Some Central Asian notes and references

Over on Clarity Daily, in addition to Sharon's stunning photographs, she has a number of really excellent posts. I want to link to two articles having to do with a part of the world in which I have been involved and about which I care a great deal. The first article deals with a little attended regional aspect of the destabilization of Iraq, the Turkish/Kurdish conflict, which, prior to 2003, had come to a kind of peaceful resolution after many years of violence. The second has to do the Turkish genocide of Armenians which took place between 1915-1917, during the years of World War I and preceded the establishment of the modern Turkish state. The third article, from the BBC, this morning is about the Turkish reaction to a vote by a US congressional committee recognizing as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

Turkey Threatens Move Against Kurds

American Witnesses to Genocide

Turkey condemns US Armenia vote

This is a sad chapter in Turkish history and, while I love Turkey, its people, and have many friends there, it is time to acknowledge and repudiate this horror and to begin to allow ethnic and religious minorities the freedom to exercise the rights guaranteed them under the Turkish Constitution.