The Kurds Ascending

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The Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey For the first time in their modern history, the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, at least, are cautiously ascending. This is because of two major reasons. In northern Iraq the two U.S. wars against Saddam Hussein have had the fortuitous side effect of helping to create a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The KRG has become an island of democratic stability, peace, and burgeoning economic progress, as well as an autonomous part of a projected federal, democratic, post–Saddam Hussein Iraq. If such an Iraq proves impossible to construct, a s it well may, the KRG is positioned to become independent. Either way, the evolution of a solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq is clear. Furthermore, Turkey’s successful European Union (EU) candidacy would have the additional fortuitous side effect of granting that country’s ethnic Kurds their full democratic rights, which have hitherto been denied. Although this evolving solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq and Turkey remains cautiously fragile and would not apply to the Kurds in Iran and Syria because they have not experienced the recent developments their co-nationals in Iraq and Turkey have, it does represent a strikingly positive future that until recently seemed so bleak...



Introduction Straddling the borders where Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria converge in the Middle East, the Kurds constitute the largest nation in the world without its own independent state. Long a suppressed minority, the wars against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003 resulted in the creation of a virtually independent KRG in a federal Iraq. This KRG has inspired the Kurds elsewhere to seek cultural, social, and even political autonomy, if not independence. Furthermore, Turkey’s application for admission into the EU also has brought the Kurdish issue to the attention of Europe. On the other hand, the states in which the Kurds live greatly fear Kurdish autonomy as a threat to their territorial integrity. The purpose of this initial chapter is to present a brief but necessary historical overview of the Kurdish problem in Iraq and Turkey before proceeding with the analysis of how a solution to the Kurdish problem is presently evolving in those two states.