Education, Interethnic Hatred, Identity: the Kurdish Question in South-Eastern Turkey

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Abstract 
“Why do Turks and Kurds hate each other?” I’ve asked myself this question many 
times, I’ve asked the interested parties, I keep asking myself which could be the roots 
of such a deep hatred. 
 
 
On my second year of university I knew little on the Kurdish question and the situation 
of Kurdish people in South-Eastern Turkey, just the little I could read on online media, 
be it Italian or International. 
If it’s hard to find accurate information on the topic while doing research, though, it’s 
even harder that information finds you, when you are not looking for it. I had been in 
the South of Turkey for a youth exchange during that academic year, in autumn 2014, 
but the topic hadn’t come up in the discussions with my peers. 
My interest and my perception on the question changed dramatically after I left for an 
EVS project in Gaziantep, Turkey. 
Even though I was preparing to sit for exams in the then upcoming summer session, 
when I found out that an NGO was urgently looking for a volunteer for a last-minute 
project in Turkey I didn’t think it twice: I applied, got selected, left within a week. 
I took my decision quickly, despite the negative opinion of everyone surrounding me, 
and I booked a flight for Gaziantep, one of the provinces of Northern Kurdistan in 
Turkey, about 50 km from the border with Syria and about 130 km from Kobanê. 
It was summer 2015, the relation between the Turkish government and PKK was 
starting to crack again and the war was a constant in Syria, few kilometres away. 
In those moments I felt that it was the place where I had to be, pushed by the necessity 
of ‘doing something’, thinking mainly of the refugee crisis and the Syrian refugees I’d 
be working with according to my project description. What I didn’t know, while 
waiting for my connection flight in Sabiha Gökçen Airport, was that I was about to 
live an experience that would have changed me for good, would have changed my way
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of seeing things, my academic and professional path. It would have thrown at my face 
a reality we too often see far away, not touching us. It would have made me approach 
non-formal education, give a close look at the life of Turks, Kurds and other minorities 
in South-Eastern Turkey, it would have made me irreparably become fond of the 
Kurdish cause. 
In my two months in Turkey I did several activities, from volunteering with Kurdish, 
Syrian, Turkish, Iraqi and Afghan kids in an orphanage run by the Turkish government, 
to volunteering in a Paediatric cancer ward, to street volunteering in poor peripheral 
neighbourhoods. I occasionally taught English in a local primary school, I organized 
free time activities twice a week with a boy with Down syndrome, I fundraised 
together with other volunteers to buy food and clothes we then distributed to Syrian 
families. 
I learnt Turkish, hitch-hiked across the country meeting every kind of people, visiting 
Turkish and Kurdish town, always hosted by locals, impressed by the generosity and 
hospitality I found on the road. 
All the people I met decided to trust me and my travel companions, opening the doors 
to their homes, opening and sharing a heavy burden. 
The people I met told me about their days, their lives, about Turkey, about the tensions 
between Kurds and Turks, about the missing intercultural dialogue, about Turkish 
nationalism, about the elections. Who had run away told me about the horrors of war, 
the fear of Daesh, the relatives they lost. In Mardin a young man showed me from his 
mobile phone a photo of a burning house -his. I’ve been shown photographs of 
relatives of whom they lost track, without letting a single emotion show through, in 
front of a cup of çay or a simple dinner they decided to offer me, despite not owning 
anything anymore. 
During my time in Turkey I had the chance to hear both sides on the Kurdish Question 
and I met Turks and Kurds of all ages, sex, religion and socio-cultural background, 
from the friends and colleagues working in local and foreign NGOs as humanitarian 
aid workers, to my conservative neighbours, from students to their grandmothers, from 
businessmen to marginalized families in the periphery, from activists to artisans in the
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bazaar, from lorry drivers I travelled with on long distances to the baker down the 
street. 
I talked to many refugees, and to a Turkish soldier working at the border with Syria. I 
listened to kids, many kids. From the kids in the orphanage survived from war and 
misery, to the Turkish kids learning English in a private school in the city centre, from 
the ones in the outskirts of the city, who didn’t go to school, to the sons of my 
colleagues, grown up together with hundreds of international volunteers. From the 
refugees kids on the run with their families, to the ones alone, picking up rubbish in 
the street to re-sell it., to the hospitalized kids who didn’t know if they would grow up. 
In children, in all those children, I want to look for the virus of hatred towards the 
Other: can we talk about a hate virus? If yes, when does it set on? Is it possible to 
intervene before it sets on? How much does the environment where one grows up 
contribute to fuelling hatred? 
I did my research combining bibliographical and sitographical information with first-
hand information collected during my stay in Turkey, observing and asking people 
questions. 
I decided to identify and understand the main historical, political and sociological 
causes of mutual hatred between Kurds and Turks, trying to reply to my initial 
question, to then try to find possible solutions. 
I think I owe it to all the people I met long the road, fighting every day to counteract 
this hatred and to promote equality and tolerance for all, without losing hopes. 
In the first chapter I will go over a brief excursus on the history of Kurdistan, focusing 
on the 20th century happenings and the more recent history. 
In the second chapter I will narrow down on education and the Turkish school system, 
looking for traces of hate speech rhetoric in socialization. 
In the third and last chapter, I will talk about conflict transformation, trying to identify 
possible solutions in the field of peace education.
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Chapter I 
In the past few years the Kurds got back in the political agendas of International actors 
and governments in the Middle East, linking their name to the Wars in Iraq under 
Saddam Hussein and to the fight to the Islamic State in the area covering Syria-Iraq-
Turkey, but what is Kurdistan? Who are the Kurds?  
With the word Kurdistan we refer to an area of about 450.000
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 km² where people of 
Kurdish ethnicity live, covering the Mountain region of Mounts Taurus and Zagros, 
stretching from the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean until the Basra gulf. As in many 
Asian languages, stan means ‘country, nation’ in Kurdish, so Kurdistan means ‘the 
nation of the Kurds’. 
Kurdish people have a population between thirty and thirty-five million people
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 and 
are the biggest stateless nation, whose aspiration for independence was always 
systematically disregarded. 
It is difficult to exactly measure the number of Kurds, because the census is not 
accurate: they don’t include the nomadic and semi-nomadic and always tend to 
assimilate the Kurdish sedentary population to the dominant ethnicity. 
According to that, state authorithies underestimate the numbers, while Kurdish 
nationalist groups tend to overestimate the number.
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The region where the Kurds live is divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and 
the most relevant one is Northern Kurdistan, covering 30% of the Turkish territory and 
including 18 out of 67 provinces. (Adıyaman, Ağrı, Bingöl, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, 
Erzincan, Erzurum, Gaziantep, Hakkari, Kars, Malatya, Mardin, Muş, Siirt, Tunceli, 
Urfa, Van). Eastern Kurdistan extends over 4 of the 24 Iranian provinces, while the 
Southern includes 4 out of 18 Iraqi provinces. In South-Eastern Kurdistan is included 
                                                           
1
 Kurdos, Manuel Martorell, Catarata, 2016, p. 139 
2
 Kurdistan, la nazione invisibile a cura di Stefano M. Torelli, Piccola Biblioteca Oscar Mondadori, 
2016, p.30 
3
 Storia dei Curdi, Mirella Galletti, 2004, Jouvence, p. 22
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the Syrian Kurdistan, which is usually considered as an expansion of the Turkish 
Kurdistan, to which Syrian Kurds relate for linguistic and cultural affinity.
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At present, we should talk about multiple Kurdistans, with different and sometimes 
conflicting agendas. 
The economic aspect of the region must be taken into account: Kurdistan is rich in 
natural resources such as phosphates, brown coal, copper, iron, chromium and is one 
of the most self-sufficient regions thanks to the presence of water, oil and the climate 
guaranteeing a copious agricultural production and the exercise of the par excellence 
activity of the region: grazing, a central element in the life of Kurds. 
The presence of water, oil and other resources makes Kurdistan a potentially rich 
region, but the resources are exploited by the central governments, making Kurdistan 
an extremely poor region
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 and condemning the region to the recent history of tensions 
and conflicts.  
Before digging deep into the relations between Kurdish people and Turkish people in 
Turkey, where the 20 million Kurds represent about 28% of the population, an analysis 
of the ancient history of the Kurdish people in its whole is necessary to better 
understand today’s dynamics and the current situation of the Kurdish reality. 
Brief overview on ancient history  
What we call Kurdistan today appears to be inhabited since remote times: the Fertile 
Crescent was the cradle of an incredible cultural acceleration between Palaeolithic and 
Neolithic. Historically there are two theses on the Kurdish origin: according to some, 
the Kurds belong to an ethnic Iranian group moving in the VII sec B.C. from lake 
Urmia to the Bothan region. Others maintain the indigenous origin of the Kurds and 
their proximity with other Asian people such as Chaldean, Georgian and Armenian 
people.
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The Kurdish tradition links its origins to a founding myth telling events from 612 B.C., 
year of the fall of Assyrian city Ninive at the hand of the Medes, the most genuine 
                                                           
4
 Storia dei Curdi, Mirella Galletti, 2004, Jouvence, p. 19 
5
 ivi. 27-29 
6
 ivi, p. 65