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Crazy
Location: Never Never Land
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I thought about writing out a long detailed history for you, but fortunately I was able to a fairly good brief history online, to which I can add my comments at the end.
Quote:
(kűrds, krds) (KEY) , a non-Arab Middle Eastern minority population that inhabits the region known as Kurdistan, an extensive plateau and mountain area in SW Asia (c.74,000 sq mi/191,660 sq km), including parts of E Turkey, NE Iraq, and NW Iran and smaller sections of NE Syria and Armenia. The region lies astride the Zagros Mts. (Iran) and the eastern extension of the Taurus Mts. (Turkey) and extends in the south across the Mesopotamian plain and includes the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 1
As of the late 1990s, there were estimated to be more than 20 million Kurds, about half of them in Turkey, where, making up more than 20% of the population, they dwell near the Iranian frontier around Lake Van, as well as in the vicinity of Diyarbakir and Erzurum. The Kurds in Iran, who constitute some 10% of its people, live principally in Azerbaijan and Khorasan, with some in Fars. The Iraqi Kurds, about 23% of its population, live mostly in the vicinity of Dahuk (Dohuk), Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, and Sulaimaniyah. 2
Ethnically close to the Iranians, the Kurds were traditionally nomadic herders but are now mostly seminomadic or sedentary. The majority of Kurds are devout Sunni Muslims. Kurdish dialects belong to the northwestern branch of the Iranian languages. The Kurds have traditionally resisted subjugation by other nations. Despite their lack of political unity throughout history, the Kurds, as individuals and in small groups, have had a lasting impact on developments in SW Asia. Saladin, who gained fame during the Crusades, is perhaps the most famous of all Kurds. 3
History
Commonly identified with the ancient Corduene, which was inhabited by the Carduchi (mentioned in Xenophon), the Kurds were conquered by the Arabs in the 7th cent. The region was held by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th cent., by the Mongols from the 13th to 15th cent., and then by the Safavid and Ottoman Empires. Having been decimated by the Turks in the years between 1915 and 1918 and having struggled bitterly to free themselves from Ottoman rule, the Kurds were encouraged by the Turkish defeat in World War I and by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s plea for self-determination for non-Turkish nationalities in the empire. The Kurds brought their claims for independence to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. 4
The Treaty of Sčvres (1920), which liquidated the Ottoman Empire, provided for the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state. Because of Turkey’s military revival under Kemal Atatürk, however, the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which superseded Sčvres, failed to mention the creation of a Kurdish nation. Revolts by the Kurds of Turkey in 1925 and 1930 were forcibly quelled. Later (1937–38) aerial bombardment, poison gas, and artillery shelling of Kurdish strongholds by the government resulted in the slaughter of many thousands of Turkey’s Kurds. The Kurds in Iran also rebelled during the 1920s, and at the end of World War II a Soviet-backed Kurdish “republic” existed briefly. 5
With the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the Kurds hoped for greater administration and development projects, which the new Ba’athist government failed to grant. Agitation among Iraq’s Kurds for a unified and autonomous Kurdistan led in the 1960s to prolonged warfare between Iraqi troops and the Kurds under Mustafa al-Barzani. In 1970, Iraq finally promised local self-rule to the Kurds, with the city of Erbil as the capital of the Kurdish area. The Kurds refused to accept the terms of the agreement, however, contending that the president of Iraq would retain real authority and demanding that Kirkuk, an important oil center, be included in the autonomous Kurdish region. 6
In 1974 the Iraqi government sought to impose its plan for limited autonomy in Kurdistan. It was rejected by the Kurds, and heavy fighting erupted. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran (1979), the government there launched a murderous campaign against its Kurdish inhabitants as well as a program to assassinate Kurdish leaders. Iraqi attacks on the Kurds continued throughout the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), culminating (1988) in poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages to quash resistance and in the rounding up and execution of male Kurds, all of which resulted in the killing of some 200,000 in that year alone. 7
With the end of the Persian Gulf War (1991), yet another Kurdish uprising against Iraqi rule was crushed by Iraqi forces; nearly 500,000 Kurds fled to the Iraq-Turkey border, and more than one million fled to Iran. Thousands of Kurds subsequently returned to their homes under UN protection. In 1992 the Kurds established an “autonomous region” in N Iraq and held a general election. However, the Kurds were split into two opposed groups, the Kurdistan Democratic party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which engaged in sporadic warfare. In 1999 the two groups agreed to end hostilities; control of the region is divided between them. Kurdish forces aided the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, joining with U.S. and British forces to seize the traditionally Kurdish cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkish fears of any attempt by Iraqi Kurds to proclaim their independence from Iraq—and thus revive the longstanding hopes of Turkish Kurds for independence (see below)—led Turkey to threaten to intervene in N Iraq. 8
In Turkey, where the government has long attempted to suppress Kurdish culture, fighting erupted in the mid-1980s, mainly in SE Turkey, between government forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which was established in 1984. The PKK has also engaged in terrorist attacks. In 1992 the Turkish government again mounted a concerted attack on its Kurdish minority, killing more than 20,000 and creating about two million refugees. In 1995, Turkey waged a military campaign against PKK base camps in northern Iraq, and in 1999 it captured the guerrillas’ leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who was subsequently condemned to death. Some 23,000–30,000 people are thought to have died in the 15-year war. The legal People’s Democracy party is now the principal civilian voice of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. The PKK announced in Feb., 2000, that they would end their attacks, but the arrest the same month of the Kurdish mayors of Diyarbakir and other towns on charges of aiding the rebels threatened to revive the unrest. Reforms passed in 2002 and 2003 to facilitate Turkish entrance in the European Union included ending bans on private education in Kurdish and on giving children Kurdish names; also, emergency rule in SE Turkey was ended. There were also clashes in the 1990s between the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq. 9
Bibliography
See G. Chaliand, ed., People without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan (1980); R. Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion (1989); D. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (1996)
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http://www.bartleby.com/65/ku/Kurds.html
My first comment would be concerning the Kurds in Turkey. Turkey’s policy towards the Kurds is to be honest not entirely friendly. I spent the better part of a summer over in Turkey studying, amongst other things, Turkish inter-political policies. The official Turkish policy is and has been for some time that “Kurds are Turks who have forgotten their identity” (nearly a direct quote from what one governmental official told me). With Turkey attempting to join the EU, however, this policy is undergoing change. Turkey, of course, still views the Kurds as an “internal problem” and as such should be a matter of internal governance without outside interference. One governmental employee liken the present problem to that of the situation of American Indians here in the US. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with his analogy exactly, but given the changes taking place in Turkey, I can foresee a time in the very near future when this could be the case.
As for why Turkey is very adamant in its position about not surrendering any of the traditionally Kurdish controlled regions is somewhat complicated. First, although there is no question that the Kurds do occupy a general region in Turkey, many of them are also disseminated throughout Turkey, as are many Turks in traditional Kurdish lands. Kurdish Turkey is strategically important to the Turks not only because it is the boarder between Iran and Iraq, but also of its geographical features, most notably the Tarsus and anti-Tarsus mountains and Lake Van. This area is where the headwaters for the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which are the main water supplies for much of the Middle East. Controlling the flow of these rivers (the Turks have many dam works built here) is an important leveraging point for the Turks in regional politics and they will not give this up lightly. It is also important to note that Turkey has no major oil or gas supplies, either inside Kurdish areas or otherwise, but major oil transportation line coming from the major oil producing do travel through Kurdish territory as they carry oil across Turkey to the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions where they are refined (Turks may not have oil of their own but they do a significant portion of the oil refining) and then largely shipped to Europe. One final note that this article leaves somewhat ambiguous about is about PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Although Ocalan was indeed given the death sentence by the Turkish Supreme Court, this sentence has yet to be carried out. There is a somewhat tenuous understanding between the PKK and the Turkish government that so long as the PKK does not resume open hostilities towards the Turkish government, the Turks will let Ocalan live.
Now for just a few quick notes on the Kurds living in Iran and Iraq. This report leaves out what I believe to be a few crucial details about the conflict beginning in 1974 between the Kurds and Iraq (points that I think are very important to understanding the current situation between the Kurds, Iran, Iraq, and the US). In 1974 the leader of Iraq was none other then Ahmed Hassan Bakr, for which Saddam Hussein was vice president (and defacto successor, or more accurately, Bakr was the puppet president as Hussein was already running most of the country at this time). The outbreak of violence between the Kurds and Iraqis was do in large part to US instigation. Basically, the US (under Nixon) saw an opportunity to help “liberate” Iraqi Kurds (and the oil regions they controlled). The US through its embassy in Iran (and its CIA operatives located there) went to the Iraqi Kurds and promised to supply and fund them were they to revolt against Iraqi control (this was all very hush hush of course, I learned of it through first hand information from one of the primary CIA operation officers who was in Iran at the time). The Kurds took the bait and began revolting. However, sometime after the conflict was in full swing, the Nixon administration for whatever reason decided to drop US support leaving the Kurds on their own. Of course once this happened the Kurds were no match for the Iraqi forces and were slaughtered. (The unofficial story goes something like this. The embassy in Iran received a communication from the State Department to “cease and desist” all support of the Iraqi Kurds immediately. Embassy officials in Iran could not believe what they were being instructed to do (knowing that if followed through this order would mean the wholesale slaughter of the Kurds in Iraq), so they sent a reply communication to “clarify the situation”. They very quickly received a reply, signed by Kissinger himself stating, “What part of “cease and desist” don’t you understand?”. Needless to say heads rolled in the Iranian embassy over this issue (and of course the Kurds were indeed slaughtered). Like all great US diplomatic errors this one was too wonderful to not repeat, and so once again 1979 in Iran it was. Once again the CIA was instructed to promise support to the Kurds for attempting to raise up in arms, once again they took the bait and did, and once again the US withdrew it support and the Kurds were slaughtered (this time under Carter of course). Now, although the US did play a small part in the 1988 slaughter of the Kurds by Hussain (redo, rinse, repeat the above scenario) the greater blame is upon the fact that Kurds are not Iraqi nor Iranian, nor Turk. With the war between Iran and Iraq the Kurds on both sides of the borders saw for themself an opportunity to gain themselves some amount of independence. Kurds in Iran then (with the full support of the Iranian government of course), began supplying Kurds in Iraq with supplies to fight against Hussein. Although Hussein is blamed for “gassing his own people”, the Kurds are not his people, the Sunnis are Hussein’s people. Keep that in mind and politics in the region make a lot more sense. So then in 1991 when the US once again promised to support the Kurds against Iraq it should come to you as no surprise that, yet once again the US pulled back and watched them get slaughtered, only this time we decided to step back into the picture and establish a “safe zone” for the Kurds who have since then had near autonomous governing (well as near to autonomous as one can have living in a hostile nation with only outside intervention being your only protection). So now it should really come as no surprise that the Kurds (not just Iraqi Kurds mind you) are somewhat skeptical of US promises to aid them and they are much less willing to take risks they view to be on our behalf. It also shouldn’t surprise you too much to learn, then, that some Kurds are so disgusted with the US that they have turned to terror organizations like Al Qaeda (after all the supposed link between Hussein and Al Qaeda was through one such Kurdish terror organization, never mind the fact that the Kurds hated Hussein more then anything else).
Anyway, I hope that this will help you have a better understanding of the Kurds and their present situation in the region and their relationship with the US.  |