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Anatolia
Turkey
Bec2004-09-15 13:11:15
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Antakya
This interesting mosque in Antakya was prosperous thanks to the rent paid by all the shops that surrounded it completely. I had not planned to visit Antakya but the cold wave that engulfed Europe in March 2003 forced me to forego visiting the mountainous Eastern Turkey that was experiencing sub zero weather.
I had intended to cross the border near Mardin to visit Diyarbakir, Van and Erzurum so as to see for myself the situation the Kurds were in before heading to Cappadocia. I have been curious about the Kurds for some time because they are the largest nation in the world, (about 25 million), that does not have their own country (Jews number about 14 million of which almost 5 are in Israel).
The western media seldom mention the Kurds in ways other than derogatory echoing the Turks who call them "Mountain Turks" and dismiss them as "terrorists". The most superficial examination reveals the falsehood of the expression "Mountain Turks". The Kurdish idiom is an Indo-European language completely unrelated to Turkish which is an Altaic language. As a matter of fact, Kurds can trace their roots to the original Hurrians who occupied the Zagros and Taurus mountain ranges 6000 years ago, long before the arrival of the Turks only 1000 years ago.
As for calling them "terrorists", it might be useful to anyone pursuing critical thinking to remember that terrorism was not so violently decried as it is today when it was used by Zionists (Irgun, Stern group), to advance their struggle to establish the state of Israel. The Zionists "wrote the manual" on the modern use of terrorism in the pursuit of political goals. In fact, zionists were only following an ancient tradition set by the "Sicaris" that spread terror by assasinating Roman occupants with knives 2000 years ago. The Zionist example inspired the IRA, the OAS, the Tamil Tigers and many others including today's Chechens. To say so is not antisemitism, these are historical
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