A Turkish War of Religion: Kurdish Activists Sense a Conspiracy
By Piotr Zalewski / Diyarbakir Monday, June 04, 2012
A Kurdish protester clashes with Turkish police during a "Noruz" or "Navroz" celebration in Istanbul on March 18, 2012.
SAYGIN SERDAROGLU / AFP / Getty Images
In a widely reported speech last month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke about Turkey's seemingly perpetual problem with its largest ethnic minority, the Kurds. He insisted on the indivisibility of the country, describing it as "one nation, one state, one flag and one religion." Erdogan, whose Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) has ruled Turkey since 2002, would later insist that the religion reference was a slip of the tongue, that he did not mean to bring up religion. Many Kurdish activists drew a different conclusion. To them, the misstatement spoke clearly to the AKP's unspoken policy of using Islam to lure the Kurds into abandoning their struggle for additional rights and a measure of political autonomy. (Like most Turks, including Erdogan himself, the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims.)
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