Word: turkish
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...buses to flee the battle zone and the retribution of Iraqi troops. Columns of people and vehicles, sometimes 50 miles long, snaked into the hills. Families packed themselves into the scoops of bulldozers. Tractors dragged trailers overloaded with passengers. Tourist buses wheezed desperately up the mountain roads. Near the Turkish border, a tall, eagle-faced man strapped 14 members of his family -- including seven children, his wife and his grandmother -- and innumerable pots, kettles, basins and chicken coops to a huge John Deere tractor. As he helped extract the car of a Western journalist mired in a bog, he spat...
Turkey's problem is that it already has 7 million to 14.5 million Kurds on its territory. For a decade, Turkey has been trying to suppress Kurdish agitation for autonomy in its eastern provinces. Ankara believes even an autonomous Kurdish region in the area would seduce Turkish Kurds into sedition and secession. Many Turkish military men argue that Saddam is using the refugees to take revenge on Turkey for standing with the coalition. "If Saddam wanted to annihilate these people, he could have done it easily," a Turkish officer allegedly said. "He has not done it. He is pushing them...
...prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq. Ankara has a historic , claim on Iraq's Mosul province which it might use as a pretext for such a move. That might in turn prompt Iran and Syria to seize their own pieces of Iraq. Two weeks ago, Turkish officials met with Iraqi Kurdish leaders for the first time. In exchange for that rare acknowledgment of their legitimacy, the Kurds apparently promised Ankara that they would not foment rebellion among their brethren in Turkey...
What is certain to prevail is the intractable conflict that has riven Yugoslavia's two major nationalities since the country was established. The Serbs, who threw off Turkish rule in the 19th century, are Christian Orthodox; the Croatians, who were subjugated by the Habsburg Empire, are Catholics. Their mutual hatred and distrust keep growing more virulent as nationalist ambitions seethe throughout Eastern Europe. Only the suzerainty of socialism imposed by Josip Broz Tito after World War II managed for a time to keep the rivalry in check...
...Islam's dominant Sunni branch, that power formerly belonged to the caliph, or political successor of Muhammad, who united religious and temporal rulership. But no caliphate has existed since 1924, and Sunni jurists today believe the power rests with any legitimate Muslim political authority. Lufti Dogan, a former Turkish Religious Affairs Minister, says all Muslims can be called to jihad, but there is greater receptivity to the call in Shi'ism, the minority branch of Islam that is dominant in Iran...