An Open Letter to Our Esteemed Governor of Iğdır, Mr. Enver Ünlü

Dear Governor:

According to a news report published in the Yeşil Iğdır Newspaper on 18-12-2019, a book project on IĞDIR will be implemented, referencing the books of our authors Ziya Zeki Acar, Nizamettin Onk, and the late Nihat Çetinkaya, with the encouragement of the Iğdır Provincial Directorate of National Education. As the public appreciates, the Provincial Directorate of National Education, representing our state, is directly subordinate to you and cannot implement any project without your approval. Therefore, I have penned this open letter to you personally. I would like to summarize my thoughts in bullet points:

1. All three authors' theses regarding the Civil War in Iğdır between 1918-1920 and its subsequent inclusion within the borders of the Grand National Assembly are fabricated, biased, and most have been refuted by me personally.
2. The selected authors are right-wing and of Azerbaijani Turkish (Azeri) origin. Kurdish-origin or left-wing Azerbaijani Turkish-origin authors have been consciously excluded from the commission.
3. As far as I can see from the internet, you are originally from Çorum. Assuming you are one of those who best know the massacres that occurred in Çorum and Maraş in the 1970s, and assuming you have been informed by your advisors in Iğdır that an ethnic (Kurdish-Azeri) tension and animosity, which has persisted since 1950, still exists in our city, please make decisions that will extinguish, not ignite, this ethnic sensitivity.
4. In the past, many governors had the books of the aforementioned authors published and distributed on glossy paper with state encouragement, featuring the picture of the governor of the time on the first page. Unfortunately, it is quite significant and equally saddening that our state, which should maintain an equal distance from its citizens, imposes books containing biased and deliberate information on the public, especially on youth, as "references" and strives in this direction. As I understand it, our state seems determined to continue this unfair stance.
5. Depriving our Kurdish-origin citizens in Iğdır of the truth and knowledge that their grandfathers and fathers contributed to the establishment of this country, and in a sense, excluding and pushing Kurdish youth, who are already deprived of reading and writing in their mother tongue, into despair by the state, means throwing them into the arms of illegal organizations.
6. The correct approach is this: We have an autonomous university in Iğdır. Our professors assign master's and doctoral thesis topics to their students. The young researcher takes any book as a reference, completes their thesis within the framework of academic autonomy and with a sense of conscientious responsibility. Ideas clash, and truths emerge. I do not find it ethical for you to condemn these researchers to a single book as if it represents the official view of the state.
7. I had previously written an article through the press, addressing you, suggesting that you publish the book "Iğdır Tarihi" by the late Veli Orkun Bey, who first wrote the history of Iğdır, and stating my readiness to provide the necessary assistance in this regard. As a Governor who listens to his conscience and genuinely wishes to serve the people of Iğdır, you could have two books written about Iğdır published and distributed on glossy paper: 1) Veli Orkun's "Iğdır Tarihi" and 2) the memoirs of Hacı Ali Ekber Tufan.
8. As an intellectual, I will oppose this project to the very end. I am ready to pay whatever price is necessary. My conscience does not allow the exclusion of Kurdish youth by the state, nor their search for identity and future in the ideological traps of illegal organizations. As Governor, you are in Iğdır today and will be somewhere else tomorrow. I politely remind you not to forget the fact that the legacy you leave behind should be of universal and conscientious value.

Sincerely,

Mücahit Özden Hun.