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Kurds
living in countries such as Syria,Turkey and Iran
now dare to dream as they observe the new-found
privileges their brothers in Iraq now enjoy. But
theirs is a much harder battle.
It took an American invasion of Iraq to open the
door to the freedoms now enjoyed by Kurds in that
country. Their fellow Kurds face other unique
obstacles and circumstances in the countries they
live in. And though they see Iraqi Kurds as their
benchmark to greater freedom, they all have
different views of how their futures might look.
Whatever autonomy they envision in the short term,
most see such freedoms as a stepping stone to a real
Kurdistan.
The Kurds of Syria have long complained that many of
them were deprived of their citizenship in a
controversial census conducted
by the pre-Ba'ath regime of president Nazim al-Qudsi
in 1962. Since then, Syrian Kurds have been
demanding citizenship, rather than autonomy like
their brothers in Iraq. In March 2004, wanting to
make their voice heard, they rioted throughout
Syria, vandalizing private and public property.
Weeks after the Kurdish unrest, the political play,
The Day that Baghdad Fell, was shown in Damascus. In
one scene, a Syrian Kurd and a Syrian Arab discuss
politics (in a comical way) while waiting at the
doctor's clinic. The Kurd praises the US, saying he
will stand by and watch if the US military attacks
Syria. It was the US, after all, that had secured
autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 and maintained
it since 2003. It was the US that brought
international attention to the Kurdish problem after
the first Gulf War in 1991. The reason for his
negative attitude, he says, is discrimination
against the Kurds and their maltreatment in Syria.
The two men quarrel, then eventually make up in high
drama, and the Kurd turns into a Syrian nationalist
saying that he too will fight for Syria if the US
tries to invade. He recounts a long list of famous
Kurds who assumed senior office in Syria, including
the late moderate cleric, Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro (who
had called on worshipers during the Iraq War in 1991
to take up arms against the invading US).
True, in real life the Syrian Kurds might fight for
Syria. But there are Kurds in Syria who simply do
not feel Syrian. This also applies to Kurds in
Turkey and Iran, who feel neither Turkish nor
Iranian but simply "Kurdish". All of them have been
looking at their brothers in Iraq and seeing what
kinds of privileges they are getting in Iraqi
Kurdistan. The Iraqi Kurds emerged victorious in the
January elections, secured continued autonomy for
Iraqi Kurdistan, propped up their leader Jalal
Talabani as president in Baghdad and made the
Kurdish language official in Iraq. This has
triggered the imagination and aspirations of the 25
million Kurds in the Middle East and the Persian
Gulf, mainly Syria, Iran, and Turkey. They now wish
that they too can secure autonomy for themselves, a
stepping stone toward creating the real Kurdistan.
Kurdish unrest in Turkey
The Kurds are the dominant minority in Turkey,
comprising nine million *( more than 18
Million ) of Turkey's 60 million population.
Turkey alone contains more than 50% of what the
Kurds demand as the real Kurdistan. Many of the
Turkish Kurds feel more Kurdish than Turkish. Some
have taken on a Turkish identity to avoid
persecution, to assimilate in society or to attain
senior posts in government or private sector. The
Turkish government has banned the use of Kurdish in
schools and on radio and TV, as well as prevented
Kurds from giving their children Kurdish names.
Violation of these laws results in up to five years'
imprisonment. Kurdish political parties in Turkey
are officially banned and their leaders have been
arrested, exiled or killed. The Kurds have been a
nightmare for every Turkish leader since the
break-down of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World
War I. Turkish governments crushed Kurdish
rebellions in 1925, 1930 and 1937-1938.
Neighboring countries such as Iran, Iraq and Syria
have exploited the Kurdish problem in Turkey, mainly
to pressure consecutive regimes in Ankara, and to
keep the Kurdish wolf away from their own doorsteps.
Even neighboring Greece has exploited the Kurdish
problem and assisted the Kurds, to weaken Turkey in
the fight over Cyprus. The main threat to the Turks
is the infamous Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK - Partia
Kakaren Kurdistan), founded in 1978, and its leader,
Abdullah Ocalan. According to Robert Olson's book
Turkey's Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel, and
Russia, 1991-2000, Turkey spends an estimated US$8
billion a year to combat the PKK insurgency. An
estimated 200,000 troops have been commissioned to
fight the Kurds. The BBC reports that more than
30,000 have been killed in Turkey due to the
Kurdish-Turkish War that has been going on since
1984. Dozens of villages have been bulldozed and
thousands of Kurds uprooted. This huge military
spending has caused public outcry among Turkish
politicians who claim this money could be spent on
education, health, social development and industry,
rather than on the military.
The argument in Turkey says that if the government
allows limited educational and social freedoms to
the Kurds, then they will demand more, as is the
case in Iraq. The Turks do not want to face a
situation where the Kurds are officially bargaining
for autonomy or complete independence. After coming
to office in 1989, president Turgu Ozal (of Kurdish
origin) tried to solve the problem peacefully by
engaging in dialogue with the Kurds. He lifted some
of the restrictions on language and allowed its
limited use in conversation and music, abolishing
the ban on Kurdish in 1991. He died suddenly while
in office in 1993 before solving the Kurdish crisis.
Former prime minister Tansu Ciller also tried to
solve the problem peacefully after coming to power
in 1993, by trying to permit the Kurdish language in
schools and on TV. Her proposal was turned down by
the government and by her own True Path Party.
The country trying to exploit the Kurdish problem in
Turkey the most is Syria, which never imagined that
one day it too would face a similar Kurdish problem.
Along with Iraq, it allowed the PKK to set up a base
and launch attacks inside Turkey. Damascus, Tehran
and Baghdad supported PKK leader Ocalan, who lived
for many years in Syria and had bases in Rezhan and
Ziveh in Iran. Ocalan did not call for autonomy - he
wanted an independent Kurdistan. With 5,000-10,000
fighters, he attacked government property in Turkey
and slaughtered Turkish officials, in addition to
ordinary Turkish citizens living in Kurdish
districts. Whenever pressure became too strong from
the Turkish government, the PKK would flee into
neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. At two points, the
Turks raided the Kurdish parts of Iraq, once in 1992
with 20,000 troops, and once in 1995 with 35,000.
They even promised to defend the Iraqi Kurds against
now-deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein if the
Kurds allowed them to enter Iraqi Kurdistan and hunt
down fighters of the PKK. Naturally, the Iraqi Kurds
refused. Defeated, the Turks were forced to grant
cultural concessions to the Kurds in 1991 but
refused to recognize Kurdish political parties.
In many ways, this Arab alliance with the Kurds in
the 1980s and 1990s explains why Turkey today enjoys
such a strong friendship with Israel. The Jewish
state is the only country in the Middle East without
a Kurdish population. Israel has generously
supported Turkey's war on the PKK, hoping that by
doing so, it would secure for itself a new friend in
the Middle East. In fact, the alliance between Tel
Aviv and Ankara came at the height of PKK
operations, when the countries signed a "Military
and Training Cooperation Agreement" in
February-August 1996. This alliance has been
strongly criticized by Iran and Syria, who have
failed to realize that it resulted directly from
their exploitation of the Kurdish problem in Turkey.
Today, like no time in recent history,
anti-Americanism is soaring in Turkey. The Turks
supported the US war on Iraq in 1991 and allowed the
US to use military bases in Turkey. In exchange, at
the time, the US extended a defense agreement
between Washington and Ankara, and increased
financial and military aid to the Turks. Many
attribute the current animosity to the legality of
the war on Iraq, which many Turks saw as
unjustified. This may be a prime reason, but as
well, many Turks are enraged that the US has done
nothing to crack down on the PKK since it launched
its war on terror in 2001. To the Turks, the PKK is
no different from al-Qaeda and Ocalan is no
different from Osama bin Laden. The Turks have drawn
parallels between Kurds rioting in front of Turkish
embassies worldwide after Ocalan's arrest in 1999,
and possible riots today in front of US embassies
worldwide if bin Laden is captured.
Although they have different ideologies and
different objectives, the PKK and al-Qaeda are two
terrorist organizations that have done nothing but
terrorize civilians and kill innocents. To the
Turks, PKK activities since 1983 are no less
horrendous than the September 11, 2001 attacks in
New York, the March 11, 2004 train bombings in
Madrid and the July 7 subway attacks in London. Not
only has the US not lifted a finger to help Turkey
fight the PKK, it unintentionally encouraged Kurdish
separatism in Turkey by maintaining autonomy of the
Kurds in Iraq after the downfall of Saddam in 2003.
The reason for the gap between many Turks and the US
is that some Turkish officials and politicians
support Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist paramilitary
organization, thereby destroying any international
or US support they may have elicited against the PKK.
Yet the Turks do not understand that the US cannot,
and will not, ever go to war against the PKK. Why
should they stick their necks out for the Turks, if
this would jeopardize their already shaky standing
in Iraq? The Kurds, after all, are the US's prime
ally in post-Saddam Iraq.
The current leaders of Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan,
Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, were one-time
allies of Ocalan. Although they disapproved of
Ocalan's willingness to kill so many innocent
Turkish civilians, they nevertheless shared a common
objective in creating Kurdistan and cooperated
extensively at certain times in the 1980s. They are
the ones maintaining the status quo in Iraq in favor
of America. They have a tremendous affection for the
US, crediting George W Bush and his father for their
autonomy and for ridding them of Saddam Hussein's
dictatorship. This is the same reason why the US
will never push too far against the Shi'ite
Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Shi'ite regime in Iran.
The Shi'ites of Iraq are also prime allies of the
Americans. Fighting the Shi'ites of Lebanon or the
mullahs of Tehran would enrage the Shi'ites of Iraq.
Overnight, they could withdraw their allegiance to
the Americans and join the Sunni-led insurrection.
The US would never fight a Shiite-Kurdish-Sunni
insurgency in Iraq.
Since the fall of Baghdad in 2003, the Iraqi Kurds
have said they fear a Turkish military attack in
Kurdistan. The Turkish Army did threaten the Iraqi
Kurds when they began demanding control over Kirkuk,
the oil-rich city in northern Iraq that the Kurds
want as a new capital instead of Arbil. Below Kirkuk
sits more than 10 billion barrels of oil, which the
Kurds are now claiming as their property. In
October-November 2004, it was reported that the
Turkish army had began planning for an invasion of
Iraq in 2005, with no less than 20,000 troops, to
bring a halt to Kurdish demands.
The plan, however, never got past the drawing board.
One sign, however, that the Turks are now dealing
with the Kurdish problem in a more rational and
civilized manner is a visit recently made by Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Diyarbakir,
the principal Kurdish town in Turkey. From there he
declared, "the Kurdish problem could not be solved
through purely military means". He added that "the
Kurdish problem is everybody's problem, but above
all mine!" He was appealing to the Kurds, in a
historic statement, effectively saying that the
Kurdish plight is a national plight for all Turks.
If one reads between the lines, however, his
statement means that the problem is a Turkish
problem and will be solved by the Turkish
government.
Secession for the Kurds is still not an option for
the Turks. This shows that Ankara is starting to
have second thoughts about the Kurdish problem and
how to deal with it. Diyarbakir, underdeveloped
compared to the rest of Turkey, is the only place in
Turkey where the prime minister needs at least 4,000
security personnel to guard him.
Kurdish regions in general are neglected by the
central government, receiving no more than 10% of
state industrial investment and only 2% of
commercial investment. Unemployment is high and so
is neglect, simply because the region is Kurdish.
While the prime minister was there, demonstrations
took place praising Ocalan. Violence did not break
out because a senior PKK official had ordered his
followers not to disrupt Erdogan's visit. Part of
Erdogan's policy is to make regional friends with
former enemies who are suffering from the same
Kurdish problem. This explains Turkey's newfound
friendship with Syria and Iran.
Meanwhile, Syria has cracked down on Kurdish
political parties, especially those associated with
Iraqi Kurdistan, and Iran has arrested 20 PKK
terrorists over the past 12 months. Defeated and
lacking strong leadership since the arrest of Ocalan
in 1999, the PKK has greatly reduced its military
activity, concentrating instead on running the
Kurdish Parliament in Exile (KPE) in Brussels, which
was created in April 1995. It thrives on the
thousands of Kurds living in Europe. Germany alone
has about 400,000 Kurds, France has 60,000 and
Sweden has 10,000. Smaller numbers are scattered in
Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Italy.
Dominated by the PKK, which the European Union (EU)
says is a terrorist organization, the KPE has been
ineffective in promoting the Kurdish cause in Europe
or advancing it in the Middle East. Today, the
problem of the Kurds is relatively quiet in Turkey.
Much tension was defused when Ocalan's verdict was
commuted in 2002 from death to life imprisonment,
the Kurdish language was allowed and pro-PKK members
of parliament were released. The situation flared up
again when the Kurdish movement appeared victorious
in post-Saddam Iraq, threatening a very violent
re-awakening of the Kurdish movement in Turkey.
Kurdish unrest in Iran
The Kurds of Iran, like elsewhere in the region,
have always advocated the creation of Kurdistan,
seeing themselves as a persecuted minority (they are
10% of Iran's 68 million). Their demands for limited
autonomy, the right to use their language, teach
Kurdish at their schools and appoint officials have
all been turned down by successive Iranian regimes.
When the Islamic revolution took place in 1979, many
Kurds supported it, seeing it as a window of
opportunity for them to obtain concessions from the
new rulers of Tehran. When the new clerics adopted a
no-compromise attitude no different from that of the
Shah, the disappointed Kurds took up arms in March
1979. What they couldn't gain through dialogue they
hoped to gain through war.
One faction emerged, headed by the Iranian Kurdish
leader Ahmad Muftizadeh of Sanandaj (a Kurdish town
in Iran), who was willing to settle for limited
concessions from the former Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini. The Kurdish Democratic Party, however,
headed by Abdul-Rahman Qasemlu and other hardliners
refused to accept a compromise, demanding a share in
the national revenue of Iran - to be used for
expenditure in Iranian Kurdistan - and
administrative autonomy for the district. They also
made the ongoing Kurdish demand for having Kurdish
as an official language and demanded that all
communication between the Tehran government and that
of Iranian Kurdistan be made in Kurdish.
Local security would be in the hands of the Kurds,
but national defense, foreign affairs, and central
banking would remain in the hands of the Iranian
regime. Khomeini curtly refused these demands and
fighting resumed in August 1979, six months after
the revolution broke out. More talks took place
under president Bani al-Sadr in 1980-1981. He said
he would accept Kurdish demands "with
modifications", but this also failed.
The attention and force of the Iranian military was
diverted when it went to war against Saddam Hussein
in 1980. It was then fighting on two fronts, the
Iraqis on the border and the Kurds at home. This
weakened the Iranian military, and the Kurds became
strong in the Iranian countryside, remaining in
control until the government retaliated with force
in 1983. Widescale persecution followed, and the
Kurdish Democratic Party was forced to move to Iraq,
where it was, ironically, received with open arms by
Saddam Hussein. Temporary alliances in the Iran-Iraq
War made the Iraqis welcome Iranian Kurds wanting to
carve Kurdistan out of Iran. It also made Iranians
welcome Iraqi Kurds in Tehran for wanting to create
Kurdistan out of Iraq. Both maneuvers backfired.
A Kurdish revolt was brewing against Saddam Hussein,
as was another Kurdish uprising against the mullahs
of Iran. Bickering and eventually fighting broke out
within the Kurdish movement in Iran in 1985, further
weakening the separatist movement. Hopes were raised
when president Mohammad Khatami came to office in
1997 promising a high-profile reform agenda. But
with the US war on Iraq in 2003, Iranian authorities
came to believe that the Kurds of Iran would now try
to use the US against them. An Iranian official told
Time magazine: "These Kurdish parties hope that the
US will send their soldiers to attack Iran, and that
they will then be able to play the same sort of role
as Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. They told the
Americans, 'We can arm tens of thousands of men and
liberate Kurdistan.' But the Americans do not want
to provoke Iran, they know that we can exert a big
influence on the events in Iraq." The newfound
status of the Iraqi Kurds today, after successfully
winning the January 2005 elections, packing
parliament, and imposing their will on the
constitution draft, threatens to re-awaken the
dreams and ambitions of the Kurds in Iran.
The truth that troubles Turkey, Iran and Syria is
that Iraqi Kurdistan does exist today, ruled by the
warlord Massoud Barzani. It has its own
democratically elected parliament, military (the
Peshmerga), constitution, president, prime minister
and national flag that differs from the Iraqi flag.
There are Kurdish TV channels and Kurdish
newspapers. The Arab world still lives by the
romance of Arab nationalism, which has dominated
Arab hearts from the 1960s onward. Arabs cannot
accept that territory historically considered part
of Iraq should today be recognized as a totally
different entity that is non-Arab, called Kurdistan.
The Arabs, and many of the Arab Iraqis in
particular, do not understand that there is no
future in wanting to unite with a people who no
longer want to unite with them. Unity or marriage
between them is impossible because it is an act to
be decided upon by both parties. And clearly, the
Kurds do not want it. After enjoying autonomy since
1991, they simply, will not give it away. Some have
accepted it as a fact, such as the Sunnis of Iraq
who are no longer trying to challenge Kurdistan. Yet
Kurdistan has encouraged the Shi'ites of Iraq to
demand autonomy for themselves in the south. This
might encourage other groups, mostly minorities, to
make similar demands in the Middle East, further
carving up the region. The nationalists in the Arab
world could not bear to see that.
One alarming fact that most Arabs do not know is
that Kurdistan is a prosperous haven for investment,
democracy and security. In fact, what it has
achieved since 1991 is a total embarrassment for
most Arab regimes. The Kurds achieved in 14 years,
undoubtedly with the help of the Americans, what
most Arab regimes have not achieved in more than 20.
Kurdistan has its own Arbil International Airport,
which recently received its first flights from Dubai
and Amman. It was constructed on the air force base
Saddam used to attack the Kurds in 1988. Kurdistan
is filled with professional hospitals, modern
supermarkets, lavish restaurants and factories. A
BBC correspondent noted the massive construction
work taking place there, saying: "Everywhere you
look, bulldozers are at work. Things are booming.
People have money, people are spending it, they feel
its safe to spend and to build for the future." A
lot of the construction work is being financed by
Kurdish businessmen who fled Saddam's dragnet in the
1980s and made successful careers in the diaspora.
Those wishing to invest are exempted from taxes
during the first five years of business operation
and facilities such as free land are given to them
by the Kurdish government as encouragement.
Today, the Kurds are concentrating on making
Kurdistan a tourist attraction for other Iraqis.
They are constructing a 28-floor luxury hotel in
Sulaymaniyya. The economic prosperity and safety of
the Kurdish towns, compared to the hellish
conditions in the rest of Iraq, has encouraged
non-Kurdish Iraqis to migrate to Kurdistan in search
of better lives. At first, the migration was
confined to laborers or unemployed young men who
wanted to work at one of the many construction sites
dotting Kurdistan, but today many educated
professionals are making the journey as well. It has
been estimated that about 25% of ophthalmologists
from Basra have established medical centers in
Kurdistan. In the last two years, since the fall of
Saddam in 2003, about 40 Arab professors have gone
to Kurdistan to teach at the University of
Sulaymaniyya.
The Iraqi daily newspaper Babil has described
Kurdistan in detail: "This is supposedly an Iraqi
land, but no one utters the name Iraq. Here they use
cellular phones called Kurdistell, they watch
Kurdish TV. Kurdistan has escaped from Baghdad's
grip since the end of the 1991 war, and is protected
by the American and British no-fly zone. There are
30 registered political parties. Its people argue
that they enjoy freedom unknown to neighboring
countries. Unbelievable changes have taken place
here. Imagine, most of the children born after 1991
do not speak Arabic."
At this stage, the most Kurds can aspire to is to
maintain their current status, which they will, and
to modernize Iraqi Kurdistan. Nobody is seriously
thinking of creating a Turkish, Iranian and Syrian
Kurdistan. Independence for the Iraqi Kurds is on
nobody's agenda since its price might be too costly
for a nation still ripped apart by war and US
inability to bring it back together. Even President
Talabani acknowledged that independence of Kurdistan
was not feasible, saying in an interview: "The
Kurds, like all other people, aspire to
self-determination. But facing the reality, we
[Kurds] recognize that this is not possible. An
independent Kurdistan cannot survive." The
realization, apparently, came a little too late!
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
www.atimes.com
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