The Kurds and Eastern Turkey
Trip Start
Jun 30, 2008
1
14
17
Trip End
Aug 22, 2008
Van,
Van,
Turkey
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Turks have created a cult of personality around Attaturk, displaying large statues, or outlines of his face on the sides of mountains overlooking cities along with huge signs saying "I'm glad to be a Turk' etc. All this in areas with 90% Kurdish population. In addition, we've seen one picture frame with a plaster-cast imprint of Attaturk's face. In the far reaches of eastern Turkey there are numerous military checkpoints and basis. During one day's worth of driving we were stopped, and on occasion searched, no less than ten times.
The Kurds that we've met, and even some of the Turks living in Kurish areas, are in favor of a Kurdish state, though Montana refuses to talk about this political issue. One young man we met and hung out with in Van talked about 'the psychological war' carried out by the Turks, and how he had to use the internet to find 'the illegal histories.' Besides paying for a load of our laundry (without us knowing) and taking us out to dinner, he offered us black market gas (but we're using LPG, which is cheaper, so we couldn't use it anyway.) Apparently his uncle smuggles petrol. The whole village in which his uncle lives travels on horseback, 70-100 horses, to the Iranian border (about 20 minutes away) and brings back the cheap petrol. It all takes place through PKK territory, so they don't have to deal with Turkish or Iranian soldiers most of the time.
If anyone thinks that the free dinner (after spending the day with him) and the offer of petrol is at all sketchy, it's really not. In eastern Turkey we've been meeting lots of very friendly Kurds. Everyone gives you free tea; I was offered free tea at a gas station while waiting for the credit card transaction to go through. Speaking of tea, there' a particular Kurdish style of drinking the tea. It is always necessary to put sugar in your tea. We put the cubes in tea; they put the cube on their tongue and then drinking the tea past it.
Besides meeting lots of very friendly people, we've also seen some amazing natural and man-made sites. At Van lake, the largest lake in Turkey, we went to the Armenian church located on an island and also saw the Van cat, a species specific to the region. The cat is completely white, very friendly, and has one blue eye and one gold eye. Most of Armenian churches are in disrepair or bombed out (the Turks refusing to recognize the minority's existence). In Diyarbakir, we had to go through someone's house to get to the back yard, in which is located an Armenian church bombed out during the genocide.
