Ataturk was the leader of the young turks who led the genocide of almost 2 million Armenians. They used the Kurds to lead the charge promising them their own state then turned against them when the armenians were cleansed. The Kurds have been fighting them ever since...don’t think they’d be fooled again by the Turks.
If the Kurds of northern Iraq are fighting the Turks today they got a strange way of combat -- other than the Marxist PKK who have killed scores of people in Turkey since the 1980s.
Please see my reply #2.
RE: Armenians
This is no attempt to mitigate the horror. Even the modern constitutional democratic Republic of Turkey has admitted the horror. But calling it genocide? Here's something on that.
[Excerpt ]"The real purpose of the resolution is not recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but a political struggle – the issue of which side has a larger political capital in Washington. . . . [T]he admission of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey is an issue of secondary importance for us. . . . our lands were seized and our 3,000-year-old culture was destroyed. . . . Therefore, our true demand is compensation for this injustice. . . . Now specialists must study the lawyers’ advice and decide which issue should be submitted to which court, as there is the International Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights, US Federal Courts, etc. This is a most important issue. It must be studied with all seriousness, because, if we lose in court, Turkey will claim that Armenians have no legal demands."
BTW, I don't like it that it's our Congress / government that Turkey and Armenia are fighting over to get/not get resolutions monthly (almost it seems to me).
Also Armenia and the Ottoman Empire were at war (W.W.I) and I've talked to Turks about this when I lived there. They wonder where is the concern for the tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of Turkish civilians killed by Armenia.
Also why give Germany a pass?
Ottoman Turkey ally Kaiser Wilhelm II had German military stationed in Ottoman Turkey.
[Excerpt] "Dadrian does not accuse Germany of instigating the Armenian genocide; he argues instead that Germany contributed to the genocide through policies that condoned it and that the German government sanctioned German and Turkish officials who participated in the genocide's implementation."