yaşar Dedeoğlu, Barış Dedeoğlu, Serpil Dedeoğlu, Serap Dedeoğlu, İpek Dedeoğlu, Metin Dedeoğlu, Sibel Dedeoğlu.