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FOREWORD
Readers new to the subject of Kurds may not find what they may expect in this refreshing collection. There are few extensive tales here of Kurdish national liberation movements struggling against repressive regimes. Such struggles have been and still are taking place but dramatic developments in the last twenty years mean that Kurdish politics are now more nuanced, complex and important than ever.
For example, the PKK's latest spasm of political violence is executed to achieve better terms of amnesty, rather than the independent Kurdistan that Abdullah Öcalan once espoused. It is clear that this damages wider Kurdish interests far more than it can advance them. The spectre of the PKK jeopardizes the most important geopolitical change in the Kurdish neighbourhood of the last two decades - the formation of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, and its recognition by the Government of Turkey.
Turkey has recognized the importance of the KRG in a more far-sighted way than policy-makers in the US or Europe. Turkey knows that the KRG is the best-governed part of Iraq and understands that a strong bilateral relationship favours its economic interests as well as its efforts to manage its own Kurdish questions. In return for recognition from Ankara, the KRG is to stay within the new Iraqi federation. But the KRG’s full and extraordinary constitutional rights are to be respected, despite the fact that no Turkish government could yet discuss granting such rights to its own Kurds. It is worth emphasizing that the Constitution of Iraq makes the Kurdistan Region freer within the new federation than are many new member states within the European Union.
The KRG is using its moral leadership among the many Kurds beyond Iraq to argue that the PKK has nothing to gain for Kurds from its further use of violence. Instead it proposes that Kurds should pursue exclusively peaceful and democratic change within Turkey. The issues at stake are being moved to a political, democratic and diplomatic rather than military footing - though the process is not complete, not least within the Turkish military. Indeed, the KRG promotes the peaceful and democratic resolution of the 'Kurdish Questions’ in the neighbouring states of Turkey, Iran and Syria. This is both a principled and a prudent stance, disciplined by the historical experience that these countries’ regimes have proved more powerful than Kurdish guerrillas.
It is true that the issue of Kirkuk is an unfinished element in the Ankara-Erbil bargain, but that can be managed. Despite their military capacities and their election victories in the city and the governorate since 2003, the Kurdish parties have not annexed’ the city and governorate. Instead they negotiated a constitutional path to resolve the past injustices in Kirkuk (which also affected Turkomen and Christians) and fairly insist on a referendum under Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution to resolve its territorial status. Contrary to fears held in some foreign capitals, the Kurds are not intent on winning Kirkuk to fund a bid for an independent Kurdistan. What matters in Kirkuk is achieving a power-sharing settlement, a working coexistence among its four major peoples.
The Turkish side of the grand bargain between Ankara and Erbil is obscured by the death-spasms of the PKK. The boldness of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and his colleagues has to be restrained for now; despite two decisive electoral victories they must be careful as they clean the stables of Kemalism. It is plain that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) hopes to win over significant numbers of religiously conservative and materially oriented Kurds to its re-making of Turkey, and that it has some prospect of doing so. Though Turkey has a long way to go in its internal transformations, there has been a halting but most likely irreversible recognition of the fact that Kurds cannot be forced into becoming Turks. The AKP and others wish to woo Kurds into a new more softly Muslim and more prosperous polity, knowing full well that the Kemalist legacy prevents almost all other Turkish parties from winning the allegiance of Kurds.
These big-picture events, unfolding before our eyes, are highlighted and treated in a more nuanced manner in the contributions in this collection. They will enable readers to contemplate plausible and fascinating futures that peep through the curtains of denial that many Europeans and Americans still want to drape across the Bosphorus. For example, some simply insist that no good has come from the US war of regime change in Iraq. Yet the flourishing KRG suggests otherwise. It is not flawless, but it is a redoubt of pro-American and pro-European sentiment, it has repaired itself from its own civil war of the 1990s and has held genuinely competitive elections, in which one of the two major parties experienced painful losses, and it has shown that power-sharing can work. It is currently doing a better job of getting along with Turkey than either the EU or the US. It also displays greater panache in negotiating with Arab parties in Baghdad than legions of US State Department officials. It too works to achieve a ‘no problems’ policy with its neighbours.
Another major denial that blocks thought and clarity is embedded in the mentality which wishes to refuse Turkey a place both in European history and in the European future. Turkey should certainly not be refused admission to the European Union because it is large, or because it hosts too many Muslims, or because of the Cyprus question. The only valid reasons to exclude Turkey from membership are that it does not yet have full civilian control over its military, it does not yet have sufficiently robust human rights protections, and it does not yet treat its religious, linguistic, cultural and ethnic minorities in the way that European member states now insist upon. This normative evaluation in turn is one of the fundamental reasons why Kurds are a 'policy imperative', in the aptly chosen words of this book’s title. Turkey's treatment of its Kurds is the best litmus test of its democratization, its rights protections and its willingness to coexist with its pluralist realities. These are the matters that need to be highlighted, managed and negotiated constructively by Europe’s diplomats and international NGOs, not as an excuse to block Turkey's accession, but rather as necessary standard-setting to clear its path to membership. Helping Turkey improve itself, through improving the lot of its Kurds, should be a key European foreign policy imperative.
If Turkey joins the European Union, as its accession negotiations in principle allow, then the southeast frontier of the European multinational federation will run along northern Syria, northern Iraq and western Iran. This geopolitical description of current state boundaries will remain true, but is also ethnographically incomplete. Having read this book, readers will know that this future frontier of the European Union would run through what Kurds call ‘Kurdistan’.
Knowledge of this ethno-geography will be more important in the era of European foreign policy that lies ahead, which is why the editors were wise and timely in using 'imperative’ in their title. There are many similarly interesting messages, expressed in both the scholarly and the imperative mood, bundled together in this engaging and well-organized collection. These messages should be carefully considered and used to inform rational reappraisals of policy towards Kurdish and regional politics.
June 2010 / Brendan O'Leary
Lauder Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Constitutional Advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government, 2003-09
Senior Advisor on Power-Sharing, Mediation Support Unit, United Nations, 2009-10
1 Introduction
Robert Lowe and Gareth Stansfield
The new prominence of the Kurds in the affairs of the Middle East and Turkey demands attention. In the past century the region has witnessed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the departure of European colonial powers and the formation and development of modem, independent states. Three major ethnic groups, Arabs, Persians and Turks, have mostly shaped the identity and course of those states and dominated regional politics. Until the late twentieth century, the Kurds, the fourth-largest ethnic group, were unwilling or unable to mobilize effectively on an ethnic basis and secure a firmer position in the regional ethno-political mosaic. Events in the past 40 years have transformed the profile and potency of the Kurds. Their unprecedented visibility - and, in some cases, also influence - requires a deeper analysis of their role in the four major states in which they live, of the manner in which their politics have developed 'internally’ and across state boundaries and of the ways in which they are interacting with regional and international players.
When the modern state system was formed after the First World War, the Kurds remained marginalized, geographically localized and politically disunited on a political stage dominated by states colored by the nationalist narratives of others. Those stories have often been overtly ethicized’ by Arabs in Iraq and Syria, by Turks in Turkey and, to a lesser extent, by Persians in Iran: they have given little space for the articulation of additional narratives, let alone counter-narratives of other ethnic groups. The nation-building project in these modern countries was so dominant that the Kurds and other minority groups were ignored by the state or were identified as sources of domestic instability or even as internal enemies. Kurds were also exploited as allies of regional powers keen to use Kurdish populations in pursuit of their national interests. They were viewed by international policy-makers only as ‘problems’ or 'situations’ within the context of relations with established states; the trans-state dynamics of Iraq.
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About the authors
Hashem Ahmadzadeh is a senior lecturer in Kurdish Studies and Director of the Centre for Kurdish Studies at Exeter University, where he has worked since 2005. He previously taught History and Politics of the Middle East and Persian Literature and Language at the University of Uppsala, where he gained his PhD in 2003 for his dissertation on ‘Nation and Novel: A Study of Persian and Kurdish Narrative Discourse’. Dr Ahmadzadeh graduated from high school in Mahabad and holds a degree in English Language and Literature from Zahedan University.
Liam Anderson is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Wright State University. He obtained his MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University and his PhD in Political Science from the University of Georgia. His research interests focus on issues of constitutional design, particularly with reference to Iraq. He has published several books, including, The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division (2005, with Gareth Stansfield), An Atlas of Middle Eastern Affairs (2009, with E.W. Anderson), and Crisis in Kirkuk (2009, with Gareth Stansfield). He is currently working on a manuscript about the use of federalism as a means of alleviating tensions in deeply divided societies.
Michael M. Gunter is a Professor of Political Science at Tennessee Technological University and teaches during the summer at the International University in Vienna. He is the author of seven books on the Kurdish question, the most recent being The Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey (2008), Kurdish Historical Dictionary (2004), The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis (1999), and The Kurds and the Future of Turkey (1997). He is the co-editor (with Mohammed M. A. Ahmed) of The Kurdish Question and the 2003 Iraqi War (2005), and The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism (2007). Professor Gunter is a former Senior Fulbright Lecturer in International Relations in Turkey and Israel.
Kemal Kirişci is a professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogaziçi University, Istanbul and a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC. He recently completed a sabbatical as a visiting professor at Carleton University. He holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration and was the director of the Centre for European Studies at Bogaziçi University between 2002 and 2008. His areas of research interest include European integration, EU-Turkish relations, Turkish foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, ethnic conflicts and refugee movements. His publications include Land of Diverse Migrations: Challenges of Emigration and Immigration in Turkey (2009, co-edited with A. İçduygu), Turkey and the Kurdish Question: An Example of a Trans-State Ethnic Conflict (1997, co-authored with Gareth Winrow) and 'The Kurdish Question and Turkey: Future Challenges and Prospect for a Solution', ISPI Working Paper No. 24 (2007).
Janet Klein is an Assistant Professor in the University of Akron's Department of History, where she offers a variety of courses on Middle Eastern History. She was previously a visiting Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Montana in Missoula. She was awarded a PhD from Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies in 2002 and is the author of several articles on Kurdish and Ottoman history. She is completing a book entitled Power in the Periphery: Kurdish Militias and the Ottoman State, 1890-i1914. She has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, including the Fulbright-Hayes fellowship for dissertation research (2000-01).
Robert Lowe is Programme Manager and Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House and an Honorary Research Fellow of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. He is currently completing a Leverhulme Research Fellowship on Kurdish politics and identity in Syria and the trans-state impact of Kurdish politics. He is the author of ‘Kurdish Nationalism in Syria’, in M. Ahmed and M. Gunter (eds), The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism (2007) and The Syrian Kurds: A People Discovered (2006).
Robert Olson is Professor of Middle East History and Politics at the University of Kentucky. His publications include: The Ba'th and Syria: From the French Mandate to the Era of Hafiz al-Asad (1982), The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism (1991), The Kurdish Question and Turkish-Iranian Relations: From World War I to igg8 (1998), Turkey’s Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia, iggi-2000 (2001), Turkey-Iran Relations, igjg-2004 (2004), The Goat and the Butcher. Nationalism and State Formation in Kurdistan-Iraq since the Iraqi War (2005) and Blood, Beliefs and Ballots: The Management of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey, 2007-2009 (2009). Professor Olson received the Best Book Award from the Third World Studies Association in 1999-2000. Seven of his books have been translated into five languages: Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Persian and French.
David Romano is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University. In addition to numerous articles on Middle East politics, the Kurdish issue, forced migration, political violence and globalization, he is the author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006; Turkish translation forthcoming 2010). He has spent several years living and conducting field research in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel and Palestine.
Clémence Scalbert-Yücel has a BA in Kurdish language and civilization (INALCO, Paris) and a PhD in geopolitics (Paris IV - La Sorbonne). She taught in the Turkish and Kurdish departments at the INALCO between 2003 and 2007. She has been lecturer in Ethnopolitics at EXCEPS, University of Exeter since 2007. She is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Turkish Studies. Her research interests and publication topics include the Kurdish question, language and cultural policies in Turkey. Her book on the Kurdish field of literature in contemporary Turkey will be published in 2010.
Gareth Stansfield is Professor of Middle East Politics and Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, where he co-founded the Centre for Kurdish Studies. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, and an Associate Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania’s Program on Ethnic Conflict (PPEC). Professor Stansfield has worked extensively on Kurdish political developments, particularly with reference to Iraq, since 1996 when he was based in Erbil and Suleimaniyah. He has published extensively on Kurdish and Iraqi politics; his most recent books are Iraq: People, History, Politics (2007) and Crisis in Kirkuk: The Ethnopolitics of Conflict and Compromise (with Liam Anderson, 2009).
Nicole Watts is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at San Francisco State University. She is a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the author of numerous book chapters and articles in refereed journals, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Ethno politics and New Perspectives on Turkey. Her book Activists in Office: Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey will be published in 2011. She is a board member of the Turkish Studies Association and on the editorial board of the European Journal of Turkish Studies.
Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham. He holds an MPhil in Political Theory from Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a PhD in Political Science from the LSE. Professor Wolff has written extensively on ethnic conflict and conflict resolution, including Ethnic Conflict. A Global Perspective (2006) and Ethnic Conflict Causes - Consequences - Responses (with Karl Cordell, 2009), as well as the forthcoming handbook Power Sharing, Self-governance and Participation in Public Life. He is the founding editor of the journal Ethnopolitics and an associate editor of the journal Civil Wars. Professor Wolff frequently advises governments and international organizations on conflict resolution issues, especially on questions of constitutional design. He has worked with the Initiative on Conflict Prevention through Quiet Diplomacy as a mediator on Kirkuk since 2008 and is currently also advising in relation to the Transnistria conflict in Moldova.
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