Shoulder to shoulder, toe to toe.

Islam is not an Arab religion,

Correct

This is why today many Turks and Iranians, in seeking to establish their own cultural identities (Kurds too actually), move away from Islam.

Incorrect. Being from the countries in question myself (all 3, actually, since I'm actually ethnically Iranian), you are completely misevaluating what has happened within these ethnic groups. Turks were secularized due to German influence during the Tanzimat period of the Ottoman empire -- the Ottomans were in a bit of a declien at the time, and Germany, being our ally at the time, managed to influence through secularization reforms. Ever since that secularization, the government became more and more decentralized away from the caliph, until Ataturk founded the Turkish Republic after the ANZAC forces tried to invade the motherland. This is why Turkiye is secular, not because of any ethnic tensions with some notion of "Arabized Islam." If Islam was "Arabized," we would not have been able to carry its flag proudly for 800 years -- Islam is simply Islamized.

As for the Kurds, they have had strong Islamist political undercurrents for a long time, and after the Turkish republic was established, many Kurdish groups repelled and tried to help re-establish some sort of an Islamic state. Of course, with Turkish nationalism rising, and the fracturing of the pan-Islamic Ottoman identity, the the inter-ethnic Kurd-Turk conflict began. With the US backing up the Turkish Republic for geopolitical reasons (proximity to Russia), the USSR began to fund Kurdish ethnic nationalist groups in Turkiye during the Cold War, in response, hoping to combat American influence. Naturally, these ethnic nationalist groups were Marxist in nature (PKK terrorists), else they would not get USSR support, it was simply the nature of proxy warfare and still is.

As a result, you have two apparently-secular entities, each representing Turks and Kurds respectively, who now consistently hate each other due to ethnic conflict over the past 100 years. Absolutely none of it has to do with any notion of "Arabizing Islam" that you keep trying to shoehorn in for some reason. I understand, given your sectarian affiliation, as well as your own ethnic background, you are apprehensive to Arab culture, but you really should not project that onto any analysis of history that you are trying to make, it's simply intellectually dishonest.

how did i write this much

/r/islam Thread Parent