Customer Reviews

The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland

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this book deserves kudos and nothing else. the fact is, mckiernan has spent several decades researching the kurds' story "in the field" inside turkey and he has had the courage to write about the truth, an unsettling truth for those of us who honor human and cultural rights. do not believe the turkish government and military forces, and what is said for example in the review by oki oki on this book. that is all sheer propaganda, exactly what the usa and turkey want the world to believe. i encourage all to read this book and think about it profoundly. it speaks the truth.

In The Kurds, journalist and filmmaker McKiernan offers a gripping tale of travel among the Kurds of northern Iraq, Turkey, and, briefly, Iran. Based on trips taken over fifteen years, his anecdotes give depth and perspective to Kurdish society. He augments his narrative with historical background. In describing the origins of the Kurds, for example, he relays not only the local Kurdish explanation that they are descended from the Medean Empire (seventh century B.C.E.) but also the scholarly debate which pours cold water on that myth.

McKiernan's tale begins in Iran where he headed at the behest of a nongovernmental organization to assist Iraqi Kurdish refugees fleeing the 1991 uprising. He relates a midnight interrogation by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards while the hotel manager, "a Kurd in a police state," looked on, "a look of embarrassment on his face." Over the next chapters and years, McKiernan shuttles between Iraq and Turkey where he meets local Kurds, as well as officials and others. Importantly, he traces the evolution of the Kurdish issue in Washington, recalling how in 1992, Kurdish officials such as Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Jalal Talabani--Iraq's current president--had difficulty getting meetings at the State Department.

It is easy to romanticize the Kurds - the perennial underdogs who have overcome great odds - and too many journalists do so. But McKiernan does not, nor does he whitewash Kurdish history in Iraq. He addresses the 1994-97 internecine civil war in which Talabani and his rival, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) president Masoud Barzani, sent each other's supporters to mass graves. He also describes the KDP obsession with spying upon and controlling foreign press and visitors.

Such balance, however, does not extend to the Turkish Kurds. McKiernan's account oozes with antipathy toward Turkey. He wrongly calls Kurds "second class citizens" in Turkey, ignoring that presidents, foreign ministers, and scores of parliamentarians have been Kurdish. Lack of education and urban-rural divide better explain the social differences in Turkey than ethnicity. Too often McKiernan uncritically accepts the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) narrative, though many Kurds consider it a terrorist group.
The second half of The Kurds discusses the 2003 Iraq war. McKiernan captures the atmosphere of anxiety that [...] might again launch chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds. His provides a gripping account of the [...] attempt on PUK prime minister Barham Salih. He describes how Iraqi Kurds would sell stories about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to U.S. reporters willing to pay for them. This raises an important but unaddressed question: how much of what entered U.S. news accounts originated with Kurdish political parties?

McKiernan's writing is eloquent, but uneven analysis weakens his narrative. That U.S. government officials cite the open press in speeches should not lead to the conclusion that they derive their information from newspaper stories. Conspiracy theories lace his account, such as the silly idea that the Pentagon hid the death of U.S. servicemen during the 2003 war. While a frequent theme of Baathist propaganda, such cover-ups are impossible given soldiers' parents, wives, and children, as well as the U.S. government's pension system. It is unclear how representative McKiernan's encounters are, or whether he reinterprets or revises observations in order to appear more astute. He appears to exaggerate Kurdish-Shi'ite distrust. Analogies to American Indians and false predictions of civil war cheapen what is ultimately a good read but an uneven account of an important time and region.

Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2007

I always wondered if the Turkish Army really burned Kurdish villages and killed innocent Kurdish people. Many of my friends in college told me that it was for real and that they "heard" a "real" story from one of their friends. Then I joined the Turkish Army and became a team commander leading an infantry commando team in the heart of the region. I visited more than 100 Kurdish villages only to help the Kurdish people there giving them clothes, trees, and food. I took injured Kurdish men and women to a Military Hospital after they got shot by the PKK militants. Then I always wondered why in the US people say that the Turkish Army kills Kurdish people and burns Kurdish villages. The answer I came up with was they "heard" it from one of their friends and it was for "real".

Even though Kevin spent a lot of time with the terrorist organization PKK, his observations in my opinion were made based on what some of his terrorist friends told him - not based on what he actually saw there. It is very unfortunate that Kevin misrepresented the situation in Turkey in his book and blamed the Turkish Army relentlessy. If you read the book and if you have any doubts about what you read, please go to the region and see what is happening with your own eyes. I would highly recommend that you go to these Kurdish villages and talk to the people there. Talking to people that belong to the PKK or any other terrorist organization won't reveal the reality.

I wish that Kevin actually spent some time with the Turkish Army (instead of a terrorist organization that has killed both Turkish and Kurdish people) to see the truth. I am sure that he couldn't write this book and make any of his money. Who knows, maybe his primary reasons for telling unreal stories were to make people buy this book.

Read the book, but also do some research and read more reliable articles (on US and Turkish government websites) to find out what the truth is. As far as I saw (with my own eyes), the Turkish Army does not harm any innocent Kurdish civilians.

Here is the truth:
http://pkk.ataturk.org/whatispkk.shtml
http://pkk.ataturk.org/pictures.shtml (Viewer discretion is advised) Please be aware that some pictures are extremely graphic. These pictures show how barbaric this (or any) terrorist organization can be. They were all Kurdish people.

The PKK has killed more than 5,000 innocent Kurdish civilians in the region. They killed more than 100 teachers, 120 goveners, thousands of soldiers, imams, nurses, doctors, and even animals (sheep and cows) just to prevent the region from becoming stable both economically as well as socially. They burned down schools, destroyed bridges, construction equipment, and threathened government employees that they would be killed if they kept working for the government. They killed two high ranking soldiers just today and bombed a religous school. This is not fighting for your rights. This is called terrorism and it is very real.

I hope that the readers of this book will find out what the truth really is by doing some more research.

Regards,