Many political taboos that are bolstered by repression and cause so much human suffering in this country are senseless ....

Ironically, supporters of these same taboos are now advocating the opposite of what they have preached and done in the past. One of these issues is the "Kurdish problem."

It is a well-known fact that any reality that is not perceived as it is (in an unbiased and non-ideological way) and dealt with rationally becomes a "problem." So, most of today´s problems are yesterday´s mismanaged realities.

The Kurdish problem, among many others, is the byproduct of the great official amnesia that has distorted our views of the past, fabricated present "facts" and misled our vision for the future. The "great amnesia" originates from a deep sense of disappointment and the agony of losing an empire. ....

. Feeling anguished, betrayed and besieged, the founders of republican Turkey needed to abandon this painful past for two reasons. A new nation-state could not be built on such negative feelings. Additionally, the responsibility of losing the empire partly rested on them because they were also members of the Young Turk movement and government, ....

So they felt the obligation of dissociating themselves from the last Ottoman rulers (royal or bureaucratic).....

This was not all that they left behind and wanted to be forgotten; it was the whole multinational, multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious Ottoman system which allowed that plurality to coexist in a series of autonomous networks. Although this rich and complex socio-cultural reality was inherited, it was politically disowned. Instead an authoritarian political vocation was adopted to standardize a complex society out of which a uniform nation had to be forged. This official or chosen amnesia cast its shadow on the perception of social reality, the way it would be managed, the educational system to teach it and laws to make sure that no deviation took place from the "uniform nation" born anew, delivered by a miraculously innovative and successful government.

This indeed would have been a "dream project" if it had worked. But it did not. It had no real reference to a civilization. ....

No doubt it referred to Western civilization. But the republic was reluctant to utilize the instruments to catch up with that civilization. Science was exalted but free scientific thinking was prohibited. History was totally fabricated and the sociology (of the country) was not subject to scientific scrutiny. .... The popular will was constantly kept under bureaucratic tutelage driven by the military.

...The Kurdish problem is no exception. Believe it or not, the majority of the people of this country learned that Kurds existed in their "homeland" in the past decades. Their efforts to come into the picture (the social reality of the country) were presented as treason, irredentism and unlawful activity, laying the groundwork for violence. Their language was presented as a primitive tongue invented to bastardize our superior language and cultural "purity."

...but reality has a way of taking its revenge on those who insist in denying it. Finally we have entered a phase in our history in which we are reconciling with our past and present at the same time. ..

Full Article:

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarDetay.do?haberno=168952

That is a very brief history of our republic really..