The current Kurdish question can be traced back to the end of the First World War and the consequent partition of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Sèvres proposed, among other things, the creation of two new states: Armenia and Kurdistan.
However, the treaty did not last and the Turkish revival led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established the Republic of Turkey: the Treaty of Lausanne superseded the Treaty of Sèvres and effectively snuffed out any aspirations for Kurdish statehood.
Over the following decades the Kurds, despite being persecuted harshly for their ethnicity, have always maintained a strong national identity that belies their geographical distribution across four different countries: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Now that Syria and Iraq, both home to different populations with diverse faiths and customs, appear to be crumbling beneath the weight of the conflict between Shia and Sunni Islam (spurred on by Iran and Saudi Arabia), the dream of a Kurdish state could perhaps become reality.
Although, in religious terms the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, they do not conform to the pattern of a perceived Sunni-Shia schism in the region. Historically, in fact, they were strongly influenced (and secularized) by Marxism and the Soviet Union. An example of this can be seen in Syria with the significant number of Kurdish women combatants fighting in the People’s Protection Units (the YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The Syrian PYD is affiliated to Abdullah Öcalan’s Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey.
While the West, allied to Turkey, considers the PKK to be a terrorist organization, there are numerous Kurdish factions across the region; some of these enjoy the outright backing of the West. The Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP, for example, a nationalist, liberal conservative party in Iraqi Kurdistan, has benefited from significant US support, especially following the war against Saddam Hussein.
The discord between different Kurdish factions has long been one of the obstacles thwarting Kurdistan’s progress towards independence, but this is not the main hurdle: the Kurds’ greatest misfortune is that they inhabit a territory rich in resources, in particular oil that Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria are reluctant to surrender.
Nonetheless, the recent upheavals in the Middle East have led to changes in the status quo. United by their shared struggle against ISIS and the extremist forces in Syria and Iraq, the Kurds of various states (with the exception perhaps of Iran) have forged an unprecedented alliance. Furthermore the regional and international powers have found themselves having to negotiate with the Kurds in order to counter the common enemy of fanatical Sunni Islam.
The first important step towards the recognition of Kurdistan occurred with George W. Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein. In 2003 the Iraqi Kurds, embittered by the horrific casualties suffered during the genocidal gas attacks at the end of the Iran-Iraq War, mobilized tens of thousands of Peshmerga militia against the regime. They were rewarded with extensive autonomy within the new Iraqi federal state.
In 2012 there was even talk of constructing a Kurdish oil pipeline to export oil directly to Turkey, sidestepping Baghdad’s central authority following disputes between the Iraqi government and the Kurdish region about the sale of crude oil.
“Thanks to mediation from Ankara, an agreement has been reached that satisfies both parties,” explains Matteo Verda an expert in energy security.
“Baghdad will not lose control of exports, as they had feared, and the Iraqi Kurds are guaranteed a healthy percentage cut in addition to arms supplies for the Peshmerga. The Iraqi federal state remains intact and arms are supplied to the faction currently fighting ISIS forces. Turkey also stood to gain significantly from an agreement. In addition to the clear economic advantages of importing crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan, the political agreement is of even greater importance: Ankara was keen to obtain a concrete guarantee of structural collaboration from the Kurds”.
The Iraqi Kurds and the PKK, who often carry out attacks against Turkish oil pipelines, risk finding themselves on opposing sides. This is clearly Turkey’s objective but there is growing concern about the solidity of the agreement in light of the increasing military collaboration between the Iraqi Peshmerga and YPG in Syria.
The second important political earthquake in the region, after the fall of the Ba’athist dictatorship in Iraq, arrived with the civil war in Syria. Initially the Kurdish forces, in particular the YPG militia, fought both against the rebels and the regime, obtaining a de facto independence for the majority Kurdish areas within the Syrian territory.
With the rise of the fanatical Islamist factions (and perhaps with a tacit agreement with the Damascus government) Kurdish forces intensified hostilities against the Islamists, firstly those of the al-Nusra Front and then ISIS. Up until the fall of Mosul in Iraq in June and the birth of the ISIS Caliphate, the Kurds had enjoyed significant military success and exercised control over their own areas. But when ISIS combatants managed to capture huge stockpiles of artillery and armoured vehicles from the regular Iraqi army, who had fled their positions in the North East of the country, the complexion of the conflict transformed immediately.
In spite of the aerial bombardment of ISIS targets by the international coalition led by the USA, in September and October fighters of the Islamic State made significant gains in the towns and villages between Syria and Iraq, pushing all the way to the border with Turkey, where they laid siege to the Kurdish city of Kobane.
In response to this moment of difficulty a further development occurred. In October Masoud Barzani, president of the region of Iraqi Kurdistan and head of the PDK, sent Iraqi Pehsmerga militia to the aid of the YPG fighters in the besieged Syrian city.
According to some experts, such as the Turkish Al Arabiya journalist, Ceylan Ozbudak, the Peshmerga went “reluctantly” and “due to strong US pressure on the Northern Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG)”. She also pointed out previous bad blood between the PDK and YPG.
“The KRG is closer in ideology to the rest of the Arab-dominated areas and the YPG’s stance has been quite controversial even among the Kurds.” Ozbudak concluded that, “the Peshmerga were not keen to join the fight in Kobane on the side of the YPG, partly because of the PYD/PKK’s ideological differences with the KRG and also because there are a very small number of Kurdish civilians left in Kobane”.
The fact that the PDK and PKK/YPG, both rivals for influence in Syrian Kurdistan, are working together, is particularly relevant.
Events is being followed extremely closely by the government in Ankara. As mentioned earlier Turkey has no qualms about negotiating directly with the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan over crude oil supplies, but they could never accept the strategic reinforcement of the PKK (and its Syria offshoots), who have renounced neither their aspirations for independence from Turkey nor their commitment to armed struggle to achieve this objective.
“The biggest strategic threat for Turkey is not ISIS but the possible birth of a Kurdish state,” claims Claudio Neri, scientific director of the Italian Institute for Strategic Studies.
“In fact, it is not unreasonable to speculate that Ankara has attempted to use ISIS against the Kurds, even though the strategy has worked only partly. Erdogan has so far avoided intervention against ISIS claiming that aerial bombardments are useless, but he knows that the US do not have the stomach for a ground invasion and such a scenario would see the Turkish military play a leading role: in this way Ankara would be able to control Turkish territory and prevent the PKK from strengthening or even prevent the formation of a Kurdish state on its borders.
In this context the United States is little more than a spectator.
“Their main interest,” concludes Neri, “ is to avoid the sudden collapse of the regional order. The whole geopolitical area of the Middle East is experiencing a phase of adjustment. The various regional actors have modified their relative powers and their internal dynamics are strongly correlated to one another, therefore any intervention could lead to a domino effect”.
The current Kurdish question can be traced back to the end of the First World War and the consequent partition of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Sèvres proposed, among other things, the creation of two new states: Armenia and Kurdistan.
