Turkish Kurds, bordering Iraq, feel under attack

By Emma Ross-Thomas

SILOPI, Turkey (Reuters) - Sabriya Akdogan left Iraq to marry in Turkey, but she still uses her mother tongue at home; she is a Kurd who married another Kurd and says that identity matters more than national borders.

"It's the same race, the same language, the same nation, the same Kurdish root," said her husband, Hasan Akdogan, who met her while visiting relatives across the border in northern Iraq.

The close ties and shared identity between Iraqi and Turkish Kurds are behind fierce local opposition to Ankara's threats to launch a major cross-border operation into north Iraq to tackle some 3,000 Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) rebels based there.

Masoud Barzani's semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq is a source of inspiration for many Kurds demanding more rights in southeast Turkey, who say Ankara's incursion plans aim to undermine the closest thing there is to a Kurdish state.

Barzani has pledged not to turn over anyone to Turkey and has vowed to fight back against any incursion, although he has called on the outlawed PKK guerrillas to leave.

Just months after the ruling AK Party saw big election gains in the southeast due to popular social policies and pledges to help the region, many are enraged by what they see as an attack on the Kurds as a whole and a bid to stop their progress.

"It's only to crush the Kurds, they see the freedom in northern Iraq and Turkey wants to crush it," said Zeki Macartay, an AK Party supporter and district chief in Cizre, a town near the border where men still wear traditional Kurdish dress and skinny cows graze for scraps in upturned skips.

"KURDISH PROBLEM"

At the same time, many also stress a kinship between Turks and Kurds, a need to live in peace and mutual self-respect.

The centre-right AK Party won many votes in the mainly Kurdish southeast in July parliamentary elections and promises to continue improving basic services in every village.

It was under the AK Party, which wants Turkey to join the European Union, that a ban on broadcasting in Kurdish was lifted though only limited broadcasts were allowed on a state channel.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stirred hope in 2005 as the first Turkish leader to say there was a "Kurdish problem".

But local politicians and officials say schools are still understaffed and doctors are few. A ban on speaking Kurdish was lifted in 1991 but teaching of Kurdish is limited to private language schools. Those who speak only Kurdish struggle in hospitals and courts.

Cizre Mayor Ahmet Dalmis, who says even he finds Turkish tricky, says Kurdish publications are still closed down by court order while the region's politicians face dozens of cases against them, many just for things they have said.

"A case is opened against everything that's said ... it's not just politicians," said human rights lawyer and Diyarbakir Bar Association Chairman Sezgin Tanrikulu.