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Kurds: The History of Oppression and Future Prospects
"Our past is sad. Our present is a catastrophe. Fortunately, we don't have a future.”
Hiner Saleem, Kurdish film-maker, quoting his grandfather
At the beginning of the 21st century, fifty years after the decolonization and liberation of ethnic groups and their founding of states, in an era where the changes of borders are so frequent, when the right of “self-determination” has never been used more, Kurds remain to be the fourth largest ethnic group and the largest minority in the Middle East without a state. Having the misfortune to be squeezed in the midst of four strong authoritarian states, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey (which is considered to be democratic now, but for the large period of time when Kurdish prosecution was taking place was an authoritarian regime), Kurdish people have been struggling for decades to obtain their independence. Their efforts remained futile.
This paper will analyze and describe the experiences that Kurds have undergone in these four countries for the past decades, how their position changed in the last century, their long-lasting struggle and oppression by authoritarian regimes, mostly on examples of Turkey and Iraq. It will also show the lack of response from the international community to properly address this issue. Furthermore, an attempt will be made to explain and analyze deeper due to what factors, both internal and external, Kurds have remained the forgotten nation in world politics, focusing specifically on one important event at the beginning of the 20th century when Kurds had the chance to gain independence, the Sevres Conference. Also, part of the paper will elaborate on the future prospects for the Kurds and the area of Kurdistan.
At the beginning, it is necessary to define the ethnic group. The Kurds are an Indo-European tribe that settled in the area of Kurdistan (name of the geographical unit) 4 000 years ago. In the 7th century, they were Islamized by the incoming Arab tribes and are now predominantly Sunni Muslims. They are usually referred to as mountain people whose economy is mostly based on agriculture and pastoralism (Les Kurds et le Kurdistan, by Gerard Chaliand, 1978). The sense and presence of tribalism is pretty strong, just like in the other Middle Eastern cultures. As for the exact population, the figures vary a lot, mostly due to the fact that oppressive regimes try to undermine the number of their Kurdish minority, whereas some Kurdish nationalistic organizations tend to exaggerate. So approximately, it is considered that there are 25 million of Kurds inhabiting the mountainous area of Kurdistan, stretching between Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.
After the First World War, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed his Fourteen Points as foundation for the future arrangement of international relations, the twelfth point being the right of people of self–determination. This notion was followed throughout the Versailles Conference in 1919 and later accepted to be one of the cornerstones of international relations. It became part of the philosophy of the League of Nations and later an article in the UN Charter. It has been used as a leading principle in the decolonization process and later in the numerous attempts of secession, civil wars (the wars in Yugoslavia and East Timor) etc. The creation of the Israeli and Kosovar states also adheres to this principle. Contrary to this theory, international conservatism strongly upholds the notion of territorial integrity and national sovereignty, claiming the secession to be unlawful and emphasizing state security over the security of people. In the particular case of the Kurds, there is an additional element to be considered and those are the years of constant oppression, deportation and prosecution of Kurdish people. So the notion of the rightness of “national security” can hardly be justified in this case. Here we have a people with their distinct cultural and national identity (language, customs, history) that have succeeded in resisting cultural assimilation imposed by all four states and preserved their culture in spite of the fact that they were politically, ideologically and economically oppressed.
Having all this in mind, it is hard to try to come up with an excuse for the lack of response by the international community. In spite of the screams of all human rights organizations pointing out the major violations and atrocities committed by Turkey, Iran or Iraq, the United Nations and the European Union remained mute when it came to helping Kurds in their struggle for independence.
The Myth of the Sevres Treaty and Colonial Interests
The Treaty of Sevres is often presented to be “the one historical chance” for Kurds to obtain a state. The question what territory that state would comprise, however, remained highly disputable.
It is true that at that period, after the First World War, in between 1918-1919, the international circumstances were beneficial to Kurds. According to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain and France divided their colonies in the Middle East and the zones of interest allocating most of Kurdistan to Russia. Events in Russia at that time: the Bolshevik revolution, the internal struggle for power and the fact that the new Soviet government gave up all territorial aspirations on Kurdistan, left a political vacuum and a great possibility for Kurdistan to become independent (Kendal, 1978). The Kurdish elite and Kurdish society, however, were not ready or capable of achieving independence. Although there were a lot of different armed struggles and insurgencies throughout the 19th century, Kurdistan at this point was an underdeveloped, feudal area whose leaders could not understand the importance of the moment and diplomatically play it out well. They also presented the type of leaders that were not highly accepted in Kurdish society; they were this new type of “Ottoman intellectuals,” a progressive elite that was considered to be influenced by western ideas and was thus distant from its own people (Kendal). But accept for the Kurdish lack of promptness, the truth is also that if Anglo-French imperialism had required an independent Kurdistan, they would have set one up (Kendal). Before the Sevres Conference, the King Crane Commission Report had recommended the setting of Kurdistan which would cover only a quarter of the Kurdish territory. It was to be placed under US mandate. The text of the Treaty of Sevres stated in Article 64 that after a year, if the majority of population wished to be independent and the Council of the League of Nations estimated that the population was capable of such independence, then Turkey needed to uphold this idea. Not only the phrasing that the Council needed to determine if the conditions were suitable, but also the fact that a hypothetical Kurdistan at that time would basically have only one–third of the Kurdish territories, leaving the rest to the French zone of interest, leaves an impression that even with the Treaty of Sevres the Kurds did not have any real historical chance offered from the West.
The story around the Sevres Conferences shows the importance that colonial powers, specifically Britain and France, had the destiny of Middle Eastern countries in their hands, deciding what to leave independent and what to incorporate into the state based on their own national economic interests. It is somehow arguable that at that time, with colonialism as the dominant power on the world scene and international law just at its origins, it was possible for these things to happen.
The question is whether at this point, with existing international standards and organizations, the real situation is any different or we just have different players in the game, only this time because of their neo-colonial interests that draw the maps based on the control of oil fields.
Kurds in Turkey
After the Lausanne treaty, the prosecution of Kurds began. Sometimes it is hard to say in which of the states their destiny was worse. In Kemalist Turkey, in 1924 a law forbidding the teaching of Kurdish at school was passed. Another Turkish law that dealt with political organizations had a clause that, “[it] must not [be] claim[ed] that there are any minorities in the territory of the Turkish Republic, as this would undermine national unity.” The Kurds largely inhabiting the southeastern Anatolian provinces have been deprived for decades of the right to express their own identity and even consider themselves as Kurds. The Turkish government underwent a strong and brutal assimilation strategy that referred to Kurds as “Mountain Turks, who forgot their true language and origin.” Many of the Turkish famous writers, artists and politicians were Kurds by origin (including Ismet Inonu, successor to Ataturk), but could never admit that in public. In schools, the use of Kurdish language was banned and the words ‘Kurd’ and ‘Kurdistan’ were crossed off the dictionaries. This was only the cultural oppression but there were also clear attempts to exterminate the entire Kurdish population.
From 1925 to 1939, Kurds organized themselves and led three major revolts, and all of them were curbed in blood. More than one and a half million Kurds were deported and massacred. During all these time, there was no response from the League of Nations. The situation with the UN was no different. After the Second World War, a group of Kurds living in Iraq sent an appeal to the UN stating that, “During the past 25 years the Kurds have and are suffering severely under the tyrannical regime of Turkey… It is indeed misfortune that the world is on the threshold of peace and many conferences are held to discuss and solve the world problems, and the Kurds in Turkey are unable to have their voice heard in these conferences… In view of such a calamitous and hopeless situation our Party demands that the Kurdish people are given its full natural rights and the right of self-determination” (Memorandum of the Kurdish Rizgari Party, Baghdad, 18 January 1946). There was no response from the UN to this appeal.
In the 1960s, the situation improved slightly. With the 1961 Constitution granting some civil liberties, the press beginning to write more freely about Kurds, and the founding of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Turkey (KDPT, based on the model of Barzani’s KDP in Iraq), the overall atmosphere became more tolerable for the Kurds (The Kurds in Turkey: A Political Dilemma, by Michael Gunter, 1990). The Kurds became more politically active and started joining parties and political organizations.
Still, at every minor attempt of the Kurds to become active citizens, the Turkish government responded brutally. In 1971, following the student demonstrations, a military court sentenced thousands of Kurdish activists under the pretext of terrorist suspects. Since the 1980s, thousands of suspected Kurdish separatists have also been arrested. Amnesty International wrote constant reports on this stating that, “torture was widespread and systematic and most people detained by police and martial law authorities were subjected to torture, which in some cases was alleged to have ended in death.” At that time, the whole world was aware of the torture and conditions in Turkish prisons, but the fact that Turkey was an important ally in the Cold War division of the world and a member of the NATO resulted in lack of any public criticism. One of the examples that shows well how much of “terrorists” are those that are sentenced and imprisoned is the case of Fatma Yazici, editor of a magazine who was sentenced in 1989 to serving eight years in prison for publishing an article on human rights, a report on the Kurdish problem in Turkey. The official accusation was that she was “weakening national sentiments” (“In Turkey being a responsible journalist often means prison,” Lois Whitman and Thomas Fromeck).
The 1980s also marked increased activities of PKK, listed as a terrorist organization, and its leader Ocalan. The Turkish government began its “counterterrorism activities,” not only directed against PKK members, but eventually spreading over civilian targets as well. As it is written in the British Guardian, “The PKK has certainly killed, and has also committed atrocities, but the overwhelming number of these 30,000 deaths, not to mention widespread mutilation and rape, are the responsibility of the Turkish military.” Noam Chomsky argues that, “By 1999, Turkey had largely suppressed Kurdish resistance by extreme terror and ethnic cleansing, leaving some 2 to 3 million refugees, 3,500 villages destroyed and tens of thousands killed, primarily during the Clinton years” (Plan Colombia, in Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, 2000). Throughout all this time, Turkey has been receiving US military aid. “But arms deliveries began to increase sharply in 1984. Evidently, there was no Cold War connection at all. Rather, that was the year when Turkey initiated a large-scale counterinsurgency campaign in the Kurdish southeast. Arms deliveries peaked in 1997. In that year alone, they exceeded the total from the entire period 1950-1983. US arms amounted to about 80 percent of Turkish military equipment, including heavy armaments (jet planes, tanks, etc.).” (Chomsky)
While the US undoubtedly supported the actions of the Turkish government, at least judging by the amount of military aid, the European Union kept on imposing restrictions and writing excessive reports, demanding the improvement of the status of Kurds in Turkey. Because of its European-oriented official policy, Turkey has indeed improved its treatment of Kurds, its human rights record, the situation in prisons, and the minority status for the past ten years. However, a lot of issues remain open and all reports from the European Commission point out to a lot of loopholes in Turkish reforms. Recently, the Turkish Court has fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish New Year celebration under a law that bans the use of characters that are not in the Turkish alphabet (Pravda Ru). According to the latest estimates, there are 13 million of Kurds in Turkey, constituting 20% of its population.
Kurds in Iraq
There are 4 million Kurds in Iraq, thus constituting 15-20% of Iraqi population. Even with all the violence and atrocities committed against its Kurdish minority, Turkey is still considered to be a democratic country, especially once compared to other Middle Eastern States. The Kurdish minority is largely settled along the Iraqi-Iran border, which has made it easier for both governments to manipulate Kurds and use them in their mutual conflicts.
Following the end of the Second World War and the final liberation of Iraq from Britain, Iraq was officially the country of Arabs and Kurds. The Constitution from 1958 recognized the national rights of Kurds and legalized the Kurdish Democratic Party, led by Mustafa Barzani. However, this situation did not last long as in the next two years the Kurdish minority became oppressed and Barzani was forced to flee the county. The Revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan started in 1961 with the main goal to secure the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurds in Iraq were far better organized and prepared for armed struggle than the Kurds in other areas. The next ten years represented a constant struggle from both sides, several times leading to cease-fire followed by continuation of the conflict. At that time, Kurds were supported by the West because the Iraqis had strengthened their ties with the Soviet Union. Mustafa Barzani proved to be a strong and charismatic leader, uniting diverse and mutually hostile tribes. For a while, he was seen as a threat from Iran and there was a fear that he might spread the Kurdish struggle outside the borders of Iraq. In the meantime, the Ba’ath Party grew stronger and at the end, in 1970, both parties reached an agreement guarantying all the rights of the Kurds and the wanted autonomy. That was considered to be a decisive, historic moment for the Kurds as it symbolized their victory.
However, the difficulties in the agreement were soon found, and the Ba’ath Party was not prepared or willing for power-sharing. Conflicts continued, which led to Saddam Hussein’s 1974 economic blockade on Free Kurdistan. In the war from 1974 to 1975, 300,000 Kurdish refugees fled to Iran. It was considered to be the most violent and bloody Kurdish-Iraqi war where Kurdish civilians were the primary targets. In this war, Saddam received big support from the Soviet Union, following the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviets and Iraqis. The Russians promised weapon supplies and war experts in exchange for the use of Iraqi ports. The Kurds had no other choice then but accept military aid from Iranian Shah, which was in essence an unnatural alliance. Subsequently, the CIA was also drawn into the whole conflict, without the knowledge of the State Department (Kurdistan in Iraq, by Ismet Sheriff Vanly). All of this, of course, had little to do with protecting Kurds which were considered irrelevant in terms of international politics. With a lot of political strategies, the Kurds did not succeed in their struggle, but this was largely due to the fact that they were betrayed by all of their allies. The war of 1974 is just one example, along with the Iraq-Iran war and “Desert Storm” operation, how unimportant Kurds are in the eyes of the Western world, serving only western interests when they can be well used against some enemy regimes.
In 1976, the battles between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish partisans continued. Jalal Talabani, leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Union, was one of the leaders of the battles. The major atrocities were committed in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, including the use of chemical weapons against Kurds. The estimates of casualties during one of the days when chemical weapons were used against Kurds in the town of Halabja ranged from several hundreds to at least 7,000 people. From 1987 to 1989 Saddam killed 183,000 Kurds, leading the genocidal campaign against the Kurds known as Anfal (the name of a Koran verse justifying the killing and looting of infidels).
Life in the countryside was abandoned; vast areas were mined; animals and people were killed if they stayed in the villages; entire villages were bombed with chemical and biological weapons; water springs, the traditional lifelines of every village in Kurdistan, were sealed; people were traumatized. Meanwhile, the outside world was busy mediating between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to stop the Iraq-Iran war.
The UN and the US did not react to all of this. Later, it was proven that the US was the supplier of Iraq with biological and chemical weapons, according to a Senate report, the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs -- The Riegle Report.
In 2003, with the invasion of Iraq, the situation dramatically changed. According to the new Constitution, Iraq became a federation, leaving Iraqi Kurdistan an autonomous government with their own parliament. In the elections of January 2005, the Kurdistan Alliance List gained 75 seats in Iraq's Transitional Assembly (26 percent of the total seats) and the Kurdistan National Democratic List gained 104 out of 111 seats in the Kurdistan National Assembly.
Kurds in Iran
Kurds in Iran (4 million) also experienced a terrible destiny, first under the Shah, then under Khomeini. In 1946, after the Second World War, they proclaimed “The Republic of Muhabad,” but it was suppressed in blood by the Shah after less than a year, once the Soviet forces withdrew and the government could deal with the separatists. In 1979, Kurds in Iran supported the overthrow of the Pahlavi Dynasty, but once Ayatollah Khomeini came into power, he declared a “jihad” against Kurds, so they were completely deprived of their political rights under the new Iranian constitution, having that double misfortune to be a national and a religious minority once Shiism was imposed as the ideological political system. During the Iran-Iraq war, both countries used to exterminate their own Kurdish minorities. Due to the complex relations with their neighboring country, the Shah even supported the Kurdish struggle against Saddam in 1974 but only to strengthen Iraq’s internal enemy. In the spring of 1980, government forces under the command of President Abolhassan Banisadr conquered most of the Kurdish cities through a huge military campaign. The Iranian Kurdistan is under the control of the government and Kurdish cultural and political rights are strongly violated. Recently, several newspapers have been closed by the Iranian authorities because of alleged "promotion of Kurdish separatism.”
Kurds in Syria
In Syria, there are 1,8 million Kurds, constituting 10% of the population and being the largest non-Arab group. Right after gaining independence in 1946, the Arabs had good relations with the Kurds, but soon after that the government adopted a Pan-Arabist ideology and started the Arabization of Kurds, ignoring their national rights. In 1957, the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria was formed, again as a counterpart of Burzani’s KDP, with the aim of linking with other Kurdish parties, but most of its leaders were arrested (The Kurds in Syria, by Mustafa Nadzar). In 1961, due to the false accusations that Turkish Kurds were “illegally infiltrating“ Syria, the authorities discounted 120,000 as foreigners and stripped them of any citizens rights, which, of course, did not pose a problem later when Syrian authorities needed to send the Kurds to fight in the Golan Heights. Later, the government nationalized the land of Kurds and many of them fled the country, having no possibility or protection to survive in Syria. At the moment, it is estimated that 200,000 Kurds are deprived of their citizenship although Syrian authorities claim that there are only 90,000.
In Armenia, from 1991 to 1994, during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the government expelled nearly all of its Kurdish inhabitants. These actions resulted in 200,000 Kurdish refugees and caused an untold number of deaths, injuries and misery. But one finds not a word of remorse, not an expression of regret, or even an acknowledgment from Armenian sources of these abuses of Kurds over the last 8 years (The Sphinx’s Beard, Notes on Kurdish Political Naiveté, in Kurdish Life, by Mehrdad Izady, 1995).
After examining the destiny of Kurdish people in all the states, the pattern is quite apparent: all the countries decided to completely deny the existence of Kurds as a separate entity, each justifying it with the reasons of national security and sentiments of national unity. Somewhere, it led to terrible consequences like massacres in Iraq and Turkey; in some other, it was less brutal, such as in Syria. But the common conclusion is that, wherever they were settled, Kurds were always prosecuted by state authorities and military forces were often used as a “solution” against the Kurdish problem.
What strikes the most is the complete ignorance and negligence of the problem by the international community. In the political theory, there are a lot of authors who claim that Kurds are more of a factor of instability in the Middle East and “trouble-makers” than victims. One of them is Stephen C. Pelletiere who, in his book The Kurds: An Unstable Element in the Gulf (1984), says that the Kurdish society is anarchic, they are fighters by their nature, and thus “They are continually disrupting the peace in an area that is adjacent to the Gulf where the superpowers want to maintain stability,” quite an unusual conclusion, stating that practically this people who are trapped in authoritarian countries and have no rights at all are the ones who have to cause all the trouble, and thus complicate matters for the superpowers. As we could see from the examples, the superpowers never got involved unless they needed some internal player and wanted to use the Kurds to weaken or strengthen the regime. Alongside all the problems the Kurds have encountered with the authorities of these four states, the Kurdish National Movement and its internal divisions have also proven to be an important factor for the unsuccessful Kurdish struggle for independence. Though we can see from the example of Barzani that the unification of Kurdish tribes is possible under the right circumstances and the right leader (the idea even spread beyond the borders of Iraq and the KDP was created in Syria and Turkey), Kurdish leaders and parties often had troubles in popularizing the idea of independence even among Kurds. The reasons listed for this are the general conditions in Kurdish society: the underdeveloped area, strong feeling of tribalism which hinders overall nationalistic feelings, and objective geopolitical difficulties. In the chapter The Weakness of Kurdish National Movement (1978), Gerard Chaliand argues that the Kurdish army units were never able to establish contact with the masses and that the majority of the population remained passive in the struggle. Kurdish leaders had no real intelligentsia and in general they represented more backward ideas. The Kurdish diaspora was active in Western Europe, where the Kurdish Institute in France and the Kurdish National Union in Sweden were founded, and they used these opportunities in advocating the Kurdish cause, but all of that had no concrete effect in helping the struggle.
Therefore, aside from the obvious injustices of Western powers to address the cause of a potential Kurdish state, the main impediment to the unification of the Kurds is their lack of common goal. All the national struggles led in Iraq, Turkey, even occasionally in Syria and Iran, were more of a national struggle for improving their position in that exact country and demanding autonomy than the creation of a big Kurdistan. Possibly, the creation of several autonomous parts of Kurdistan could subsequently lead to the creation of Kurdistan as a state. Hypothetically speaking, even if Kurds were to be given an independent state and they managed to preserve friendly relations with their neighboring states and former republics, would that be a guarantee that Kurdistan would be stable as a country? Kurds have spent decades living as separate tribes in different states, adopting different conditions and circumstances. How would that function if they were all to live together? Culturally, there is no great spirit of unity and there might be new divisions in the identity of Syrian/Iranian/Turkish/Iraqi Kurds, expressing hostile feelings towards each other, each of the groups aiming at the domination of their own cultural pattern and mentality. Kurds unfortunately have not experienced a multicultural, tolerant society, and thus it is highly questionable whether they would be capable of creating one, without starting to oppress one another (Syrian Kurds oppressing Turkish Kurds, etc.). Their political culture and collective memory are full of violence and it would be hard to expect from them to behave any differently. At economic level, we are confronted with even more serious problems: the area of Kurdistan is unevenly developed. How would oil revenues from the Kirkurk area be distributed? Would Iraqi Kurds want to control the whole area?
Thus, even in the best possible conditions, the creation of Kurdistan would not be an answer and might increase the already big level of instability in the Middle East.
Future Prospects for the Kurdish Minority
As the idea of a common state is rather unfeasible and to some extent detrimental, the only solution that remains is the improved position and possible autonomy of the Kurds within their states. After analyzing all the countries, the future definitely does not seem bright, with Turkey being the exception, mostly due to the restrictions and demands coming from the European Union. In the article What Future for the Kurds?, Khaled Salih addresses the possible prospects for the four states with Kurdish minority, including propositions that Turkey should be decentralized or even arranged as the Spanish or Belgian models (in The Middle East Review of International Affairs, March 2005). This sounds too optimistic at the moment, but if in a few years Turkey was to join the EU, it could easily happen.
Salih also expresses optimism for Syria and even Iran due to the new EU-Mediterranean Partnership, specifying that through trade and aid programs the EU will have the power to influence the promotion of reforms in Syria, pressing the Syrian government to give back citizenship to many Kurds and report human rights violations. This plan does seem feasible in the future. Nonetheless, at the moment, the EU appears to be rather fragile, and with a lot of internal problems, Syria again is still uncertain about the future developments, with the alleged accusations of participating in the murder of Hariri and with the US strongly advocating for sanctions.
In Iraq, with the US troops still on soil and instability and murder every day, it is quite uncertain what direction the country will take. Kirkurk appears to have solid foundations for strong autonomy, but how that will function in correlation with raising Shia attempts and still rebellious Iraqi Sunni minority is something yet to be seen. As Salih points out, it is hard to see a transformation from a country where the mass graves and everyday torture were common features to a democratic multicultural society. If the Iraqi federation proves to be a successful experiment, that would be a good model for Turkey, Iran and Syria to make similar internal arrangements with their own Kurdish minorities.
Olga Mitrović
Olga Mitrović graduated from the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade, Serbia. She obtained an Open Society Institute scholarship to complete her third year of studies at UWEC, Wisconsin, USA, majoring in International Relations. As a fellow of the Fund Dr Zoran Đinđić, she worked at Hilfswerk Austria, Vienna on implementing development-aid projects. Currently, Olga is working on numerous civil society projects in Serbia with the Fund for an Open Society and other NGOs regarding youth activism and europeanization. She is particularly interested in global relations, the European Union, civil society, and development studies.
