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Google Erases Kurdistan From Maps in Compliance With Turkish Government (kurdistan24.net)

schwit1 shares a report: Google has removed a map outlining the geographical extent of the Greater Kurdistan after the Turkish state asked it to do so, a simple inquiry on the Internet giant's search engine from Wednesday on can show. "Unavailable. This map is no longer available due to a violation of our Terms of Service and/or policies," a note on the page that the map was previously on read. Google did not provide further details on how the Kurdistan map violated its rules.

The map in question, available for years, used to be on Google's My Maps service, a feature of Google Maps that enables users to create custom maps for personal use or sharing through search. Maps drawn by ancient Greeks, Islamic historians, Ottomans, and Westerners showing Kurdistan with alternative names such as "Corduene" or "Karduchi" have existed since antiquity. The use of the name "Kurdistan" was banned by the administration of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the immediate aftermath of the crushed Sheikh Said uprising for Kurdish statehood in 1925.
Further reading: Local media report. "Turkish officials outraged by Google map showing the unofficial border of Kurdistan. Turkey demands the removal of the map. There are around 40 million Kurds divided between 4 main countries," Jiyar Gol, a BBC correspondent tweeted.

30 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Re:There's no such country as Kurdistan by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The winner writes the history. That is always the case.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  2. Google is evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Deliberately selling out to murderous authoritarian governments is about as close to pure evil as you can get.

    1. Re:Google is evil by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No, but they should be the ones telling foreign authoritarian nation states to go fuck themselves, and not reshaping the world and spreading "fake news" at their behest. Wiping out the political demarcation denies that information to others and serves the agenda of Turkish propaganda

    2. Re:Google is evil by puddingebola · · Score: 2

      Lets draw a distinction between a group of people seeking to form their own social contract, and a group of people seeking to deny another group of people their rights as human beings. "National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 'Self determination' is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action." - Woodrow Wilson.

    3. Re: Google is evil by jpaine619 · · Score: 2

      Confederate states never existed on their own. The north just let em think they existed for the purpose of war.

      The real reason for the civil war was to get rid of all the racist assholes.

      I see. So when Lincoln said the war was about preserving the Union and not about slavery, he was lying? You're an idiot. Slavery wasn't banned until it became obvious the North was going to win. Lincoln opposed slavery but was never willing to go to war over it. The war was ONLY about preserving the union.

    4. Re: Google is evil by larryjoe · · Score: 2

      There exists is a disturbing pattern of Google conduct. Google went out of their way to placate a human-rights violating, totalitarian regime in order to preserve the ability to increase revenues. Google could have simply added disclaimers about disputed territories, unrecognized claims, or fictional maps. But they chose the path of greatest revenue.

      Are we still talking about Kurdistan or did we just move on to China?

      We moved on from China to Turkey to establish a pattern of trading revenue for granting the wishes of human-rights violating, totalitarian regimes.

      Of course, the alternative is that no quid pro quo exists and rather that that Google does actually ideologically support Chinese censorship and surveillance and Turkish suppression of the Kurdish.

  3. Historical Revisionism by fishscene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Historical Revisionism. Let's call it what it really is. Lies.

  4. Re:Politics by Desler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Billions of people?

  5. Re: There's no such country as Kurdistan by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2, Informative

    There was no country called Israel for 1900 years either. The last long-term ruler of the area was the Ottoman Empire so the former citizens of that have a far better claim on the area than a bunch of European refugees.

  6. Re:There's no such country as Kurdistan by TFlan91 · · Score: 2

    Quite literally... In this case, two people, british and french, who really had no clue as to what they were doing, have been shaping the world for almost a century. (source)

  7. Re:Kurdistan Doesn't Exist by jfdavis668 · · Score: 2

    Pakistan was a place that didn't exist, either. But, if you kill enough people, you to can have your own country.

  8. What about Mexico by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Think about it from the point of view of Turkey. How about if Google showed a map of Mexico that included Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California? USA wouldn't be happy.

    1. Re:What about Mexico by 1ucius · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There are many, many such maps " drawn by ancient" people and still used for "personal use or sharing through search." e.g., anything showing the borders before the Mexican-American war.

      Nobody in the U.S. cares, least of all, the U.S. government.

    2. Re:What about Mexico by careysub · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you read the summary, no need to even go to TFA, you will see that Google deleted a personal map created by an individual on a service that exists for exactly that purpose - MyMaps.

      If someone created a MyMap showing an ethnic region where there are many Latinos which extended into the U.S. and labelled it "LatinoLand" of something, why would the U.S. care, and why would it have any standing to demand that the personal map be deleted?

      This is treating a personal map, showing a real ethnic group's real distribution, as if it were, say, child pornography -- something inherently criminal and illegal in all contexts.

      And what should the Kurds call the region where Kurds actually live? "Place where the Kurd's live"? Seems reasonable, wouldn't you think? That is exactly what "Kurdistan" literally means.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
  9. Re:There's no such country as Kurdistan by datavirtue · · Score: 2

    Google erased Kurdistan?!! We knew it would come to this, however it seems they started with a powerless country and no one will really complain. One by one they are going to erase us all until only the state of Google remains.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  10. Re:Kurdistan Doesn't Exist by PPH · · Score: 2

    by integration of the Kurds into their society

    Kurds don't want to be integrated into Turkey.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  11. Was it the name? by tepples · · Score: 2

    How about if Google showed a map of Mexico that included Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California? USA wouldn't be happy.

    I doubt the United States would object to a historic map labeled "Mexico prior to American intervention". If it did, then a map of Mexico as of 1824 would already have been removed from an article about American intervention in Mexico on an American website.

    Would the map of Kurdish regions have been removed if its author eschewed the disputed name "Kurdistan" in favor of "Historically Kurdish regions of modern-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria"?

  12. Re:Nothing Worse by Luckyo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One of the highest female genital mutilation rates in the region. Unapologetic and unironic marxist-leninist system.

    It's true that enemy of your enemy can be your friend, but the enemy in question is all but gone for the West at this stage. Which means there's no need to maintain friendship with someone who's ideologically diametrically opposed to capitalism. And kurds are even more prone to fighting their civil wars in European countries after going there as refugees, and about as rapey as everyone else from the region when in contact with Western women whom they view just like everyone else in the area does. Massive sluts who view sex like those in Brave New World and who utterly emasculated their own men and are in a desperate need of a true man.

    It's the same reason kurds have been dropped by the West after their purpose was served after first Iraq war. They're not any more "decent" than the rest of the region unless you either really like marxism-leninism and really hate capitalism, which is unfortunately increasingly true for modern Western media workers. Or you're into empowering women through dampening their biological interest in men. Which aligns with interests of modern feminism that are doing just that. The only divergence is that they do this via psychological rather than surgical methods in the West.

    But if you're not ideologically aligned with those two groups, then compared to the rest of the region they're marginally better in some ways and worse in others. As such, your approach to alliance with such people should be pragmatic to the extreme, just like it would be with any other entity that is utterly opposed to you on societal level. And pragmatic reasons to support Kurds ran out with failure of IS. Turkey and Iraq are far more important as allies and both are diametrically opposed to Kurdistan (greater or not) as a state. Which is the primary political goal of Kurds today. So when the choice comes to choose either Turkey and Iraq or Kurdish forces, the pragmatic choice is obvious to the extreme.

  13. Re: There's no such country as Kurdistan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sorry, but your bible is a work of fiction. Do you have a real source?

  14. Re: There's no such country as Kurdistan by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Informative

    The state of Israel ceased to exist under the Roman Empire. I didn't say it never existed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

  15. Re:ethnicity and nationalism is tricky business by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

    Except that the Turkish government has imposed their rules on the entire planet by having the map taken down. The map violates their laws so then they should have had Google make it so nobody in Turkey could view the map while leaving it up for everyone else to view.

  16. Re:Nothing Worse by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Kurds are in deep economic trouble because they're practically under an embargo both from the central government in Baghdad as well as from Turkey, with Syria and Iran being absolutely no help. They do try to run a welfare state that they can't really afford, but the rest is you smoking crack. Capitalism is very much alive and well in Kurdistan.

    Turkey is becoming another Islamic theocracy under Erdogan, the territory is strategically important but as allies they're in the "they're bastards, but they're our bastards" category. They're pissed off about the West and EU and is looking east to Russia for more dictator-friendly regimes. The Iraqi government can barely keep the country together, if it hadn't been for foreign military support and the Peshmerga most the country would be lost to IS.

    They do seem to be one of the territories with a history of female genital mutilation though, I'll give you that. But hey they have women in the armed forces, this is not "stay at home and pop out babies in a burka"-Islam. The problem is that the creation of any Kurdistan - even just the independence of the Iraqi region - would set off a helluva chain reaction nobody wants to see where leads. But I think they've earned it.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  17. Re:There's no such country as Kurdistan by bob4u2c · · Score: 2

    What troubles you Google Brother? Are you not of the happy? All hail the glorious Google!

  18. Re: There's no such country as Kurdistan by jpaine619 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No she didn't.. The President isn't elected by popular vote. Never has been, never will be. The fact that you don't understand WHY the system is as it is does not make it wrong or unfair.

    Systems like this are all over the place.

    Case in point: You could own 99.9% of the shares in a company, but if it's not preferred (voting) stock, you have no say in how the company runs. You get the share of the profits (if they are paid out) but no say in day to day operations. This information is not secret. Companies have to disclose this information. But if you bitch about it later, nobody is going to give a fuck.

    Constitutional amendments require the consent of the states. The smaller states (population wise) will not cut their own throats and change this system.

  19. Re:There's no such country as Kurdistan by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    Just as you can find Palistine under the similar name Philistine on biblical-era maps, you can find Karduchia too.

    If you read Anabasis by Xenophon, he describes in detail their northwest border, which is currently in land claimed by Turkey. If you use a topo map, you can see that their traditional land includes most of a mountain range that goes from just north and east of the Euphrates river in modern Iraq, north to their border with the land that was traditionally Western Armenia, east in Iran, and south nearly to the Persian Gulf.

  20. Re:There's no such country as Kurdistan by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    The British and French are responsible for a lot of problems in Southwest Asia, but not this one. The fate of the Kurds was sealed by Turkish victory in the 1919-1922 War of Independence. The British and French were the losers, along with their Greek and Armenian allies.

  21. Re:There's no such country as Kurdistan by Aighearach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Right, 2500 years ago when the Ten Thousand invaded Karduchia (in order to pass through it and escape the Persian Empire) they were victorious in their strategic retreat. They fought a running battle from the southern border, in what is now Iraq, all the way north into Western Armenia, where the people were much more accepting of strangers. (!)(lol)

    The Karduchians had previously been famously invaded by 1 million Persian cavalry, none (!) of whom made it home. If you look at the topo map, you can see a really really long valley, not a river valley but rather the remnants of an ancient mountain chain, with steep sides and no exits but at the ends, something like 50 or 100 miles apart. They blocked the end with their army, and the whole length of the trench was lined with villagers throwing down stones.

    The Greeks took a different route; they captured a guide, and went right through the heart of the land, down the twisting mountain roads that the Karduchians used for local traffic. Without a guide, you just go in circles, but with a guide, (and heavy infantry) they were able to fight from ridge to ridge in two teams.

    And later Xenophon wrote that history down. So it is too late to erase Karduchia merely by winning some war, because victors of yesteryear already wrote it down. And being that they had no intention of war, the Greeks merely wanted to pass through the land, they give an honest and direct account. The Kurds refused to even negotiate for passage at all, but they did negotiate and respect temporary cease-fires for both sides to recover and bury the dead.

  22. For those unaware of the history of the region by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

    In a nutshell, a large part of the Middle East including part of modern-day Turkey used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. One of the less-known facts about WWI was that the Ottoman Empire was on the losing side, which eventually led to its dissolution. The European victors then carved it up with little regard for the cultural and religious boundaries of the indigenous people. The modern countries there - Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel - Palestine, Jordan were drawn with these arbitrary borders. The instability in the region is partially (mostly) due to the cultural borders not coinciding with the political borders. The Kurds (about 40 million of them) were the biggest ethnicity screwed out of a country to call their own. They're spread between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, and all of those countries are paranoid that the Kurds will try to declare independence and secede.

  23. Re:Usage of language by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Greek isn't really that difficult to translate into English.

    For historical reasons. ;)

    The "million" Persian cavalry was cited in the story as a rumor. Other military numbers are given by visual estimate, and there are detailed descriptions of the military engagements and who was where, who fought who, etc. The Ten Thousand is how many professional soldiers the Greeks had with them; that's just the people with full heavy armor. Each of them had a bunch of helpers, and there were lots of light units with them. They had numerous generals, and while Xenophon started as just a mercenary, he quickly rose during the campaign to be a general.

    They describe the numbers because it was important to the story, if you assume that the intended audience would have their own military experience from that era. And for the same reason, the observations of numbers in the story are likely to be fairly accurate. I'm not sure why you presume that any sort of literary detail that you're not personally interested in must be "masturbary."[sic] And honestly, commentary on an English translation by a person who doesn't know the word masturbatory is a bit of an exercise in, well, you get it.

    But absolutely, a story about an army that had to travel that far to get home, fighting through most of the lands as they went, is going to have a certain "mad man dragging his jock strap" character to it; because that is what it is like to engage in that sort of activity. If you're not ready to be mad, you're not ready to get home, you might as well dig your grave where you stand.

    I don't think the Greeks cared at all about Arabic society, and they certainly didn't go that far south. They marched from Ionia through Turkey to what is now Syria, and crossed into Persia from the west. A route that was not considered wise at the time, but they were imposing enough to manage it. They fought a major battle with the Persians near what is now Baghdad. They were victorious in their own engagements, but the Persian prince they were fighting for died in the battle, and so their side had lost, and the story is their journey home. Most of the story takes places in Karduchia and Western Armenia.

    I'm sure there were a few Arabs in the Persian army somewhere, but it wasn't part of the story. It is only in the last few hundred years that the Arab population have been that far north to border the Kurds.

  24. Re:places where kurd live is turkey not kurdistan by Cederic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Then why is the Turkish government so fucked off about someone creating a map delineating the geographic boundaries of the areas in which Kurds live?

    Sounds to me like the Turks want to commit another genocide. Hopefully the Kurds can avoid the same outcome the Armenians suffered.