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Originally Posted by NousDefionsDoc
AL - ask the Armenians and the Kurds.
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Ask them what?
Kurds are Muslims. Turkish repression of Kurdish national identity is a nationalist idea, not sectarian. It is in fact a Western concept, a product of the Enlightenment. Turkey was following the French example, among others.
At the time of the Revolution, only about 25% of people in France spoke French (the rest spoke Breton, Provencal, German, Flemish and various other languages and dialects) and there was no concept of citizenship. After Napoleon, there was a French nation (for better or worse) made up of French citizens. That is what Atatürk was trying to create in Turkey out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. You are welcome to criticize that policy, but it has nothing to do with Islam.
As for the Armenians, that was perpetrated under the Ottoman Empire. In 1915. It also had ethnic and military components, as well as religious. The Ottomans long feared that Armenians would help the Russians, and their (Christian) German allies agreed.
1915 was 25-30 years before people in a predominantly Christian part of the world killed 6 million people for their religion. If you are going to cite the Armenian genocide as evidence that modern Turkey is a repressive Muslim state, then the Holocaust seems like even better evidence that the West is full of genocidal Christians.