A Stateless People: the Kurds
By Zyna Shoukat and Dhanviee Misra, 10/3/2020
Stories Spanning Generations
The Kurds are the world’s largest stateless ethnic and linguistic group of roughly 30 million people, living in the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, portions of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and western Armenia, the Khorāsān region, and other adjacent areas.
In 1922, the Ottoman Empire dissolved at the end of World War I and the remains of the Ottoman army were able to unify to expel the Allied Powers, which included France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States. However, the possibility of an independent Kurdish state was abandoned. As a consequence, the Kurds were split across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Iraq attacked Kurdish civilians, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds and prompting hundreds of thousands of Kurds to flee. In response, neighboring Turkey closed its borders, fearing an influx of Kurdish refugees.. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has always been sturdily against Kurdish nationalism with his ultimate goal being the elimination of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a Kurdish far-left militant and political organization based in Turkey and Iraq that fought the Turkish state for more than three decades. Turkey has tried to divest them of their Kurdish identity by identifying them as “Mountain Turks,” excluding the Kurdish language, and forbidding them to wear the traditional Kurdish clothing in or near the important administrative cities.
The Kurds were earnest US allies during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When ISIS swept through Iraq, Kurdish fighters were crucial in the effort to push the terrorist group out. Despite the Kurds’ past support of the US, on October 6th, 2019, President Trump defended his decision to withdraw US forces from Northern Syria. In his opinion, the Turks and Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years, which is factually incorrect, although the two countries have had their differences for a long time. U.S. troops made a hasty retreat, even deploying F-15s to carpet bomb their own bases as they departed. This made the Kurds vulnerable to Turkish attack since there was no longer a force mediating between Turkey and the armed Kurdish People's Protection Units along the border shifting the regional dynamic. Turkey invaded the Kurds, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and overtaking land and homes. Kurds found themselves again traveling in search of a home, some settling down in pre-existent refugee camps, deeper in Syria and to the East in Iraq.
Governed by the Kurdish political party known as the Democratic Union Party, Northeast Syria operates independently of Syria’s capital of Damascus. Kurdish authorities have announced 478 cases of COVID-19, including 28 deaths in the region, but the International Rescue Committee noted that rates were likely higher due to low testing rates. The years-long war, including the 2019 Turkish intrusion, has damaged healthcare infrastructure and many people are still displaced. Worsening the situation, Turkey has cut the water supply to the region. Further complicating matters, the UN Security Council’s January closure of the Yaroubiyah crossing from Iraq into northeast Syria. Russia and China, who back the Syrian government, want aid to flow through Damascus. The Syrian government does not fully recognize the authorities in northeast Syria, making it difficult for humanitarian actors to deliver aid that will actually reach Northeast Syria, significantly worsening healthcare in the region.
The Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish authorities must take steps towards eliminating discrimination against the Kurds and fully recognize economic, social and cultural rights – including the right to work that is freely chosen, adequate housing, food and water, education, healthcare, and equal participation in cultural life.
In 1922, the Ottoman Empire dissolved at the end of World War I and the remains of the Ottoman army were able to unify to expel the Allied Powers, which included France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States. However, the possibility of an independent Kurdish state was abandoned. As a consequence, the Kurds were split across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Iraq attacked Kurdish civilians, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds and prompting hundreds of thousands of Kurds to flee. In response, neighboring Turkey closed its borders, fearing an influx of Kurdish refugees.. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has always been sturdily against Kurdish nationalism with his ultimate goal being the elimination of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a Kurdish far-left militant and political organization based in Turkey and Iraq that fought the Turkish state for more than three decades. Turkey has tried to divest them of their Kurdish identity by identifying them as “Mountain Turks,” excluding the Kurdish language, and forbidding them to wear the traditional Kurdish clothing in or near the important administrative cities.
The Kurds were earnest US allies during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When ISIS swept through Iraq, Kurdish fighters were crucial in the effort to push the terrorist group out. Despite the Kurds’ past support of the US, on October 6th, 2019, President Trump defended his decision to withdraw US forces from Northern Syria. In his opinion, the Turks and Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years, which is factually incorrect, although the two countries have had their differences for a long time. U.S. troops made a hasty retreat, even deploying F-15s to carpet bomb their own bases as they departed. This made the Kurds vulnerable to Turkish attack since there was no longer a force mediating between Turkey and the armed Kurdish People's Protection Units along the border shifting the regional dynamic. Turkey invaded the Kurds, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and overtaking land and homes. Kurds found themselves again traveling in search of a home, some settling down in pre-existent refugee camps, deeper in Syria and to the East in Iraq.
Governed by the Kurdish political party known as the Democratic Union Party, Northeast Syria operates independently of Syria’s capital of Damascus. Kurdish authorities have announced 478 cases of COVID-19, including 28 deaths in the region, but the International Rescue Committee noted that rates were likely higher due to low testing rates. The years-long war, including the 2019 Turkish intrusion, has damaged healthcare infrastructure and many people are still displaced. Worsening the situation, Turkey has cut the water supply to the region. Further complicating matters, the UN Security Council’s January closure of the Yaroubiyah crossing from Iraq into northeast Syria. Russia and China, who back the Syrian government, want aid to flow through Damascus. The Syrian government does not fully recognize the authorities in northeast Syria, making it difficult for humanitarian actors to deliver aid that will actually reach Northeast Syria, significantly worsening healthcare in the region.
The Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish authorities must take steps towards eliminating discrimination against the Kurds and fully recognize economic, social and cultural rights – including the right to work that is freely chosen, adequate housing, food and water, education, healthcare, and equal participation in cultural life.
A Modern History
The Kurdish people are an ethnic group originating in the Middle East and mostly comprised of followers of the Sunni branch of Islam and speakers of Kurdish languages, meaning that Kurds share a similar cultural identity. However, their political history differs in the four countries where they largely live.
Iraqi Kurds make up about 15-20% of Iraq's population of 38 million. In 2005, the Iraq constitution accepted Kurdish as an official language, and recognized the predominantly Kurdish provinces of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Duhok as a federal entity known as the Kurdistan Region.
The relationship between the Kurds and the Iraqi government, however, has a history of bloody confrontations. Feeling pressured by the Kurdish resistance movement, Hussein's forces in the 1980s unleashed the Anfal campaign, which reportedly left 180,000 Kurds killed or missing. The Iraqi government campaign also used chemical weapons, particularly in the 1998 gas attack on the town of Halabja, which left nearly 5,000 residents dead. Rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have deemed the Anfal campaign a systematic ethnic-cleansing program that amounted to genocide. In March 1991, after their uprising was crushed by the Iraq government, about 1.5 million Iraqi Kurds fled into Iran and Turkey, leading to a refugee crisis. In response, an anti-Hussein international coalition established a partial no-fly zone in northern Iraq to allow the return of refugees and protect them from a future aggression. For years afterward, the zone allowed the Kurds to establish their regional government and parliament.
The rise of the Islamic State (IS) terror group in 2014 weakened the Iraqi government. The Kurdish Peshmerga (the Kurdish military force in Iraq) moved into areas that Iraqi forces retreated from as the IS took control. The Kurds announced they had no intention of withdrawing from these areas, which the Iraqi constitution now considers disputed territories between the Kurdistan Region and the Central Government, and requires a referendum vote on their status. As IS started losing territory and the Kurdish military gained international support for their role in defeating the militants, the Kurdistan Region said it intended to hold a referendum for independence. The vote in September 2017 received 93.25% support, but it was later crushed in an Iraqi government operation.
In Syria, Kurds make up nearly 15 percent of the population. Since the establishment of a modern state in Syria in the 1920s, Syrian Kurds have been deprived of political and linguistic rights. Kurdish women flash victory signs and shout slogans as they protest against possible Turkish military operation on their land at the Syrian-Turkish border in Ras al-Ayn, Syria on Oct. 7th, 2019. The first Kurdish political party in Syria was founded in 1957, influenced by Iraqi Kurds. The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria called for political and cultural rights for the Kurdish minority in the Arab-majority country, but its leading members were faced with imprisonment and persecution.
With the eruption of Syria's civil war in 2011, Syrian Kurds were able to be in charge of their regions for the first time. The People's Protection Units (YPG) took control of the area after Syrian government troops withdrew to focus on fighting rebel groups elsewhere in the war-ravaged country .With the rise of IS in Syria, the YPG proved to be an effective force in the fight against IS. Consequently, the U.S.-led coalition provided assistance to the Kurdish group to remove IS from other territories in Syria.
In 2015, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was established to include non-Kurdish fighters among their ranks as well. With U.S. support, the SDF captured most areas from IS control. In March 2019, the SDF declared the territorial defeat of IS after pushing out the terror group from its last pocket of control in eastern Syria.
The Kurds are the largest non-Turkish ethnic group in Turkey. They constitute up to 20 percent of Turkey's population. For decades, the Kurds were subjected to the so-called "Turkification policies" of the state, and their ethnic identity was denied. Their language was restricted, and naming their children in Kurdish was banned. For decades, they were referred to as “Mountain Turks.”The question of an independent Kurdistan has a long history that dates back to the Ottoman Empire. In the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, the Western allies promised an autonomous Kurdistan. However, that was never fulfilled because the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 following the Treaty of Lausanne. As a unitary nation state, Turkey considered the Kurds a threat to its national unity and pushed back on demands for equal citizenship rights.
In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) with the aim of establishing a united, independent Kurdistan within Turkey, but also including parts of Iraq, Iran and Syria. The group started its armed insurgency inside Turkey in 1984, and since then, tens of thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as a result of the conflict between the Turkish government and PKK. In 1999, Ocalan was arrested in Kenya by Turkish intelligence forces. He is serving a life sentence at an island prison near Istanbul. In March 2013, during the Kurdish "Nowruz," or new year celebrations, Ocalan sent a letter to supporters. He called for a cease-fire, as well as steps to disarm and withdraw from Turkey, and an end to armed struggle. The Turkish government praised the letter. In July 2015, the two-and-a-half-year cease-fire broke down, and the conflict resumed. According to the International Crisis Group, more than 4,500 people have been killed in clashes or terror attacks since 2015.
Ethnic Kurds make up nearly 9% of Iran's 80 million population. They are largely Sunni Muslims, but there are some Shiite and Zoroastrian Kurds as well.The Kurdish political movement in Iran started with the establishment of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1946. Under the leadership of Qazi Mohammad, the group declared a Kurdish republic in the city of Mahabad that same year. Nearly 11 months later, however, Iranian government forces entered Mahabad to crush the new Kurdish entity. Mohammad was executed immediately. In 1979, after the Islamic revolution toppled the last shah of Iran, the new Islamist government carried on the subjugation of the Kurds. The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) began targeting Kurdish activists at home and abroad .In 1989, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, an influential Iranian Kurdish leader, was assassinated in Vienna, Austria. The operation was reportedly carried out by the IRGC. Influenced by the Turkish-based PKK, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) was founded 2003 in Iran. Ever since, the group has been engaged in occasional clashes with Iranian security forces.
The Kurdish people are an ethnic group originating in the Middle East and mostly comprised of followers of the Sunni branch of Islam and speakers of Kurdish languages, meaning that Kurds share a similar cultural identity. However, their political history differs in the four countries where they largely live.
Iraqi Kurds make up about 15-20% of Iraq's population of 38 million. In 2005, the Iraq constitution accepted Kurdish as an official language, and recognized the predominantly Kurdish provinces of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Duhok as a federal entity known as the Kurdistan Region.
The relationship between the Kurds and the Iraqi government, however, has a history of bloody confrontations. Feeling pressured by the Kurdish resistance movement, Hussein's forces in the 1980s unleashed the Anfal campaign, which reportedly left 180,000 Kurds killed or missing. The Iraqi government campaign also used chemical weapons, particularly in the 1998 gas attack on the town of Halabja, which left nearly 5,000 residents dead. Rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have deemed the Anfal campaign a systematic ethnic-cleansing program that amounted to genocide. In March 1991, after their uprising was crushed by the Iraq government, about 1.5 million Iraqi Kurds fled into Iran and Turkey, leading to a refugee crisis. In response, an anti-Hussein international coalition established a partial no-fly zone in northern Iraq to allow the return of refugees and protect them from a future aggression. For years afterward, the zone allowed the Kurds to establish their regional government and parliament.
The rise of the Islamic State (IS) terror group in 2014 weakened the Iraqi government. The Kurdish Peshmerga (the Kurdish military force in Iraq) moved into areas that Iraqi forces retreated from as the IS took control. The Kurds announced they had no intention of withdrawing from these areas, which the Iraqi constitution now considers disputed territories between the Kurdistan Region and the Central Government, and requires a referendum vote on their status. As IS started losing territory and the Kurdish military gained international support for their role in defeating the militants, the Kurdistan Region said it intended to hold a referendum for independence. The vote in September 2017 received 93.25% support, but it was later crushed in an Iraqi government operation.
In Syria, Kurds make up nearly 15 percent of the population. Since the establishment of a modern state in Syria in the 1920s, Syrian Kurds have been deprived of political and linguistic rights. Kurdish women flash victory signs and shout slogans as they protest against possible Turkish military operation on their land at the Syrian-Turkish border in Ras al-Ayn, Syria on Oct. 7th, 2019. The first Kurdish political party in Syria was founded in 1957, influenced by Iraqi Kurds. The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria called for political and cultural rights for the Kurdish minority in the Arab-majority country, but its leading members were faced with imprisonment and persecution.
With the eruption of Syria's civil war in 2011, Syrian Kurds were able to be in charge of their regions for the first time. The People's Protection Units (YPG) took control of the area after Syrian government troops withdrew to focus on fighting rebel groups elsewhere in the war-ravaged country .With the rise of IS in Syria, the YPG proved to be an effective force in the fight against IS. Consequently, the U.S.-led coalition provided assistance to the Kurdish group to remove IS from other territories in Syria.
In 2015, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was established to include non-Kurdish fighters among their ranks as well. With U.S. support, the SDF captured most areas from IS control. In March 2019, the SDF declared the territorial defeat of IS after pushing out the terror group from its last pocket of control in eastern Syria.
The Kurds are the largest non-Turkish ethnic group in Turkey. They constitute up to 20 percent of Turkey's population. For decades, the Kurds were subjected to the so-called "Turkification policies" of the state, and their ethnic identity was denied. Their language was restricted, and naming their children in Kurdish was banned. For decades, they were referred to as “Mountain Turks.”The question of an independent Kurdistan has a long history that dates back to the Ottoman Empire. In the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, the Western allies promised an autonomous Kurdistan. However, that was never fulfilled because the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 following the Treaty of Lausanne. As a unitary nation state, Turkey considered the Kurds a threat to its national unity and pushed back on demands for equal citizenship rights.
In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) with the aim of establishing a united, independent Kurdistan within Turkey, but also including parts of Iraq, Iran and Syria. The group started its armed insurgency inside Turkey in 1984, and since then, tens of thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as a result of the conflict between the Turkish government and PKK. In 1999, Ocalan was arrested in Kenya by Turkish intelligence forces. He is serving a life sentence at an island prison near Istanbul. In March 2013, during the Kurdish "Nowruz," or new year celebrations, Ocalan sent a letter to supporters. He called for a cease-fire, as well as steps to disarm and withdraw from Turkey, and an end to armed struggle. The Turkish government praised the letter. In July 2015, the two-and-a-half-year cease-fire broke down, and the conflict resumed. According to the International Crisis Group, more than 4,500 people have been killed in clashes or terror attacks since 2015.
Ethnic Kurds make up nearly 9% of Iran's 80 million population. They are largely Sunni Muslims, but there are some Shiite and Zoroastrian Kurds as well.The Kurdish political movement in Iran started with the establishment of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1946. Under the leadership of Qazi Mohammad, the group declared a Kurdish republic in the city of Mahabad that same year. Nearly 11 months later, however, Iranian government forces entered Mahabad to crush the new Kurdish entity. Mohammad was executed immediately. In 1979, after the Islamic revolution toppled the last shah of Iran, the new Islamist government carried on the subjugation of the Kurds. The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) began targeting Kurdish activists at home and abroad .In 1989, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, an influential Iranian Kurdish leader, was assassinated in Vienna, Austria. The operation was reportedly carried out by the IRGC. Influenced by the Turkish-based PKK, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) was founded 2003 in Iran. Ever since, the group has been engaged in occasional clashes with Iranian security forces.
