Kurds Research Paper

* The Kurds were anxious to advance their decades long desire for autonomy and to

During World War I, the government of Turkey sought to rid their country of the Armenians. The Turks and other ethnic groups hated the Armenians for their ability to prosper, even as a minority group with limited rights. This hatred led to the desire to cleanse the Ottoman Empire of Armenian influence. The Turkish people say that the Ottoman empire went through a civil war during this time, which explains the deaths of so many Armenians. Although the Turks claim otherwise, the treatment of the Armenian people during World War I qualifies as a genocide through scale, government involvement, and the usage of the genocide process.

ISIS is being led by multiple people who are extremely resistant to compromise and believe that they are following a prophecy. They have a divine prophecy that they will either be led to a great demise or a wonderful ending where they will come out on top. ISIS is vastly different than many other groups by the fact that they are led by a very strong willed leadership.

On the 24 April 1915, as the Ottoman Empire was being dismantled, a fiercely nationalistic Muslim political party known as the Young Turks began the process of exterminating approximately 1 500 000 Armenian Christians. The Young Turks aimed to create a state that was free from any Armenians and from Christians in particular. The genocide lasted 8 years, until 1923, during which time the Armenian Christian population in the Ottoman Empire was reduced from approximately 2 million to approximately 500 000. Still today, Turkey refuses to call what took place ‘genocide’. The modern Turkish government argues that the intent was to relocate the Armenians or, in some cases, that the genocide was completely fabricated by the Armenians, as a bid to gain support from the outside Christian world.

Before delving further there are proceeding events that must be examined, such as what was taking place concurrently during WWI. Arthur Bright from The Christian Science Monitor stated that according to the Turks the reason the Armenians were targeted was not intentional, “Ottoman Empire 's relocation policy wasn 't targeted at Armenians because of their ethnic identity - rather, the Ottomans were targeting insurgent groups within the Armenian community.” So much like the United states amidst WW2 when any Japanese persons were taking to camps during times of war. However, in this case as one begins to see what happened before and during, it becomes clear that it was a lot more than just a simple relocation.

The Turks conquered a lot of Armenia’s ancestral lands, which became part of the Ottoman Empire. Today the Ottoman Empire is known as Turkey. The Turks let the Armenians have some freedom in the lands that they had conquered from the Armenians until 1890. There were religious rebellions, and Muslims wanted their religion to stay in power, so the Ottoman Empire leaders came up with a plan to use the Armenians as people who are against their religion. This put the whole religious rebellion blame on the Armenians. The Turks killed Armenian villagers periodically in different areas in the conquered Armenian lands, because they did not like the fact that there were Christians in their country. After the Ottoman Empire lost its national strength the Young Turks, which was a nationalistic movement took over Turkey. The Young Turks murdered the Armenians in order to create inspiration towards the Islamic nationalism. This is when the Armenian Genocide had occurred in the 20th century, which resulted in 1,500,000 murders of Armenians. These people were not just simply murdered with a gun shot, they were raped, enslaved, suffered from hunger, hung, and even had their heads cut off. Yet still some nations like The United States of America has still not declared the killings of the 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as Genocide. To this day the Armenian race is still struggling to conquer back their ancestral lands, which

At first the Armenians were hopeful that their more modern government would help their region and give them equal rights. However, shortly after they came to power, the Young Turks made it clear that their numbers one priority was to “Turkify” all of the empire. On April 15, 1915, the genocide truly began. The government first arrested and murdered several hundred Armenian intellectuals. Secondly, they went into regular Armenians’ houses and grabbed them from their homes and took them on death marches in the scorching heat of the Mesopotamian desert until they dropped dead with no food, no water, no clothes. If you stopped to rest you would be shot. On top of these death marches, there were special organizations called “killing squads” that went around drowning, stabbing, and burning Armenians. In 1922 as the genocide began to end, “there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire” (“The Armenian Genocide”). So in the end, the Armenian Genocide is one of the many Genocides that have happened and are happening currently that we are not educated on. If this particular genocide is either forgotten or unspoken, it really is a little bit of

A French historian, Ernest Renan, once remarked, “In the creating of nations, the act of forgetting is as important as remembering” (qtd. in Anderson 2). For Turkey, this meant “obliterating the memory of a group that inhabited their country before they did” (Anderson 2). Due to hardships inside the Turkish government after its losses of many European provinces, a transnationalist ideology was created, and the war against the Armenians started. From 1915 to 1917, almost one and a half million Armenian men, women, and children were deported to the south from the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey and sent to their deaths. Mass murders and widespread deportations of the Armenian

Throughout the 1960’s, the Ba’ath regime, the Iraqi government, saw the Kurds as a threat simply because they were a different race and culture. The Kurds were an ethnic group of people who originated in the Middle East, now living throughout Western Iraq, Northern Syria and Northern Iran. The Regime saw the Kurds as such a threat that they decided it would be good to attempt to wipe them out completely. To achieve this, they used chemical weapons. This action started a genocide.

The Kurds are a Middle Eastern group that distinct from the Arabs, Turkish, and Iranians. About 30 million Kurds live in Kurdistan which are combined parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The Kurds are the most popular ethnic group that doesn’t have their own independent country. The reason that the Kurds haven’t established their own independent country is because of all the issues that exist in the region. The area and neighboring states they are surrounded are filled with war and disagreements over natural resources, mainly oil. Many of the city officials and people who hold most of the powers are corrupt. It’s hard to develop a strong independent country with corruption and conflicts.

This issue has been with Turkey almost since the foundation of the Turkish State in 1923. The Kurds were promised the creation of an independent state as part of the treaty of Sevres in 1920 but this part of the treaty was never ratified and Turkey has refused to recognize the existence of a separate Kurdish ethnic community within its borders.

Turkey has been a key player against the PKK. Geography, politics and history have conspired to render 30 million Kurds the largest stateless people in the Middle East. The Government of Turkey has long denied the Kurdish population, located largely in the southeast, basic political, cultural, and linguistic rights. The government of Turkey has in turn waged an intense campaign to suppress PKK terrorism, targeting active PKK units as well as persons they believe support or sympathize with the PKK. As part of its fight against the PKK, the Government forcibly displaced noncombatants, failed to resolve extra judicial killings, tortured civilians, and abridged freedom of expression. The Turkish government has also managed to burn over 4,000 villages forcing Kurds to flee from their homeland. Finally, the Turkish government estimates that the conflict with the PKK has exacted a high financial drain on the

Peshmerga means those who are prepared to confront or face death. This military force began around the 1920’s and have experienced a lot of tension between political groups. The Peshmerga is currently fighting ISIS which is the biggest terrorist organization in the world. They are not only the leading protectors of the Kurdistan Region, but also the entire world.

In recent years, the Iraqi nation has endured a crisis that will forever remain in the hearts and minds of the Middle Eastern culture. However, the outcomes of the War on Iraq will not change the long-lasting and passionate traditions and memories that have been held in the country for decades. One major event that happened in Iraq’s history is that on October 3, 1932 Iraq was established as an independent nation. Iraq has always been a country in which respect and generosity have been highly valued and play an important cultural role in everyday life. Additionally, approximately ninety-five percent of Iraqis are Muslim, and therefore Islam is the official religion of this nation (Gutierrez 1). Furthermore, Iraq is a

Throughout history, the middle east has often been the focus of news reporters. A middle eastern country that has not been exempt from this, is Turkey. Turkey has not only been a focus, but it also has had a very long, complicated history.