As of recent, there has been a lot of attention on the middle east in the wake of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, but this is not the only struggle in this region. This article is going to discuss the history of the largest stateless nation in the world and the injustice they face at the hands of their oppressors.
The partition of the Ottoman Empire took place from 1918 to 1922 after World War One., Iit was decided by several European countries, most importantly Britan and France, and it set the stage for the middle east from that point onwards. Many disputes over land have come about due to these decisions, one of the most currently relevant being the ongoing conflict of Israel and Palestine. But of all the countries that were drawn out of the many treaties post Wolrd War One, one sticks out as a major oversight on behalf of the allied powers.
This oversight goes by the name of Kurdistan, or Greater Kurdistan as it is sometimesimes referred referred to., Bbut what really is Kurdistan and why was it failed so heavily by the partition of the middle east?
Kurdistan is a region spanning across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria – it is a people unified by common culture and territory, covering 390,000 km²2 and containing around 25-30 million people. Despite all of this, Kurdistan has never been a sovereign state, but this isn't how it was always meant to be. In August of 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres was proposed, and this treaty featured Kurdistan as a nation by its own right. Unfortunately for the Kurds, Turkey would never sign this document as they felt it took too much of their rightful land, and later when the Treaty of Ankara was decided upon in 1926, it failed to even mention Kurdistan.
From this point onwards, the history of the Kurds has been turbulent at best. After a brief flirtation briefly flirting with the Soviet Union in Iran, causing their leader to be promptly hanged by the Iranian government, a general named Mustafa Barzani established the Kurdish Ddemocratic Partypolicy (KDP) in Iraq. Eventually, after many ups and downs in Iraq and Barzani's relationship, the first Kurdish-Iraqi war began and the first Peshmerga (erga (meaning a Kurdish army translating to “those who face death”) was established along with the common Kurdish strategies of guerilla warfare that would allow them to defend their land for generations to come.
In 1970, both sides came to the agreement that they were at a stalemate and layed down arms., Iraq offering limited autonomy to the KurdsKurds, , but this did not last, and after continued wars, assassinations and broken promises between the parties, in 1975 Iraq ended up taking all significant gains in Kurdish territory. They were nowry, making them worse off thane they were in the first place.
Wars like this would plague Kurdish history for decades to come, from the PKK in Turkey leady by Abdullah Ocalan in 1978, to the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, where both Iran and Iraq armed each other's Kurdish population to the teeth, which would end up detrimental to the Kurds in the long run. In 1998, at the end of the Iran-Iraq conflict, Saddam Hussein and one of his generals nicknamed ‘cchemical Ali’ launched the most vicious attack the Kurds had ever seen. This came in the form of the “Anfal campaign” when thousands of Kurds were killed via chemical weapons and thousands more were starved in concentration camps. Entire towns were wiped off the map and it was only in 1991 when the U.S intervened and the Kurds could return home and begin to rebuild.
This event would set the tone for the further exploitation of the Kurds throughout modern history: , time and time again they have been used by other nations where it is convenient and left to face the consequences as soon as their purpose has been fulfilled. To see another example of this in action, we need only to look to America.
American influence and the war on terror
Kurdistan was split in two, the KDP, now led by the son of Mustafa Barzani, shared power with the PUK, which was led by Jalal Talabani. But the issue was, these parties only knew war, they had never had to manage civil governance before. Due to this lack of experience and temperamental two-party system, they were at each other's throats. This tension gave way to yet more fighting in 1994 after a small land dispute, leading to the utilisation of the usual guerilla tactics and subsequently, a lot more death. All this continued until a peace deal was brokered by the United States in 1998 as they had a vested interest in a united Kurdistan who would work as a check on Saddam Hussein.
Kurdistan made effective use of the American aid as they began to recover from conflict and genocide, all while enjoying the first peace the region had enjoyed in a long time. But now in a post-9/11 world, and the war on terror had just begun, a big shift was coming in the region's politics. In 2003, as many of you will know, the USA invaded Iraq on false claims of chemical weapons and alleged ties to Al-Qaeda. Kurds believed that this was a golden opportunity to expand their territory and autonomy, and in 2005, they got just that. In the elections of that year the Kurds received constitutional autonomy and a presence in the Iraqi Parliament.
This and the recent expansion of Kurdish rights in Türkiye (in an effort to get themselves rt from them to get into the EU) and mass Kurdish protests in Damascus (the capital of Syria) pushed the Kurdish plight into the mainstream, creating far more pressure for global recognition of the people. Things finally seemed as if they were looking up for Kurdistan. But this was soon disrupted by the unintentional side effect of the Iraq war: Islamic state.
Islamic state , (or ISIS as it is better known as ISIS,) was a jihadist group looking to establish an Islamic caliphate (an Islamic region) in Iraq and Syria, ISIS initially focused on Mosul (the second largest city in Iraq) and many Kurdish regions, which at first ISIS took with ease but throughout the war were pushed back by the Ppeshmergas. In 2019, Syrian- Kurdish forces declared victory of the Islamic state after clearing the town of Baghouz., Wwhilst this was a big victory for Kurdish global recognition and reinforced their place in geopolitical issues, it quickly went downhill when Americal withdrew from the area, leaving the Kurds completely undefended. This led to Turkey quickly moving into the area, displacing hundreds of thousands and enforcing a rule that Kurdish militias could not inhabit any areas bordering Turkey.
Kurdistan is in crisis and has been for the past century. Kurds are being killed by Turks, Iranians and are bring suppressed by all their other neighbours. All with no help from the western powers who promised them their own country. Kurdish culture is rich, and distinct from any other in the world, they share common language, culture and history, and for this they deserve their own sovereign nation and a place to call home without risk of war or genocide. Kurdistan has been praised for its progressive attitudes and women in positions of power, specifically the all-female Peshmerga that helped defeat ISIS, the have also been praised in their advocacy of democracy, which is something relatively hard to come by in the middle east. All of these are reasons for the Kurds to finally get their wish and gain full autonomy and sovereignty in the form of their own nation state, but overall, it is just unfair and immoral to allow the continued oppression and suffering of these people.