The Impact of the Munzur Dams
Kurdish Human Rights Project
Compte d’auteur
It is now commonplace to suggest that the Turkish state persecution of its Kurdish population, which has so disfigured the history of modern Turkey, derives its impetus from the ‘Kemalist’ project of unitary secular nationalism, implemented by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk during the founding of the Republic. Of course, such a view is far from inaccurate: Ataturks iconic status in Turkey is evident everywhere from his ubiquitous photos and busts to the reference in the Turkish Constitution to him as “the founder of the Republic of Turkey, its immortal leader and unrivalled hero”.2
A similar reverence is reserved for the principles of the Kemalist state, united as one against internal and external foes. In particular, the principle of the “indivisible integrity” of the state, territorially and politically, is absolutely fundamental to the ideology and self-perception of the Turkish polity. Article 3 of the Constitution puts it bluntly: “The Turkish State, with its territory and nation, is an indivisible entity. Its language is Turkish.”3 The assertion of an alternative ethnic or linguistic identity, whether by political intention or simply by growing up speaking another language, is thus seen by statist ideologues as striking at the most deeply embedded legal and ideological foundations of the Turkish republic. It is the overarching accusation of ‘separatism’, the state’s assumption that any form of Kurdish ... | 
