i'm not sure i should be writing this

Yesterday was Nevruz. Or Newroz. Depending on your ethno-cultural-political standpoint. It's "the w problem," a small reminder of the larger "Kurdish problem" in Turkey. Here we had an outdoor concert to celebrate Nevruz. The Turkish flag was prominently displayed behind the stage, where Black Sea music was followed by a grungy rock band. It didn't mean much to me until some background reading gave me the context of the holiday. An ancient pagan festival of spring celebrated all over the region- Iran, Georgia, Central Asia, and other countries- it was banned in Turkey until a few years ago, because the Kurds were celebrating it as an expression of their separate cultural identity and political goals. So now it's a Turkish holiday! Problem solved. You can read about it on the Turkish Ministry of Culture website, with the Turkish spelling Nevruz, where many different spellings and origins for the holiday are mentioned, except the Kurdish ones. Or you can read about it from the Kurdish point of view if you google their spelling "newroz." There seem to be lots of interesting stories to be learned in Turkey. What's most interesting is an estimated 30% of the Turkish population are ethnic Kurds and I haven't met ANY that I know of. Seems like it's the kind of thing you keep to yourself. What baffles me is that all over the world, governments are not able to identify the basic mechanics of cause and effect. Oppression of an impulse intensifies and gives strength to that impulse. Don't they get it? If they had just let the Kurds have their own cultural identity within Turkey all this time there wouldn't be a "Kurdish problem" now. And why is everyone so obsessed with having their own state anyway? They'd still disagree. We'd have to keep breaking into smaller and smaller states to maintain this ideal of purity and sameness these nationalist impulses are built on, until eventually each person becomes a nation of one. And even then, trying to remain hardline can have disastrous results.