TURKEY Essays - Ethnic Groups In Turkey, Ethnic Groups In Syria

Turkey is a country, which is located between two continents. These are Europe and Asia. Its neighbors are Greece, in the west, Iran and Iraq in the east, at north lies Russia, and in south is the Mediterranean Sea. It is a very geologically important country. The reason for that is that Turkey controls three different seas, which are the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. The country has a very long history. It is the continuation of the old Ottoman Empire, which has ruled the whole Europe, part of Africa, and most of the Middle East for over three hundred years. This great history makes most of its neighbors very uncomfortable. Over these years, Turkey has been faced with a lot of problems from its neighbors. One of these is the Kurdish problem.At this point, I would like to introduce you the Kurds. The Kurds are the people who live in the Northern part of Iraq, southwest of Iran, and southeastern part of Turkey. The Kurds claim that they are a nation and after t he Serv Agreement they requested a considerable piece of land from those three countries. However, the land that they claim theirs is almost half of Turkey and the north part of Iraq.The Turkish army declared that they were going to invade the northern part of Iraq, to kill the PKK terrorists, and "clean up the region". Also, England, France and Germany asked Italy to hand him over to the Turkish authorities. After a couple of years, PKK announced that their headquarters is in Syria, and their leader is Abdullah Ocalan. This showed that the PKK was weakening in the country region. At that time nobody knew where he was, and all of the Turkish people were upset that again Ocalan has disappeared and slipped through their fingertips. After the 1996 elections, the new government declared that they are going to be even stricter about terrorism in Turkey. In addition the Turkish intelligence has found out that PKK is selling drugs to the European countries and earning incredible profits in hard currency. On the other hand, Turkey has accepted Kurdish people, gave them Turkish citizenship and the equal rights as any ordinary Turkish citizen has. On the other hand, the Kurds were broadcasting untrue information, claiming that the Turkish army was killing regular Kurdish citizens. The reason for this was that their economy began to weaken, and both countries were losing tremendous amounts of money. even a square foot of land will be given to the Kurds. The Turkish authorities know the importance and the results of giving him the death penalty, but on the other hand they are afraid of the protests from the relatives of those fifty thousand people who have lost their lives due to Ocalan and his actions. In this regional war, Turkish government has spent ninety billion dollars and lost fifty five thousand civilians and soldiers. However, the Syrian government denied all of these allegations and didn"tmt make any effort in locating these terrorists. However, Turkish intelli gence tracked Ocalan down in an airport in Rome, Italy.