Education, inter-ethnic hatred, identity: the kurdish question in south-eastern turkey

“why do turks and kurds hate each other? ” i’ve asked myself this question many times, i’ve asked to the interested parties, i keep asking myself which could be the roots of such a deep hatred. in summmer 2015 i decided to take part to a volunteering project in gaziantep, turkey, about 50 km from the syrian border and about 130 km from kobanê. the relation between the turkish government and pkk was starting to crack again and the war was a constant in syria, few kilometers away. in those moment i felt that it was the place where i had to be, pushed by the necessity of ‘doing domething’, thinking mainly of the refugee crisis and the syrian refugees i’d be working with according to my project description. What i didn’t know, while in istanbul waiting for my connection flight, was that i was about to live an experience that would have changed me for good, would have changed my way of seeing things, my academic and professional path. It would have made me irreparably become fond of the kurdish cause. In my two months in turkey i did several activities, from volunteering with kurdish, syrian, turkish, iraqi and afghan kids in an orphanage run by the turkish government, to volunteering in a pediatric cancer ward, to street volunteering in poor peripherical neighbourhoods. i learnt turkish, hitchhiked across the country meeting every kind of people, visiting turkish and kurdish town, always hosted by locals, impressed by the generosity and ospitality i found on the road. during my time in turkey i had the chance to hear both sides on the kurdish question and i met turks and kurds of all ages, sex, religion and socio-cultural background, from the friends and colleagues working in local and foreign ngos as humanitarian aid workers, to my conservative neighbours, from students to their grandmothers, from businessmen to marginalized families in the periphery, from activists to artisans in the bazaar, from truck drivers i travelled with on long distances to the baker down the street. I talked to many refugees, and to a turkish soldier working at the border with syria. I listened to kids, many kids. From the kids in the orphanage survived from war and mysery, to the turkish kids learning english in a private school in the city center, from the ones in the outskirts of the city, who didn’t go to school. From the refugees kids on the run with their families, to the ones alone, picking up rubbish in the street to re-sell it, to the hospitalized kids who didn’t know if they would grow up. In children, in all those children, i want to look for the virus of hatred towards the other. Can we talk about a hate virus? If yes, when does it set on? Is it possible to intervene before? How much does the environment where one grows up contribute to fuelling hatred?