To Be a Kurd: An Indelible Testament on the Brow of History

The greatest distance is not between the moon and the earth, but between their promises and ours. Between what is said in Ankara and what is written in blood in Diyarbakı-;-r. Between the silence of embassies and the screams of mothers who no longer count on seeing their sons return from prisons, whose graves the earth itself has forgotten how to smell. There, where mountains weep stone and plant alike-;- there, where language is murdered before it is even spoken—there precisely begins the story of the Kurd. Not as a nationality, but as a human testimony to endless brutality.

Who said a person is born only once? The Kurd is born every day. Born awakening with a forbidden name, a threatened language, an identity deemed treason. Born knowing that acknowledging him might be considered a crime in a state that builds its glory upon denying his existence. Yet, in every corner of this suffering, hands appear waving from afar, voices whispering: "They will change," "The hour of understanding will come," "Perhaps this time it will be different." Yes, there are those who delude themselves—or wish to delude us—into believing that Turkey will one day its policy toward the Kurds, that it will move toward recognizing our existence as a people with our own language, culture, and rights. But they have forgotten,´-or-chosen to forget, what certain pillars of the Turkish state still openly declare today: "We will not allow a Kurdish entity, even on the surface of the moon." Yes, the moon! It is not enough for them to prevent Kurds from governing their villages—they imagine our very presence in space itself a threat to their troubled existence.

We, the Kurds with kind hearts, who again and again believed in slogans of unity and brotherhood, who gave trust while swords were being sharpened in secret, who were deceived since those who came from the north settled our lands, colonized them over centuries, then rewrote history to make us strangers in our own homes—we must not forget. We must not forget how they turned villages into ashes, children into orphans, sorrow into a homeland. Remember, for perhaps remembrance may save us.
Forgetting is not merely weakness—it is betrayal: betrayal of the martyrs, of history, of future generations who will ask: Why didn’t you resist? Why did you believe the promises, time and again?

Do you hear that bitter laugh escaping the mouth of the Kurd when a Turkish official calls him “brother”? It is a laugh that knows history. It knows how villages burned one after another, how soldiers poured gasoline into an old woman’s house and set it ablaze while laughing. It knows how entire villages were wiped out, how military courts passed sentences before trials even began, how torture in Diyarbakı-;-r prison was not punishment, but policy—a policy designed to strip a person of his name, his language, his voice. A policy meant to reshape him into a Turk, even at the cost of his soul. But they forgot that the soul cannot be colonized. They forgot that despite all the lashes, the body never forgets where it came from, nor the songs of mothers and names of fathers buried deep within.

The European Court of Human Rights speaks its verdict: Yes, rape occurred. Yes, women were tortured before their children. Yes, people were forced to eat feces. Yes, this happened. These are not rumors, but documented facts. Yet Ankara laughs and marches on. Because for them, law is not justice—it belongs to the strongest. And strength, for them, does not reside in constitutions, but in rifles, in decisions, in silence. As for the Kurd, he possesses nothing but his memory. But this memory, O State, is stronger than your tanks, more enduring than your institutions, more truthful than your president’s speeches.

They have deceived us too many times. Deceived us in the name of unity, in the name of homeland, in the name of religious brotherhood, while building walls inside a single body. They deceived us with promises of reform, claiming the republic belongs to all, only to rebuild the same system under a new face. Today they speak of a “peaceful solution,” yet send warplanes to bombard the mountains of Qandil, Kobanî, and Afrin. Today they talk about “diversity,” yet imprison the teacher who taught children the letters (G, X=Ğ-;-). We, the kind-hearted, who repeatedly believed intentions could change, are beginning to understand: Do not trust the outstretched hand if the other remains clutching a knife.

And we shall not forget. We shall not forget who killed us, who burned our villages, who banned our language in schools, who turned the word “Kurdistan” into a forbidden term. We shall not forget because forgetting is betrayal. Because forgetting is exactly what they want. Because forgetting is the beginning of surrender. But despite the pain, we have not surrendered. Instead, we transformed pain into awareness, injustice into a promise—a promise that we will not be reduced to a mere statistic, nor a faint voice in a corner, nor a people without history.

And if there is one message that must be sent to everyone living on this land, it is this: The sun of the Kurds will rise. Whether you like it´-or-not. Whether you close schools´-or-open them. Whether you recite constitutions´-or-keep them written in blood. A state cannot endure on hatred. A just system cannot be built upon the denial of an entire people. Therefore, you have no choice but to rebuild yourselves from scratch. A state cannot be founded on one ethnicity alone, nor can a constitution be written in only one language. Centralism must fall—the bureaucratic beast that grips everything tightly from the capital. It must be recognized that this land is shared. Shared among all of us, among everyone who has lived here, suffered, and remained.

And it must be enshrined in a new constitution—a human constitution, a constitution of life—that the Kurdish language, too, is an official language, and that education must also be conducted in Kurdish. Not as favor, but as justice. Not as charity, but as a natural right. For whoever denies a people their language, denies them the freedom to think, the ability to dream of dignity.

If you truly wish to know who the Turks really are, be a Kurd for just one day. Only one day. You will see how a person is treated simply for pronouncing the name of his village. How he is asked about his allegiance before his name. How he is seen as a threat before he is seen as a human being. And then, you will understand that Nelson Mandela was not speaking of politics, but of broken humanity.

But know this too: No state can build its future upon the skulls of peoples. However long the night, dawn will come. However high the wall, sunrise will seep through its cracks. And we, you who think you rule—we who carry the candle in darkness—will keep walking, even if the road is long, even if each step is slow. Because we do not walk merely to arrive, but to prove that we exist. That our existence is not a mistake. That our Kurdness is not shame, but honor—an honor reclaimed not by weapons alone, but by memory, by truth, by the word that refuses to break.

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