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The Kurdish Question
By Alexander Weinstock
SATURDAY OCTOBER 01, 2011
Photographer: Dan Phiffer
In Istanbul, a crowd demonstrating in support of the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), facing a police line.
Settled in the Middle East since ancient times, the Kurds remain the
largest ethnic group without a state of their own in the region. About
35 million are split between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, with small
diaspora groups primarily in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Kurds'
present situation is rooted in the decision to partition areas of the
former Ottoman Empire by Great Britain and France after World War I.
Today, the Kurdish people struggle for self-determination and the
recognition of their ethnic identity within nations where they have
significant populations. For example, it is illegal for them to speak
their language in Turkey, and the country's constitution provides for
only one ethnic designation, Turkish, thus disavowing the very concept
of Kurdish ethnicity. There is little consensus between the many
Kurdish groups as to how best to achieve their goals. Overall, Kurdish
history in all four states with native Kurdish populations over the
last hundred years has been mostly marked by cultural discrimination
from ruling regimes, spotted with frequent rebellious uprisings that
were violently suppressed.
The different roots of Kurdish nationalism
The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group of Iranian origin with their own
language and culture. In modern history, they are also united by a
desire for greater autonomy, and, ideally, a state of their own, as
well as a shared history of discrimination and oppression from each
regime in question. "Self-determination is the right of the Kurdish
people," said Iraq's president Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, in an
interview with Le Figaro, published on October 31, 2006.
The causes of clashes between Kurdish minorities and central
governments have been different in each country. Kurdish nationalism
in Turkey was primarily a reaction to Turkish nationalism in the
newly-founded republic. The country's course toward secularization
under the Kemalist ideology (a movement developed by the Turkish
national movement leader,Mustafa Kemal Ataturk), which emphasized the
absence of religious influence from all public institutions,
conflicted with the devout Muslim Kurds' world view and was a major
reason for the rise of the nationalist movement.
Iranian Kurds always bore some discrimination, according to Amnesty
International, such as inability to register newborns with certain
Kurdish names and difficulty obtaining employment or adequate housing.
Such policies reached their zenith in 1979 with the Islamic
Revolution. The desire of nearly 2.5 million Sunni Kurds for regional
autonomy caused Ayatollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of predominantly
Shia Iran, to declare jihad (holy war) against them. Shia Kurds, on
the other hand, were untouched by the Ayatollah's decree and did not
face discrimination from the Iranian government. Neither have they
ever really desired autonomy or independence from Iran due to
religious homogeneity with the rest of the population. Shia Kurds have
held or currently hold key positions in the Iranian political
hierarchy, such as First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi and
former Foreign Minister Karim Sanjabi. In fact, in recent history, the
Sunni denomination of Islam has traditionally been discriminated
against in Iran regardless of the ethnic group involved. For example,
according to Sunni-News, in March of this year, Iranian authorities
have forbidden the annual forum of Sunni students set to be held in
the town of Zehan.
Ethnic, rather than religious, differences were the cause of the
Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq, according to the analysis of
Denise Natali, a lecturer at the Center for Law and Politics at
Salahaddin University in Iraqi Kurdistan, in her book The Kurds and
the State. She cites a forceful "Aribization" campaign, which started
in 1963 with the rise of the Ba'ath party to power. The initiative
involved the ban of the Kurdish language, deportation and ethnic
cleansing. The government did propose a plan, which provided for a
degree of Kurdish autonomy in 1970. However, according to George
Harris, a Near East history scholar at the Middle East Institute, this
was combined with a forceful resettlement program, in which the
government tried to settle traditionally Kurdish areas with citizens
of Arab ethnicity. The Kurds comprise a lesser percentage of the
population in Syria than in the other countries as most of them
emigrated from neighboring Turkey. It is for this reason that Syrian
Kurds have long been regarded as foreigners by the ruling Ba'ath
regime, and thus, were not allowed to participate in elections or
travel abroad as Syrian citizens. They were extended some civil
liberties as a result of the protests last winter, but some, like the
Syrian Kurdish opposition activist Shirzad Al-Yazidi in an interview
with Asharq Alawsat newspaper, call to "look to the recent declaration
of democratic autonomy in the Kurdish region of Turkey" as a model for
attaining a greater degree of independence for Syrian Kurds. Unlike
their Turkish or Iraqi counterparts, however, Syrian Kurds do not seek
independence, but rather a wider spectrum of civil rights within the
country, such as equal employment opportunities. Fawzi Shingar, a
Syrian Kurdish leader, remarked to Rudaw in English that despite the
lack of a common agenda between the many Kurdish groups, "no Kurdish
party wants independence from Syria because the Kurds are an
inseparable part of the country."
The struggle for Kurdish independence has often been violent. In the
interwar period, Turkey saw an average of three revolts per year. The
most well-known of the militant groups, the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK), has been in existence for 33 years and has been leading an
armed struggle against the Turks for 27 years. Their official agenda
is independence from Turkey and possible unification with other
Kurdish-populated areas in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The PKK is labeled a
terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union for
its violent actions such as the suicide bombing in Ankara in 2007. In
her 2007 book Blood and Belief, Reuters political analyst Aliza Marcus
contends that the PKK guerillas would stop fighting if offered amnesty
and certain liberties for Turkey's Kurdish population. Marcus also
notes that any legitimacy to their demands is countered by their
fervent devotion to PKK's recently retired leader Abdullah Ocalan, who
stressed armed struggle as a means for complete secession of Northern
Kurdistan from Turkey.
Other militant groups include the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK),
which has been in regular confrontations with the Iranian government.
The most recent incident, as reported by Reuters, occurred last July,
involving the assassination of General Abbas Kasemi of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite division in the Iranian army. Iran
responded with an armed incursion of 5,000 men into northeastern
Iraq's Kurdish region, accusing the head of Iraqi Kurdistan of
illegally sponsoring PJAK activity. Several towns were shelled by
Iranian artillery. Despite constant assurances of a victory made by
either side, the conflict went on until complete PJAK surrender on
September 29.
The statehood question
What is to be done about this situation? Some, like British journalist
David Osler of Lloyd's List, compare the Kurdish problem to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Naturally, such a comparison brings to
mind the familiar one-state vs. two-state solutions. Daniel
Greenfield, a journalist for The Kurdistan Tribune, strongly advocates
a completely independent Kurdistan, stating that it would be otherwise
impossible for Turkey to enter the EU. "Only by allowing an autonomous
Kurdish state within the borders of occupied Northern Kurdistan, will
Turkey gain stability and peace," writes Greenfield in a blog post
from June 20, 2011. He asserts that Turkey's acceptance into the EU
without resolving the Kurdish question will exacerbate ethnic
conflicts and undermine the EU's credibility. However, there are
matters other than the Kurdish question that bar Turkey's entrance
into the EU, such as the issues of Cyprus and foreign relations with
Greece.
The Kurds find themselves in a complicated situation, at least
geopolitically speaking, considering the sheer number of nations and
potential negotiations involved. Taken within the greater scope of all
of Kurdistan, a two-state solution entails carving out sizable
portions of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. This means that each Kurdish
minority will have to negotiate with its respective government, and
none of these states are inclined to simply give up territory. Iraqi
Kurds are in constant contest with the central government for the
oil-rich region of Kirkuk. The Kurds inhabit a large portion of
Turkey. Syria, with the partition of the country under the French
Mandate still fresh in the nation's consciousness, will most likely
not agree to give a piece of its land to its Kurdish residents,
despite recent advances such as President Bashar Al-Assad's granting
of Syrian citizenship to the country's large Kurdish population.
As such, more moderate solutions have been proposed. Michael Gunter, a
professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University,
in his 2007 book The Kurds Ascending, sees the solution in an
education system that provides a belief "in democracy for all people
regardless of ethnic affinity." Dr. Gunes Tezcur, who teaches
political science at Loyola University, points to more serious issues
that must first be resolved. In particular, he recommends the cutting
of funding from Iraqi Kurds to militant groups such as the Kurdish
Freedom Falcons and PKK in Turkey and an acknowledgement of the
Turkish government's civil rights violations by the EU. Some experts,
like Yale University's political science lecturer Matthew Kocher,
believe more moderate solutions have a better chance of success in
satisfying all sides involved to some degree than four separate and
costly two-state solutions. "The median Kurdish voter probably
supported center-right Turkish political parties," writes Kocher in
his 2002 paper "The Decline of PKK and the Viability of a One-State
Solution in Turkey," which was published in the MOST Journal on
Multicultural Studies. He describes the position of Turkish Kurds
regarding integration into the state. In light of the Syrian Kurds'
attitude of remaining within Syria voiced by Shingar and the autonomy
granted to Iraqi Kurds by Iraq's new constitution, it is possible that
one-state solutions are gaining popularity. This is indeed a step
toward settlement, even though more remains to be done for
reconciliation.
http://www.theinternational.org/articles/166-the-kurdish-question
By Alexander Weinstock
SATURDAY OCTOBER 01, 2011
Photographer: Dan Phiffer
In Istanbul, a crowd demonstrating in support of the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), facing a police line.
Settled in the Middle East since ancient times, the Kurds remain the
largest ethnic group without a state of their own in the region. About
35 million are split between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, with small
diaspora groups primarily in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Kurds'
present situation is rooted in the decision to partition areas of the
former Ottoman Empire by Great Britain and France after World War I.
Today, the Kurdish people struggle for self-determination and the
recognition of their ethnic identity within nations where they have
significant populations. For example, it is illegal for them to speak
their language in Turkey, and the country's constitution provides for
only one ethnic designation, Turkish, thus disavowing the very concept
of Kurdish ethnicity. There is little consensus between the many
Kurdish groups as to how best to achieve their goals. Overall, Kurdish
history in all four states with native Kurdish populations over the
last hundred years has been mostly marked by cultural discrimination
from ruling regimes, spotted with frequent rebellious uprisings that
were violently suppressed.
The different roots of Kurdish nationalism
The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group of Iranian origin with their own
language and culture. In modern history, they are also united by a
desire for greater autonomy, and, ideally, a state of their own, as
well as a shared history of discrimination and oppression from each
regime in question. "Self-determination is the right of the Kurdish
people," said Iraq's president Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, in an
interview with Le Figaro, published on October 31, 2006.
The causes of clashes between Kurdish minorities and central
governments have been different in each country. Kurdish nationalism
in Turkey was primarily a reaction to Turkish nationalism in the
newly-founded republic. The country's course toward secularization
under the Kemalist ideology (a movement developed by the Turkish
national movement leader,Mustafa Kemal Ataturk), which emphasized the
absence of religious influence from all public institutions,
conflicted with the devout Muslim Kurds' world view and was a major
reason for the rise of the nationalist movement.
Iranian Kurds always bore some discrimination, according to Amnesty
International, such as inability to register newborns with certain
Kurdish names and difficulty obtaining employment or adequate housing.
Such policies reached their zenith in 1979 with the Islamic
Revolution. The desire of nearly 2.5 million Sunni Kurds for regional
autonomy caused Ayatollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of predominantly
Shia Iran, to declare jihad (holy war) against them. Shia Kurds, on
the other hand, were untouched by the Ayatollah's decree and did not
face discrimination from the Iranian government. Neither have they
ever really desired autonomy or independence from Iran due to
religious homogeneity with the rest of the population. Shia Kurds have
held or currently hold key positions in the Iranian political
hierarchy, such as First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi and
former Foreign Minister Karim Sanjabi. In fact, in recent history, the
Sunni denomination of Islam has traditionally been discriminated
against in Iran regardless of the ethnic group involved. For example,
according to Sunni-News, in March of this year, Iranian authorities
have forbidden the annual forum of Sunni students set to be held in
the town of Zehan.
Ethnic, rather than religious, differences were the cause of the
Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq, according to the analysis of
Denise Natali, a lecturer at the Center for Law and Politics at
Salahaddin University in Iraqi Kurdistan, in her book The Kurds and
the State. She cites a forceful "Aribization" campaign, which started
in 1963 with the rise of the Ba'ath party to power. The initiative
involved the ban of the Kurdish language, deportation and ethnic
cleansing. The government did propose a plan, which provided for a
degree of Kurdish autonomy in 1970. However, according to George
Harris, a Near East history scholar at the Middle East Institute, this
was combined with a forceful resettlement program, in which the
government tried to settle traditionally Kurdish areas with citizens
of Arab ethnicity. The Kurds comprise a lesser percentage of the
population in Syria than in the other countries as most of them
emigrated from neighboring Turkey. It is for this reason that Syrian
Kurds have long been regarded as foreigners by the ruling Ba'ath
regime, and thus, were not allowed to participate in elections or
travel abroad as Syrian citizens. They were extended some civil
liberties as a result of the protests last winter, but some, like the
Syrian Kurdish opposition activist Shirzad Al-Yazidi in an interview
with Asharq Alawsat newspaper, call to "look to the recent declaration
of democratic autonomy in the Kurdish region of Turkey" as a model for
attaining a greater degree of independence for Syrian Kurds. Unlike
their Turkish or Iraqi counterparts, however, Syrian Kurds do not seek
independence, but rather a wider spectrum of civil rights within the
country, such as equal employment opportunities. Fawzi Shingar, a
Syrian Kurdish leader, remarked to Rudaw in English that despite the
lack of a common agenda between the many Kurdish groups, "no Kurdish
party wants independence from Syria because the Kurds are an
inseparable part of the country."
The struggle for Kurdish independence has often been violent. In the
interwar period, Turkey saw an average of three revolts per year. The
most well-known of the militant groups, the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK), has been in existence for 33 years and has been leading an
armed struggle against the Turks for 27 years. Their official agenda
is independence from Turkey and possible unification with other
Kurdish-populated areas in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The PKK is labeled a
terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union for
its violent actions such as the suicide bombing in Ankara in 2007. In
her 2007 book Blood and Belief, Reuters political analyst Aliza Marcus
contends that the PKK guerillas would stop fighting if offered amnesty
and certain liberties for Turkey's Kurdish population. Marcus also
notes that any legitimacy to their demands is countered by their
fervent devotion to PKK's recently retired leader Abdullah Ocalan, who
stressed armed struggle as a means for complete secession of Northern
Kurdistan from Turkey.
Other militant groups include the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK),
which has been in regular confrontations with the Iranian government.
The most recent incident, as reported by Reuters, occurred last July,
involving the assassination of General Abbas Kasemi of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite division in the Iranian army. Iran
responded with an armed incursion of 5,000 men into northeastern
Iraq's Kurdish region, accusing the head of Iraqi Kurdistan of
illegally sponsoring PJAK activity. Several towns were shelled by
Iranian artillery. Despite constant assurances of a victory made by
either side, the conflict went on until complete PJAK surrender on
September 29.
The statehood question
What is to be done about this situation? Some, like British journalist
David Osler of Lloyd's List, compare the Kurdish problem to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Naturally, such a comparison brings to
mind the familiar one-state vs. two-state solutions. Daniel
Greenfield, a journalist for The Kurdistan Tribune, strongly advocates
a completely independent Kurdistan, stating that it would be otherwise
impossible for Turkey to enter the EU. "Only by allowing an autonomous
Kurdish state within the borders of occupied Northern Kurdistan, will
Turkey gain stability and peace," writes Greenfield in a blog post
from June 20, 2011. He asserts that Turkey's acceptance into the EU
without resolving the Kurdish question will exacerbate ethnic
conflicts and undermine the EU's credibility. However, there are
matters other than the Kurdish question that bar Turkey's entrance
into the EU, such as the issues of Cyprus and foreign relations with
Greece.
The Kurds find themselves in a complicated situation, at least
geopolitically speaking, considering the sheer number of nations and
potential negotiations involved. Taken within the greater scope of all
of Kurdistan, a two-state solution entails carving out sizable
portions of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. This means that each Kurdish
minority will have to negotiate with its respective government, and
none of these states are inclined to simply give up territory. Iraqi
Kurds are in constant contest with the central government for the
oil-rich region of Kirkuk. The Kurds inhabit a large portion of
Turkey. Syria, with the partition of the country under the French
Mandate still fresh in the nation's consciousness, will most likely
not agree to give a piece of its land to its Kurdish residents,
despite recent advances such as President Bashar Al-Assad's granting
of Syrian citizenship to the country's large Kurdish population.
As such, more moderate solutions have been proposed. Michael Gunter, a
professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University,
in his 2007 book The Kurds Ascending, sees the solution in an
education system that provides a belief "in democracy for all people
regardless of ethnic affinity." Dr. Gunes Tezcur, who teaches
political science at Loyola University, points to more serious issues
that must first be resolved. In particular, he recommends the cutting
of funding from Iraqi Kurds to militant groups such as the Kurdish
Freedom Falcons and PKK in Turkey and an acknowledgement of the
Turkish government's civil rights violations by the EU. Some experts,
like Yale University's political science lecturer Matthew Kocher,
believe more moderate solutions have a better chance of success in
satisfying all sides involved to some degree than four separate and
costly two-state solutions. "The median Kurdish voter probably
supported center-right Turkish political parties," writes Kocher in
his 2002 paper "The Decline of PKK and the Viability of a One-State
Solution in Turkey," which was published in the MOST Journal on
Multicultural Studies. He describes the position of Turkish Kurds
regarding integration into the state. In light of the Syrian Kurds'
attitude of remaining within Syria voiced by Shingar and the autonomy
granted to Iraqi Kurds by Iraq's new constitution, it is possible that
one-state solutions are gaining popularity. This is indeed a step
toward settlement, even though more remains to be done for
reconciliation.
http://www.theinternational.org/articles/166-the-kurdish-question