Turkey out of East Anatolia

By Dr Jan Best de Vries:

The Medes – ancestors of the Kurds

Since Mr. Erdogan and his ministers, living in a state that is currently a NATO member, repeatedly accuse NATO members Germany and The Netherlands of being aggressive and racist against people of Turkish descent in these countries (1), one should realize for a moment that, from an historical point of view, the Turks arguably do not belong in Anatolia at all, in that, as barbarian nomads, they intruded there from the Siberian steppes some centuries ago. Since the beginning of the 20th century at least, Turkey has itself showed itself to be aggressive and racist against minorities within Anatolia, and the Armenians and Kurds, both sharing a common Indo-European language, have even experienced genocide from the Turks.

One should also realize that the present Turkish government is responsible for the creation of barbaric ISIS in Istanbul, Ankara, Raqqa and Mosul these days. Many peoples from before the Turks arrived in Anatolia are extinct now, but not all. One people surviving the onslaught of the Turks in Anatolia, whose ancestral territory is East Anatolia, are the Kurds, whose ancestors were the Medes who lived in Kurdistan, like the Persians in Iran, from 1700 BCE. These peoples have, like the present peoples in Germany and The Netherlands, not only a common Indo-European background, but they also speak Indo-European languages (Sorani and Farsi respectively, cognate to most languages spoken in Europe these days).

At the moment American, Canadian, German and Dutch private soldiers fight together with the citizens of Rojava against ISIS, the closest ally of the Islamist state Turkey that you can imagine. Why do they do so? Because, as in their own countries, in Rojava reigns secularism, democracy, gender equality and humanism. ISIS fighters in The Netherlands, Germany, Syria and Iraq do represent just the long arm of Turkey, the latter state demonstrating itself once more as an enemy of human civilization. Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey does not belong in NATO in the first place and Turkey should at least withdraw from East Anatolia, the ancient homeland of Armenians and Kurds. The patience of the populations in Germany and The Netherlands with the Islamist fanatic Mr. Erdogan is almost over and when so, at last, the Turkish embassies in these countries would better be closed….

(1) For example, on the Dutch TV-program Nieuwsuur (News hour) on NPO 2, Sunday 7 December, 22.00- 22.35 h.

Dr. Jan Best de Vries is an archaeologist and historian, decipherer of the so-called Byblos Script from Aleppo and Alalakh (‘How to Decipher the Byblos Script’, Aspekt Publishers 2014, ISBN978-946-153-420-0)