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[Astronuc]

Turkey Set to Invest in Better Relations With Kurds
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/world/europe/12turkey.html

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s government is planning a broad series of investments worth as much as $12 billion in the country’s largely Kurdish southeast, in a new economic effort intended to create jobs and draw young men away from militancy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The program is intended to drain support for the militant Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, by improving the lives of Turkey’s impoverished Kurdish minority, Mr. Erdogan said in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday.

As part of the push, the government will dedicate a state television channel to Kurdish language broadcasting, a measure that Kurds in Turkey have sought for years. The Turkish state has imposed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, arguing that allowing that freedom would strengthen the Kurds’ desire to form a separate state.

I hope it works. Seems a better and more productive approach than a civil war.

Kurds should be allowed to use their own language and indulge in their own culture, as should any minority.