The Kurds in the north (Turkey), in the west (syria) and in the east (iran) are opposed by the regional powers, which instead flirt with the Kurds in the south (iraq).
The Kurdish question has always been a very multifaceted issue and internal divisions have often been one of the major obstacles facing their independentists cause. The largest rift appears to be the one dividing the Syrian-Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party) from the Iraqi-Kurdish PDK (Kurdistan Democratic Party). The Syrian formation is after all based on a Socialist agenda and promotes a democratic confederation along the lines of that spelt out by the leader of the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) Abdullah Ocalan. The Iraqi formation, led by the Barzani clan, is instead conservative and nationalist. The first is considered a mortal enemy of Turkey, the second an unreliable partner.
During the years of the war against the Islamic State the Syrian-Kurdish cause of PYD has become very popular even in the west, thanks to the heroic conduct of the People’s Protection Units (the YPG and the female YPJ brigade) that are linked to it, and other reasons as well. The fascination with the PYD and its militias has not just hinged on the ancient saying whereby “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but also – and especially – owing to the “political” nature of this cause.
The dream of a democratic parliamentary republic based on pluralism, decentralisation of power, respect for the environment, parity between men and women and on the application of the highest socialist values has turned the Rojava experiment – Syrian Kurdistan, freed from the IS occupation after many clashes and battles, of which Kobane is only the most renowned – into a seductive narrative for western public opinion. This has led to the formation of the international brigade of foreign fighters, often very young, who travelled to Syria to fight alongside the YPG militias in their war of liberation. It has also given rise to the legends surrounding the YPJ’s Kurdish female fighters, feared above all else by the men of IS for the very fact of being women, and thus proving that progress and equality can be achieved even in a Muslim society. Other ethnic minorities in the territories occupied and devastated by IS have also built up their own militias, such as those of the Yazidi. This minority group, which used to live on the border between Syria and Iraq , was ruthlessly massacred by the caliphate’s men in 2014. Abandoned by the Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga (linked to the PDK), who were supposed to protect them and instead retreated in front of the unstoppable advance of IS, the Yazidi have been helped by the PKK and the YPG, which opened safe corridors to transfer as many of them as possible into the Syrian Rojava. At this point, both men and women formed their own militias, the YBŞ and (the exclusively female one) the YJÊ.
Obviously enough there have also been negative aspects, both past and present: a few international reports have accused the Syrian-Kurdish militias of recruiting minors by force, of politically persecuting all opposition and even engaging in ethnic cleansing against the Arab populations, who have supposedly been moved off their land, and so on. But these accusations up to now have not been sufficient to belittle the positive image of their cause that the PYD and it militias have managed to project during their years of battling IS.
But this favourable media exposure and positive “emotional” narrative surrounding the Syrian-Kurds linked to the PYD and the YPG has not always been matched by similar goodwill from the standpoint of international politics. The United States, who certainly used the YPG as infantry against IS, for a long time refused to supply the Syrian-Kurdish militias with advanced weapon systems, so as not to upset Turkey, which considers the PYD an arch-enemy, given this formation’s links with the PKK, which Ankara labels a terrorist organisation. But that’s not all. Even Russia, which is the main player in Syria and controls and manages all the various open fronts on the ground, has abandoned and sacrificed the Syrian Kurds in the western enclave of Afrin, after partnering them for a long time. Putin has allowed the Turkish army to occupy this enclave by force in 2018, in exchange for Turkey’s backing in the dismantling of the last pockets of rebellion in Syria by those still ready to fight it out against the al-Assad dictatorship.
By contrast, the Iraqi Kurds of the PDK, relatively speaking, have not been treated so warmly by western public opinion in recent years. Their war against IS in Iraq, probably due to a few episodes such as the abandoning of the Yazidi people, have not led to the kind of fascinating and heroic narrative attributed to the Syrian Kurds and their stalwart resistance in Kobane. Yet they have been much better treated from a political point of view than the PYD, with both the United States and Turkey having historically always sought to have good relations– even in economic and commercial terms – with the Regional Government of Iraqi Kurdistan (KRG), which up to a short while ago was led by Masud Barzani.
This political favouritism was temporarily jeopardized when Masud Barzani tried to go too far, for the taste of his foreign allies, by calling a referendum on the independence of the Iraqi Kurdish region and winning it in 2017. Baghdad reacted immediately and fiercely, by taking back the city of Kirkuk – which controls a major oil field – that had been freed by the Kurdish Peshmerga and had been under their control since then, and generally raising the stakes with Erbil (the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan). Ankara, Tehran and Damascus – the other states which host Kurdish communities – immediately condemned the independentist efforts of the Iraqi Kurds and no one in the west was prepared to give sufficient support to the reasons behind the referendum. Thus the independence never came about and Masud Barzani had to stand down from his leadership of the KRG, which he had held continuously since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But, just as it had turned sour so suddenly, the favour of the various regional and international players towards the PDK quickly returned once the risk of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan had been cast aside. After less than a year since the victorious yet fallimentary referendum, the relations between Erbil, Baghdad, Ankara and Washington are back to normal. Another Barzani now leads the PDK – Masud’s nephew, Nechirvan, who has already been appointed prime minister – and could soon become the new president, thus succeeding his uncle.
But why does the Iraqi Kurdish PDK of the Barzani clan enjoy such preferential treatment compared to the Syrian Kurdish PYD? The issue is partly ideological: the PYD is the heir to a Marxist tradition that has never curried favour with the United States or Turkey. Even in historic precedents, for example the Iraqi Kurdish civil war in the middle of the Nineties, when the PDK was backed by Turkey against the Marxist formations led by the PKK (and above all the Iraqi Kurdish PUK). But, besides history and ideology, the main distinction apparently seems to be the relationship with Turkey. Those who are its enemies, such as the PYD, are easily sacrificed by other states which could even be temporarily allied with the Kurds (as was the case recently with the US and Russia), because the Turkish pawn carries much more weight in determining Middle Eastern strategies that the Kurdish one. Those who are not hostile to it, and don’t press too hard for independence, are rewarded with good relations with Ankara from both a trade and geopolitical point of view. This scheme, a divide and conquer strategy that influences the different relations between Kurdish elements and Turkey, has so far held sway.
However, in the extremely volatile current situation found in the Middle East since the failure of the Arab springs and the escalation of the clash between Sunnis and Shiites – a smokescreen for the geopolitical clash between Iran and Saudi Arabia -, and especially the gradual distancing of the US from the area, the relations’ dynamics could change radically. Turkey has now moved very decidedly into the sphere of influence of the Kremlin, despite formally retaining membership of NATO , and relations between Washington and Ankara are increasingly strained. If the crisis between the White House and Erdogan, which began at the start of this decade but got worse during the Syrian civil war and especially after the failed coup in 2106, should reach its ultimate conclusion, the scenario could change radically. Fantapolitics? Perhaps. After all it’s probably not to Turkey’s advantage to cut itself off completely from the west, and it will probably prefer to remain in an ambiguous position so it can negotiate with both the US and Russia. But if the strategic short-sightedness shown by Erdogan lately reaches its ultimate conclusion, the Kurdish-Syrian independence card might enable the United States to punish a “betraying” former ally such as Ankara while at the same time creating serious problems for two “enemy” states such as Iran and Syria.
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The Kurds in the north (Turkey), in the west (syria) and in the east (iran) are opposed by the regional powers, which instead flirt with the Kurds in the south (iraq).
