{"id":20257,"date":"2010-06-29T19:07:10","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T17:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=20257"},"modified":"2017-11-28T18:13:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T15:13:46","slug":"kurdish-heritage-reclaimed-stephen-kinzer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/06\/29\/kurdish-heritage-reclaimed-stephen-kinzer\/","title":{"rendered":"Kurdish Heritage Reclaimed: Stephen Kinzer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><!--startclickprintinclude--><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"subHead\">After years of conflict, Turkey&#8217;s  tradition-rich Kurdish minority is experiencing a joyous cultural  reawakening<\/h2>\n<ul id=\"byLine\">\n<li>By Stephen Kinzer<\/li>\n<li>Photographs by Lynsey Addario<\/li>\n<li><em>Smithsonian<\/em> magazine, June 2010<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>  Isolation allowed the Kurds to  survive for thousands of years while other cultures faded from history.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><strong>More from Smithsonian.com<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Iraq&#8217;s  Resilient Minority<\/li>\n<li>Gobekli  Tepe: The World\u2019s First Temple?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>In the breathtakingly rugged Turkish province of  Hakkari, pristine rivers surge  through spectacular mountain gorges and  partridges feed beneath tall clusters  of white hollyhock. I\u2019m attending  the marriage celebration of 24-year-old  Baris and his 21-year-old  bride, Dilan, in the Kurdish heartland near the borders  of Syria, Iran  and Iraq. This is not the actual wedding; the civil and religious   ceremonies were performed earlier in the week. Not until after this  party, though,  will the couple spend their first night together as  husband and wife. It will  be a short celebration by Kurdish  standards\u2014barely 36 hours.<\/p>\n<p>Neither eating nor drinking plays much of a role at a traditional  Kurdish wedding.  On the patio of a four-story apartment house, guests  are served only small plates  of rice and meatballs. Instead, the event  is centered on music and dance. Hour  after hour, the band plays lustily  as lines of guests, their arms linked behind  their backs, kick, step  and join in song in ever-changing combinations. Children  watch  intently, absorbing a tradition passed down through generations.<\/p>\n<p>The women wear dazzling, embroidered gowns. But it\u2019s the men who  catch my  eye. Some of them are wearing one-piece outfits\u2014khaki or gray  overalls with  patterned cummerbunds\u2014inspired by the uniforms of Kurdish  guerrillas who  fought a fierce campaign for self-rule against the  Turkish government throughout  much of the 1980s and \u201990s. The Turkish  military, which harshly suppressed  this insurgency, would not have  tolerated such outfits just a few years ago. These  days, life is more  relaxed.<\/p>\n<p>As darkness falls and there is still no sign of the bride, some  friends and I  decide to visit the center of Hakkari, the provincial  capital. An armored personnel  carrier, with a Turkish soldier in the  turret peering over his machine gun, rumbles  ominously through the  city, which is swollen with unemployed Kurdish refugees  from the  countryside. But stalls in music stores overflow with CDs by Kurdish   singers, including performers who were banned because Turkish  authorities judged  their music incendiary. Signs written in the  once-taboo Kurdish language decorate  shop windows.<\/p>\n<p>By luck, we encounter Ihsan Colemerikli, a Kurdish intellectual whose  book    <em>Hakkari in Mesopotamian Civilization<\/em> is a highly  regarded work of historical    research. He invites us to his home,  where we sip tea under an arbor. Colemerikli    says there have been 28  Kurdish rebellions in the past 86 years\u2014inspired    by centuries of  successful resistance to outsiders, invaders and would-be conquerors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKurdish culture is a strong and mighty tree with deep roots,\u201d he   says. \u201cTurks, Persians and Arabs have spent centuries trying to cut off   this tree\u2019s water so it would wither and die. But in the last 15 to 20  years  there has been a new surge of water, so the tree is blossoming  very richly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Back at the wedding party, the bride finally appears, wearing a  brightly patterned,  translucent veil and surrounded by attendants  carrying candles. She is led slowly  through the crowd to one of two  armchairs in the center of the patio. Her husband  sits in the other  one. For half an hour they sit quietly and watch the party,  then rise  for their first dance, again surrounded by candles. I notice that the   bride never smiles, and I ask if something is amiss. No, I\u2019m told. It is   customary for a Kurdish bride to appear somber as a way of showing how  sad she  is to leave her parents.<\/p>\n<p>The party will go on until dawn, only to resume a few hours later.  But as    midnight approaches, my companions and I depart, our  destination a <em>corba    salonu<\/em>\u2014a soup salon. In a few minutes we  enter a brightly lit caf\u00e9.    There are two soups on the menu. Lentil  is my favorite, but when traveling I    prefer the unfamiliar. The  sheep\u2019s head soup, made with meat scraped from    inside the skull, is  strong, lemony and assertive.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After years of conflict, Turkey&#8217;s tradition-rich Kurdish minority is experiencing a joyous cultural reawakening By Stephen Kinzer Photographs by Lynsey Addario Smithsonian magazine, June 2010 Isolation allowed the Kurds to survive for thousands of years while other cultures faded from history. More from Smithsonian.com Iraq&#8217;s Resilient Minority Gobekli Tepe: The World\u2019s First Temple? In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":107757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[1571,78,120,1153,1018],"class_list":["post-20257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-ahmet-davutoglu","tag-ergenekon","tag-gulen","tag-politics","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}