The Plight of the Kurds

The Plight of the Kurds

Historically, many conflicts throughout the world have been created when religious or tribal boundaries have conflicted with national boundaries. The plight of the Kurdish people is the present day example of this type of conflict.

In order to understand the conflict in which the Kurds are currently involved, one must first understand who they are and from where the conflict arises. The Kurds are Islamic people, but not Arabic, who largely live in the Kurdistan region of the Middle East and speak the Kurdish language. The Kurdistan region includes the northern part of Iraq, the northern tip of Syria the western part of Iran, and the southeastern part of Turkey. Despite the fact that the Kurds are a distinct ethnic group, they have never had their own sovereign country. This paper will explore why the Kurds are in their current situation.

The modern issue of the Kurdish state can be traced back to The Great War. With the end of The Great War in 1918 and the fall of the once expansive Ottoman Empire, there was much debate among the Allied victors about what to do with the old territory once controlled by the Ottomans. The task of splitting up this land fell upon the British. The creation of a purely Kurdish state was not a major issue on the minds of the British. "For Britain the question of Kurdistan was bound to remain secondary to a political settlement for the main territories of interest, greater Syria and Mesopotamia." (McDowall 2000 117). With the Treaty of Sevres, in August of 1921, the Kurds hoped to be granted an independent Kurdish state. The French and British largely ignored ethnic boundaries and, instead, divided the land that was supposed to form Kurdistan up into parts of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran. Two years later in 1923, Great Britain and Turkey met to conclude The Treaty of Lausanne, which set part of the borders of post-war Turkey. Again the Kurds thought that these talks would open up the opportunity for their own Kurdish state. This was not to be. Any plan for a Kurdish state was again discarded in the treaty. In 1946, the Iranian Kurds set up a short-lived Mahabad Republic with the help of the Soviet Union. The Iranian Government crushed the Mahabad Republic. For the next seventy years the Kurds pursued a sovereign homeland, but with no real success.

Now in this century two issues have arisen that have a major impact on the Kurds quest for an independent Kurdistan. The first issue is that while some Kurds are pursuing a peaceful strategy for a new state, others are not. The Kurdish organization PKK, who are fighting violently for a new state, mostly against the Turkish Government, but against other countries as well. The attacks on Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria by the PKK makes theses nations refuse to have talks with the Kurds until the Kurds can stop the PKK. This leads to the second issue, which is that there are Kurds within these nations all searching for the same independence but through complicated negotiations with different governments.

The PKK or the Kurdistan Workers' Party was established in 1984. "The PKK's rise had been a quiet one. It was born out of the vision essentially of one man, Abd Allah Ocala, widely known by his nickname 'Apo'." (McDowall 2000 418). The PKK has been labeled as a terrorist organization by many of the major nations in the world. The history of relations between the PKK and the Turkish Government has been a series of sporadic fighting and then ceasefires, once again to be broken by fighting. This back and forth has been continuously since the creation of the PKK up to the present. "With a vast military arsenal it became increasingly reliant on the use of force to control the Kurds..." (Natali 107 2005) Recently, the Turkish government has been using attack aircraft to bomb and strafe the PKK bases in the Iraqi mountains. The Turkish army is in the process of sending their troops in to attack the bases. "Turkish warplanes struck Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq overnight and some 500 soldiers have crossed the border with armored vehicles, military and security sources told Reuters on Tuesday, in an escalation of hostilities." (Reuters.com). The PKK on the other hand has responded by sending small bands of militia fighters into Turkey to attack towns and bases.

These constant attacks from both sides make it difficult for the Kurdish people, who are trying to find diplomatic means to solve this problem, to get anywhere with the governments of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. As the diplomatic side of the Kurdish issue tries to speak out and let their voices be heard, the governments of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria are ignoring them because of the constant threats from the PKK. One of the biggest problems that are hindering talks between the Kurds and these nations is the fact that the Kurds are spread out between all of them. Instead of just one government to talk to they have four very unyielding governments.

In the three other nations that the Kurdistan region encompasses, tensions are still high. In Iran, the government has recently taken control over the Kurdish regions and the Iranian government has received warnings for their acts of discrimination against the Kurdish people.

"Kurds in Iran have long suffered deep-rooted discrimination. Their social, political and cultural rights have been repressed, as have their economic aspirations. Kurdish regions have been economically neglected, resulting in entrenched poverty. Forced evictions and destruction of homes have left Kurds with restricted access to adequate housing. Parents are banned from registering their babies with certain Kurdish names. The use of the Kurdish language in education is frequently thwarted." (Iran- Amnesty International)

In Syria, the situation still does not look promising for the Kurdish people. The Syrian Kurds have taken up a protest against Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad. This has caused recent clashes between the Syrian government and protesters. "The government has demonstrated little political strategy in coping with the revolt so far, relying almost exclusively on violence since August..."(NYTimes.com). The Syrian government looks at these recent uprisings as a way of trying to overthrow their government and they want to put an end to it.

The only place where the situation for Kurdish independence appears to be more promising is in Iraq. From the beginning of the reign of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were discriminated

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