Kurds And Armenian Genocide Similarities

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Alyssa Presgraves Luckman/Dunbar English 103 11/30/09 Kurds and Armenians The Armenians and the Kurds are both proud of their identities. Both sets of individuals have been through a lot in their existence. Living with or going through a genocide is an atrocious thing to deal with. The Kurdish Genocide of 1988 and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 were atrocious and horrific. The people never gave up though and kept their nationalism strong! Kurdish and Armenian identity is what kept their nationalism alive and striving for independence. The Kurds and the Armenians are both very proud of their land. Kurdish nationalism emerged after World War I with the termination of the Ottoman Empire. After the termination of the Ottoman Empire the…show more content…
The Armenian people had a lot to move on from. Almost all their population was wiped out. The Kurdish Genocide was centrally planned and administered by the Iraqi Government against the entire Kurdish population. In Sarafian Fernandes’ paper “After 16 March 1988, one word came to symbolize the tragedy of the Kurds -- Halabja. Halabja is the Kurdish Auschwitz; not because the scale of the massacre was comparable with that of the Nazi death camp, but because the victims were chosen merely because they were Kurdish civilians.” In the beginning before the genocide, Armenians, Kurds and Turks lived in relative harmony in the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Armenians were known as the "loyal millet". As many other Christian groups began to gain independence, the Armenians became more isolated as the only major Christian minority. Armenians and Turks began to have conflicting ideas of the future. Some Armenians began to call for independence like the Greeks and others had already received, while some Turks began to visualize a new Pan-Turkic empire spreading all the way to Turkic speaking parts of Central Asia. The Kurds wanted independence just like the Armenians they wanted to have their own land to go to, to call their own. World War one gave the Young Turk government the cover and the excuse to carry out their plan. The significant thing about the following events is the almost…show more content…
In February 1988 a call by the Nagorno Karabakh (NK) legislature for unification with Armenia; the Armenian Supreme Soviet in December 1989 declared that NK, a largely ethnically Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan, was part of Armenia. It also proclaimed Armenia's sovereignty over its land and resources. A popular referendum on independence was held in Armenia on 21 September 1991, in which 94 percent of the eligible population reportedly participated and 99 percent approval of the proposal. The Armenian legislature declared Armenia's independence two days later. Armenia received worldwide diplomatic recognition upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991. Yet the Kurds have not accomplished their independence. The Kurd’s fight for independence has been continuously blocked. Since World War One, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq have all fought to stop Kurdish uprisings. The Persian Gulf War offered hope, but even after defeat Iraq’s leaders maintained control. This is an ongoing struggle, a struggle that will probably not be won any time soon. In the article by Stephen Kinzer “One hope for the independence struggle is that Iran and Iraq are not favored nations among the world powers. If these nations become weaker, the fight for independence might gain more momentum.” With the absence of a central government, many Kurd’s considered their clan leaders
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