The Kurds: State and Minority in Turkey, Iraq and Iran
James Ciment
Facts on File
The end of the Cold War has exposed, or re-exposed, to general view many ongoing regional ethnic, territorial and religious conflicts that had been obscured, suppressed or subordinated to the great international power struggle. One of the most ancient of these conflicts is the struggle of the Kurdish people for national autonomy or independence.
Kurds have for centuries occupied large parts of the mountainous areas of the lands that now comprise the states of Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Though Muslims, they are ethnically distinct from the majority populations of those countries, and they have been repressed, often violently, in all of them. Kurds have been subject to deportation and mass murder, political repression and co-optation, forced assimilation and large-scale military assault. Despite this history, and the nearly universal desire among them for self-government, Kurds have been unable to develop a serious and united political vehicle for their aspirations. At various times (sometimes simultaneously), Kurdish groups have fought both for and against the nations they inhabit, made common cause with other ethnic groups, assisted in their repression, and cooperated with and fought against other Kurds across international borders. Vicious internal power struggles among Kurdish leaders, sometimes masked by ideological disagreement, have seriously undermined the national cause, as have cynical interventions on all sides by the great powers.
Surveying the history of this conflict (with particular emphasis on the twentieth century), examining the cultures of the Kurds and of their antagonists, analyzing the byzantine political infighting and maneuvering of Kurdish leaders as well as the generally self-serving interventions by outside powers, James Ciment lucidly assesses the state of Kurdish affairs in each of the three states in which most Kurds live, and the possible course of future events. Organized for ease of access, yet lively and readable, The Kurds: State and Minority in Turkey, Iraq and Iran is a splendid and compelling work for students and other readers who need a clear and understandable introduction to a very complex subject.
James Ciment, Ph.D., teaches history at City College of New York (CUNY). He is the author of Law and Order in the young adult series Life in America 100 Years Ago. While preparing this volume, in addition to his historical research, he spoke firsthand to a number of participants in the events described in the book.
Contents
List of Maps / ix Preface: Conflict and Crisis in the Post-Cold War World / xi
Chapter 1: Introduction / 1 The Mid-1990s / 3 Issues 7 Participants / 15 Tactics of War 28 Negotiations / 32
Chapter 2: A History of Kurdistan / 36 To World War I / 36 Turkey / 43 Iraq / 52 Iran / 63
Chapter 3: Kurdistan and the Kurds / 75 Topography and Climate / 75 Demography / 76 Kurdishness / 78 Tribes and Tribal Confederations / 79 New Affiliations - New Identities / 92
Chapter 4: Nation-States / 106 Turkey 106 Iraq 113 Iran / 120 Middle East and International / 127
Chapter 6: Kurdistan Since The Gulf War / 176 Iraq: Establishing the Safe Haven (1990-1991) / 176 Turkey: War Against the PKK (1990-1995) / 187 Iraq: Civil War in the Safe Haven (1994-1995) / 192 Update: Turkey and Iran (1995- ) / 197 Kurdistan into the Twenty-first Century / 201
Glossary / 209
Bibliography / 213
Index / 215
List of Maps 1. Middle East / 2 2. Turkey / 107 3. Iraq / 114 4. Iran / 121
PREFACE
Conflict and Crisis in the Post-Cold War World
The eminent British historian E. J. Hobsbawm has recently declared the end of die “short twentieth century," delimited by the two great Russian revolutions of 1917 and 1991. If that is so, then this series might be considered among the first histories of the twenty-first century.
Whatever date we care to assign the beginning of the new century, we carry into it a lot of baggage from the past. The Cold War may be over, but just as the two global struggles of the first half of the twentieth century left a legacy of troubled peace, so has the great confrontation of the second half.
Conflict and Crisis in the Post-Cold War World explores that legacy. Each conflict described in these volumes has been a place where the Cold War turned hot.
The confrontation between East and West, however, did not ignite these conflicts. Each one has a history that stretches back to long before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima or the wall was built in Berlin. Most of them, in fact, arc not products of the Cold War so much as they are legacies of the European imperial order of the last several hundred years, and, in the case of Kurdistan, of a struggle that goes back a lot farther than that.
Similarly, these conflicts have had important indigenous and regional components. The great delusion of the Cold War, that all conflicts were essentially superpower confrontations by proxy, has been exposed in the post-Cold War era for the myth that it was. Ethnicity, religion and the animosity between settler and indigenous societies are, in varying measures, at die root of the very different conflicts examined in this series.
But that is not to let the Cold War off the historical hook. The struggle between Washington and Moscow exacerbated, extended and exaggerated each of these conflicts, and many more. Both East and West offered support in the form of money, weaponry, intelligence and military training to their favored clients. Worst of all, they provided an ideological force-field that deflected potential negotiations and peaceful solutions.
The books in this series examine the roles of pre-Cold War history, the Cold War, and indigenous and regional factors in these conflicts.
They are intended as introductory volumes for the reader acquainted with but not versed in the stories of these wars. They are short but comprehensive and readable reference works. Each follows a similar format and contains similar chapters: an introduction and overview of the conflict; its history; the participants, both those in power and those struggling against it; the issues, tactics and negotiations involved; and a final chapter as update and conclusion. (The volume on Israel / Palestine contains an additional chapter on the larger regional conflict between Israel and the Arab nations of the Middle East.) Each book also contains several maps, a glossary of names and terms and a bibliography.
1 Introduction
Level the mountains, and in a day the Kurds would be no more. Kurdish adage
In Arabic, the words for “wolf” and “Kurd” are synonymous. Arab linguist
The Kurds are a nation without a state, if by nation we mean a people who are ethnically distinctive and who have written for themselves a history of political and military struggle to achieve self-rule and cultural autonomy. In fact, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Kurds have become the largest ethnic group in the world that occupies a geographically compact area and has no nation-state of its own. The obstacles to Kurdish nationhood, however, have been as formidable as the determination of the Kurds themselves.
The Kurds have the misfortune of occupying lands ruled by three aggressive and repressive states: Turkey, Iraq and Iran.1 Competing nationalisms, regional power struggles and international politics have continually thwarted Kurdish efforts at self-determination and cultural autonomy throughout the twentieth century, indeed, back to early Mesopotamian civilization.
Imperial, republican, military, dictatorial and theocratic regimes alike have sought to subjugate the Kurds for strategic purposes, to gain access to economic resources, to establish administrative hegemony and to build independent nations. In short, the Kurds have had many enemies for many reasons, and they have had them for a long time. Yet not least among the obstacles to Kurdish independence have been the Kurds themselves.
The Kurds are a mountain people. The isolation and impenetrability of their mountain homeland have long protected them. From this fastness, the Kurds have defended their autonomy and their distinctive way of life from the authority of lowland regimes throughout history. The mountains are where the ancient Kurds fled Babylonian hegemony and where the guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) fight the current Turkish regime in Ankara.
But the mountains have also been the Kurds’ worst enemy. They have isolated them and kept them ignorant of political, economic and social …
James Ciment
The Kurds: State and Minority in Turkey, Iraq and Iran
Facts on File, Inc.
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The Kurds: State and Minority in Turkey, Iraq and Iran
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ciment, James. The Kurds: state and minority in Turkey, Iraq and Iran / James Ciment. p. cm. — (Conflict and crisis in the post-cold war world) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8160-3339-0 (alk. paper) 1. Kurds—Politics and government. 2. Middle East—Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series. DS59.K86C56 1996 323.1T9159—dc20 / 95-9595
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For Vera Beaudin Saeedpour American Citizen, Jewish Scholar, Kurdish Patriot and In Loving Memory of Doug Blum
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