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Human Rights Watch: Turkis-Kurdish Conflict

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Human Rights Watch: Turkis-Kurdish Conflict
Throughout history and still today there have been many conflicts, wars and broken promises all over the world. These conflicts and wars include civil wars, small wars, world wars and human rights movements. One of the main problems with these are that there are innocent lives being tortured and killed. A perfect example of this takes place in the Turkish-Kurdish dilemma in a region of the world that connects Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In this report I will bring awareness to a conflict that needs to be resolved for the best interest of both parties as well as the world. I will examine the Human Rights Watch article that was published in March of 1993 by Helsinki Watch. I will look into details of killings, disappearances and torture of the Kurdish population by the Turkish government.

The Kurdish population, a population of roughly 30 million which stretches over 5 countries including Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan and Syria but mainly in Turkey, where the most number of casualties have occurred. This conflict can be considered a civil war, a small war that can lead to a world war and also a human rights matter. Although there have been steps taken recently to ease this problem there are still many unanswered questions remaining.

To fully understand the modern day Kurdish issue, we must first understand the history behind it and who the Kurds are. According to most recent census of Turkey, the Kurds make up about 20% of the population and the dominate group, the Turks, account for the remaining 80% of the population. The Kurds, often referred to as “Mountain Turks” in Turkey are a Sunni Muslim people living primarily in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran as mentioned before however, I will mainly focus on Turkey in this report.

The Kurdish people has a distinct culture that is not at all like their Turkish, Persian, and Arabic neighbors. Kurdish people have been around for a very long time however the desire for a Kurdish homeland didn’t

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