making sense to kurds

no science, no art, no philosophy, no literature, no environment, no democrats, no finesse... issues i and a number of other left-outs have always complained about as huge gaps of knowledge in the turkish modes of mentally constructing the world.

now, we are facing as a nation, a gross ramification of thinking with our guns instead of our minds. our democrat-free democracy has long created an ogre that has gnawed on turkish society for years and now threatens to mangle it: a feud between turks and kurds, that is mutually suicidal rather than fratricidal!

ten years ago, a division of the country might have been hypothetically possible without destroying the essential make-up of either ethnic community. now, even on paper, such separation can be but fatal for both. since the 1990s, millions of kurds have spread into the country, which is also their country, so that ethnic strife can only devastate both entities that constitute one nation. however, not only rampant turkish nationalism but also the cultural customs of kurds and their particular articulation with their turkish compatriots can at present be listed as psychological distances that belie physical proximity.

what do we know about this anthropological - sociological and pychological phenomenon that bears so much dormant risk to our vey existence? nil? most possibly... why? because in our denial of a kurdish entity, in our despisal of academic inquiry, we simply ignored the study of the kurdish way of mind and life. worse, we jailed anyone who dared to study the kurds as a specific social actuality. i know many young scholars who have researched kurdish life and culture in situ but all as affiliates of universities abroad. i doubt any turkish academic institution has any worthwhile and reliable data, studies or publications on a matter that directly pertains to the country's life-lines.

how are we going to live with people to whose minds, souls and praxes we are so indifferent? how are we going to communicate with them? whether on the north or the south of our borders, how are we going to reach out to them and make sense to them as partners in life? certainly a reference to a millenium of shared geography and politics is not so satisfactory any longer.

instead of science, learning and thought, we have tried to ensure political unity only with our guts and guns, since the 1821 uprising in the peleponessus. it seems there has occurred no change in our grasp of the world ever since, wielding nietzche's hammer all the time, we see all problems as nails.

hope we do not bang it on our thumb this once...