Iran and Turkey are now returning to a long-time hobby: they shoot the Kurds. “Shooting” is a very general characterization. They send planes and drones, they launch missiles and bombs; Iran announces that it has killed 24 “terrorists”, and Turkey announces that 14 Kurds are dead; the Turkish president promises to send ground forces. The US condemns Iran in harsh language, and Turkey in soft language.
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Both, Iran and Turkey, are doing so in the name of their war on terror. Iran’s terrorists are the hijab rebels, whose large-scale protest against the morality police puts the Islamic Republic on the brink of revolution; Turkey’s terrorists are the ones being held responsible for last week’s deadly explosion in central Istanbul.
Since September, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been attacking Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) bases inside Iraq. In recent days, the Turkish army has increased its attacks on the bases of the ‘Kurdish Workers’ Party’ (PKK) and its allies inside Syria and Iraq. “Doomsday!” tweeted the Turkish Ministry of Defense on Friday. “The bastards paid the price!” The tweet included a photo of a Turkish fighter jet taking off from its base, apparently on its way to kill Kurdish rascals.
The miscreants rushed to ensure an appropriate response, and even damaged a police convoy near the Turkey-Syria border. President Tayyip Erdogan announced in a speech to the nation that following the air and artillery attacks “there will come, God willing, a ground operation as well.”
“Kurdish terrorists” against the hijab
The Iranian regime goes out of its way to give a Kurdish “separatist” color to the civil uprising, in order to justify the repression. This week there were reports of loaded military convoys entering the Kurdish city of Mahabad, in northwestern Iran, near the Iraqi border. Echoes of the use of heavy weapons can be heard in videos, which are common on social media. The authorities present this campaign of repression as directed against “separatist terrorist groups”.
Mahsa Amini, whose murder by the morality police in September ignited the protest movement, was indeed Kurdish. The first protests over her murder did arise in Kurdish cities. Kurdish separatists are indeed active in the border areas. But the speed with which the protests spread across the rest of Iran obliterates any local and regional identity. It is not Kurds who set fire to the house where Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, was born last week.
Kurdish separatist tendencies in Iran have existed since at least the middle of the last century. For one year, 1946, there was even a Kurdish republic, also known as the “Republic of Mahabad”. It was made possible by the short-lived Soviet occupation of northern Iran during World War II. The Kurds did not want independence then, but autonomy, but their demands included priority status for the Kurdish language and the appointment of only Kurds to political and administrative positions. This was enough for the Shah regime. Immediately after the withdrawal of the Soviets, the Iranians brutally suppressed the republic, and hanged the man who headed it.
Several hundred supporters of the republic managed to march on foot to Soviet Azerbaijan. They were headed by Mustafa Al Barzani, who later led the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq. If the first rebellion was pro-Soviet, here the second rebellion was pro-Western, and was even supported for a while by Iran, showing us that the Kurds had difficulty finding permanent allies. Their history is rich in betrayals and poor in true friendships.
The map of the Middle East could have changed
There were no bigger losers in the Middle East in the last century than the Kurds. They missed the clock of history. While the European powers divided the Middle East among themselves at the end of the First World War, drew maps and invented countries, the Kurds were dispossessed. They found themselves divided between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Persia/Iran. Three of the four did not even exist as such until a century ago.
During these hundred years, more than once the main common denominator of the above-mentioned four countries was the common persecution of the Kurds. The only time when Kurds received any national rights came in the shadow of a regime’s defeat, not thanks to its generosity. This happened in Iraq after the Kuwait War, in 1991 Kurdish autonomy then emerged under American auspices. At its height, it extended its rule to Arab-populated areas in northern Iraq, including the city of Kirkuk, and even toyed with the intention of establishing an independent state. Three old Kurdish persecutors rushed to join hands to thwart its plans.
The assignment of the word “independence” to “Kurds” has threatened Arabs, Turks and Iranians. The map explains why. If all the areas inhabited by Kurds, perhaps 30 million people, were joined into one geographical unit, from the heart of Anatolia all the way down to the Persian Gulf, the geography and politics of the Middle East would change dramatically. Turkey would lose half of its territory and half of its population. Iran would lose the geographical continuity to the rest of the Middle East. Iraq and Syria would lose a significant part of their territory and their oil treasures.
A century ago, a Kurdish state was no less likely than an ‘Iraqi’, or a ‘Lebanese’ state. But over the years its likelihood decreased and the Kurds began to be perceived as a threat to stability and the status quo. They did not always manage their actions wisely, and made enemies that were not always necessary. But they were most of the time victims of circumstances and malice, without real allies. And there they return.
Erdogan is preparing a birthday celebration
In recent weeks, the two largest countries where the Kurds live have been reminded, to the extent that they have forgotten, that the elimination of the Kurdish national movement continues to be a central goal of their policy. A particularly bad omen for the Kurds is the assignment of their case to the internal needs of the regimes in Turkey and Iran. Turkey is now facing the impending presidential and parliamentary elections in June. The polls are far from painting an agreed picture, but at least some of them show slight differences between the ruling party and its opponents. Tayyip Erdoğan these days uses all the means available to him to ensure his victory.
He wants to be there next year and the year after, to mark two significant anniversaries: the establishment of the republic and the abolition of the suits. It is better to remember that in 1920, three years before the establishment of the republic, the victorious powers of the First World War ended up saying to dismember Turkey. They intended to shrink it to Western Anatolia. Its place was to be taken by a large Armenian state and Kurdish autonomy. There was even a written commitment that the Kurds would receive full independence “within a year” from the establishment of autonomy. But none of the foreign seals meant it seriously.
One thing the Kurds have not been able to create is cross-border unity. This may be an unrealistic goal given the tribal and linguistic differences. Kurds are not made of one piece. But another reason was that the Kurds were never in the crosshairs at the same time. This is probably the first time in their history that Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq are under attack at the same time.
Their geography explains how small their chances are in a military conflict, without access to the sea, without borders with friendly countries. Their only hope is for internal changes in each of their countries of residence, which may lead to a federal structure, with generous autonomy for the Kurds. The chance of this is perhaps greater than that of a military victory, but probably only slightly. Rights in the Middle East are not meant for the Kurds.
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