Kurdish
P.E.N. Centre, Bremen,
04.April, 2003
The
poets, essayists and novelists gathered around the Kurdish PEN Centre dream of
the world in which the Kurds and their neighbours can live in peace and be
engaged in cultural exchange. We strongly believe that the people speaking and
writing in main Kurdish dialects of North- and South Kurmandji, Zazaki, Hewrami
and Luri as well as Christians, Jews and indigenous religious communities of the
Yezidis, Kakais and Zoroastrians together constituting the Kurdish nation
deserve the right of self-determination. Only thus we are able to develop our
ancient culture.
However,
the reality does not correspond to our idealistic views and the Kurds since the
early twentieth century have been facing continuous and sometimes unbearable
discrimination aimed at annihilating them and their
identity. The notorious policy of the governments of Turkey, Iraq, Iran
and Syria in this respect are well documented.
Having
been deprived of the right to articulate our position, we have unwillingly found
ourselves in the middle of the war that the coalition forces led by the USA
wages against the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. Since 1991, the Kurds,
enjoying in this part of their homeland the US and UK air protection, built one
of the most democratic societies in the Middle East. Actually, it is the only
place in the world where the Kurdish language and literature develop without
restraint. The Kurdish P.E.N. Centre therefore hopes that this democratic and
liberal model can be applied to the rest of Iraq and other states with the
Kurdish population and beyond. It is especially true with Turkey whose military
and Islamistic rulers cannot emancipate themselves from an ill-fated Kurdophobia
by ignoring the will of its twenty-million-strong Kurdish population and
threatening to militarily crush the arrangements of the Iraqi opposition to
build a new, democratic and federal Iraq.
In
this circumstances we entirely support the stand of the Kurds in South-Kurdistan
(Iraq) and their co-operation with the coalition forces to liberate their
homeland. We also feel sympathy with our Kurdish people in North-Kurdistan
(Turkey) fearing that the war might give a pretext to the Ankara authorities to
increase oppression against them.
We
call on the governments of Turkey, Syria and Iran to seriously address the
concerns of their Kurdish citizens and other opposition forces, which is the
only way to establish a modern state and secure a peaceful co-existence between
majorities and minorities.
We
appeal to liberal and anti-war intellectuals and activists world-wide to take
into consideration the tragedy of the Kurds who have been always paying the
price for wrongly-understood security and power politics.
The
Kurdish P.E.N. Centre also appeals to the US administration not to abandon the
Kurds and Arabs of Iraq to prove their critics wrong.