To be clear: I support Palestinian freedom. I think Palestinians have suffered under occupation, military rule, displacement, blockades, settlement expansion, and repeated wars. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, a rough estimate for Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, wars, occupation, and military campaigns is somewhere around 120,000 to 180,000, depending on the methodology. Since October 2023 alone, the Gaza death toll has passed 72,500 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities cited by Reuters. The UN’s OCHA also maintains casualty data for Palestinians and Israelis since 2008 in the context of occupation and conflict.
But here is the question: why do so many Turkish and Arab people, governments, commentators, and nationalist movements speak loudly about Palestine while staying silent, or even hostile, when the victims are Kurds?
Kurds are one of the largest stateless peoples in the world. They have been divided across Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, and in each of these states Kurdish identity has been treated as a threat instead of a legitimate national identity.
In Turkey, the state spent decades trying to erase Kurdish identity. Kurdish language, names, political expression, and cultural rights were restricted or criminalized. After the 1980 military coup, Turkey passed Law 2932, which effectively banned communication in Kurdish; Human Rights Watch notes that this law was repealed only in 1991. Kurdish broadcasting and education remained heavily restricted even after that. The Turkish state also promoted the idea that Kurds were not a separate people but merely “Mountain Turks.” That is not normal national unity. That is forced assimilation.
The repression was not only cultural. Since the early Turkish Republic, Kurdish uprisings and communities were violently crushed: Koçgiri, Sheikh Said, Ararat/Zilan, Dersim, and later the war between the Turkish state and the PKK. If you add up deaths from major Kurdish uprisings, massacres, state repression, and the modern conflict, a reasonable rough estimate is somewhere around 100,000 to 170,000 Kurds or people in the Kurdish conflict context killed since around 1920, with higher estimates going beyond that depending on what is included. Dersim alone is often estimated in the tens of thousands, and Zilan is also remembered as a major massacre.
And this is not only about Turkey.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime carried out the Anfal campaign, which Human Rights Watch describes as genocide. HRW estimates that at least 50,000 and possibly 100,000 Kurds were systematically murdered during Anfal. Halabja alone saw up to 5,000 civilians, mostly women and children, killed by chemical weapons.
In Syria, Kurds were stripped of citizenship through the 1962 Hasakah census. Human Rights Watch says around 120,000 Syrian Kurds, about 20% of the Syrian Kurdish population at the time, were left stateless. Kurdish names, language use, Kurdish political organization, and Kurdish cultural expression were restricted. Kurdish areas were also affected by Arabization policies, including the replacement of Kurdish place names and demographic engineering.
So when Turkish nationalists, Arab nationalists, or state-aligned commentators talk about Palestine but deny Kurdish oppression, that is hypocrisy.
If occupation, displacement, language suppression, demographic engineering, collective punishment, and denial of national identity are wrong when Israel does it to Palestinians, then they are also wrong when Turkey, Syria, Iraq, or Iran do it to Kurds.
And yes, armed groups on both sides have committed crimes. Hamas has killed civilians. The PKK has killed civilians. Palestinian armed groups overall have killed thousands of Israeli civilians since 1948, and Hamas alone is responsible for roughly 1,200 to 1,500 civilian deaths, with October 7 being the largest single event. The PKK has also killed Turkish civilians, soldiers, police, and village guards, with the Turkish-state side suffering roughly 13,000 to 16,000 deaths depending on categories.
But the existence of armed groups does not erase the rights of an entire people. In many cases, these groups did not appear out of nowhere, they emerged in the context of occupation, repression, denied political rights, forced assimilation, or state violence. That context matters if we want to understand why conflicts radicalize. But context is not the same as justification. Attacks on civilians are still wrong, whether they are committed by Hamas, the PKK, a state military, or anyone else.
Nobody serious should say Palestinians deserve oppression because of Hamas. So nobody serious should say Kurds deserve repression because of the PKK. If that argument is racist when used against Palestinians, it is also racist when used against Kurds.
This is the double standard:
When Israel suppresses Palestinian identity, many people call it colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or occupation.
When Turkey suppresses Kurdish identity, the same people call it “national security.”
When Palestinians resist, many call it liberation.
When Kurds demand language rights, autonomy, or recognition, many call it separatism or terrorism.
When Gaza is bombed, the region explodes with outrage.
When Kurdish villages were destroyed, Kurdish language banned, Kurdish names restricted, Kurds gassed in Halabja, Kurds Arabized in Syria, or Kurds massacred in Dersim, the same region often stayed silent — or defended the state doing it.
That is not a principled position. That is ethnic favoritism and state propaganda.
I am not asking people to care less about Palestine. I am asking them to be consistent.
If you support Palestinian self-determination, you should support Kurdish self-determination.
If you oppose forced assimilation in Palestine, oppose it in Kurdistan.
If you oppose occupation, oppose it everywhere.
If you oppose collective punishment, oppose it everywhere.
Free Kurdistan and Palestine.
Note: AI helped me structure and phrase this post, but the information, sources, and argument are my own.