Recep Tayyip Erdogan Quotes
There is no Kurdish problem.
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip. Speech at the Balıkesir Economy Awards Ceremony, 15 Mar. 2015, Balıkesir, Turkey.
The problem persisted into the 21st century. Iraqi Kurds have constantly tried to carve out parts of Iran and Turkey with ethnic Kurds and form them into a Kurdish nation, separate and distinct from Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Some of the Kurds became fanatic terrorists to that end killing many in all three countries as well as fomenting civil war with other Kurdish factions in Iraq.
During the 1920s there was a dispute between Romania and Russia regarding land area claimed by both. Few modern people know that Communist Russia, less than a decade after the Russian Revolution, had proposed the creation of a Jewish State. The State would be part of the Soviet Union and under Communist control. While there were some communist Russian Jews who were enthusiastic supporters of such a Jewish State, the Jews of the area were more concerned by the kind of autonomy the Jewish state would have. Western Jews were split. Most were Zionists and wanted an independent Jewish nation, not a Jewish subdivision of the Soviet Union. Pro Communist Jews tended to like the idea but many of them preferred a communist nation in Palestine. Anti-Communist Jews did not want Russia to dominate any more land and saw a Jewish state under communist domination as contrary to the highly traditional Jewish individualistic and independent culture. Soon Lord Balfour was to make his famous declaration about Palestine as a Jewish homeland, and most Jews and many others lost all interest in the earlier Russian idea.
Most social and demographic changes many people fear will continue on a trend and assume the extrapolation will become reality. Few ever do, and the fears turn out to be just fears.
The Kurdish People do not have a homeland of their own but are minorities of other states—mostly in Turkey and Iraq. There was a “Kurdistan” for a few years but it did not last do to major geopolitical forces. Whereas Barzani is opposed to violence, there are other Kurds who have resorted to vicious terrorism in their quest for a homeland. Kurds represent a wide range of opinion on the best way to create a stat of Kurdistan, but they were at the time, almost unanimous on their desire for independence and the belief in their moral right to have a homeland.
When the former Soviet republics were in the Soviet Union, ethnic Russians were often against their will forced to the Republic so it can be Russified. These ethnic Russians had higher status with the Soviet government and the local people resented them for that and for trying to change their culture. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people took out their resentment on the ethnic Russians by various form of official and unofficial discrimination. For example, in 2014 when the Ukrainians revolted and ousted the pro-Russian President, the new legislature, as one of its first acts, banned the use of the Russian language on schools and in all official government forms and activities. Although the new President vetoed the ban and it never became law, the vast majority of the legislators would gladly discriminate against the ethnic Russians legally as well as socially and personally. The Russian government, decided to be the “protectors” of the ethnic Russians. This conveniently also gave them a “justification” of seizing and annexing the Crimea which had been part of Ukraine.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the current President of Turkey. He previously served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001, leading it to election victories in 2002, 2007, and 2011 before being required to stand down upon his election as President in 2014. He later returned to the AKP leadership in 2017 following the constitutional referendum that year. Coming from an Islamist political background and self-describing as a conservative democrat, he has promoted socially conservative and populist policies during his administration.
