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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.
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.
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.
Deliberately selling out to murderous authoritarian governments is about as close to pure evil as you can get.
Historical Revisionism. Let's call it what it really is. Lies.
Billions of people?
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
The state of Israel ceased to exist under the Roman Empire. I didn't say it never existed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.