Tuesday, November 30, 2004

The Failed Kemalist Modernization Project.

"In the beginning of the 20th Century the Ottoman Empire’s military and civil bureaucracy, about 95% of which was under Colonel Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s leadership, decided to create a modern Republic from what remained of the Empire after World War I. The Ottoman Empire, like most other empires, was multinational, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual, and allowed for a wide variety of religions. However, the founders of this new Republic decided to create a uniform ethnicity, language, and religious orientation (Islam = Sunni-Hanefi and Turks=Turkish) out of this diverse community. Since then, the government has been in war with its citizens, imposing its will to artificially transform the majority into a minority culture, language, and religion. At the same time the educational institutions, the mass media, and public officials have preached citizen-uniformity and enforced with gunpoint, furthermore, anyone taking a position contrary to that has been considered an Enemy-of-the-State."

Kurdistan Observer

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