Churches Are Still Maintaining Uneasy Silence About Kurds' Plight 17-March-1999by Alexa Smith
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Perhaps
it is only Kurds who are not surprised that North
American churches say so
little about the Kurds, an ethnic group that some
call the largest in the
world without a country to call home.
It's not
much of a surprise to Mike Amatay, the director of the
Washington Kurdish Institute,
who has - like most of the world's 25 million
Kurds - grown used to the
quiet.
"The silence
probably reflects the general silence," Amatay told the
Presbyterian News Service
in a telephone interview from his Washington,
D.C., office.
Amatay
said he believes the use of the word "terrorist" to describe the
recently arrested Abdullah
Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has
muzzled international criticism
of the Turkish government's treatment of
Kurds living in southeastern
Turkey.
Yet, in
a professed campaign to oust PKK guerillas - of which about
8,000 remain - Turkish security
forces have razed more than 3,000 Kurdish
villages since 1992, killing
more than 40,000 people and forcing thousands
of other into exile - with
almost no international outcry in response.
Silence
about such atrocities, Kurdish activists argue, further weakens
Kurds in Turkey, who are
already forbidden to teach their language, form
political parties or develop
their historical lands.
"There
is support from progressive church elements who support peace
and activists," Amatay said.
"Establishment [churches] remain somewhat
silent; they don't want
to rock any major political boats or leave
themselves open for any
possible reprisals in Turkey."
Mainline
church officials in the United States uncomfortably
acknowledge that they have
been quiet about the repression of Kurdish
political or cultural identity
- not just the 15 or so million Kurds
living in Turkey, but also
about the one million in northeastern Syria, the
four million in northwestern
Iran and the approximately five million in
northern Iraq.
Kurds have lived as an unwelcome minority in those countries since
the end of World War I,
when the Allies reneged on a promise to establish
an independent Kurdish state
The silence
of U.S. churches cannot be explained merely as an
unwillingness to rock political
boats, although there's some truth to that.
The larger question is not
just whether to speak, but whom to speak to ...
and, of course, what to
say. Church officials insist there are so few
Kurdish coalitions doing
advocacy among non-Kurds that church leaders have
little access to such a
fragmented community.
But there are ecclesiastical concerns as well -- worries that
governments in already inhospitable
countries may make life difficult for
Christian minorities there
if international churches defend human rights
for Kurds.
"We simply
have no contacts with the Kurds. ... There's nothing
comparable to the kinds
of linkages that bind U.S. churches to churches to
the Holy Land among the
Kurds," said David Weaver, the National Council of
Churches' liaison to the
Middle East. There are small evangelical churches
in some Kurdish towns, he
added, but little entree for church officials
into largely Muslim Kurdish
communities. Some Kurdish Christians are
members of historical Middle
Eastern churches as well, such as the Assyrian
Church of the East in northern
Iraq.
"There's
not a substantial Kurdish Christian minority anywhere in the
world, and certainly not
in the U.S. The Kurds are a big issue in Europe,
there are so many Kurds
there," said Weaver, noting that many left
impoverished agrarian towns
to find jobs in Europe during the post-war
years.
"In a
general sense, we can say that we promote human rights in Turkey,
for Kurds and all involved,"
Weaver said, summing up the NCC's position.
"We would remain critical
of the resort to violence on all sides."
Such a
generic statement is typical of most U.S. churches, including
the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.), whose 1997 "Resolution on the Middle
East" calls for an end to
harsh treatment of Kurds by the Turkish and Iraqi
governments, but stops short
of calling for the independent Kurdistan that
Ocalan's rebels and other
Kurdish activists once sought.
That goal
has been ratcheted down now to an appeal for minority rights.
The Presbyterian paper urges
an end to human-rights abuses committed by
Kurds against Kurds, and
asks for U.S. government, United Nations and
ecumenical and interfaith
intervention to help Kurdish communities develop
economically, socially and
politically. "But we've not really talked about
the Kurds ... as far as
being a voice," PC(USA) Middle East liaison the
Rev. Victor Makari told
the Presbyterian News Service.
Advocacy
-- usually through statements by coalitions of Christians --
has fallen along general
lines: including the Kurds in human-rights
statements, pushing for
an end to U.S. weapons sales in the Middle East,
where some may be turned
against Kurdish populations. The World Council of
Churches in Geneva did put
out a statement on Feb. 19 after Swiss Kurds
appealed to the general
secretary to intercede with Turkish authorities for
fair treatment of Ocalan,
the PKK leader who was captured in Kenya last
month.
Most observers
cite Turkey's abysmal human-rights record - including
its jailing and torturing
of dissidents - as the reason preventing its
admission into the European
Union. Of course, historic animosities with
EU-member Greece don't help.
Nor does 10 years of political instability.
The WCC
has called upon its member churches in Europe to urge their
respective governments to
"seek a peaceful political solution to the plight
of the Kurdish people."
"This
is one of the great tragedies of contemporary history - a people
shoved from pillar to post,
who've never been able to live comfortably with
the regimes under which
they've lived," said the Rev. Dwain Epps, a WCC
spokesman. "Strangely
enough, they've come closer in Iraq than anywhere
else. The Kurdish
population is badly split in violent ways, one from
another. There's not
always a consistent, coherent Kurdish voice to which
to respond."
And the political and ecclesiastical barriers are just as confusing.
For example,
the U.S. Air Force protects sectors of the Kurdish zone in
northern Iraq, where more
than 70 percent of Iraq's oil is pumped. A
United Nations force is
maintained there to ensure that Saddam Hussein's
plan to "ethnically cleanse"
the province of Kirkuk never gets under way
again.
Further,
the U.S. has defended part of its isolation of both Iraq and
Iran at least partially
on the poor treatment of Kurds in those countries.
Yet, paradoxically, according
to the Jan. 4 issue of "The Nation," the U.S.
supplies more than 80 percent
of Turkey's military arsenal and tends to
treat its "military-dominated
regime with kid gloves."
There
is a similar paradox in ecclesiastical circles. In Turkey, for
instance, both the government
forces and the Kurdish opposition make life
intolerable for other citizens.
Syrian
Orthodox communities and monasteries in the beleaguered
southeast find themselves
caught between two armed camps - the military,
which has a track record
for closely watching those thought to be
sympathetic to Kurdish nationalism,
and the PKK, which, although it
represents a small faction
of Kurds, is capable of inflicting terrible
pain. The pressure
has become so intense that huge numbers of Turkey's
Christian population have
fled the country - with only an estimated 150,000
to 160,000 remaining.
"In the
conflict between the Kurds - some of whom are separatists - and
the Turkish army a lot of
Christians have been asked to make their
allegiance one way or another.
They can't, and they often have to leave,"
said Thomas Abraham, one
of the United Church of Christ's (UCC) two
liaisons to the Middle East
in its New York City offices.
Such pressure
worries international church organizations and western
churches with ties to historic
Middle Eastern churches. Longtime UCC
Turkish missionary Mel Wittler
told the Presbyterian News Service: "If
there was an international
statement of support ... the anxiety on the part
of churches there is that
those churches might be associated [with it] and
might be considered unfaithful
to their country. ...
"There's the possibility of being misunderstood."
The UCCs
- who first evangelized Turkey as part of the "comity"
agreement between U.S. Protestants
that divvied up the Middle East for
mission work early in this
century - know how much damage such
misunderstandings can do.
Two bombs have exploded in the denomination's
Istanbul office, one in
1979 and another in the 1990s, though the motives
of the bombers have never
been identified except as anti-American.
"The Kurds,"
Weaver said, "have been used and abused by Israel, the
U.S., the British, the Turks
for the past half-century. It is a story of
shifting alliances and sudden
betrayals. They've been pawns more than
once."
That is
Amatay's argument - that the Turkish government is able to duck
international criticism
by avoiding conversations about more autonomy for
Kurds and talking instead
about dealing with the PKK militarily. So once
again the Kurds are singled
out for ostracism to serve another nation's
ends.
"It stems
from the misconceptions that come with the `terrorist'
label," said Amatay, who
believes the term "terrorist" applies more
broadly in this conflict.
"I'd consider elements of the Turkish security
forces a terrorist organization
... burning villages, killing civilians."
Because
Kurdish populations are invisible to most U.S. citizens,
churches ought to be more
vocal on their behalf, said Abraham. But he
acknowledged that even his
own denomination tends to identify most easily
with the Turkish Christians,
with whom they've been in ministry for a
century. "We have
the longer history," he said. "But saying something ...
That has been muted on our
part, too."
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