| As we understand the issue of genocide, it has to do with the destruction of a culture, an entire distinct society. lt doesn't mean you go in shooting people. lt can also mean you are destroying a distinct society as a way of life. - Kevin Thomas
FOREWORD
When I visited the Southern Kurdish town Halabja in May 2008, I felt like I had been there earlier. A small town where people were proud of their Kurdish heritage and the nature was extremely beautiful. People, whose culture and customs differed from their neighbours. Halabja people had rebelled against the Arabs for decades, without support from the other Kurds. Their town was the scene of one of the cruellest atrocities of modern times.
Despite being my first visit, 1 had a strong feeling that I had seen it before. This feeling did not leave me in peace; 1 searched for an explanation for my astonishment. Where had I seen the same thing? In Dêrsim, in Kurdistan which is under the Turkish occupation (from now: North Kurdistan). There Zaza dialect speaking Alevite Kurds have fought against the Turkish republic since the 1920s. Also, the Dêrsim Kurds have a unique life style. They are culturally, linguistically, and religiously different from their Kurdish neighbours. Like the Halabja people, they have been the target of massacres. As Halabja's nature is among the most beautiful in Kurdistan, that in Dêrsim is tao. ln bath towns also the nature has been destroyed by the occupying armies. The list of similarities is long. Halabja and Dêrsim are sister towns in suffering. There are many other Kurdish sister towns; for example Kelar (Kalar) and Elih (Batman) are huge refugee camps for deported Kurdish villagers.
I visited the lraqi part of Kurdistan (from now: South Kurdistan) for the first time in April 2008 after sixteen journeys to North Kurdistan and West Turkey. 1 got interested in South Kurdistan only after being banned in December 2006 from entering Turkey. Now I regret that I did not visit South Kurdistan earlier.
After my first journey I studied the history of South Kurdistan. The similarities between North and South Kurdistan surprised me. At the same time, when Sheikh Said organized Zaza dialect speaking Sunni Kurds to rebel against the Turks in North Kurdistan, Sheikh Mahmoud organized uprisings against the British forces in Silemanî (Sulaymaniyah). ln Kurdistan, sheikhs are religious leaders. Most of the time, there has been going on an uprising somewhere in Kurdistan.
Uprisings are the reason for the massacres and genocide. When I tried to understand the background, 1 delved further and further into the history. I went back to the sixteenth century, to the Battle of Chaldiran, to understand the massacres in Dêrsim (1938) and Halabja (1988). These and other massacres are not separate incidents. They are steps in the Kurdish genocide process which started when the Kurdish autonomous princedoms were crushed in the Tanzimat programme in the 1840s and divided between Turkey and Iraq in the 1920s.
When I searched for information about the Kurdish genocides, I noticed the lack of any comprehensive analysis. There are several books about genocides in the former Ottoman area; the Armenian genocide, the Dêrsim massacre, and the Anfal Campaign. But each of them covered only one incidence. Even books on Kurdish history usually tell only about one part of Kurdistan. An exception is David McDowall's book "A Modern History of the Kurds", but even he has separate chapters for each part of Kurdistan. The history is not described chronologically but geographically. Reasons for the lack of such analysis are understandable: Kurdistan is a huge country divided between four states: Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. A description of the situation in Kurdistan as a whole means that the researcher is required to analyse also the situation of these four countries each of which have a complex history. Three languages (Arabie, Turkish, and Farsi), in addition to several Kurdish dialects, make the work even more difficult. Usually Kurdologists write about one part of Kurdistan. However, signs have emerged of a wider perspective among the writers on the Kurdish issue. My specialization was North Kurdistan. The reason for my interest in South Kurdistan was nota decision to survey the whole country. I went to South Kurdistan because I could not go to North Kurdistan. With my experience from North Kurdistan, I saw the conditions in the South in a different way than a Kurdologist specializing in that are a. I cou Id not find any book about the Kurdish genocide process comparing the development in the North and South. So I felt compelled to do it. 1 saw the situation so clearly I felt that I had no other choice but to start writing.
Kurdish genocide is not only history. The process still continues. The biggest international military ope ration after the Vietnam War was in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 while the European Union negotiates with Turkey about its membership in the union. The international community is active in Kurdistan. During the Battle of Chaldiran (August 23, 1514) and the signing of the Treaty of Zuhab (1639), the superpowers of the world were the Safavid and Ottoman Empires. Now the United States and European Union (EU) have much influence on the world. As the British accepted the Treaty of Lausanne and confirmed the division of Kurdistan, it is easy to suggest that Great Britain and the EU are responsible for the destiny of the Kurds. Yet while the Kurdish genocide happens in front of the eyes of the international community, they look in other directions. During the 1980s, the Western world cooperated with the lraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, when he fought against the lrariian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The next decade, the European countries described the Kurdish liberation movement, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK, Partiya Karkarên Kurdistan), a terrorist organization.
The Kurdish genocide is a huge and complex issue. lt is not possible to caver ail its aspects in one book. There are several important issues which I do not describe. For example, there are the trials in Baghdad about the disappearance of the Barzanî men, the Halabja chemical bombing, and the Anfal Campaign. The fate of West Kurdistan, accupied by Syria, is not analysed here, despite the fact that it had been also controlled by the Ottomans until the 1920s, nor do I caver the genocide process in East Kurdistan (the lranian part of Kurdistan). I describe the process which led to the Kurdish genocide, although it is not felt necessary to explain every incidence in detail to understand the main lines of the process. 1 tell about the Armenian genocide, but not about the Assyrian genocide, or the oppression of Shia Arabs in Iraq. These tragedies are also an important part of the collapse of the Ottoman state and the circumstances leading to the Kurdish genocide. But the tapie is so huge that it is not possible to explain everything in one book.
Helsinki, the 4th February 2013
Kristiina Koivunen
Introduction
The target of this book is ta describe the history of genocide during the twentieth century in North and South Kurdistan, an area ruled by the Ottomans from 1514 to 1923, but nowadays the lraqi and Turkish parts of Kurdistan. The book consists of three main historical themes. First I describe how the Ottoman Kurdistan was divided after the First World War (1914-1918) between Turkey and Iraq, and the Turks and Arabs started forced assimilation of the Kurds. West Kurdistan (the Syrian part of Kurdistan) although also part of the Ottoman state, is outside this research. The second theme is how the Kurds defended, through rebellions, their ethnie identity against forced Turkification and Arabization. The last theme is the Turkish and Arab suppression of the Kurdish rebels. The suppression methods in bath Turkey and Iraq resulted in reaching levels of genocide. The peak was the Anfal Campaign in South Kurdistan in 1988. 1 concentrate on the death of unarmed civilians. Soldiers and fighters who have died in battles between the occupying armies and the Kurdish liberation movement are placed outside this research. Sorne Kurds use the words 'red genocide' for genocide by physical methods and 'white genocide' for assimilation, which they also call psychological genocide. I do not use these terms as they are not commonly used in academic literature.
As an example of the process which the whole of Kurdistan has faced, I describe, in detail, the genocide process in three areas: Barzan, Dêrsim, and Halabja. ln each ofthem the people had resisted foreign rule since the Ottoman times. They had developed progressively their …
|
