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The Kurds: stateless people on the
region's faultlines 18.10.2007
By Christophe de Roquefeuil |
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October
18, 2007
PARIS: Above and beyond the current tensions
between Ankara and Baghdad, the Kurdish question
represents a perennial risk in an explosive area at
the crossroads of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
“The mountains are our only friend,” goes a Kurdish
saying, which encapsulates perfectly the history of
a people on one of the most unstable faultlines in
the world.
With no access to the sea and no state to represent
them, the 25mn to 35mn Kurds have maintained their
language, traditions and clan-based form of social
organisation.
“Up to the end of the 19th century, the Kurds were
used as tools by the Persian and Ottoman empires,
which gave them great latitude and hired them as
auxiliaries” to keep the peace on their borders or
control other minorities, said Oliver Roy, a
specialist in the region.
“It was when the Persian and Turkish worlds went
secular - with Ataturk in Ankara and the Pahlavis in
Teheran - that the Kurds developed in reaction their
own ethno-national claims,” he said. But the
countries of the region have regularly acted
together to quell aspirations for Kurdish
independence. In 1947, Baghdad, Teheran and Ankara
signed the Pact of Saadabad, aimed at coordinating
efforts against the “armed gangs”.
And today the three countries - secular Turkey,
Islamic Iran and Iraq under US tutelage - still
waver between fear of separatism and the temptation
to use the Kurdish question to further their own
designs against neighbours.
The games of the great powers created uncertain
times for the Kurds themselves.
World War I saw the break-up of the Ottoman empire,
but left no lasting solution for Kurdistan which
continued to be claimed by Turkey.
The League of Nations for a time considered the idea
of an independent Kurdish state, but in 1926 it
opted instead to attach the region around the
Kurdish city of Mosul to the British protectorate of
Iraq.
Not until the first Gulf War of 1991 did the Western
powers intervene to protect Kurds against the
exactions of Saddam Hussain.
Allied to the US, the Kurds were major beneficiaries
of the American intervention, which confirmed their
substantial autonomy and the relative stability of
their region.
The downfall of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad then
profoundly changed the balance of powers in the
region.
“What we are now seeing is a meeting between the
Kurds of northern Iraq and the Kurds of Turkey on
the cultural, linguistic and economic levels in a
way never seen before,” said Roy.
Iran is also involved, with a “very clear increase
in state repression in Iranian Kurdistan,” Roy said.
For Soner Cagaptay, regional specialist at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “the
Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq has
created a lot of excitement among the nationalist
Kurds in the region.”
And in the complex game of alliances in the area,
supporting a Turkish operation in Iraqi Kurdistan
could be an opportunity for Tehran to form a
rapprochement with Ankara, to the detriment of the
Americans.
“Iran feels the grip of the US-led isolation, and it
wants to break this isolation. There is only one
neighbour with which Iran can break that grip and
that’s Turkey. So Iranians are using all means
possible to win Turkey’s heart,” said Cagaptay.
AFP
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan ( Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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