As US Prepares to Leave Iraq, Ex-Advisor to Iraqi President Says Kurds Need Reliable Partners

© AP Photo / Jim MacMillan, File
Elizabeth Blade

Washington has a proven track record failing its allies, says a former Kurdish official, whereas such countries as Iran and Russia are known for standing by their partners and fighting for them until the end.

With the pullout from Afghanistan officially over, the US is now looking to meet another deadline and withdraw its forces from Iraq, where they have been stationed since 2003.
Today, there are some 2,500 US troops in Iraq. They help local forces combat remnants of Daesh* and other terrorist groups. After the withdrawal, only few troops will be left, and they are expected to train and advise the Iraqi military.

Kurds Worried

The promise to leave the region has already stirred worries among many Kurds within Iraq, and Hiwa Osman, an Erbil-based political analyst and former advisor to Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish politician who served as the president of Iraq from 2006 to 2014, says that the pullout of American forces from the country will not turn it into another Afghanistan, but Iraq will be "fragmented and divided".


"The south will fall into the hands of Iran. In the north, where the Kurds are, there will be a Turkish takeover, whereas in the centre, where most Sunnies reside, there will be a civil war," Osman believes.

Up until recently, the Kurds of Iraq had high expectations of US President Joe Biden, who took office in January.

Unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, who was perceived as someone who used the Kurds in his fight against Daesh and who dumped them years later, Biden has been viewed as a reliable partner, and as a leader who could solve their multiple problems.
And those were in abundance. They included the attempts of Iran and Turkey to bite off some territories from the Kurds, the lack of agreement with Iraq's central government over oil revenues and disputed land and the involvement of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the Iraqi military.

Unreliable Partners

Now, as the policy of the Biden administration is clear, many Kurds feel exposed but Osman says he has not been surprised by the move, given Washington's "poor history" mistreating its allies. "They have always said they would not leave the Kurds. But history taught us they always did".

Such was the case in 1975, when following the Iran-Iraq border treaty, the Kurds were attacked by the then-leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, while the Americans, who initially seemed to have supported the Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, were sitting idly by.
In the 1980s, the Kurds experienced a similar setback when they joined the Iranian revolutionary guards in the Iran-Iraq war. Once the hostilities came to an end, Saddam Hussein became even more ruthless towards the ethnic minority that had cooperated with his enemy. Washington once again preferred not to interfere.

"They have also left the Kurds of Syria," says Osman, referring to the 2019 US withdrawal from the war-torn country and refusal to confront Turkey over its decision to move troops and proxy forces into Kurdish-controlled areas. "They cannot be trusted, and this is the reason, why the Kurds should be looking for alternatives."

Looking for Allies

One such alternative could be Iran, thinks the former advisor. Steps in that direction have already been taken. In 2018, Kurds gave reassurances to the Iranians that they would not allow any Kurdish opposition groups to launch cross-border attacks from Iraqi Kurdistan, something that brought the two sides closer.

And, more recently, eastern Kurdistan made a series of appointments that indicated they were seeking closer ties with the Islamic Republic.

There have also been attempts at rapprochement with Russia. In 2020, Moscow made sure to involve the Kurds in negotiations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whereas Russian President Vladimir Putin has reiterated the importance of Iraq's Kurdish Pershmerga forces in their fight against Daesh.

"For the Kurds, it makes perfect sense to align themselves with such countries as Iran and Russia. Those stand by their allies to the last bullet. So if I were a decision maker and I needed to choose between Washington and Moscow, I would most certainly go for the latter", Osman concludes.

*Daesh, also known as ISIS/IS/Islamic State, is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.

Sweden’s NATO Entry Launches a New Phase for the Country’s Kurds

The conviction of a PKK member may have helped smooth the way for Stockholm’s membership, but it also signals a tense turning point

Tam HusseinTam Hussein is Associate Editor at New Lines magazine
July 31, 2023

Demonstrators in Malmo, Sweden, protest Turkish military attacks against Kurds in Syria in 2018. (Magnus Persson/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

On July 6, the conviction of Yahya Gungor, 41, a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) member, caused shockwaves in the Swedish-Kurdish diaspora. Gungor had extorted a Kurdish businessman in order to get him to fund the PKK, a designated terror organization in Sweden, the United States and the EU. According to the judge, Gungor had been part of a European fundraising campaign and will serve a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence and then be extradited to Turkey. This is the first time a PKK member has been convicted in a Swedish court.

This will worry the 100,000-strong Swedish-Kurdish diaspora, as they see Gungor’s case as politically motivated, aimed at smoothing the Nordic country’s entry into NATO by doing Turkey’s bidding. His case follows the Russian invasion of Ukraine, after which Sweden’s security interests changed overnight. Sweden abandoned its long-standing neutrality in favor of NATO membership and, consequently, became dependent on Turkey, a NATO member, which held veto power over the bid. Turkey said it would only let Sweden in if its security concerns were satisfied. Ankara has long accused Sweden specifically, and Europe generally, of being too easy on an organization linked not only to terror attacks but organized crime, including extortion and drug trafficking.

Swedish judges went to great pains to stress that Gungor’s case had nothing to do with Turkish demands that Sweden crack down on the PKK. But that likely won’t stop Swedish Kurds from seeing the decision as a sign of an insecure future. While the political views of Swedish Kurds are manifold and varied, there is considerable sympathy for the organization, even if many disagree with its methods and radical ideas. Many Swedish Kurds still hold a common grievance against the Turkish state and may even have attended PKK rallies in solidarity. Now, displays of sympathy could land them in a Turkish prison.

Such fears are not wholly baseless. Even before Gungor’s conviction, on June 7 a Swedish court approved Turkish demands to extradite Mehmet Kokulu in order to finish off a prison sentence for drug trafficking. From the outside, Kokulu’s extradition appears quite reasonable. States often send convicted criminals to complete prison sentences in the countries in which their crimes were committed. However, Kokulu was also a refugee and a PKK supporter, and the case suggests that anyone who is a PKK sympathizer might face the prospect of extradition in spite of their refugee status. Both court cases appear to signal the end of Sweden’s tolerance for the political activities of its Swedish-Kurdish citizens, and may herald their becoming a suspect community. Yet in reality, that relationship between Swedish society and its Swedish-Kurdish citizens has always been one of alternating admiration and suspicion, since the time the latter arrived in the country.

When Kurds arrived in Sweden after World War II in the 1960s, Sweden had gone from being a country whose citizens migrated to other countries to one which required migrants for its growing industries. The first wave of Kurdish migrants was not dissimilar to the German foreign workers (“Gastarbeiter”) and came mostly from southeastern Turkey. The second wave came in the late ’70s and ’80s and were far more educated, middle class and politically active. They were also affected by political instability, repression and martial law which they suffered not only at the hands of the Turkish state, but also the Syrian, Iranian and Iraqi states. None of these countries wanted to see a Kurdish state being carved out of their territory.

The Kurdish diaspora felt aggrieved. Many of these countries that had sprung up from the former Ottoman empire erased their identity, either under the guise of Turkish nationalism or pan-Arabism. This took forms including the genocidal policies of the Iraqi Baath Party, culminating in the Anfal campaign, which killed thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s, and the land seizures of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, which aimed to create an “Arab belt” by seizing land from Kurds and bequeathing it to Arabs, and, in the case of Turkey, the process of Turkification, which sought to turn Kurds (or “mountain Turks,” as they were euphemistically known) into assimilated Turks bereft of an independent ethnic identity.

The latter policy manifested itself in the suppression of Kurdish language and culture in Turkish institutions. Since Kurds did not speak Turkish very well, they were left behind in a rapidly modernizing country. Even in 2022, the Kurdish soprano, Pervin Chakar, was allegedly canceled by her local university in the city of Mardin, on the Turkish-Syrian border, for including a Kurdish folk song in her repertoire. So the freedom experienced in Sweden was not underestimated by the nascent Swedish-Kurdish diaspora.

According to Barzoo Eliassi, a researcher of social policy at Oxford University, and Minoo Alinia, professor of sociology at Uppsala University in Sweden, Kurds were regarded as a “culturally remote and incompatible group in Swedish society.” Facing immense prejudice and racism and feeling a sense of alienation from their homeland, the Kurdish diaspora developed a sense of their “Kurdishness.” Sweden had become a melting pot, where Kurds from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran could gather freely for the first time, having previously been separated by national boundaries. Martin van Bruinessen, an anthropologist who specializes in the Kurds, notes that the presence of Kurdish intellectuals helped to stitch the community together and contributed to the spread of Kurdish nationalism.

As Eliassi and Alinia point out, the first generation did not care whether they were accepted by Swedes or not. They were migrants and they knew it; they were just thankful to be in a country that didn’t persecute them. For the first generation, prejudice was a price worth paying for the immense political freedom they experienced in their daily lives. For Kurdish women in particular, life in Sweden led to opportunities that they would never have experienced back home.

For their children, however, the situation was very different, as they didn’t have that pre-migratory experience of their parents. For them, to be accepted as Swedish mattered, and the realization that they were never going to be “Svensk Svensk” (Swedish Swedish) took a toll on them. If they didn’t face overt racism, at the very least, they experienced what Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish-Balkan soccer player, identified as “undercover racism.” They experienced the stigma that came with not having a surname like “Andersson or Svensson,” as he put it. It manifested itself in fewer job prospects or the near-complete segregation of foreign-born Swedes, who lived in self-contained suburbs like Rinkeby away from their white compatriots.

Alinia, who has written extensively on the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden, told me that Kurds were made to feel doubly incompatible with Swedish society, especially after 9/11. Not only did they experience the prejudice that many Muslim communities faced globally but they were also affected by the backlash that followed the honor killings of Pela Atroshi in 1999 and Fadime Sahindal in 2002. Atroshi was killed by her uncles for moving out of the family home. Sahindal was shot by her father for having a Swedish boyfriend and speaking out in the Swedish Parliament. It was a common accusation that Kurdish men were seen as “perpetrators” and women “their victims,” Alinia said. It made second-generation Kurds feel spurned by their country of birth.

And so sometimes, the second or third generation became even more hardcore Kurdish nationalists than their parents. Unlike the latter, who had experienced life in their homeland, the second generation created little idyllic Kurdistans in their heads, far removed from the messy political reality that always comes with such nation-building projects. As Alinia points out, nationalism became the framework and created a sense of “collective identity,” perhaps even more so when, in 2005, following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a federal Iraq was created and Kurdish Iraqis were given an autonomous Kurdistan governorate rich in oil resources.

Arguably, the Swedish Kurds spread and strengthened Kurdish nationalism in Sweden because it gave both first- and second-generation Kurds a way to protect themselves from the prejudice of wider Swedish society; it gave them self-confidence and self-respect. In many ways it anchored them to something, even if it was just a vague idea.

Politically and culturally, however, according to Khalid Khayati, a political scientist at Linkoping University, Sweden became a “gravitational center” for Swedish Kurds. Up until now, at least, the Kurdish diaspora felt they could express themselves freely in Sweden. The Swedish state supported cultural federations in general, and Kurds could form associations and societies in a way that they couldn’t in Turkey or Syria. Kurdiska Riksforbundet i Sverige, the Federation of Kurdish Association in Sweden, had 40 or so associations and many other associations were formed in the ’90s. Kurds also established several TV and radio channels, as well as newspapers. Kurdish libraries and publishing houses printed books in the Kurdish languages that riveted the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden. These activities would be difficult or impossible in Turkey. Unlike many other ethnic minorities in Sweden, Swedish Kurds had managed to penetrate many spaces of Swedish society, rarely available to ethnic minority Swedes.

As someone born in Stockholm and raised in Rinkeby, to spot a white Swede there is a rarity, something noteworthy, and to witness the grit and tenacity of Swedish Kurds is extraordinary. Not only did Swedish Kurds manage to elect six members (MPs) to Parliament in 2018 but they had journalists, intellectuals, writers, academics and pop singers in wider Swedish society, too. In fact, such was the political skill of some that Amineh Kakabaveh, an independent MP of Kurdish heritage and a former PKK guerrilla fighter, for one brief moment held the decisive vote that could have resulted in the fall of the Swedish Social Democrats’ minority government. Kakabaveh managed to leverage her single vote to secure concessions for the Kurdish factions fighting in Syria.

But there were problems too. Many of these societies were dominated by supporters of the PKK, which started life as a Marxist-Leninist and radical leftist party. Even though there were other political parties in Kurdish politics, the PKK was the loudest in channeling the grievances of the Kurdish diaspora. The problem was that the PKK was outlawed by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme after a PKK defector was killed in 1984. When Palme was assassinated in 1986, the national security service, SAPO, suspected that the PKK had killed him out of revenge. These allegations proved baseless, and over the years the Swedish state left them more or less alone because they threatened neither the Swedish state nor the West, despite the fact that the group was accused of involvement in terrorism, human trafficking and the heroin trade. A 2019 paper by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction suggested that the PKK controlled the nexus for heroin trafficking in southern Turkey and there was “limited” open source evidence that the PKK was involved in importing narcotics into Europe. Until recent years, the PKK was never deemed “a question” for the Swedish state, according to Svante Cornell of the Institute of Security and Development Policy, and so they were left to do their politicking among the Kurdish diaspora unchecked.

With the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, however, turning a blind eye toward the PKK was seen as tacit support. The Kurdish political groups seized northern Syria by 2012 and captured the Western imagination in the battle for Kobani and Rojava in 2015. While as many as 300 Swedish nationals joined jihadist groups and made Swedish headlines by beheading Syrian pilots, ramming a truck into a famous department store in Stockholm and taking some of their blond and blue-eyed children to the Islamic State caliphate, the Kurds led the fight against them. One of the PKK’s offshoots, the YPG, was prominent in the fight against the Islamic State. For a fleeting moment, Kurds could do nothing wrong, as the YPG appealed to Swedish sensibilities. They seemed egalitarian. Kurdish women fought on the front lines against a barbaric jihadist group that enslaved Yazidis and oppressed women. No longer were the Kurds seen as the perpetrators of honor killings. Popular support translated into political support; Sweden, alongside the U.S. and other NATO countries, supported the YPG in its fight against the Islamic State.

Such support, however, was deemed unacceptable to Turkey, especially as the truce between it and the PKK ended in 2015. As a result of the renewed clashes between the two, according to the International Crisis Group, from 2015 up until very recently, 6,677 fatalities have occurred in Turkey, 614 of whom were civilian victims. In 2016, the Kurdish Freedom Hawks, said to be an offshoot of the PKK, bombed transport hubs in Ankara and a mosque in Bursa, in northwest Turkey, as “payback” for a Turkish military operation. While not all Kurds are part of the PKK, Turkey believed that Sweden was not only supporting the YPG but harboring cadres involved in extorting money and funding the PKK. These fundraising activities supposedly affected not only small stores in Rinkeby and elsewhere in Western Europe but also the streets of Turkey in acts of terror. Turkey needed to cut off the indirect relationship between the PKK and the Swedish government. In this, Sweden was not an exception in attracting Turkey’s ire over PKK activities. Other countries such as France had also fallen afoul of Turkey, but Sweden arguably occupied a special place because of its important role in Kurdish cultural and political life. Turkey saw its opportunity in 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian invasion led Sweden to discard its neutrality by applying for NATO membership. This application, however, could have been vetoed by Turkey, meaning that Sweden had to placate Ankara’s security concerns. Moreover, by 2022, Sweden was governed by a right-wing coalition led by Ulf Kristerson that relied on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, which was even less sympathetic to immigrants, let alone Kurdish causes. And so Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom distanced the government from organizations like the YPG, while also turning its attention to the PKK’s activities at home. While wider Swedish society fretted over being dictated to by Turkey, the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden felt a deep betrayal at this seeming about-face from the Swedish state. After all, Kurds had died on the frontline fighting on behalf of the West. They were also holding European jihadist women and children, including Swedes, in camps such as al-Hol and Roj in northeastern Syria.

The cases of Gungor and Kokulu were not seen as merely coincidental by Swedish Kurds but rather as betrayals auguring an insecure future. For many Swedish Kurds, the new detente between Sweden and Turkey could mean their extradition and the beginning of a new relationship between them and Swedish society; one in which they are viewed as a suspect community.

Is Russia cozying up to Syria's Kurds amid rift with Turkey?

ARTICLE SUMMARY
The United States has reportedly cautioned the Kurds not to fight Turkey in any potential escalation in Syria, but Russia appears to have moved closer to the Kurds, as suggested by Kurdish collaboration with the Syrian army in areas along Idlib’s boundaries with Afrin.

Fehim Tastekin February 20, 2020

REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
Russian and Syrian national flags flutter on military vehicles

 near Manbij, Syria, Oct. 15, 2019.

The escalation in Idlib has left Turkey vacillating between Russia’s tough options and the United States’ enticing prodding, as it maintains its menacing posture to force the Syrian army’s retreat to now-defunct cease-fire lines in the rebel stronghold. Amid the standoff, the Syrian Kurds are becoming a key factor in both US and Russian calculations to sway Turkey’s attitude.

The US administration is said to be considering options to back Turkey in a potential thrust in Idlib and, in a further move pleasing Ankara, has reportedly cautioned the Kurds to stay out of the conflict. Russia, for its part, appears to have unfolded the Kurdish card, albeit rather discreetly at this time, in a way that goes beyond reviving the dialogue between the Kurds and Damascus.

Until recently, the Kurds worried that Russia, in a bid to keep Turkey on its side in Syria, might allow it to take control of the Kurdish city of Kobani on the Turkish border in return for Turkish concessions in Idlib. In fact, this has been a fear recurring at each apparent progress in the Turkish-Russian partnership. Amid the recent head-spinning developments, however, the Kurds sense that the Russian door might open to them to an extent they have never imagined.

In general terms, the Kurdish position could be summarized as follows: The Kurds still place importance on their partnership with the United States on the ground, continue to consider Turkey’s military presence as a primary threat, and — while seeing Russia as the guarantor of any negotiations with Damascus — they keep in mind that Russia’s strategic interests might lead it to accommodate Turkey, as it did in 2018 when it acquiesced to Turkey taking over Afrin.

Yet the order of priorities in the Kurdish approach has changed since Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria in October 2019. The notion that Damascus should be the address of settlement on the Kurdish issue has gained weight as a general strategic choice for the Kurdish-led self-administration in northern and eastern Syria. In late December, the Russians had a meeting with Kurdish representatives at Russia's Khmeimim air base, after which they arranged a meeting between the Kurdish team and Syrian government representatives in Damascus. The talks, in which intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk led the Syrian side, resulted in a deal to set up joint committees with a view of furthering negotiations down the road.

The straining of Russian-Turkish ties over Idlib has resulted in some undeclared changes in Kurdish tactical choices. According to Kurdish sources contacted by Al-Monitor, the Kurds are collaborating with the Syrian army in certain parts of the operations in northwest Aleppo, namely in areas along the boundaries of Afrin. An expansion of the offensive toward Afrin is likely to make the Kurdish participation more visible.

Standing out as two other potential fronts are Tel Rifaat, where the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has redeployed after pulling out from Afrin in 2018, and Manbij, where Syrian and Russian troops have moved in since the withdrawal of US forces. To the east of the Euphrates, meanwhile, Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad, which are controlled by the Turkish military and its ally, the Syrian National Army, as well as nearby Tel Tamer and Ain Issa, which lie on the M4 highway, are considered key areas to which potential clashes might spread. The said locations are already the scene of sporadic confrontations in the form of transient, controlled exchanges, but in the event of a direct face-off between the Syrian and Turkish militaries in Idlib, they are likely to turn into hot battlefields.

The joint Russian-Turkish patrols along the Turkish-Syrian border, which had stalled after the killing of Turkish soldiers in Idlib earlier this month, resumed Feb. 17, yet the Kurdish sources believe the Turkish-Russian arrangement reached in Sochi Oct. 22 after Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring has collapsed. The collapse of the deal would mean that Russia, a guarantor of the cease-fire, would stop acting as a brake holding up the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian military in the region. Still, making such a conclusion appears a bit premature at present.

Speaking of the Afrin front — which has been effectively opened with the Kurdish involvement — and other potential fronts, another curbing factor, namely the United States, is at play.

According to US sources, quoted by prominent Turkish journalist Murat Yetkin on his personal blog, the United States has made it clear to the YPG that they would not get US support if they fight the Turkish military. “A senior official stressed that YPG forces were ‘clearly and repeatedly’ told that the United States would not choose them over Turkey in case of a conflict,” Yetkin wrote Feb. 18.

The report quotes a senior US source as analyzing that Turkey’s October incursion, while opposed by Washington, seems to have accomplished two objectives, namely establishing Turkish military presence in northeast Syria, which is critical for future developments in Syria, and demonstrating that the United States would not protect the YPG against Turkey, even though Ankara was concerned and at least some in the YPG believed that the United States would do so.

Regarding the situation in Idlib, Yetkin summarizes the comments of US sources as follows: “US forces will not directly get involved in conflict [in Idlib]; that is our limit. But we will support Turkey in other areas, from advanced intelligence services to special equipment when needed.”

The journalist quotes the source as saying that Washington will not raise any objections if other NATO allies decide to assist Turkey by deploying Patriot batteries at the border to “ensure air cover.”

One of the sources notes that Turkey is capable of dispatching up to 45,000 troops to the region in a short period of time, stressing that “neither Syria nor Russia would be capable of that.” The source, however, adds that Washington does not expect Russia to strain ties with Turkey “too much” over Idlib, given “the strategic significance” of the relationship.

A Kurdish source contacted by Al-Monitor denied the Kurds had received any message to not expect US backing if they fight Turkey, but they are not ruling out such an eventuality. “The United States is against any alignment between the Kurds and Damascus. Saying that [the Kurds] should not fight Turkey amounts to saying that [the Kurds] should stay clear of Idlib,” the source noted.

Stressing that the situation remained fluid, the source said, “We are on a very fluctuant ground, where cooperation, contradiction and conflict between the United States and Turkey, between Turkey and Russia and between Russia and the United States are going on simultaneously. So, we are unable to speak in definitive terms. Still, we can emphasize this: Russia’s role as mediator and guarantor has become more prominent [for the Kurds] after the US attitude in the face of Turkey’s invasion [in October].”

According to the source, the deepening of the Turkish-Russian rift is significant for the Kurds in the sense that it could lead Russia to take the Kurds into account more prominently and result in a solution mechanism on the Kurdish question. “If the conflict in Idlib grows, the Russians are likely to open the Kurdish card. In fact, we can say they have already opened it to some extent,” the source said.

Nevertheless, the Kurds believe it is still premature to declare a clear position, not ruling out the possibility that the Russians might eventually lack the resolve to go into a full-fledged face-off with Turkey. Of note, while reaching out to the Kurds on the one side, the Russians are trying to rouse Turkey’s sensitivities on the Kurds on the other. In a Feb. 18 statement, for instance, Russia said the United States had moved more than 300 truckloads of weapons from Iraq to northeast Syria this year, with the weapons being “used against Turkish troops” in the region. In other words, the “dual usability” of the Kurdish card is another reason why the Kurds are blowing on cold water.

Fehim Tastekin is a Turkish journalist and a columnist for Turkey Pulse who previously wrote for Radikal and Hurriyet. He has also been the host of the weekly program "SINIRSIZ," on IMC TV. As an analyst, Tastekin specializes in Turkish foreign policy and Caucasus, Middle East and EU affairs. He is the author of “Suriye: Yikil Git, Diren Kal,” “Rojava: Kurtlerin Zamani” and “Karanlık Coktugunde - ISID.” Tastekin is founding editor of the Agency Caucasus. On Twitter: @fehimtastekin



Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/02/turkey-syria-russia-idlib-unfolding-kobani-card-kurds-sdg.html#ixzz6EqSjoKgh

Peace in Kurdistan sends its solidarity greetings to all those resisting Turkey’s war on this day of action for the Kurds.

ANF
LONDON
Saturday, 11 Jun 2022

Peace in Kurdistan sent its solidarity greetings to all those resisting Turkey’s war on this day of action for the Kurds.

Peace in Kurdistan said in a statement: "We stand shoulder to shoulder with all those out on the streets who are joining in the demonstration for peace. For the fate of humanity, the Kurds must be victorious. Solidarity with the Kurds, stop Turkey’s war."

The statement continued: "The spill over into Kurdistan from the protracted conflict in Europe is becoming more clearly evident in Erdogan’s latest actions in Syria and Iraq. The President of Turkey is ruthlessly exploiting the situation opened up by the war in Ukraine to achieve maximum advantage in his unrelenting war against the Kurds. He calculates that while the United States and Russia are preoccupied with Ukraine, Turkish forces will have a free hand to eliminate Kurdish forces located across the border in Syria and Iraq, claiming to be acting in response to a terrorist threat and encouraged by his belief that Turkey’s allies will remain silent and in so doing will effectively be condoning his actions.

Furthermore, while much of the Russian forces are preoccupied in Eastern Ukraine, Erdogan appears to believe that the Russian military presence in Syria will offer no obstacle to Turkey’s military operations against the Kurds, which involve mass expulsion of the Kurdish majority population in the border region of some 1,400 km. He expects to escape criticism of his actions by the device of claiming that he is simply making the land safe for Turkey. This is a falsehood. The Kurds pose no threat to the Turkish people. They seek peace and to be treated fairly and only wish to enjoy the rights that other peoples can take for granted.

In pursuit of his war aims, Erdogan has frustrated NATO’s plans for expansion by refusing to countenance the membership of Sweden and Finland in a bid to exert leverage over the domestic policies of those two countries alleging that they offer a haven for Kurdish terrorist groups.

With Erdogan poised to launch an all-out war on Kurdish positions, the danger to the Kurds is now real and imminent. He has wanted to destroy Rojava ever since the Kurdish controlled enclave was established and has long resented the successes achieved by Kurdish forces in their resistance to ISIS and their cooperation with international forces in the common struggle to restrain the advance of the Islamist groups, who were engaging in an orgy of bloody massacres and enslaving all who stood in their way of their plan to construct a caliphate. Turkey collaborated with these groups, who were regarded by others as a scourge on humanity.

Like any other nation, Turkey must be held fully accountable for its actions. Ankara cannot simply be given free rein to ride roughshod over international law and flout standards of behaviour that we all expect other countries to follow.

Credible and repeated reports of the use of banned chemical weapons by Turkish forces against the Kurds demand to be thoroughly investigated.

Turkey must not be permitted to get away with its planned destruction of Kurdish civilians and displacement of entire communities in this ruthless and dirty war.

Turkey is pursuing an extremely high risk strategy with untold consequences which can only provoke further conflict and further destabilise the whole region. The Kurds stand full square for peace, for a new form of democratic self-government that offers hope for the peoples of the region and for advancing the rights of women and protecting the rights of minority communities. They must be supported.

The rights of all the peoples of the region and their way of life were mercilessly repressed by the jihadi factions whose interests became opportunistically aligned with those of the Turkish state. As such it is surely blatantly obvious that Turkey’s war on the Kurds is an attack on every one of us. Erdogan’s Turkey is engaged in a war of extermination against all decent, democratic, humanitarian principles and presents a threat to all the shared values that we should cherish and uphold as citizens of one global community. If we believe that we have a common interest in building a better future for the world, then we must stop Turkey from fulfilling its objectives.

Since its foundation in 1994, Peace in Kurdistan has consistently argued that direct peace negotiations between Turkey and the Kurds offer the only realistic solution towards bringing this historic conflict to an end with an enduring settlement. We repeat once again this demand and call on all those with influence to restrain Turkey’s war drive and bring Erdogan to the negotiating table.

The UK Government, NATO and the West must not remain silent in the face of Turkey’s war drive."

Peace in Kurdistan ended its statement by sending its solidarity greetings to "all those resisting Turkey’s war on this day of action for the Kurds. We stand shoulder to shoulder with all those out on the streets who are joining in the demonstration for peace. For the fate of humanity, the Kurds must be victorious. Solidarity with the Kurds, stop Turkey’s war."

The Kurdish Dream Of A State – Analysis

Kurdish-inhabited area, by CIA Factbook. Source: Wikipedia Commons

February 21, 2021 Anondeeta Chakraborty* 0 Comments

By Anondeeta Chakraborty*

The Kurds are often considered to be the largest ethnic group without a territorial boundary of a State. Today, the Kurdish population is dispersed unevenly across countries like Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria mainly. A part of the Kurdish population is also spread across Trans Caucasus and Central Asia. There remains a debate amongst scholars about the ethnic roots of the Kurds. It was during the 7th century that the name ‘Kurds’ was attributed to Western Iranian people, residing along the mountain chain of Zagros and in the eastern boundary of Taurus. The Kurdish as an ethnic group had a considerable influence in the history of middle-west until the Arab Caliphate ceased to exist in 1258.

To understand the Kurdish freedom struggle, it is imperative to have a more or less clear understanding of the Kurdish history. The Kurds have always been a significant ethnic group, even during the period of Ottoman rule. With the dissolution of the large Ottoman Empire after the First World War by the Treaty of Sevres, the large ethnic Kurdish population got divided haphazardly between the territories of Iraq, Syria and Turkey, making them a large minority group in each of the States. The Arab states have always seen the idea of an independent Kurdistan as a potential threat to their existence and hence, no stones have been left unturned to suppress the Kurdish nationalist struggle. It would be methodical to look at the history of the Kurdish freedom struggle based on respective countries involved in the Kurdish conflict.

TURKEY

The Treaty of Sevres was one of the series of treaties that brought an end to the 1st World War. It was rejected by the Turkish leader Kamal Ataturk, and the new Treaty of Lausanne was negotiated in 1923. This new treaty gave control of the entire Anatolian Peninsula as well as of the Kurdish homeland in Turkey to the nascent Turkish Republic. Unlike the Treaty of Sevres which provided for a referendum to be conducted to negotiate the issue of an independent Kurdish homeland, the new Treaty of Lausanne did not lay down a single word for Kurdish autonomy or the probability of a referendum to decide the Kurdish fate in this new Turkish state.

After Ataturk consolidated his political grip over Turkey, the actual face of the regime was getting more and more evident. By 1978, Kurdish language, Kurdish names, folklores, attires and all other forms of cultural representation was banned. In an effort to deny the very Kurdish existence in the country, they were started being referred to as the “Mountain Turks”. Following the military coup of 1980, the use of Kurdish language in either public or private life was banned, so were the use of the words “Kurds”, “Kurdistan” or Kurdish. Such forceful repression and growing discontent among the Kurdish population prompted the formation of PKK – Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Worker’s Party), a far left militant and political organization under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan.

A full scale military insurgency was yet to begin until 15th August, 1984 when the PKK officially declared a Kurdish uprising. From 1984 till 1st September 1999, when the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire, Turkey saw unprecedented instances of human rights violations. About 40,000 civilians died in these 15 years. After 5 years of maintaining ceasefire, it was finally lifted by the PKK on 1st June, 2004. The military uprising of this decade was much more brutal and vicious than what it had been like earlier. The number of Human Rights abuses increased at an exponential rate. Torture, systematic execution of Kurdish civilians, forced displacement; arbitrary arrest became the norm of the day. Since the summer of 2011, the uprising took a more violent turn with large scale hostilities. In 2013, the process of negotiation was started between the PKK and the Turkish Government. Another ceasefire was declared bilaterally when Ocalan announced the “end of armed struggle” which was only to be resumed again in 2015 following the widespread massacre of PKK activists in Iraq at the hands of the Turkish military.

According to the statistics given by human rights organizations, more than 4000 Kurdish villages have been destroyed since the beginning of the uprising, with 380,000 and 1,000,000 Kurdish villagers being forcefully evacuated. Some 35,000 Kurds have been killed, 17,000 have disappeared while 119,000 Kurds have been imprisoned by the Turkish authorities arbitrarily. The condition at present is still the very same with rampant human rights violations, arbitrary arrest and detentions. Negotiations between the Turkish government and the PKK have become impossible in such a situation of mutual hostility and violence.

IRAQ

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, a significant number of Kurds became a minority in Iraq. The first phase of Iraqi-Kurdish conflict began with the arrival of the British. Through some secessionist attempts, Mahmud Barzanji became successful in uniting the Kurdish tribes to form a short-lived autonomous, self-proclaimed Kurdish kingdom in Iraq between 1919 and 1922. Though his plan of a Kurdish kingdom eventually failed, the struggle for freedom was carried out by other Kurdish leaders like Ahmed Barzani(1931), Mustafa Barzani (1943-1945) in the first phase of freedom struggle.

In 1943 after Mustafa Barzani was exiled to Iran, the Kurdish revolt suffered a setback. At this point, Iraq witnessed the 14th July Revolution ousting the Hashemite monarchy from power and bringing General Abdul Karim Qasim to power. In 1958, after returning from his exile, Barzani made an attempt to negotiate Kurdish autonomy in the north of Iraq with General Qasim’s government, which ultimately failed, culminating in the first Iraqi- Kurdish Civil War (11 Sept, 1961 to 1970) with casualties more than a million. Despite repeated attempts at negotiations for Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, a second Iraqi- Kurdish Civil War became inevitable in 1974 which resulted in a total massacre of the Kurdish militias and a recapturing of northern Iraq by the Iraqi troops. This led to a political vacuum in the area with the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) gaining power and leading an insurgency campaign against the Iraqi Government. The PUK suffered a major defeat from KDP in 1978 with support from Iran.

The Iraqi- Kurdish conflict resurfaced as a part of the Iran- Iraq War when the Kurdish parties plotted against Saddam Hussein with help from Iran. By then the Iraqi government had had enough of “non-loyal” Kurdish presence in the North and started its genocidal campaign called ‘Al- Anfal’ for the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds, in which over 200,000 Kurds were killed. In spite of the mutual recognition after 2003 Iraq War and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, conditions have not improved, with repeated clashes erupting between the Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraqi central government over a multitude of issues, but mainly power sharing and oil reserves. The 2017 Iraqi- Kurdistan referendum also ended with a diplomatic crisis.

SYRIA

Ethnically and linguistically, the Kurds form a major ethnic group in Syria. But despite such a numerical strength, the Syrian Kurds have not gained any autonomy unlike their Iraqi counterparts. Roughly 15 percent of the total Kurdish population in Syria remains stateless, in a legal vacuum without any fundamental rights. Despite Kurdish being the second most widely spoken language in Syria, it has never been officially recognized. In 1962, on the pretext of illegal immigration from Turkey and Iraq, 20 percent of Syria’s Kurdish population were stripped of citizenship.

After the 1970 military coup which brought Hafez al- Assad to power, instances of arbitrary behavior of the Syrian Government towards the Kurdish population increased by leaps and bounds. The same legacy was carried forward by his son, Bashar al- Assad. After the Arab Spring of 2011 which culminated into a deadly civil war in Syria, things got very complex in the Syrian political arena. The civil war gave birth to radical Islamic extremist militia, the ISIS (Islamic state of Iraq and Syria), which made the very existence of Kurds in Syria as well as in Iraq a big question mark.

As of now, the struggle of the Kurds is not against an arbitrary dictatorial government but against these forces of radical militia which threaten the very existence of the ethnic group. The Kurds have consolidated themselves under the pseudo military border guard called Peshmerga, to take up arms against this extremist militia. The Kurdish lands that were won back from the ISIS now form a de facto autonomous region called Rojava, under Kurdish administration, covering the sub regions of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez- Zor.

CONCLUSION

With a sudden surge of right wing nationalism and majoritarianism in world politics, the chances of diminution of this long battle for recognition have taken a further step back. None of these three countries are ready to sit on the negotiation table. To worsen matters, Turkey has initiated a military offensive, codenamed Operation Peace Spring in north eastern Syria, apparently as a way of driving out the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), an ally of the PKK. But the implementation of this operation clearly suggests that it is just another tool to eliminate about 3.6 million of Kurds refugees from Turkey, in this particular area, who were proposed to be resettled here. The political atmosphere still being volatile in Iraq and Syria, no question of catering to the demands of the minority Kurds or even giving them the bare minimum social and political rights is arising; as of now. Things have taken a turn for the worst. The Kurds, as a community still needs to fight the battle for their existence. The struggle for their survival continues and it is a zillion miles away from being over.

*Anondeeta Chakraborty is a Research Coordinator at Global Counter Terrorism Council

Factbox-Iran's minority Kurds in focus after woman's death in custody


Women protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, in the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli

Mon, October 10, 2022 

DUBAI (Reuters) - Nationwide protests over the death of a young Iranian Kurdish woman in the custody of Iran's morality police have been at their most intense in the northwestern areas where the majority of the country's 10 million Kurds live.

The protests, now in their fourth week as demonstrators defy a crackdown by security forces, pose the biggest challenge to Iran's clerical rulers in years.

The demonstrations began in reaction to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini and then spread to every one of Iran's 31 provinces.

The death of the ethnic Kurd raised tensions between the establishment and Iran's Kurdish minority, which human rights groups say have been long oppressed by Iran's leadership.


The Islamic Republic denies persecuting Kurds.

Tehran has blamed Kurdish dissident groups and foreign enemies for fomenting some of the protests, and its armed forces responded to the turmoil by striking Iranian Kurdish opposition groups inside neighbouring Iraq.

The elite Revolutionary Guards have put down unrest in the Kurdish community for decades, and the country’s judiciary has sentenced many activists to long jail terms or death.

Here are some facts about Iran's Kurds, part of a community that is spread across several Middle East countries and one of the world's largest people without a state.

HISTORY

Minority Kurds, mainly Sunni Muslims in Shi'ite-dominated Iran, speak a language related to Farsi and live mostly in a mountainous region straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

Kurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised Kurds independence. Three years later, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk tore up that accord.

The Treaty of Lausanne, ratified in 1924, divided the Kurds among the new nations of the Middle East.

Kurdish separatism in Iran first bubbled to the surface with the 1946 Republic of Mahabad, a Soviet-backed state stretching over Iran’s border with Turkey and Iraq. It lasted one year before the central government wrested back control.

Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution touched off bloodshed in its Kurdistan region with heavy clashes between the Shi'ite revolutionaries and the Kurdish Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) which fought for independence.

After the 1980 eruption of the Iran-Iraq war, regular Iranian armed forces and Revolutionary Guards doubled down on their repression of Kurds so as to prevent them becoming a fifth column in Tehran’s fight against Saddam Hussein.

New militant groups such as the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) have emerged over the past two decades and have occasionally clashed with security forces. Their leaders have often sought refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan and have been attacked by Iranian missiles.

Kurdish claims have oscillated between full-on separatism and autonomy within a multi-ethnic Iranian state, spanning a wide political spectrum from left-leaning secularism to right-wing Islamist thought.

SOCIETY

With eight million to 10 million Kurds living in Iran, Tehran fears pressure for secession will grow among a minority with a long history of struggle for its political rights.

Rights groups say Kurds, who form about 10 percent of the population, along with other religious and ethnic minorities face discrimination under Iran's Shi'ite clerical establishment.

"Kurds in Iran have long suffered deep-rooted discrimination. Their social, political and cultural rights have been repressed, as have their economic aspirations," human rights group Amnesty International said in a report.

"Kurdish regions have been economically neglected, resulting in entrenched poverty. Forced evictions and destruction of homes have left Kurds with restricted access to adequate housing."

(Writing by Michael Georgy, Editing by William Maclean)

International Conference on the Genocide of the Kurdish People Calls for Compensation and Recognition

2023-05-04 

Shafaq News/ The supervisory committee of the International Scientific Conference on the Genocide of the Kurdish People (the genocide of the Fayli Kurds) has called for the Iraqi Parliament to issue a special law to compensate the victims of the genocide, specifically the Fayli Kurds, return their properties, and define a global day for the genocide against the Kurds.

The supervisory committee of the conference stated in the final recommendations of the conference that "this conference was organized under the supervision of President Barzani from May 2 to May 4, 2023, in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region."

The committee added, "A supreme committee consisting of the presidents of Saladin, Soran, and Dohuk universities was formed to hold this conference. More than 160 short papers and 88 research papers from 25 countries were submitted to the conference's scientific committee during the three-day event."

The committee explained that "after discussions and receiving suggestions from conference participants, and in light of President Barzani's recommendations within the framework of the ninth conference, we call for a national institution to reorganize the administration, monitoring, and service of the various aspects of the Kurdish family's genocide. A center for the Fayli Kurds should be established in Erbil. At this stage, all conference recommendations should become a detailed roadmap for action."

The recommendations included; "a proposal for the Iraqi state to join the Rome Statute, and we suggest that the Iraqi Parliament issue a law regarding Iraq's signing of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Iraqi state signed this convention in 1959, but it is not implemented at the domestic level in Iraq, and Iraq's membership in this convention has not yet been established by law."

The conference also recommended, "The Iraqi Parliament should issue a law specific to a permanent Supreme Court for crimes, particularly those related to genocide and crimes against humanity. The Iraqi Parliament should also issue a law regarding the allocation of an annual special budget for compensating the victims and those affected by the genocide of the Kurdish people in general and the Faili Kurds specifically."

In addition, the conference called for "the Iraqi government to apologize to the Fayli Kurds and all the Kurdish people who were subjected to genocide, Anfal crimes, chemical bombings, and displacement by successive governments in Iraq, and recognize that the current Iraqi government is the successor to the previous governments."

"The Iraqi legislator should legislate a national law specifically for genocide crimes. The Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government should include the topic of genocide in university curricula, especially in the Faculty of Humanities. The Iraqi government should also resolve identity and nationality issues and return confiscated movable and immovable properties to the Faili Kurds."

The communique called on the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to "work and intensify efforts to find the remains of the Fayli Kurds and return them to a deserving place, such as a national cemetery, and increase the quota seats for the Faili Kurds in the Iraqi Parliament."

"after discussions and receiving suggestions from conference participants, and in light of President Barzani's recommendations within the framework of the ninth conference, we call for a national institution to reorganize the administration, monitoring, and service of the various aspects of the Kurdish family's genocide. A center for the Fayli Kurds should be established in Erbil. At this stage, all conference recommendations should become a detailed roadmap for action."

The recommendations included; "A proposal for the Iraqi state to join the Rome Statute, and we suggest that the Iraqi Parliament issue a law regarding Iraq's signing of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Iraqi state signed this convention in 1959, but it is not implemented at the domestic level in Iraq, and Iraq's membership in this convention has not yet been established by law."

The conference also recommended, "The Iraqi Parliament should issue a law specific to a permanent Supreme Court for crimes, particularly those related to genocide and crimes against humanity. The Iraqi Parliament should also issue a law regarding the allocation of an annual special budget for compensating the victims and those affected by the genocide of the Kurdish people in general and the Fayli Kurds specifically."

In addition, the conference called for "the Iraqi government to apologize to the Faili Kurds and all the Kurdish people who were subjected to genocide, Anfal crimes, chemical bombings, and displacement by successive governments in Iraq, and recognize that the current Iraqi government is the successor to the previous governments."