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Viewing cable 03ADANA107, RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRATION BY KURDS:

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
03ADANA107 2003-04-15 12:17 2011-08-24 01:00 UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Consulate Adana
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ADANA 0107 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE 
 
 
/////////////////// 
CORRECTED COPY 
////////////////// 
 
 
PLEASE DISREGARD ADANA CABLE 106. 
DUE TO FORMATTING PROBLEMS, THIS 
CABLE REPLACES ADANA CABLE 106 
 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM SOCI SCUL TU ADANA
SUBJECT:  RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRATION BY KURDS: 
          OBSERVATIONS OF A SOCIOLOGIST 
 
1.  (SBU)  Summary:  Mehmet Erbas, a junior 
faculty member at Mersin University, has 
conducted scholarly research about the migration 
of Kurds from the countryside to the cities of 
Turkey.  He believes that "Kurdish identity" will 
survive transplantation to the metropolis as long 
as Kurdish migrants see a benefit to it.  The 
Turkish State has no ability to influence this 
process.  End summary. 
 
 
2.  (SBU)  Mehmet Erbas, a young assistant 
professor of sociology at Mersin University's 
Science and Literature Faculty, has carved out a 
niche in the study of a very significant 
phenomenon of contemporary Turkey: the massive 
migration by rural Kurds to urban areas.  This 
migration has dramatically changed the 
demographics of cities like Mersin, as well as 
other cities in the southeast, and indeed 
throughout the country.  Istanbul, by some 
reckonings, is now the largest Kurdish city in 
the world. 
 
 
3.  (SBU)  Erbas is not Kurdish.  He hails from 
Ordu, on the Black Sea.  He does not speak 
Kurdish.  Nevertheless, he has undertaken the 
study of Kurdish migration because he feels it is 
a crucially important topic for understanding 
where Turkey is headed. 
 
 
4.  (SBU)  In a wide-ranging April 11 discussion 
in his office at Mersin University, Erbas offered 
some perhaps unconventional thoughts about the 
nature, and consequences, of large-scale rural- 
to-urban migration by southeastern Kurds. 
 
 
5.  (SBU)  First, "it's not about language." 
According to Erbas, the ability to speak Kurdish 
is not crucial to Kurdish identity in Turkey. 
There are politicized Kurds who do not know the 
language.  He cited the case of the large Kurdish 
diaspora from Turkey that now resides in Western 
Europe.  These Kurds, he said, have made no 
attempt to set up Kurdish language schools for 
their children.  This stands in contrast to 
Turkish emigrants in Western Europe, who have 
done so.  At the same time, he noted, Kurds 
living in Western Europe who came from northern 
Iraq did work to set up Kurdish-language 
education for their children - in effect, 
replicating the Kurdish-language educational 
system they had back in Iraq. 
 
 
6.  (SBU)  Second, "it's not clear how much of 
the tenacity of the culture is its Kurdishness 
and how much is its ruralness."  This observation 
would likely be agreed upon by many residents of 
Turkey's cities who have been urbanized longer, 
and who have noted, often with dismay, the 
persistence of rural folkways (in dress, in 
ritual, in family stucture) in the city.  A 
family slaughtering its Kurban Bayram sheep on a 
fifteenth-floor balcony of a high-rise in an 
apartment complex is as likely to be Turkish as 
Kurdish. 
 
 
7.  (SBU)  Third, there is class-consciousness 
among Kurds, but it has a twist.  There is a 
large number of well-off, even wealthy, Kurds in 
a city like Mersin.  Those who buy a summer beach 
house do not go out of their way to make sure 
they will have Kurdish neighbors there.  On the 
other hand, if one goes to a typical Newroz 
(Nevruz, the Persian-Kurdish March 21 celebration 
of Spring) celebration in a large Turkish city, 
the crowd is likely to be made up of middle and 
lower-class Kurds.  Wealthy Kurds do not usually 
attend.  Why?  Interestingly, according to Erbas, 
it is not out of snobbery.  Rather, it is out of 
fear that being seen at such events by Turkish 
authorities might open them to accusations of 
being overly "politicized" in their Kurdishness. 
(Note:  Some contacts recall for us that in the 
1980s and 1990s there were wealthy and powerful 
Kurds who disappeared mysteriously.  End note.) 
A prosperous and successful Kurd in Turkey still 
might worry about the risks of "guilt by 
association" with more radical elements. 
 
 
8.  (SBU)  Fourth, the basic motivation for 
maintaining one's Kurdish identity after the move 
from the country to the city is, in Erbas' view, 
"to get something from it."  The "something" he 
has in mind is not an ineffable kind of ethnic 
pride.  Rather, it is something pragmatic in re 
housing and jobs.  Uniquely among citizens of 
Turkey, the Kurds of the southeast over their 
history developed an elaborate system of "clan" 
or "tribe" ("asiret" in Turkish) affiliation. 
This system is part and parcel of the phenomenon 
of the "aga" (large feudal landowner) system - 
also peculiar to Kurdish lands in southeast 
Turkey.  The salience of the clan system 
persists.  Polling done among Kurdish youth in 
the southeast, for example, is ambiguous; 
depending on how one looks at it, young people's 
belief in the value of the clan system is either 
(predictably) fading or (remarkably) still alive. 
(Note: It was in angry reaction to the 
"feudalism" of the clan and "aga" system that a 
young Kurd named Abdullah Ocalan first embraced 
revolutionary politics as a Marxist at Ankara 
University in the 1970s.  End note.) 
 
 
9.  (SBU)  As it effects rural-to-urban 
migration, the relevance of enduring clan values 
among southeastern Turkey's Kurds is that a 
typical Kurdish rural-to-urban migrant is not, 
and cannot be, "an individual actor."  While a 
random rural Turkish family from, say, Erzurum 
might be drawn to a neighborhood in Istanbul or 
Ankara that offers hometown contacts, there are 
many other neighborhoods to choose from.  The 
tighter bonds of clan connection in the Kurdish 
world dictate differently.  Clan is expected to 
seek out and be helped by clan.  To fly in the 
face of that practice, according to Erbas, means 
that an incoming migrant simply might not be 
cold-shouldered.  Concretely, that might mean not 
being offered informal assistance with job- 
seeking or not being invited to settle in a 
neighborhood, particularly a squatter 
("gecekondu" in Turkish) neighborhood.  Thus, 
maintaining one's "Kurdishness" is a practical 
necessity for access to housing and employment 
and social acceptance. 
 
 
10.  (SBU) Comment:  As long as new migrants 
remain dependent on personal, family, and clan 
networks to survive, Kurdish ethnic identity is 
likely to survive in contemporary urban Turkey, 
no matter what actions Turkish State authorities 
take.  End comment. 
HOLTZ