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Mostrando postagens com marcador curdos. Mostrar todas as postagens
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sexta-feira, 6 de dezembro de 2019

Armenian Genocide Descendants Face Another Turkish Onslaught - Amy Austin Holmes, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu

Armenian Genocide Descendants Face Another Turkish Onslaught, One Century Later

One of the deadliest sites of the Armenian genocide – Ras al-Ayn – has once again fallen under Turkish control because of a ceasefire agreement negotiated by the United States. The incursion of Turkish-backed rebels in the swath of land ceded to Turkey has forced Armenian families to flee – one century after their ancestors fled those who sought to exterminate them. When Turkish President Erdogan visited the White House on November 13, President Trump failed to mention the ethnic cleansing campaign and assault on the descendants of Armenian genocide survivors.
The U.S. President paved the way for Turkey’s military to invade northern Syria earlier this fall when he ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops against the advice of the U.S. military, key advisors, and members of Congress from both political parties.
Now, more than 100 years after the Armenian genocide, the United States negotiated a deal that ceded a swath of land between Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn (Serêkaniyê in Kurdish) to Turkey, granting Erdogan’s regime de-facto occupation of additional Syrian borderlands.
In 1915, long-held fears of territorial dismemberment and anti-Armenian sentiment led the Ottoman Turkish government to launch a brutal campaign against its Armenian population, who were killed, forced into Muslim households, or deported into remote areas to perish. Ras al-Ayn became one of twenty five concentration camps where deported Armenians from Anatolia were settled temporarily.  In 1916 the Ottoman government ordered the massacre of Armenians in two major camps (the other in Deir Ezzor is known as “Armenia’s Auschwitz”). An estimated 70,000 Armenians in Ras al-Ayn alone were killed by Turks and their militias. They were buried in mass graves or just left in open fields where bones of victims can still be found today.
Those who survived put down roots in the area, which enabled a multiethnic society to develop in northeastern Syria. The current cross-border military operation, however, seeks to change these dynamics permanently. Houses owned by Armenians, as well as other Christian and Kurdish families are being looted by Turkish-backed militias. “Taken by al-Jabha al-Shamiyya” has been scrolled on the gates of their homes to signal to other Turkish-commanded militias that the properties had already been confiscated.  Since the start of the Turkish assault, known as Operation Peace Spring, more than 200 civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. All 30 Armenian families living in the region recently ceded to Turkey between Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn/Serêkaniyê have reportedly fled. Armenians are also under attack by the Islamic State (ISIS) in other parts of Northeast Syria. Just recently, Ibrahim Hevsop Bedo, an Armenian-Catholic priest, and his father were killed by ISIS gunmen while traveling to Deir Ezzor to restore an Armenian Catholic church.
The Turkish incursion has now forcibly displaced approximately 300,000 people from the so-called “safe zone” where Turkish-backed militias operate under the umbrella of the “Syrian National Army” and include groups known for their brutality including Ahrar al-Sharqiya, Jaysh al-Islam, Sultan Murad, al-Jabha al-Shamiyya, Hamza Brigade, and others.  On October 12, Hevrin Khalaf, a Kurdish female politician and head of the Syria Future Party, was captured and executed by Ahrar al-Sharqiya. Amnesty International referred to her murder and other summary executions as war crimes. In recent testimony, Syria Envoy James Jeffrey acknowledged that the State Department was investigating crimes committed by Turkey and Turkish-backed rebels. In a leaked memo, Ambassador William Roebuck, the top American diplomat working in northern Syria, wrote: “Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing.” 
President Erdogan publicly announced at the United Nations General Assembly intentions to deport Syrian refugees living in Turkey into the areas now being depopulated by Turkey and its militias.  The forced return of refugees into a war zone is illegal under international human rights law, yet Erdogan’s plan has not been denounced strongly by world leaders, in part because he regularly threatens to send Syrian refugees and captured ISIS members to Europe and other countries.  
In recent days, the House of Representatives recognized the Armenian genocide and condemned the murder of about 1.5 million Armenians. On the same day, the House also passed a bill sanctioning Turkey for recent actions. While these actions are long overdue, the decision to move this legislation now signals unprecedented congressional anger at Turkey, a NATO ally that will remain mostly rhetorical as the Senate is unlikely to pass a genocide resolution or adapt meaningful sanctions.
Ignoring and rewarding Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian ruler sends a terrible message, condoning ongoing war crimes by Turkish forces and allied militias in Syria. Some of these groups actually film themselves carrying out executions of civilians.  
Turkey and Turkish-backed militias should be sanctioned, and displaced families should be allowed to return to their homes. The United States should not lend its support for the Turkish government’s goal of re-engineering the demographics of a geography already stained by genocide a century ago.  It is not too late to reverse some of the damage that has been done. 

Amy Austin Holmes is a visiting scholar at the Middle East Initiative of Harvard University, and the author of Social Unrest and American Military Bases in Turkey and Germany since 1945, (Cambridge University Press). She has carried out research in Northeast Syria since 2015, and has conducted the first survey of the Syrian Democratic Forces.  Lerna Ekmekçioğlu is an Associate Professor of History at MIT and the author of Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey, published by Stanford University Press. She studies and teaches about women’s experiences during and after wars.
*** To watch a clip from Amy Austin Holmes' video interview on this subject, click here. 
Statements and views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Harvard University, the Harvard Kennedy School, or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.  – Via Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.

segunda-feira, 25 de setembro de 2017

Independencia do Curdistao: saiba quem sao os curdos, o que pretendem, o que vai acontecer na regiao depois do plebiscito

Uma matéria quase completa sobre a questão curda.

What To Know About The Independence Referendum In Iraqi Kurdistan

National Public Radio,
A campaign poster next to a Kurdish flag in Irbil urges people to vote yes Monday on independence from Iraq.
Balint Szlanko/AP 
 
Iraqi Kurdish leaders plan to hold a controversial independence referendum on Monday. Kurds are expected to overwhelmingly vote in favor of separating from Iraq. The United States and other allies have warned them not to go ahead.
Here's what to know:
Who and where are the Kurds?
An estimated 30 million Kurds live in territory overlapping northern Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. They are the fourth-biggest ethnic group in the region after Arabs, Persians and Turks.
About 6 million Kurds — almost 20 percent of the the Iraqi population — live in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, as well as in Baghdad and a swath of territory claimed by both the Kurds and the Iraqi government.
Rogesh Adnan Yasin, a Syrian Kurd, holds a Kurdish flag and her 2-year-old niece at a pro-referendum rally in Irbil, Iraq. Yasin believes that if Iraqi Kurds achieve independence, her Kurdish region of Syria will be next.
Jane Arraf/NPR
Kurds generally speak different dialects of the Kurdish language — although in Turkey, it was once considered a crime to speak Kurdish.
Have the Kurds ever had their own country?
When the Ottoman Empire was dissolved after World War I, Kurds demanded their own state, but hundreds of thousands were expelled from their traditional areas and dispersed to other parts of Turkey instead.
After World War II, the Soviet Union backed a Kurdish self-governing state in what is now Iran. That state, the Republic of Mahabad, lasted less than a year.
The most autonomy Kurds have had since then is in Iraq. In the three northern Kurdish provinces, Kurds control the land borders with neighboring countries, elect their own parliament, maintain their own security forces (known as the peshmerga) and draft their own laws.
What was the U.S. role in helping to create modern Iraqi Kurdistan?
After Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the U.S. formed a coalition to drive him out in 1991. The Kurds (and Iraqi Shiites in the south) rose up against him.
The Iraqi army attacked the north, and more than 1 million Kurds fled their homes and tried to escape over the mountains in winter. Thousands died.
That year, the U.N. Security Council approved a U.S.-led no-fly zone preventing Iraqi planes from flying over the north and south of Iraq. In 1992, Iraqi Kurds established their own regional government.
The decade that followed was a tough time. The Iraqi government punished the Kurds with trade sanctions, and the Kurdish region was included in an international trade embargo against Iraq.
After 2003, when Saddam was toppled, Kurds started rebuilding and foreign investment poured in.
Why do Iraqis Kurds insist on independence?
Most Kurds say they will never feel safe as part of Iraq.
From 1986 to 1988, Iraqi forces destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages in a campaign by Saddam's Arab Socialist Baath party to "Arabize" northern Iraq. At a conservative estimate, more than 100,000 Kurds were killed. Chemical gas attacks in the town of Halabja in 1988 killed thousands of women and children.
"You will lose nothing if you vote yes, but if vote no, you will lose something," says Saad Abdul Razak at his shop in Irbil's historic market.
Jane Arraf/NPR
Saddam is long gone — he was convicted of war crimes and executed in 2006. But many Kurds believe they will always face threats from an Iraqi Arab government.
They also blame Iraqi Arabs for the rise of ISIS, which has massacred members of the ancient Yazidi minority. The Kurds consider Yazidis to be Kurds.
An estimated 2,000 Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces were killed fighting ISIS.
The Kurds also want to control their own economy. When ISIS attacked three years ago, Iraqi forces refused to fight. Kurdish fighters moved in to push ISIS back and took control of some of the biggest northern oil fields, as well as the disputed city of Kirkuk.
The Kurdish government accuses Baghdad of reneging on an agreement to give it a share of oil revenues. Baghdad says the Kurdistan region is illegally exporting oil. That has led to an economic crisis in the Kurdish region.
Which countries are supporting the Kurdish independence referendum?
Israel is the only country that has come out in favor of it. Israel has long-standing security and business ties to the Kurdistan region and would love to have a non-Arab ally in the Middle East.
In a more lukewarm endorsement, France — after initial opposition — recently said it wouldn't oppose the vote taking place.
But the United States and some of Iraq's neighbors oppose the referendum. Iran and Turkey have warned the Kurds not to go ahead with the vote. The U.S. wants to avoid the prospect of another conflict between Baghdad and the Kurdish government while they are still fighting ISIS. After 2003, Kurdish leaders agreed to an Iraqi constitution that calls for negotiations over disputed areas, so holding the referendum in Kirkuk and other cities now is seen as provocative.
Kurds wave Israeli flags at a Kurdish independence rally. Israel is the only country in the region to support the referendum.
Jane Arraf/NPR
Iraq's neighbors are worried that a Kurdish state would encourage their own Kurdish populations to try to break away.
The Iranian, Turkish and Iraqi foreign ministers announced Friday they would take coordinated measures against the Kurds — likely economic sanctions — if they go through with the vote.
Why is the referendum controversial within the Kurdistan region?
The vote is being driven by regional President Massoud Barzani, whose Kurdistan Democratic Party controls the Kurdish regional government. Barzani is 71, and many believe he wants the referendum to be part of his legacy.
But there are deep divisions among Kurdish political parties.
Although Barzani still holds the position and power of president, his term actually ended two years ago. Until last week, Parliament hadn't met for two years after the Parliament speaker, who is from an opposition party, was blocked from entering.
Some Kurds believe that their political leaders should be working on strengthening democracy and rescuing the economy instead of holding a referendum. There is also discontent about corruption among Kurdistan's political dynasties while people like teachers and the peshmerga go without salaries because of the economic crisis.
Is there a chance that voters won't support independence?
No. There is a "No for Now" campaign that argues this isn't the right time — but even Kurds who are on the fence are overwhelmingly expected to vote yes.
So what does holding the referendum actually mean in the end?
It's a signal and a statement of intent that Kurdish leaders plan to pursue independence. But there's no timeline, and the vote doesn't trigger any moves to independence. It's likely though to trigger retaliation from Iraq's neighbors and allies. The Kurds supporting this, though, believe it's worth it.