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The Kurdish Identity: A Cause for
Conflict?
15.12.2010
By Saeed Kakeyi |
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December 15, 2010
Abstract
In the period immediately after the First World War,
a weak Kurdish sense of nationhood combined with
poorly organized leaderships meant that the hope for
an independent Kurdish state arising from the
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire remained only a
hope. Nevertheless, the end of the Cold War Era and
the effects of globalization on intrastate conflicts
have served the Kurds to solidify their sense of
“Kurdishness” and transform it to building a “unique
nation.” For the Kurds, Kurdishness means unity and
continuity. Also, it is a “Hi-Cyberization” of
individualism which brings to the attention of Kurds
in one country the activities of Kurds in another.
Introduction
Like most peoples of the world, the Kurds have their
own identity based on their common race, language,
religion and geographical territory called Kurdistan
in which they have been living for a long time. |
Saeed Kakeyi |
However, since the division of
Kurdistan by boundaries imposed on it by the 1923
Treaty of Lausanne, a perceived sense of injustice
has served to sharpen Kurdish nationalist views in
the different countries, though in different ways.
What is nationalism and how does it formulate views?
What are these Kurdish nationalist views? How do
they differ from each other? This paper will answer
these and other questions related to the Kurdish
identity. Then, in a brief historical background,
this paper explains why the Kurds have not been able
to establish their own nation-state. What are the
ramifications of not having a Kurdish political
identity? In conclusion, the paper will stress the
essential role of the Kurds in conflict avoidance.
Who are the Kurds?
The Kurds, totaling some 35 million people, are
often defined as a nation, or a ‘non-state nation’;
an ethnic group possessing all of the
characteristics of a nation except their own state (McDowall:
1997, 1). Their homeland, Kurdistan, is divided
between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria (1997, 1). The
governments of these four countries have different
ways of relating to their Kurdish population.
The Turkish government barely acknowledges their
mere existence as a group and have since the
establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 been
the target of a politics of assimilation (1997, 2).
The Turkish state has not acknowledged their
existence as a minority, and has denied them
cultural and linguistic rights. It is within this
context that the Kurdish identity has survived for
the better part of the last century. The ongoing
struggle for identity recognition implies the
Kurdish resistance against the hegemony of the
Turkish nation-state. This historical and political
framing is important when trying to understand the
broader context of the Kurdish identity since the
claim for recognition of the rights of the Kurds
depends crucially on the existence of a Kurdish
community that is perceived as culturally different
from others.
Although Iran acknowledges the linguistic and
cultural rights of the Kurds—less numerous than
those of Iraq and Turkey—within the context of “the
universality and expansion of Islam” (Kreyenbroek
and Sperl: 1992, 190), it has always been ruthlessly
“opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism”
(1992, 21). The core issue between the government of
Iran and Kurdish nationalism is “not the supposed
‘universalism’ of Islam, but rather…the boundaries
of the nation-state called ‘Iran’” (1992, 190).
The case of the Kurds against the government of Iraq
differs significantly from those of Iran and Turkey.
When Iraq became an independent nation-state in
1932, it legally has pledged its obligation to
guarantee the autonomous rights of the Kurds. Though
never was materialized until the populous Kurdish
uprising in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War,
Kurds have had legal bases “to claim a greater say
in their own and national affairs” (1992, 24).
However, the chauvinistic responses of the
consecutive governments in Baghdad were savagely
brutal to the extent where the deposed tyrant,
Saddam Hussein, used chemical weapons in his ethnic
cleansing and genocidal campaigns in a bit to
eliminate the Kurdish conflict.
In the case of Kurds in Syria, Kurdish identity
exclusion from Syria’s nation-state definition dates
back to 1940s and became more apparent in 1950s and
1960s; and statelessness remains away of life for
many Kurds. Policies of denial, brutal repression
and assimilation perhaps are more aggressive than
those of Turkey and Iran.
Historical background for Kurdish identity
Many scholars consider the Kurds and their Kurdish
language to be Indo-Europeans. For instance,
according to Vladimir Minorsky, a Russian diplomat
and orientalist, Kurds are direct descendant of
Medes (1968: 43). Similarly, many Kurdish
historians, anthropologists and scholars assert that
the Medes are the ancestors of the Kurds who were
the first in ranking and organizing their military
system which the Greeks and the Romans made use of
them later.
However, after the demise of the Median Empire in
the sixth century B.C. and the subsequent rise of
the Persian Empire, Kurds became subjects of the
successive Iranian empires with which most Persian
historians claim that “Kurds are not a separate
nation; rather, they are of Persian origin” (Ghassemlou:
2000, 25). Likewise, the rise of Islam and its
forceful spread amongst the devoted Zoroastrian
Kurds had made some Arabs think of the origins of
the Kurds differently. Ali Ibn Al-Masudi, an Arab
Abbasid historian (c. 896-956), recorded asserting
that Kurds are “Sons of Jinns—Genies” (1989: V.2,
123).
Knowing that the Kurds are the inhabitance of the
rich agrarian lands of Mesopotamia, such
aforementioned claims, aside stemming from resource
scarcities, have had a lot to do with variations of
worldviews between members of these nations.
Furthermore, Arabs’ aggressive means in converting
the Kurds into Islam forced the Kurds; first into
resistance, then alliance with the Byzantine
Christians, and finally the hard-line Islamic Sofi
Mysticism interpreted in the teachings of
Ibn-Taimiya which led to rise of present-day Islamic
extremist school of thought. The Kurdish religious
fragmentation and subsequent fermentation
contributed to the emergence of Islamic Fraternal
Orders. Qadiriya was and still is one of the
strongest and best known of those orders (Fisher and
Ochsenwald: 1990, 92).
The Turkish Seljuk conquests of the Middle East in
eleventh century inflicted woe upon the Islamic
administrative system resulting in “disunity and
internecine warfare among the petty Muslim states”
(1990, 120). Western feudal Crusaders took advantage
of the situation by conquering Jerusalem on July 15,
1099; and later, forming alliances with Syrian and
Kurdish feudalists in defeating the Seljuk rulers in
Asia Minor (1990, 120-21). Saladin Ayyubi—a Kurdish
feudal and a previous lieutenant in the Turkish
ruled Mosul principality—dissolved the Turkish
Zangid authority by establishing his own Ayyubid
Dynasty, took on his “Islamic” fight against Muslim
disunity. Under his rein, Ayyubid forces were able
to liberate Syria from the Franks and drove out the
Turks form Kurdistan.
Saladin’s military and good governance qualities
earned him the title of Sultan over the then Islamic
world. Thereafter, as the Crusaders became greedy in
their exploitations of the region, Saladin turned
against the Franks by liberating Jerusalem in 1187
and much of other principal Arab cities (1990, 123).
For a quarter of a century, Kurdistan and much of
the east “was in turmoil because of the eruption of
the Mongolian Turks led by the Sunnite Muslim Timur
Leng (“Timur the Lane,” or Tamerlane)” (1990,
127-28).
It is worth mentioning that the death of the Ayyubid
Sultan in Egypt in 1249, played well into the hands
of the Turkish Maluks (Slaves). A Turkish slave
general, who married one of the widows of the dead
Sultan, announced the end of the Ayyubid era. But,
when later his Kurdish wife had him murdered in his
bath, the Turkish slave soldiers of the self
proclaimed slave Sultan beat her to death.
Accordingly, the rule of Egypt passed to the slave
Turks (1990, 125-26). As a result, animosities
between the Kurds and the slave Turks grew ever
since.
In the wake of the Mongols barbarian tide, the
Muslim world produced three Turkic dynasties; the
Ottoman Dynasty in the heartlands of Asia Minor, a
fragmented Turkmani-Persian Dynasty in Iran and a
Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt. After the collapse of the
Byzantine Empire in 1453, the Ottomans were able to
expand their dynasty into a fledgling empire and the
Persians managed to build their dual Turkic-Persian
Safavid Empire in 1488 (1990, 179-85).
Meanwhile, Kurdish feudalists went on to setup their
own various dynasties. Nonetheless, being sandwiched
between the Ottomans and the Safavids, the Kurds
were devastated by the rivalries between the
Safavids and the Ottomans.
In the course of consolidating their power and
economy, the Safavids invaded Kurdistan in 1504.
Heavy taxations associated with brutalities of the
Safavids in their attempts to convert the Sunnite
Kurds into Shii’sim, forced the Kurds to seek
alliance with the Ottomans. The outcome was the
battle of Chaldiran in 1514 between the two
contending empires which led to the first
partitioning of Kurdistan; western Kurdistan was
seized by the Ottoman forces to be administered a
few “well-defined” autonomous Kurdish dynasties and
the east enclosing the Kurdish dynasties of Ardalan
and Mukrian to remain semi-independent under the
Safavid sphere of influence.
While this was the status quo of Kurdistan for well
over three hundred years, Kurdish dynasties were
well-defined but weak and disunited. The Kurdish
feudalists—in their struggle for hereditary
rule—were involved, as was the case with others, in
killing their competing kinships (Barth: 1953,
129-30). Yet, although Sharaf Khan of Bitlis himself
was advocating the system of dynasties,www.ekurd.nethe
was very much concerned with disunity among Kurdish
rulers. In his famous Sharafname book, completed in
1597, Sharaf Khan suggested a loose confederation of
dynasties and municipalities as a way out of
fragmentation. A century after Sharafname’s
completion, Ahmadi Khani, a Kurdish poet and
scholar, demanded on the unification of the
principalities under a single Kurdish king, who
would ensure Kurdish independence. According to Amir
Hassanpour, “both visions were clearly those of the
feudal society of Kurdistan, Khani’s views are more
appealing to contemporary nationalists because of
his problematization of Kurdish suffering under
Ottoman and Safavid rule as a question of the lack
of a unified independent Kurdish state” (2007).
Definition of nationalism
Although there exists no consensus among the
scholars in defining nationalism; however, without
at least a theoretical framework in which the
definition of the term can be defined, any argument
regarding nationalism remains unproductive.
Therefore, "nationalism" is used in this paper to
refer to a political movement of a community that
distinguishes itself from others as a separate
cultural and political entity. Its main objective is
political self-determination through either
secession or autonomy (Plano and Olton: 1988,
33-34). A political movement becomes nationalist
when it makes political demands for secession or
autonomy in a region that is regarded as the
historical homeland and where the majority of the
population belongs to the same community.
Nationalist movements that demand autonomy are
concerned more with the self-rule of a community
without claiming a sovereign territorial entity
(1988, 35).
However, as scholarly debated, often nationalism,
ethno-nationalism, separatism and irredentism
instigate ethnic conflict between ethnic groups.
Hence, the study of ethnic conflict is of interest
to students of International Relations (IR) because
it is considered to be one the principal causes of
war and frequently results in war crimes such as
genocide (Jones: 1985, 396-435). The correlation
between nationalism and ethnic conflict is important
to determine the origin of nationalism in the
Kurdish case.
The emergence of Kurdish Nationalism
Kurdish nationalism emerged as a political movement
during and after the dissolution of the Ottoman
Empire in a hope for progression and statehood.
Kurdish feudalism played a significant role in
promoting the idea and assuming the leadership,
especially in Kurdistan. The fit Kurdish political
organization to the definition mentioned above to
lead its national aspirations was the Koma Te’aliya
Kurdistanê or the Society for the Progress of
Kurdistan (SPK).
Although the Kurds organized themselves into several
"semi-political societies" in late 19th and early in
the 20th centuries, their organizations became
purely political and began making nationalist
demands only on December 17, 1918, with the
formation of the SPK in Istanbul.
However, due to the feudalist ambitions of its
leadership, a split occurred in the SPK, leading to
an ideological polarization among its members:
secessionists led by Amin Ali Bedirkhan and
autonomists led by Shaykh Sayyid Abdulqadir of
Shemdinan. The supporters of these wings cohered
based on their collectivist mindsets and large
dimensional power distance. Leaders of these two
wings were from the two most influential Kurdish
families which, earlier, led revolts in Kurdistan
(1992, 51).
In such contrasting state of mind, the Kurds were
not able to match the well organized and driven
nationalist targets of their Turkish neighbors. In
fact, the religiously motivated Kurdish feudalism
not only contributed to the weaknesses and the
immaturity of the Kurdish nationalism, but also
became a disastrous catalyst for Kurdish religious
and tribal decision-makers throughout the twentieth
century Kurdish revolts. The disenchantment of a few
Kurdish intellectuals and secular nationalists
played vey well into the hands of the opponents.
Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924), a Turkified Kurdish
sociologist and think-tank, was one of such figures.
Taking advantages of these weaknesses, the colonial
powers, driven by their aggressive exploitation
policies and in concert with the Turkish and Arab
nationalists in the 1920s, partitioned the remnants
of the Ottoman Empire, including western Kurdistan,
amongst the newly formed states of Turkey, Iraq and
Syria. Ever since, the opponents of the Kurds
initiated persisting systemic repression and denial;
and have been working on eliminating a separate
Kurdish identity. But, such actions approved not
only to be pointless; rather, they have exacerbated
the Kurdish conflict more and more. “Recent events
have exposed the existence of Kurdish nationalist
sentiments, which have developed irrespective, or in
spite, of those same boundaries: Kurdish autonomous
aspirations in Iraq; the resurgence of Kurdish
opposition to the policies of the Turkish state; the
crackdown of the Syrian government on its Kurdish
population; the under-reported suppression of
Kurdish national expression in Iran” (Stansfield:
2007).
Thus, one has to go “beyond the conventional
binarism of the civic/ethnic nationalism” (Hassanpour:
2007) to analyze the causes of ethnic conflict.
Primordialism, instrumentalism and constructivism as
theories of ethnic conflict have proven their
inadequacies in explaining the complexities of the
Kurdish conflict.
In time, isn’t it time for non-state actors to
involve in regional and international imperative
policy making?
Conclusion
For the first time in Kurdish history, Kurds in Iraq
have been able to shape their political identity in
a “unique” way (Aziz: 2005, 61). Since 1991, the
leading source of inspiration for nationalist Kurds
has been the continued existence of the autonomous
Kurdistan in Iraq. The legalization of this region
in post-2003 Iraq has strengthened the commitment of
many Kurds to what they see as their inherent
national rights.
Kurdish politicians are now able to influence
outcomes in a manner that the Kurdish negotiators of
the 1920s failed to accomplish. There is no imminent
prospect of an independent Kurdish state, but it is
possible that one may emerge in the Middle East (Stansfield:
2007).
These developments mean that the Kurdish condition
has to be reconsidered with reference to new
political dynamics in Turkey, Syria, Iran, and of
course Iraq, and more importantly, the new political
and economic outlook of the Kurds themselves (Stansfield:
2007).
“International policy-makers find it difficult to
deal with non-state actors, but this should not
prevent them from engaging seriously on Kurdish
issues” (Stansfield: 2007). The recent dilemma
between Turkey, the PKK, and the Iraqi Kurds has
shed light onto the complicated relations that
connect different actors together, and has revealed
the increasingly effective Kurdish political actors
engaged in conflict avoidance.
This article was originally written in 2007 but
never was published..
_____________________________________
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Copyright © 2010 ekurd.net
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