Young Civilians bring Kurds and Turks together
June 1st, 2009The student movement Genc Siviller (Young Civilians) works for an open society with different language and cultures. Vedat Yildirim of the multicultural music groups Bajar and Kardes Turkuler thinks that the ideology of Genc Siviller is very important for him. He helped the NGO with training a Kurdish-Turkish choir singing songs in Kurdish.
Today’s Zaman says that Young Civilians aim to improve democracy in Turkey and recently travelled to Yassıada, a small island in the Marmara Sea, to protest against the military coup of 1960.
GS-member Pinar Akpinar explained that her organization organized humorous campaigns for a civil constitution, against military coups, the headscarf ban and ridiculed nationalistic fears. Not only Kurds are members of the organization, but also atheists, Christians, Muslims, ladies with headscarves and without. The group tries to include everybody who lives in Turkey.
Last year Genc Siviller for example organized courses to ‘Kurdify’ Turks with information about Kurdish language, traditions, music and culture. The Kurdish artist Rojin also participated in the program.
On Valentine’s day the GS organized their first Kurdish-Turkish concert in Istanbul to learn Turks how to say ‘I love you in Kurdish’ (Ez ji te hez dikim)’. The concert was organised under the idea that Kurds and Turks should live peacefully together. “If Kurds and Turks cannot live together in this world, then, go down with the world. Long live the love of peoples,” was the slogan of the concert.
More information:
Website Genc Siviller
Today’s Zaman: Turkey moving from oligarchy to absolute monarchy, says Oğur
New York Times – Turkish Group Wields Wit as Tool for Political Change
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The only reason that for hudereds years we are fighting for our survival is that the turks tried to destroy us. Now some meangless and naive people think this how is going to work to make a peace. First you pay for what you have done and for what you destroyed from the begining of kamalisme state. Ataturk himself tried that way by saying “kurt-turk musluman kardeshligi” So all this is blasphemy. Go ask to 4 million deported people and tousend of killed and raped people in the south. if they realy want such way “sevgili kardeshligi” of conflict resolution.
We want to live and leurn about our own nation (sorani, Zazaki, Yezedi, chaldean) Because we are leurning for alomost 80 Years ” ne mutlu turkum diyene” so we got tired of knowing such limited and arragant nation.
Making peace is to free youself from slavery and not to accept de past in a romantisme way.
My question is that how can we serve G-d and our own people if you are slaved to others? if G-d wanted us to live with the turks there will be not such war and hate between us. They fight on the name of evil we fight on the name of justice.
The problem with Kurds, like the above poster, is that they can’t get over history. Many of the Kurds today, have no interest in having a peacefull friendship with the Turkish people or the Turkish state. They will do everything to deal as much damage as they can to the Turkish state, no matter what it takes, killing civillians or guards, it doesn’t matter for them. They have been obsessed with the ideal to form their own state and can’t live together with the Turks.