Suchergebnisse

For many years, Ismail Be•ikçi was the only non-Kurdish person in Turkey to speak out loud and clearly in defense of the rights of the Kurds. No other writer in Turkish history has had to face such an endless series of trials and prison sentences for almost every public utterance as Be•ikçi has. The odyssey of Be•ikçi's encounters with Turkey's legal system shows, more eloquently than any abstract political or legal analysis could, what is wrong with the system, and it demonstrates effectively how the officially proclaimed human rights and democratic values become null and void where the Kurdish question is involved.

In the early months of 2003, when the American invasion Iraq was being prepared, it looked as if the Kurds were willing to consider re-integration in a remade, democratic post-Saddam Iraq. The American planners of the invasion and administrators of the occupation had made it clear to the Kurdish leaders that they wished to see a united Iraq with a strong centre, and the Kurds appeared to concur. The two major Kurdish parties, the KDP and the PUK, had continued pleading for autonomy and federalism, which they have both written into their party programs, until weeks before the war. But then, not wishing to antagonise the Americans, the party leaders changed their tune and for a long time avoided even mentioning the words federalism and autonomy. They even appeared willing to accept the American demand that the Kurds' own armed forces, the peshmerga, were to be dissolved and become part of the new Iraqi army.

The IISH did not hold any materials on the Kurds in those days, nor could one find much in any other library or archive in Western Europe. There existed a small solidarity committee in Amsterdam, the International Society Kurdistan (ISK), that maintained a newspaper clipping archive and library and published a newsletter. There were even smaller (in fact, one-person) similar committees in Paris and Berlin, and there existed a Kurdish student union with a few dozen members spread over various countries in Eastern and Western Europe. None of these individuals and groups was part of the 'progressive' solidarity movements. When they had political contacts at all, these tended to be with conservative circles. The Kurds of Iraq made alliances that did not endear them with European progressives either. The most prominent leader of the Iraqi Kurds, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, had come to depend heavily on The Kurds in movement the support of the Iranian Shah regime and was from 1972 on to receive covert CIA support in his struggle against the Arab 'socialist' Ba`th regime.

That the contemporary relevance of Jwaideh's work had not diminished by the turn of the century is shown by the fact that the recent Turkish translation was banned almost upon appearance.[2] In a situation where many other books on the Kurds, including some more overtly political ones, were and remained freely available, this can only be considered as a mark of distinction, based on the recognition of some dangerous quality. It was no the subject matter as such that caused the ban but rather, I imagine, the way in which Jwaideh framed what was usually called the Kurdish 'issue' or 'question'. Reflection on the ban of Jwaideh's book in Turkey provided me with the subject for this memorial The Kurdish Question lecture: the various ways in which the Kurds' neighbors, and especially the scholarly inclined among them, have defined the Kurdish 'issue'. Jwaideh looked at the Kurds and their history from the perspective of an Iraqi, whose own identity necessitated some engagement with the Kurds.

Does Islam as a system of beliefs or as a political force have something positive to contribute to the hoped-for democratisation of Indonesia, or will it largely be an impediment and a threat to the emergence of an open society? Many participants in the political process have strong opinions on these questions. There are those who argue — and not without some justification — that reformist political Islam represents the only significant alternative to the patrimonial, authoritarian and corrupt political culture pervading almost all parties and thereby is the country's only hope for democracy. Others — and these include many committed Muslims besides secular nationalists and non-Muslims — fear that the Muslim ambition of turning Indonesia into an Islamic state is perhaps the most serious threat the country is presently facing, the more so since radical Muslim groups appear to be courted by powergreedy military and civilian elite factions. There is a widespread and understandable fear of resurgent political Islam — but this resurgent political Islam is itself in large measure a response to another perceived threat, the fear that Islam's very presence in Indonesia is being threatened.

Martin van Bruinessen, "NU: Jamaah konservatif yang melahirkan gerakan progresif", Kata pengantar pada: Laode Ida, NU Muda: Kaum progresif dan sekularisme baru. Jakarta: Erlangga, 2004, hal. xii-xvii. Pada dasawarsa 1980an dan 1990an terjadi perubahan mengejutkan di dalam lingkungan Nahdlatul Ulama, ormas terbesar di Indonesia. Perubahan yang paling sering disoroti media massa dan sering menjadi bahan kajian akademis ialah proses 'kembali ke khitthah 1926': NU menyatakan diri keluar dari politik praktis dan kembali menjadi 'jam'iyyah diniyyah', bukan lagi wadah politik. Dengan kata lain, sejak Muktamar Situbondo (1984) para kiai bebas berafiliasi dengan partai politik mana pun (maksudnya dengan Golkar) dan menikmati enaknya kedekatan dengan pemerintah. NU tidak lagi 'dicurigai' oleh pemerintah, sehingga segala aktivitasnya – pertemuan, seminar, . – tidak lagi dilarang dan malah sering 'difasilitasi'. Perubahan tersebut, walaupun merupakan momentum penting dalam sejarah politik Orde Baru, dapat dipahami sebagai sesuai dengan tradisi politik Sunni, yang selalu mencari akomodasi dengan penguasa.

For the past twelve years, the Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed selfgovernment in at least part of their homelands; the Kurdishadministered enclave was to most purposes an independent state although it lacked all forms of international recognition. The Kurdish leaders never stopped proclaiming that they had no ambitions to separate from Iraq permanently; their stated political objectives could be summarized in the slogan "democracy for all of Iraq, and autonomy for Kurdistan." And there is much, indeed, that ties the Kurds to the rest of Iraq: a common history and common perceptions such as result from enculturation in the same educational system, listening to and watching the same media, and decades of taking part in the same political system.

Samuel Huntington's thesis of a clash of civilizations, formulated in the early 1990s, has gained renewed popularity in the wake of September 11 and America's declaration of war on terror. This thesis came out of a research project that aimed to search for the likely sources of major conflict after the end of the Cold War and to identify America's future enemies. Huntington argued that the major fault lines of the future, across which there are likely to be conflicts, are the boundaries between different civilizations. Civilizations — such as Western Christendom, Eastern Christendom, Islam, the Indic and 'Confucian' civilizations of Asia — have, in this view, a more lasting permanence and stability than individual states and political alliances. The great heterogeneity within each of these civilizations is ignored. The greatest threat is Islam, which, Huntington claims, 'has bleeding borders;' the worst nightmare is an alliance of Confucianism with Islam against the West. Years before Bush' 'axis of evil' speech, Huntington hinted at North Korean arms deliveries to Iran as the beginning of this most threatening scenario.

The October 12 bombing in Bali that killed more than 180 people seemed to vindicate the claims of those who had been accusing the Indonesian authorities of deliberately ignoring the presence on Indonesian soil of Islamic terrorists, connected with the al-Qa'ida network. Self-styled terrorism experts at once claimed to recognize the signature of al-Qa'ida's alleged regional mastermind Hambali, who was believed to have planned a similar bombing of the US Embassy in Singapore. More sober voices commented that domestic power struggles rather than international terrorism might be responsible for this outrage. It was the largest, but by no means the first major bomb explosion in Indonesia; the country had seen many of those since the fall of Suharto in May 1998, and in many cases military personnel — 'rogue' elements, 'deserters', retired or indeed active officers — appeared to be involved. There are also, however, a number of relatively small but conspicuously violent radical Islamic movements, that engage in jihad in such places as the Moluccas and Central Sulawesi or act as vigilante squads raiding nightclubs, discotheques and other dens of inequity. Surprisingly perhaps, several of these militias maintain close relations with factions in the military or political elite.

At most times, Kurdish society has existed at the periphery of, and functioned as a buffer between, two or more neighbouring states. From c. 1500 until the First World War, the relevant states were the Ottoman Empire in the west and Safavid, later Qajar Iran in the east (with Russia and the British Empire gradually encroaching upon the region from the north and south, respectively). In the aftermath of the World War, Kurdistan was divided among four of the modern would-be nation states succeeding these empires, becoming a peripheral and often mistrusted region in each of them. All these states, whether empire or nation state, have exercised various forms of indirect rule over Kurdistan, which have had a profound impact on the social and political organisation of Kurdish society. The specific tribal formations that existed in Kurdish society in various historical periods were in important respects the products of the interaction of these states with Kurdish society.

The October 12 bombing in Bali that killed more than 180 people seemed to vindicate the claims of those who had been accusing the Indonesian authorities of deliberately ignoring the presence on Indonesian soil of Islamic terrorists, connected with the al-Qa'ida network. Self-styled terrorism experts at once claimed to recognize the signature of al-Qa'ida's alleged regional mastermind Hambali, who was believed to have planned a similar bombing of the US Embassy in Singapore. More sober voices commented that domestic power struggles rather than international terrorism might be responsible for this outrage. It was the largest, but by no means the first major bomb explosion in Indonesia; the country had seen many of those since the fall of Suharto in May 1998, and in many cases military personnel — 'rogue' elements, 'deserters', retired or indeed active officers — appeared to be involved. There are also, however, a number of relatively small but conspicuously violent radical Islamic movements, that engage in jihad in such places as the Moluccas and Central Sulawesi or act as vigilante squads raiding nightclubs, discotheques and other dens of inequity. Surprisingly perhaps, several of these militias maintain close relations with factions in the military or political elite.

The emergence of violent Muslim vigilante groups employing a jihadist discourse and mobilizing followers for jihad in regions where there have been inter-religious conflicts, such as the Moluccas or the Poso district in Central Sulawesi, is one of the most conspicuous new phenomena in contemporary Indonesian Islam. During the twenty-month presidency of Abdurrahman Wahid, such groups often gained control of the streets, and the army and police appeared unable, or unwilling, to contain them. Against the president's express orders, groups of jihad fighters could leave the island of Java for the Moluccas without being checked by police or army; upon arrival in the Moluccas they were even given modern weapons by certain military officers sympathetic to their cause.

The capture of a 'baby-killer' Handcuffed and blindfolded, waking up from what looked like a drug-induced sleep, Abdullah Öcalan told the masked Turkish security men in the little plane that was taking him from Kenya to Turkey that he really loved the Turkish people, that he was willing to co-operate and that he could be very useful to them. The video images of this humiliating scene, hurriedly and very visibly edited so that doubts remained about the context of Öcalan's words, were shown again and again in news programs of the major television stations all over the world. The images created an upsurge of nationalistic fervour in Turkey and caused outrage among Kurds of all political affiliations, including Öcalan's fiercest opponents. These images — of which more were to follow — had the obvious intention of destroying Öcalan's charisma by showing him as a broken and weak man, ready to betray his cause. In an obvious effort to counteract any pity or sympathy that Öcalan's plight might provoke, the Turkish media invariably referred to him as 'babykiller' and 'terrorist chief' in each news item that mentioned him.

Some sixty years after Sharaf Khan Bidlisi completed his Sharafname, the celebrated Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi travelled extensively in Kurdistan. The ten thick volumes of his Book of Travels (Seyahatname) constitute a unique work almost unparalleled in the travel literature. The account of his travels in Kurdistan is unfortunately not yet completely available in print. At the time when the Ottoman printed edition of these volumes appeared, the archetype (the manuscript from which all later manuscripts appear to be copies, and which either was written in Evliya's own hand or dictated to a scribe) was not available to the editors, Necib Asim Bey and the great historian Ahmed Cevdet. Sultan Abdulhamid II's censors (or the editor's fear of the censors) moreover caused some alterations in the text as it was published. Only parts of Evliya's memoirs on Kurdistan have so far been published in a more satisfactory edition. One important part has in fact never been published at all and is awaiting a critical edition. Evliya's Seyahatname does not really fit any established genre, and it never became popular until this century. Evliya's contemporaries found his work badly organised and were probably put off by his interests in things that did not conform to civilised taste. It is precisely Evliya's "bad taste" that made him the most interesting of the Ottoman authors to late- 20th century readers. Postmodernists may easily recognise a kindred spirit in his juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements, without sharp separation of the serious from the frivolous. We find government documents and dirty jokes, descriptions of mosque architecture and observations on local food and dress habits, legends about saints and gossip about political events side by side; all of this peppered with Evliya's own adventures and occasionally his sceptical comments on opinions of others.

Simplifying a complex question, one may observe that the objectives of all Kurdish political movements of the past century have concerned two central issues, culture and territory. The Kurdish language and the region historically known as Kurdistan are the Kurds' most important national symbols. It is only seemingly a paradox that many of the most active participants in the present Kurdish movement (especially so in the case of Turkey's Kurds) speak but little Kurdish and have long lived outside Kurdistan. Pre-modern Kurdish uprisings were mostly directed against outside interference in the affairs of local communities; the insurgents as well as their leaders had strong local roots and usually spoke the same Kurdish dialect. Ideas of a common Kurdish identity or of Kurdistan as a natural territorial unit, however, did not occur to them. These ideas are not entirely a modern development — we find them quite explicitly expressed in the work of the seventeenth-century poet Ehmedê Xanî — but only in the twentieth century did they get something of a wider appeal. The first Kurdish nationalist associations were established, significantly, outside Kurdistan, and in Kurdistan itself it was only in the largest and most modern towns that initially gained some influence.