By Dr. M. Koohzad

Generally speaking, all of the years at my elementary school were filled with joys of learning, positive energy, and good people. I am now an old retired professor. I advise my grandchildren to try hard to “enjoy learning.”  Yet, there was a sad story that I have to tell in the middle of all those happy days. We were not allowed to speak our mother tongue of Kurdish, at school, period. No buts or ifs. It was an order imposed on the Kurdish minority by the government that occupied Kurdistan. The funny part of the story is that our local Kurdish teachers were implementing the law. Our teachers spoke their mother tongue of Kurdish right in front of us, but not the little kids who even did not master the occupier’s language, a foreign one. 

In Turkey, it is illegal to be a Kurd. Ataturk was the first to commit genocide against the Kurds. Since then, every successive regime in Ankara has never stopped killing Kurds. Now, the Turkish Tyrant President Erdogan has killed the largest number of Kurds in the 21st century. Only Saddam Hussein killed more Kurds than the sick Semi-Sultan Erdogan. The Turkish Tyrant is the only head of state who can simultaneously kill Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.