PDK-XOYBUN; wiha, di xizmeta, Kurd û Kurdistanê daye : Pirojeya Kurdistana Mezin, Pirojeyên Aborî û Avakirin, Pirojeyên Cand û Huner, Lêkolîna Dîroka Kurdistanê, Perwerdeya Zimanê Kurdî, Perwerdeya Zanîn û Sîyasî, Weşana Malper û TV yên Kurdistane. -

Dear Organizers and dear Participants,
the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Turkey wishes this Congress fruitful work and every success.

We - the Kurdistan Democratic Party (Turkey) - are firmly convinced that the organizers and the participants of this conference will undertake every effort to seek out and debate a just solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. Moreover, one of the defined aims of this congress would be to try to discuss the background to the present situation of the Kurds and about the hindrances for its solution. We have no doubt that both the participants present here as well as the organizers are sufficiently informed to be qualified for doing so.
However, we deem it necessary to explain a number of points concerning the present situation from our point of view and regarding Turkey.

As you know, after the demise of the Ottoman empire, the Kurds had chosen to live together with the people and minorities living in Turkey. In this respect, the Kurds have politically behaved as had been expected of them. We Kurds were even employed against other minorities and nationalities although this was not one our own concerns and interest. When, then, the alleged danger from other minorities and nationalities had been eliminated (with our support), the Kurds finally were persecuted themselves. Only when, at the beginning of the second quarter of this century, the Kurds became aware that they had been betrayed and cheated by Turkey, and only when they were not even allowed anymore to profess themselves as Kurds, they started to offer resistance.

In the course of the subsequent uprisings, hundreds of thousands of Kurds were murdered, their dwellings destroyed, and several hundred thousand people forcibly resettled. this stood at the beginning of the history of the so-called laic Kemalist republic.

After the crushing of the Kurdish uprisings of the 1920th and 1930th, there was the silence of a graveyard concerning all matters Kurdish. this silence lasted until 1958, until the return from exile to Iraq of the legendary Kurdish leader Mola Mustafa Barzani This home coming had repercussions for the Kurds in Turkey as well. The organizing of the Kurds in Turkey started once again, and at the same time Kurdish patriots, at the beginning of 1965, founded our Kurdistan Democratic Party in Turkey.

Shortly after the foundation of our party, our Secretary General, Faik Bucak, was murdered with the help of local collaborators, despite that our party had been advocating to solve the Kurdish question by democratic and peaceful means., and did not demand a separate Kurdish state. The attacks on our party continued until today, all members of the Central committee were arrested and convicted.

It were the brutally handed politics of Turkey towards the Kurds that provided for Stalinist movements like the PKK to appear and to gain strength. Our party, now, was suffering persecution from both the Stalinist movements and the Turkish state, so that we had no opportunity to develop and work on a democratic solution.

We want to especially draw your attention to this one point, i.e. that Turkey in no way was ready for, and interested in democratic and moderate interlocutors on the Kurdish side. This accounted for a constant growth of organizations like the PKK leading into a national catastrophe not only for the Kurds, and forced the Turkish state into economic and moral ruin.

Turkey has always maintained that, because of the violence of the PKK, it was not in a position to further the process of democratization of state and society and of observance of human

rights standards. In reality, PKK had only represented a small portion of the Kurds, and Turkey has made no progress concerning a democratization process ever since the inception of the

Republic of Turkey. We may not forget that PKK and its violent activities lasted for only 15 years., - and that the democratization of the country is dependent on the solution of the Kurdish question. This is exclusively a matter of will and determination of the Turkish state. For which reason Turkey for so many decades has been unable to embark upon democratization while Spain made it in 20 years, Greece in 30, and Italy in 40?

These countries have each witnessed and survived an exemplary democratization process.

We are convinced that Turkey is incapable of realizing the democratization process because she has been built on the fundaments of Kemalism and its main principles. Kemailism means Turkish nationalism and nationalism does not mean democracy but war. It is this that the allies of Turkey, be them in Europe or within Nato, obviously do not want to be true. For this reason, Turkey, until very recently, was massively and without reservations supported economically and militarily. Turkey has abused this support in interior conflicts instead of using this support to construct a democracy conform with human rights.

Therefore we would like to encourage that part of the organizers and participants of this conference that does not want anymore to see Turkey treated as the pampered child of the West. We feel that time is ripe for it. Turkey's pretext that violence was preventing her from realizing the democratization process, definitely does not exist anymore.

We also feel - and we urge you to take this very seriously - that it is high time to think about alternatives to the PKK-centered way of looking at the Kurdish question in Turkey, which means to seriously make an effort to finally become oware of and recognize alternative movements and parties which al along and without doubt have aimed at democratic and peaceful solutions, - and to provide them with support here.

If the world so far has not taken notice of us, so for two reasons: firstly, we have always been considerate of the interests of our brothers and sisters in Iraqi Kurdistan -especially during the past ten years - and of their difficult situation which we did not want to prejudice further; and, secondly, the entire world is talking about those who took up arms and about those, too, and especially about those, whose terrorism was turned mainly against their own people, that is about this so absolutely un-Kurdish PKK and others. Those forces, on the other hand, who so far and over decades have been pursuing a political just solution, have been forgotten and neglected; and even today, and here in Washington, we see little chances that this could change. Still, we urge you from our heart to seriously and consequently include this into your considerations during this congress.

16 April 2000
by orders:
Rojhat Amedi
for: KURDISTAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY (T)
E-mail: rojhat0212@aol.com
www.pdk-t.dk