Kurds celerated New Year worldwide!

Kurdish New Year celebration in Istanbul

Last two weeks Kurds across the globe celebrated their New Year (Newroz). In various parts of the world, the celebrations were carried out in different styles and manner. In Kurdistan (Eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, Northeastern Iran and Northern Syria) the celebrations were massive and millions participated to demand ethnic and cultural rights. In Iraqi Kurdistan, where the Kurds have an undeclared independence, the celebrations were in form in picnic and festivals; there was not a threat of being jailed or killed. In other parts of Kurdistan, the regional governments have jailed Kurdish activists for either speaking for Kurdish freedom thus insulting the nationhood. This was very evident in Turkey. Turkey has tried for many years to block Kurdish New Year celebrations as an act of separatism. By doing this, Turkish governments and other regional governments try to eradicate Kurdish culture in the Middle East and create homogenous ethnic cultures upon which their nations (Turkey, Iran, Syria and still Iraq) are based.



Picture from www.kurdistan.nu


Despite all the pressure—military or legal—Kurds have celebrated their New Year on March 21st. These celebrations have been in form of festival comprising of singing, dances and speeches on large city or town gathering places. In other countries such as Europe, North America and Russia and so on, Kurds have celebrated New Years festivities in big hall, conference rooms and even on the streets. This tradition has been going on in Europe for decades. It has become a cultural part of European celebrations.

Picture from www.kurdistan.nu Kurdish dances at Newroz celebration in Berlin

What is in this week’s obsession?

I used to listen to Alistair Cook on the BBC World News every week. He would send his reflections on America to BBC listeners. Somehow I had grown addicted to his weekly reports. I still go his site and listen to some of his reports. I am still his aficionado. This in the flow of time will change and I have to find some other obsessions to be busy with.

My obsession is now a burden! We all have our burdens in our lives. The rose always complains about the thorn that makes it appealing to it. Then when we approach the rose, its beauty becomes distasteful in our thoughts. Nonetheless we like it and we would like to posses it until we come near how difficult it is to go near it; smell it and then we give up cursing it. I love it thinking about it. It makes me think about anything I love and later on the novelty wears off. As happened in case of Alistair Cooke. I listened to him, however, now he is forgotten.

Is that all with everything? It is hard to say yes or no. I might say yayin (it is a combination of Ja and Nein in German.).

I believe that is different with a few things that could never change. Some of you might have thought of love as not a changing element. Maybe! I will not dispute it. However, I am of different opinion. The love for or obsession with ideas or concepts the crucial issue. This week and weekend many people celebrated and will celebrate. The Hebrews/Jews will celebrate the path to freedom. This concept has not died and I believe will never die.

Some people will celebrate/commemorate Jesus Christ whose novel ideas are ephemeral. What is the obsession with this man, which is alive all the times? His teaching has inspired the humanity. Nothing has affected our lives positively as much as his teaching has done. How can one not be obsessive with him? He preached freedom and nonviolence thousands of years ago. He had the courage to do it; he had the courage to forgive. This happened in a time when there was no mercy among people. He took the pain to insist on being peaceful. His obsession was with freedom and peace. We just need a little bit of it.

What is my obsession? It is the same as Jesus’—freedom. This weekend I celebrated Kurdish New Year (actually March 21st) in Boston (I will write about it next time.). The burden of freedom had made me to celebrate this annual tradition that inspires the thoughts of freedom. I have been busy with this burden for weeks now.

At times, I think myself about freedom. What is it? How can I describe it so that I will be obsessed with it for ever? I do not know how to answer it satisfactorily. Yet, I think freedom is the beat of never ending drum; freedom is the moment when autumn leaves fall into a creek to join the moisture; and the freedom is Love!

Civilization begins in the library.

I wrote the following short article for the library where I work.


One of the teachings of Zoroaster states that “He who cultivates grain, cultivates civilization.” This statement is exactly aimed at the center of our mind to make us ponder a lot. Planting grain in the ancient Middle East also initiated the foundations of civilization that ours is based on.

What is the foundation of our future civilizations? The late professor Hogan of Wesleyan University had said in one of his interviews that the “Civilization begins in with library.”
I am of the opinion that Trinity Library Outreach is doing just that by inviting 5th graders to our library. There are a lot of merits in introducing the college library to young kids: they will see a trove of books; they will observe students concentrated on reading a book; they will see people coming into and going out the library; they will see people with their lap tops doing all sorts of fascinating stuff.

The day of visit to the college library will certainly mark their young mind toward colleges and studies positively. When they go home they will talk to their parents or relatives about visiting Trinity College Library. This field trip is different than other field trips; this is about their future provided that they pursue further studies. This trip is different in that the library has demonstrated to them that it is at the heart of the civilization, and this is the place to open the door to the universe of knowledge. They will certainly relate this trip to Jefferson’ saying “I cannot live without books!”

I wish more power to the organizer(s) to having made this possible for the young readers as a part of the outreach to community and the world.

Images that haunt me all the time!

My professor of technology class posed an intriguing question and asked us to write our thoughts about images that stayed with us. There similar questions such as the “best 100 movies” or the “most influential philosopher of the millennium” on the BBC Web site some time ago, etc. Then there are pictures depicting the beauty such as Marlene Dietrich in the movie Casablanca. I have never thought of the pictures capturing my mind. Yet I did think about pictures that have had an interesting background or historical importance. For example, one of them is that Stalin is with Lenin during the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Trotsky is missing on picture because Stalin had it removed to indoctrinate next generations in the Soviet Union without the memory of Trotsky. I think about these pictures in the context so that I relate them to an event or a remarkable moment.
There are images or pictures that depict beautiful moments and scenes. There are thousands of them. These moments captures by photographers have a novelty of a few second. After a few seconds, these moments are replaced by some other beautiful moments. I occasionally get pictures of beauty in attached files sent to me. The recent one was about Dubai and its booming tourism industry. For example, ski slope in a shopping mall or the $10,000 hotel suite per night. These are amazing pictures; nonetheless, they don’t stick to our minds because they are replaced second later by the pictures of the National Geographic.

What about the grim pictures then? I would like present some these grim and gruesome pictures that have haunted me all the time. They are in memory because they show the ugly side of our fellow human. It is about killing or destruction that is captured in a moment of seconds. The first picture is from the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The picture is from Robert Capa and called “Moment of Death.” It is quite remarkable how R. Capa took such a picture in the death field in a few second; it is mind boggling. The photographer must have gone through a scary moment to take someone’s falling when he got shot. The victim’s position makes one think what he thought about at the moment when he was falling. His gun looks like is also being swirled away like him when he was gunned down as though he were saying to gun “To hell with you!”

(Picture taken by Robert Cappa)

The other picture that I think about all the time is from the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. On March 16 of that year Iraqi Air Force dropped chemical bombs on the town, killing thousands of people in seconds. On this picture, a father has hugged his child lying on the ground. The fatherly love could not protect that child. No matter what the father did, his effort to save his child from poison gas was in vain. He might have had protected his child from other dangers but not from air born poison agents. One would think that the father could have lived if he had escaped without his infant child. No…he tries to save the baby but stays and dies with him or her.

(Halabja: March 1988)

Happy New Year!

It was pretty nippy yesterday when I left work. I love cold weather—snow, wind and brisk air. I occasionally tease my dear colleagues at work about their softness and complaints regarding beautiful New England winters. I felt the cold inside me yesterday. I have had of this brute and chilly wind. I reminded myself of my dichotomy. Do I love cold weather? Yes, I do … but what is this whimsical attitude. I pontificated about it for sometime and came to the comforting conclusion that it is the boundary between winter and Spring I have had enough of.
Having in mind that we will have a cold day at work, I really bundled myself to embrace the weather early in the morning while leaving for work. As soon as I stepped out, a gentile breeze embraced me. I looked down at the snow; the snow was melting. The sounds of little water paths tingled my mind and made me reminisce on things that I would otherwise not be a guest in your mind. Of course, it is the day before spring; the precursor of March 21st. It is not an accident. The gentile wind is the cutter of winter and spring like a forwarding slash between two words or the sensuality between two lovers.
Tomorrow is March 21st when we Kurds (like other national groups, e.g., Persians, Afghans, etc.) celebrate the arrival of the spring. It is the day when I set up fire and danced hand in hand with women to see the coming of age of spring and summer. It is the day when I sang freedom songs; I reached out my hand to singing youth in South Africa for freedom; It is the day when sang with the Chileans “NO PASARAN.” It is the day when I sang love songs, and it is the day when celebrate tomorrow for freedom and justice! Tomorrow will be the day when my singing will be a part of a new life. It is NEWROZ. New Day!

I am for peace but!

This weekend thousands of people gathered to protest against the war in Iraq. The anti-war demonstrators also protested against the U.S. presence in Iraq and an immediate withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq. All of these are noble demands; I do support these demands by heart and agree, in general, with them against any invasion or occupation. One would be insane if without any reason to support an occupation or invasion that usually bring destruction and thus problems.
What made me to support the invasion of Iraq? First of all I am of Kurdish origin. Being Kurdish and being oppressed mean the removal of the dictatorships in the Middle East would be welcomed. It is quite destructive to live under regimes that do not know any scruples. The brutality of the Middle Eastern regimes is famous. How did the Islamic regime in Iran, for example, executed young female political prisoners? Once they landed in the infamous Evin prison in Tehran, they were first raped by the Revolutionary Guards and then they were executed. I bet one cannot imagine what it means unless lives under such situation. Even hearing such happening is not enough to have empathy because one forgets in busy midst of the day. When it comes to reporting of such tortures, the regimes brushes them away because the Western powers cannot interfere in the domestic problems. In some cases the Western powers do not interfere because there are very lucrative businesses happening between them and these cash producing countries. Of course, France would be interested in selling 30 or 40 Mirage fighter jets to Iran or Iraq (at the time of Saddam) and cash in billion of dollars. Why would they care about “a few” people with bloody noses?
Second, if there is no foreign intervention, then there is no change in the Middle East. The Middle East was carved out during and after WWI. The Middle East has always been a place of occupation and intervention. The intervention begins early on with Greeks, Persians, Arab-Islamic conquests, Mongols, Turks etc. Why is it that people in the Middle East scream out their guts when someone else comes to occupy? If the Americans stay there for some times they will be natives too. Were the Arabs the natives of Kurdistan? They were not. Were the Turks the Natives of Anatolia? No they were not. So it is the time that makes us to forget the events.
Finally, I am for the peace if they let me stay and be in peace. What does it mean? It means I would like them to show my culture respect; let me speak in my language; let me write and read in my mother language. Is this to much to ask?

March 16

On March 16, 1988 Saddam’s regime dropped chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing over 5,000 civilian people. This was a final act of his campaign of eradicating Kurds in Iraq. This campaign was called Al-Anfal in Arabic, which means “the Spoils of War.” It is a Sura in the Quran. This campaign lasted from 1986 to 1989. During this campaign the Baath regime in Iraq killed 180,000 Kurds. Many Kurds were deported into Arab part—south—of Iraq to depopulate Kurdistan. The Iraqi Kurds have been fighting the Arab regimes for decades for their autonomy and democracy. The Kurdish fight began in Iraqi-Kurdistan when the Iraq was a mandate of Britain in the 1920s. They revolted many times against the British government. After the British left, the Arabs came to power to govern Iraq. Since the founding of Iraq the Arab regimes have vehemently fought to deny Kurds their rights of self-government.

The Anfal campaign was an eye opening for us Kurds. Countries in the U.N Security Council did not believe such an attack by Saddam on the Kurds and they dismissed it. There was nothing to be done. Saddam was offering all the countries lucrative businesses, e.g., acquiring military hardware from cash greedy military-industrial companies. There was no one to file complaints against because we did not have any power to get countries behind us to do something for injustice. It was like being a homeless person on the street without any protection from hunger, cold, and heat. We will remember those days for ever. We will remember that there was no help when we were attacked with chemicals. We will remember those days when no one came to heal our wounds. Therefore we will not give up what we have achieved in Iraq-Kurdistan. We will be a beacon of freedom in the Middle East.

Click on the link below to view a slide show about Halabja

http://www.netkurd.org/nuce.asp?id=6165