Tuesday, 14 April 2009The top general of Turkey said on Tuesday that there had never been a systematic assimilation policy in Turkey.
Gen. Ilker Basbug, the chief of General Staff of Turkey, said that Turkish state had never assumed a systematic assimilation policy towards citizens of Kurdish origin.
"As a state, we have never pursued a systematic assimilation policy towards our citizens of Kurdish origin either during the Ottoman Empire or the Republic," Basbug said during "annual assessment speech" at the War Colleges Command in Istanbul.
Basbug referred to a Turkish professor's model on ethnic clashes and said that assimilation had three phases, including the efforts of a state to forcibly assimilate certain ethnic groups.
"Second, resistance of these groups to these efforts, and third state's increasing its assimilation efforts," Basbug said.
Basbug said the state had naturally taken some measures against the possibility that some secondary cultural identities could lead the common primary identity due to the rebellions that occurred in the first years of the Republic.
"We cannot assess these measures as an assimilation policy. They were some steps regarded as necessary during the formation of the nation state, but they did not aim at creating a homogenous ethnic structure," the general said.
Basbug said, "Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) is naturally preserving the nation state, unitary state structure, entrusted by Ataturk."
The chief of general staff also said that nobody should doubt that the TSK would continue to preserve the nation and unitary state. |
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
ISTANBUL (A.A)
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