Aldo
viandit@yahoo.it
Aldo, My experience of meeting with the Kurdish people
I began to deal with the Kurdish question in March 1998, when Dino Frisullo (who
I knew 'in passing') was arrested at Diyarbakir's Newroz, imprisoned and tried.
I began to gather historical and cultural information about the Kurdish people, creating " Newroz 4D ", a multilingual database (Italian, French and English) of more than ten thousand texts, chronologically and thematically ordered. Then, in November 1998, Ocalan had come to Italy, and since then I had begun to take part in Italian initiatives, in Rome and in other Italian cities, of which Dino Frisullo was the tireless organizer, and to the Italian delegations who went to Turkey and in Kurdistan every year for the Newroz and on other occasions.
At the death of Dino
Frisullo I dedicated a website to him:
http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/dino
In particular, I had
started several collaborations with the Association “Verso il Kurdistan” (that
means. "Towards Kurdistan") of Alessandria (Antonio Olivieri), including the
translation of the book of the Kurdish Refugee Association Göç-Der about the
forced exodus from the destroyed villages, including the creation of a
multilingual Web Site (in Turkish, Italian, English and French) about that:
http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/GocDer/
http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/GocDerText
After Ocalan's death sentence, I had organized a demonstration in Turin against this condemnation, in which a procession of about 500 people had delivered a petition to the Turkish Consul (in that time there was a Turkish Consulate also in Turin).
In that period, in particular, I carried out an activity of electronic information through an initiative that I had called "Kurdish Mailing List": I sent to thousands of e-mail contacts information, 'turning' the news that I found or that in turn I received .
A partial picture of the issues I have dealt with since then emerged from the Websites I created, listed by the 'introductory page': " INDEX OF SITES: MESOPOTAMIA-ITA " available at the link: http: //www.mesopotamia-ita. com /
I could meet the various managers and collaborators of the UIKI, “Ufficio d’Informazione del Kurdistan in Italia” (that is. "Information Office of Kurdistan in Italy") - [ www.uikionlus.com], from the moment of its creation, around 1999, until recently: Hevi Dilara, Mehmet Yüksel, Rojin Felat, Francesca Gianfelici, Yilmaz Orkan.
I then lived permanently (except for brief interruptions) in Turkish Kurdistan (mainly in Diyarbakir and Derik) and in Turkey (mainly in Istanbul, where I collaborated with MKM, "Mezopotamya Kültür Merkezi") from March 2002 until June 17, 2010 , the date when Turkey formally expelled me; I have described everything concerning this expulsion on the website " Turkey enters Europe and drives Europeans": http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/tureu/
A summary image of my stay in Kurdistan and Turkey is contained in the text “La mia amicizia con il popolo kurdo” (that means: "My friendship with the Kurdish people"), which I had written after my expulsion, available at the link: http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/tureu /pages/friendship.html
Another initiative was
called "Tourism in solidarity in Kurdistan", aimed at organizing trips,
activated in 2009 by me and by Carlotta Grisi, and then cut off from the
expulsion of Turkey first against me and then Carlotta; it is described at the
link:
http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/ts/
There, among other things, it is written:
"The trip
becomes supportive and responsible because the participants are hosted in the
family - avoiding the stay at the hotel - and give a concrete contribution to
the host families -monetary and / or other nature: gifts brought from Italy or
local goods-. But above all the method of family stays is meant to be a way of
direct encounter based on reciprocity and dialogue, a way of knowing and
enjoying two (and more) cultures. Participants will have the opportunity to
live, eat, sleep, drink çay and munch on seeds with families knowing and really
touching who the Kurdish people are. The Kurds can tell each other, show their
land, customs, traditions, and tell their story, their problems, difficulties,
requests and hopes. [...] The journey thus becomes a moment not only of visiting
the places but of knowledge-historical, geographical, social, cultural-,
creating links and disseminating information. During the trip we also visit the
headquarters of some associations - such as the Association of Human Rights (IHD),
women's associations and cooperatives, etc. depending on the interests of the
participants - to hear opinions, to know data, statistics, projects".
In Turkey, among other
things, I have made Websites for Kurdish friends who are artists [ http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/ =
Index of Sites - Culture], subtitles in several languages (Italian, English,
French) of Kurdish films (of MKM etc.); I made a multilingual Web Site about the
Retrial of Leyla Zana of 2003 [
http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/LeylaZana/ ], I collaborated with Kalkınma
Merkezi Derneği [ http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/sviluppo_rurale_in_kurdistan/ ] .
I was in contact and friendship with Yüksel Genç, one of the components of the
PKK guerrillas’ first Peace Group which in September-October 1999 consigned
itself to Turkey to promote a peace dialog, and I translated into Italian half
of her very beautiful book “Barışa Tutunmak” (İstanbul,
Belge Yayınları, 2006), and now a selection of its
translated passages is in the multilingual Web Site that I created, titled
“Kurdish Peace Group” [
http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/Peace_Group/Haberler/ITA/pace/index.htm ].
This Web Site [
www.mesopotamia-ita.com/Peace_Group/ ] in reality
is not only about one Kurdish Peace Group, but two: both the one of 1999 and the
following of 2009.
I dedicated the Kurdish Culture multilingual website to Kurdish culture: http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/kc
After my expulsion
(against which I made an appeal, whose legal practices are still ongoing),
between June 2010 and December 2013, I stayed in Rome, working 'full time'
within the association "Senza Confine" (it means: “Without Borders” - at that
time it was chaired by Alessia Montuori, now by the lawyer Simonetta Crisci) for
assistance to asylum seekers, almost all Kurds; every day came to me kurds
escaped from turkey for the received persecutions, I listened their terrible
stories told in Turkish, and the association "Senza Confine", with the help of
the lawyers often necessary, helped them to prepare theirselves to the meeting
with the Commission who had to decide if their request of political asylum would
be accepted.
"Senza Confine" is adjacent to the "Centro Ararat", managed by the Kurds (asylum
holders or applicants), with whom the collaboration was intense and daily.
After my return to my home in Piemonte (in Piedmont) in the town of Saluzzo,
starting from 2014, I worked mainly on the Rojava, to which I dedicated the
website of the same name, available at the link: http://www.mesopotamia-ita.com/rojava/
Here there is a concise presentation of this website:
'Rojava' wants to be above all a site for
collecting documentation on Rojava, organized both chronologically and
thematically. Its documentation, which is continually updated and increased,
begins about March 15, 2012, that is from the beginning of the Syrian
insurrection against Bashar al Assad, and arrives until today, collecting
thousands of texts, chronologically ordered; this makes it possible to read the
sequence of the texts as a true "story" of the development of the events. The
Site collects the information present above all in the periodical press
(newspapers, or broader periodicals) and on the web (news agencies etc.); in
addition to the most common organs of general information, some very careful
sources are drawn from these topics: in particular the site of the UIKI,
"Information Office of Kurdistan in Italy". There are both texts relating to the
narration of 'events' and those related to analysis of the most diverse
topics. But the texts as well as chronologically are also organized
thematically: the Site also contains the Thematic Sections: Rojava ; Middle
East ; Women ; Pluralism ; Social
relationships and with nature ;Culture,
art, education, religions ; Yezidi ; Islamic
State, IS, ISIS .
January 2019
Aldo Canestrari