A Discourse on the Efforts to Establish a Kurdish Nation State: Part 2
Thomas (TJ) Ball, tb357@cornell.edu
The following is the second part of a two part analysis of the Kurdish national movement, part one of which can be found in the August/September issue of the Cornell International Affairs Observer (CIAO).
While the institutional and structural constraints placed on the Kurdish nationalist movement by the drawing of post-conflict, post-colonial borders — in addition to the fact that the creation of a Kurdish state directly challenges the interests of neighboring powers — may provide an adequate explanation of why the Kurds have yet to establish their own nation-state, I’d like to introduce another obstacle the Kurds have had to confront that partially spurs from the first two. In any power struggle, there are a limited number of means through which minority groups can accomplish their goals or at the very least receive adequate representation in their given power arena. Unfortunately, it’s often hard to unify these different methods of advocating for minority interests such that the progress of one doesn’t come as a detriment to another. When the Kurds first started pursuing a nationalist movement in the early 20th century they started political parties in the various countries which housed their divided population. In Iran and Iraq these political parties emerged as early as 1945 and 1946, immediately following the end of the second World War and just before the creation of the Israeli Zionist state. Kurdish nationalist parties emerged somewhat later in Syria and Turkey, in part due to the severe political repression of the Kurds in those countries . As political parties proved ineffective many Kurds descended into more forceful and violent methods of activism for statehood, which ultimately hindered their movement.
At the outset of Kurdish nationalism, Iranian Kurds enjoyed the greatest successes, at least in a political sense. In fact, in 1946 the Democratic Party of Kurdistan in Iran (PDKI) established the Republic of Mahabad as an autonomous region in northern Iran . After an intensive Iranian assault later in the same year led to the fall of the Kurdish republic the Kurds of Iran were forced into an extremely disadvantageous position in Iranian politics. After political participation failed, the Kurds attempted armed struggle against the Iranian government which also yielded limited success. By 2006 dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of the PDKI and its leadership led to the emergence of a splinter party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). [1] Shortly after its founding the KDP relocated to Iraq and is now at the forefront of Kurdish political organizations. The KDP is loosely affiliated with the PDKI, Kurdish National Council (KNC) in Syria, the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria (KDPS), and the Kurdistan Democratic Party North (KDPB) in Turkey. [2] The Kurdish political alliance headed by the KDP is the primary source of Kurdish political unification, though other alliances like the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which brings together Kurdish political parties in Iran and Syria, are attempting to do the same with a slightly different agenda. Over time the continued repression of Kurdish political parties by governmental forces, along with the overall inability to garner widespread support for their attempts at autonomy, forced these parties into seclusion. With the failure of traditional political avenues, some Kurds decided it was necessary to return to and intensify their earlier methods of armed struggle.
2004 brought the rise of the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran, which described itself as “a political, social, and cultural movement with an armed wing.” [3] PJAK is active in the Kurdish political sphere, however it is best known for its militant activism and its extremist measures. PJAK emerged as an outshoot of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which was first established in 1978 “‘as a reaction to Turkish oppression of Kurds in Turkey and the continuous military interference in the Kurdish regions in the southeast part of modern Turkey.’” [4] Both PJAK and the PKK have been labeled as terrorist groups by the United States as a result of their involvement in human and drug trafficking, extortion, numerous urban and roadside bombings, and the use of guerrilla tactics. [5] These extremist methods of securing a Kurdish nation-state have done little to advance the Kurds’ national interest, but rather have resulted in violent backlash by regional governments and a decrease in Western support for some Kurdish nationalist movements. Oppressed minority groups like the Kurds often have their predicament made even more complicated because major world powers typically favor the state in internal power struggles when violence is reciprocated by both sides, though “many oppositional groups and armed political movements [merely] apply such tactics of violence and terror very like those of the state to achieve their goals.” [6] Despite Kurdish extremist groups simply matching the offensive actions of state institutions, the Kurds receive far more vocal backlash in return. It could easily be argued that the Kurds lack of political unity and violent extremism in the name of Kurdish nationalism in the past two decades has only further burdened the structural and institutional constraints imposed on the Kurds.
Though any in-depth historical analysis of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey would reveal how different the progression of each movement was, I focused on Iranian Kurds in the prior section because their political and extremist activism approximately parallels that of Kurdish nationalism as a whole. What I mean is that certain occurrences in the Iranian Kurdish nationalist movement were part of broader trends or occurrences common to the Kurdish nationalist movements in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey as well. That being said, I feel that it is important to make note of several major events in the other Kurdish regions to get a clearer understanding of the entirety of the Kurds’ situation at present. For instance, while all four of the Kurdish states saw — at least to some extent — the gradual shift from the establishment of political parties to armed struggle to seclusion and eventually onto more extreme militant action, in Turkey the more violent components of Kurdish nationalism emerged much sooner than in the other countries. [7] The Kurds of Turkey may defend themselves by pointing out that they had to turn to more violent means of activism because Turkish repression was so severe, but regardless of whether the Kurds were justified in actively performing what the Turkish government might consider “acts of terrorism” against the government and Turkish peoples, this approach to promoting the creation of a Kurdish nation-state aversely affected the progress of Kurdish nationalism throughout the region. As for why the Turkish government was — and is — so harsh in their repression of the Kurds and their culture, its likely because the Turks themselves had to work extremely hard to secure a state of their own and don’t want a Kurdish nation-state to threaten the Turkish influence they fought so hard to secure. [8]
On the other end of the spectrum, Iraqi Kurds made relatively early headway in the movement for an autonomous Kurdish nation, despite having their own party divisions and a plethora of armed conflicts with government officials later on. By the early 1970s Kurds in Southern Kurdistan — Northern Iraq — had already signed a tentative agreement with Iraqi officials to establish an autonomous Kurdish region. [9] Unfortunately for the Kurds this agreement was never actualized and the disheveled Kurds descended into conflict amongst themselves and with the Iraqi government. This continued for years until an extremely deadly use of chemical weapons by Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein led to mounting international pressure for a sovereign Kurdish region in Iraq. In 1992 the Kurdistan Regional Government was established in Northern Iraq and after Iraq’s political power structure crumbled in 2003 amidst the second Gulf War, Kurdish military forces, known as the peshmerga, were able to secure this portion of the Kurdish nation by forcing out Iraqi government forces. [10] It is important to observe the stark contrast between Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and Iraq, not only to fully understand why the Kurds have had such difficulty to date in securing a nation-state, but also to see how greatly government sentiment and action in the four countries with major Kurdish populations has impacted the nationalist movement.
As this two-part paper has clearly outlined, to suggest that there is a single reason why the Kurds of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey have been able to secure the establishment of a Kurdish nation-state would be a gross misrepresentation of the Kurdish national movement and the various circumstances which have led to the Kurds’ current situation. Some will surely argue that the arbitrary borders imposed by world powers following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire are responsible for the Kurds inability to mobilize widespread support for the creation of Kurdistan. Alternatively, other individuals may posit that because many of the major polarized groups in the Middle East have some state which they govern or exercise great control over, it is easy to see why there are strong disincentives for allowing the emergence of a Kurdish state that may challenge the current power structure. Upon greater consideration it’s clear that both of these stances are valid and join a host of other explanations for why the Kurds have had such difficulty with their nationalist movement. A full analysis of the Kurdish question of statehood must also take account of the lack of unity among Kurds as a result of divided populations and the dispersion of Kurds across mountainous territories, as well as the lack of support for self-determination from Western powers because the Kurdish diaspora hasn’t been as pervasive as that of other nations who were also promised nation-states in the Middle East. Finally, it is important to also consider whether the shift in Kurdish nationalism from utilizing political parties to utilizing extremist militant groups in some areas has helped or hindered the Kurds’ efforts, for these methods of activism often antagonized the issues of Western support and Kurdish unity. Regardless of which factor one considers the greatest consideration for why the Kurds have yet to create their own nation-state, only time will tell as to whether the Kurds can overcome the numerous, multi-faceted constraints placed upon their nation to create a sovereign, autonomous Kurdistan.
Notes
1 Rodi Hevian, “The Main Kurdish Political Parties,” Rubin Center (2013).
2 Wadie Jwaideh, The Kurdish National Movement: Its Orgins and Development (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 252.
3 Rodi Hevian, “The Main Kurdish Political Parties,” Rubin Center (2013).
4 Ibid.
5 “Turkey: The PKK and a Kurdish Settlement,” International Crisis Group, accessed May 9, 2016.
6 Ramazan Aras, The Formation of Kurdishness in Turkey (New York: Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2014), 24.
7 Ibid 49.
8 Ibid 45.
9 Mohammed Ahmed and Michael Gunter, The Kurdish Spring (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, Inc., 2013), 94.
10 Ibid 95.
