Versions- Les Kurdes et le Kurdistan [Français, Paris, 1978-01-01]
- Les Kurdes et le Kurdistan [Français, Paris, 1981-01-01]
- Οί Koύρδoι [Grec, Αθήνα, 1988-01-01]
- Kurdistan und die Kurden [Allemand, Göttingen, 1984-01-01]
- The Kurds and Kurdistan [Anglais, London, 1980]
- A People without a Country [Anglais, London, 1993]
- Kurdistan und die Kurden - II [Allemand, Göttingen & Wien, 1986]
- Kurdistan und die Kurden - III [Allemand, Göttingen, 1988]
PEOPLE WITHOUT A COUNTRY The Kurds and Kurdistan
Middle East Series People Without a Country is a unique and comprehensive book that covers the whole history of the Kurdish question over the past sixty years. The 15 million Kurds are the largest nation in the world with no state of their own. Ever since the old principalities of Kurdistan were carved up between Iran, Iraq, and Turkey following the First World War, the Kurds have struggled ceaselessly for independence, or at least autonomy. In Turkey, Iran and Syria today, their identity is still denied and they are not even allowed to teach in their own language. Their history is one of constant revolts and bloody repression, massacres, deportations, and renewed insurrection. As recently as 1979, fighting between the Kurds of Iran and the new government in Tehran flared up and this is the subject of a Post-script by Gerard Chaliand written especially for this book. The Kurdish national question undoubtedly remains one of the most pressing problems of the Middle East.
Maxime Rodinson, the renowed French scholar, opens the volume with a provocative Preface in which he challenges progressive forces and intellectuals to recognise the gravity and implications of the Kurdish question. Gerard Chaliand, the editor, follows with a wide-ranging Introduction that provides a useful summary for those new to the question, and Kendal describes the history of the Kurds under the Ottoman Empire. The principal authors then present a series of detailed chapters analysing the Kurdish national movement's achievements and defeats in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Soviet Union, as well as a piece on the short-lived independent Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in 1946.
The authors of this book are, except for one, all leading Kurdish intellectuals and activists. Professor A. R. Ghassemlou taught at the Ecole Superieure d'Economie in Prague (1960-75) and wrote Kurdistan and the Kurds (1965) and Problems of Economic Growth in the Developing Countries (1969). After the flight of the Shah, he returned to Iran as secretary-general of the Kurdish Democratic Party (which since mid-1979 has been under military attack by the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime). Ismet Sheriff Vanly, a lawyer, was a representative of the Iraqi Kurdish national movement in Europe and author of Le Kurdistan irakien (1970). Kendal (a pseudonym) is also a Kurdish writer. And Mustafa Nazdar (another pseudonym) is from Syria. Archie Roosevelt Jnr was U.S. Deputy Military Attache in Tehran in 1946 and is included here for his account of the short-lived Mahabad Republic. The editor, Gerard Chaliand, is a well-known French author on Third World revolutionary movements.
'A book which allows Kurdish intellectuals to speak for themselves ... One of its great merits is the way it examines and compares the Kurdish policy of regimes as different as those of Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara.'
Le Monde |