Volume 46, Number 11 · June 24, 1999
Justice and the Kurds
By Christopher de Bellaigue
Turkey's Kurdish Question
by Henri J. Barkey, by Graham E. Fuller
Rowman and Littlefield, 238 pp., $22.95 (paper)
Imagine that you head a foreign delegation on its way to Turkey to protest to the authorities on behalf of that country's unhappy Kurds. If you are important enough, you might be met at the Ankara airport by Hikmet Cetin, the outgoing speaker of the Turkish parliament. But Mr. Cetin himself is a Kurd, with a good command of Kurmanji, the most widely spoken Kurdish dialect, and he will defend the regime's policies toward the Kurds. You might have better luck with some of the members of Turkey's newly elected parliament, some 25 percent of whom will be of Kurdish origin. But many of them are rich landowners who enjoy excellent relations with the government. You might reveal your sympathies to one of Turkey's capitalist czars—say, Halis Toprak (whose Toprakbank has been valued at $1.7 billion). But he is a Kurd who does not protest treatment of other Kurds. In the 1980s, Istanbul had a Kurdish mayor, who was supported by plenty of the city's migrant Kurds before he was undermined by allegations of corruption.
Review, 6720 words
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