|
The claim that Kurds were in Anatolia before Turks is just wrong, it´s a propaganda for legitimazing their motive. Btw. Kurdish separatists really have to choose one of these contradicting claims:
- Whenever they feel like it they argue real Turkics are %x in Anatolia (give 3, 5, 9, 20 etc. for x) which would mean most Turks are native to the land.
- Yet they also argue they were here before Turks, and Turks came from C.A.
Aside from that, neither Turks were here from the start nor Kurds. Most Kurdish populated areas of today belonged to Armenians and Assyrians. They were gradually replaced in some areas by first Turkmen arrivals, do not forget that Diyarbakir was once the capital of a Turkish Atabegh state.
Anyway; what really defined the ethnic makeup of the region was Ottoman´s policy against Alevite Turkmens around the time of Yavuz and later on. Alevite Turkmens were killed or exiled or had to assimilate, whilst Kurds, being sunni, were encouraged to push into their former lands. Armenian deportation/genocide/whatever was the final significant event that also contributed to kurdish expansion. In the end, the region is very mixed today, Kurds, Zaza, Turkmen, Arabs, assimilated/converted Assyrians, Armenians, other ancient people etc.
However one thing is certain, although there has been significant effort by Kurdish institutes in Europe, Kurdish claims on the heritage of ancient peoples of the region such as Urartu were never accepted by any scientific authority. Thus saying "Kurds were there before" is a completely baseless claim, please prove it otherwise if you have the sources.
Aside from that, Mylo´s words are correct, there have been Kurdish immigration, even as close as the time of Gulf war when 500.000 Kurds of Northern Iraq who fled from Saddam were granted Turkish citizenship by Ozal. These people are estimated to be around 2 millions of population by now.
This alone proves that Turkish state has not had any negative population policy against Kurds, yet it has to from now on by the look of things. They should start by kicking out these 2 million people back to Barzani´s laps, then they should detect pseudo-leftist European immigrants of dubious Turkish heritage posing as Turks and pay a visit to them.
|