To understand the nature of any state one must understand how it was formed or how it came into being. In my opinion the story of the Kurdish parliamentarian, Hasan Hayri, in relaton to the establisment of modern Turkey explains more about the nature of this state than anything else.
Hasan Hayri.
Hasan Hayri was from Dersim, and when the Turkish delegation was in Lausanne in 1923, the delegates from other countries said,
"There is a Kurdish population in Kurdistan, in the east of Turkey. If we sign the agreement, what will happen to them?"
And Ismet Pasha, (Ismet Inonu) the chief of the Turkish delegation, said,
"The Turkish government of Turkey is not only the government of Turkey. It is a Turkish and Kurdish government. And the Kurdish and Turkish people have decided to live together, so it is no problem".
But he had to prove that this was the case. He told Kemal Pasha (Mustafa Kemal 'Ataturk') to do something in Ankara to show that the Kurdish people were with the Turkish people.
Kemal Pasha took this man, Hasan Hayri, and told him that the next day he must wear Kurdish national clothes and come with him to parliament to show everybody and show the journalists from other countries that the government of Turkey accepted the Kurdish peoples' existence and their traditions and their clothes and culture.
So the next day, Hasan Hayri arrived in Kurdish clothes and he spoke in the parliament about about how the Kurdish and Turkish people had decided to live together, and how the Kurdish people didn't want to secede. And then Pasha asked him,
"Please write a telegram and send it to Lausanne with the same thoughts you expressed in the parliament."
So Ismet Pasha showed the telegram to the other delegates from the European nations. And they said okay, and they signed the agreement together. But after a while Hasan Hayri was arrested and sent to a special court in Turkey called the Independence Court.
There were no jurists, just members of parliament and members of Kemal Pahsa's party. And they said,
"You are a Kurdish nationalist. You want to separate Turkey and build an independent Kurdish republic."
He said, "No, no! You know who I am. I am Hasan Hayri. I talked in the parliament. I sent a telgram to Lausanne, so how can you say to me, "You are a Kurdish separatist?"
They replied, "We know that one day you wore national Kurdish clothes and in these clothes you went to the Turkish parliament, so you are a Kurdish separatist."
He was condemned to death. And when they took him to the gallows and asked him for his last words, he said,
"I want my grave to be in a place where the Kurds can walk by and spit on me because of my betrayal of them.
Taken from Kurdistan In The Shadow of History
