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Kurdistan: What Now for National
Liberation?
7.12.2006
December 2006 Issue, Third World Report (Middle East)
by Sait Akgül |
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December 7,
2006
The Kurds are distinguished from their neighbours by
their language, culture, and a homeland where they
represent about 90 percent of the population. They
speak an Indo-European language different from both
Turkish and Arabic.
The Kurdish population is about 36 million, of whom
55 percent live within the borders of Turkey, where
they represent 30 percent of the population. The
rest live mainly in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurds
are by far the largest stateless nation on earth.
The history of the Kurds in Turkey is a long
succession of revolts and uprisings. The latest of
these, led by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
under Abdullah Öcalan, is the 29th. It started in
1978 and has continued to the present in the form of
a low-level military conflict which occasionally
flares up into bloodier battles between the Turkish
military and PKK guerrillas. The conflict has so far
cost 30,000 lives, with thousands of villages
emptied and burnt down, and millions of peasants
displaced.
Öcalan was captured by the Turkish state on 15
February 1999 with the help of the CIA and the
Israeli Mossad secret service agencies. He was
sentenced to death at a show trial, though the death
penalty was abolished before he could be hanged. He
has since been kept on a one man prison island in
the middle of the Marmara Sea.
Under pressure from the European Union, which it is
desperate to join, Turkey has made a number of
gestures over Kurdish rights in recent years. It is
no longer illegal to speak Kurdish, to publish or to
make recordings in Kurdish. Laws are one thing,
however, implementation of the laws is another. The
general level of oppression remains high, as do
military operations in Kurdish areas, despite the
fact that the PKK announced a unilateral ceasefire
in October 2006.
The war in Iraq has divided opinion among the Kurds.
Since the war and the creation of what is
effectively an autonomous Kurdish state in northern
Iraq, the Kurds in Turkey have somewhat toned down
their anti-imperialism.
The fact that Iraqi Kurdistan, closely allied to the
US, has not suffered much from the war (and was
naturally glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein) has
meant that a considerable degree of infrastructure
and cultural development has flourished in the area.
The Kurds have never had anything like this before.
They are therefore easily swayed into favouring the
US invasion in Iraq, even though the memory of the
1988 Halabja massacre, when Saddam used chemical
weapons to kill 5,000 Kurds with materials supplied
by the West, remains fresh.
The tragic twists in the history of the Kurds seem
to continue as they are once more powerless without
the help of the enemy of their oppressors. The fact
that the current Iraqi president Jalal Talabani,
leader of one of the two tribal organisations in
Iraqi Kurdistan, has selected his son as the
representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government
to the US, while the son of the other tribal lord,
Massoud Barzani, has been serving as prime
minister of the same government confirms the nature
of the democratic establishment the US has offered
to the Kurds.
The oppression of the few Kurdish voices of dissent
in Kurdistan (northern Iraq) which oppose the regime
makes it obvious that freedom has not arrived in
Kurdistan. But the freedom of Barzani and Talabani
to increase their influence and wealth is indeed a
reality. The involvement of Israel in Kurdish
northern Iraq, where they are training government
and security officials, is a further indictment of
the US-backed Kurdish regime.
The fragility of the Barzani-Talabani empire becomes
more visible as the Western liberators consider
inviting Syria and Iran to help solve the problem
and control the resistance in Iraq. Syria and Iran
both have their own oppressed Kurdish minorities.
And if these countries become US allies in Iraq, the
US is less likely to need Barzani and Talabani.
Freedom is the right of the Kurds. But at what
price? What kind of freedom will be offered by
artificial statehood in a federative Iraq.
socialistreview.org.uk
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