The Kurds and the Injustice of Kin

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

If we were to count the peoples living under great injustice today, in the twenty-first century, we cannot overlook the Kurdish people, who suffer severely from persecution, pursuit, killing, and destruction across the various Kurdish lands.

And if we are to claim to stand with human rights, with justice, and with peoples’ rights to freedom and independence, we have no choice but to stand with the Kurdish people. Whoever wants to be fair to himself must be fair to others, and what he accepts for himself he must accept for others — otherwise he falls into duality, hypocrisy, and the loss of any moral standard.

The Kurdish people is severely wronged, and most of the injustices against it come from those who ought to bear the duty of treating it well — Arabs, Turks, and Iranians. Kurds have been subjected to humiliation, killing, the destruction of villages, and being denied political independence for a very long time.

To begin with, the colonial states victorious in the Second World War denied them the establishment of an independent Kurdish state, dividing the region called Kurdistan into parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Turkey, thereby tearing the Kurdish people apart into population blocs under the control of a number of states. Note that the area of Kurdistan is about half a million square kilometers, and the number of Kurds today is about 25 million people — an area and population far greater than those of many peoples who have obtained states of their own.

The area of Kurdistan and its population qualified it, after the Second World War, to establish an independent, sovereign state, but it seems Western colonialism planned crises in the region just as it planned for Palestine, in order to drain the energies and wealth of the region’s peoples. Colonialism succeeded in this, in that it exhausts the Kurdish people through continuous wars against it, and drains the energies of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, and it also succeeded in spreading feelings of mutual hatred, animosity, and resentment between Kurds and the rest of the region’s peoples — Arabs, Turks, and Iranians.

Kurdistan lies at the meeting point of the Iranian, Turkish, Iraqi, Armenian, and Syrian borders, and the number of Kurds in the world is about 25 million. The largest portion of them is found in southeastern Turkey, numbering about 16 million; about five million live in Iran; while their number in Iraq is about four million, and over a million in Syria. This is not to mention a small Kurdish presence in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lebanon, Russia, and Germany.

A number of historians say the Kurds are mostly descended from the Aryan race, and are therefore ethnically closer to Iranians than to Arabs or Turks. Some say the Kurds are originally Arab, but this requires verification.

Kurds have suffered greatly at the hands of Arabs, Iranians, and Turks, and now suffer greatly from ISIS (the Islamic State organization), which tries to control their sites and villages in northeastern Syria, and from Turkish ground and air attacks that try to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state or an independent Kurdish region in northeastern Syria.

Kurds suffered greatly from the policy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who tried to forcibly convert them away from their nationality and national culture. Atatürk enacted a law imprisoning any Kurd who spoke Kurdish. Kurds had to abandon their language and culture in favor of Turkish cultural dominance. Kurds, who mostly belong to the Sunni sect, suffered from Iraqi repression, and were long denied simple human rights, such as celebrating their national occasions, to the point of being struck with chemical weapons and thousands of them massacred collectively in Halabja, even though the Iraqi government agreed to grant the Kurds self-rule in 1970 after harsh wars that drained both sides. The Iranians, for their part, struck the Kurds militarily and destroyed a large number of Kurdish villages in northwestern and western Iran.

Now, Turkey threatens the Kurds, massing its military forces on the border with Syria opposite the Kurdish areas, saying it will take measures if it catches the scent of a Kurdish entity being established in northeastern Syria. It is clear the Turks provide various forms of assistance to the ISIS organization so it can pounce on the Kurdish areas, even though Turkey says it provides no support or facilitation to the ISIS organization.

Perhaps Turkey is not greatly concerned with the Kurds, but its position on the Syrian regime pushes it to use the Kurds as a card covering its military intervention in Syria. But Turkey has long attacked the Kurds present in the Turkish Kurdistan region, and has long prevented them from forming political parties and denied them the ability to contest elections to gain representation in the Turkish legislative councils.

Recently, the Justice and Development Party allowed Kurdish parties to rise and move politically on Turkish soil, but the Kurds’ human and cultural situation remains under the weight of Turkish repressive measures.

The Kurds have the right to establish an entity of their own — they are a people with a distinct culture and language, like other peoples of the earth, and have the right to affirm themselves, organize their affairs, and enjoy the full rights other peoples and nations enjoy. We Arabs always speak of peoples’ right to self-determination, and detest external domination and control, and just as we love this for ourselves, we must love it for others too.

The Kurds are our kin and neighbors, and what is required of us is to be good neighbors and to deal with them according to the ethics of Islam, grounded in love, harmony, and tolerance. We must not leave the Kurds as prey for the Zionists and Americans to toy with as they please.

Arabs, Iranians, and Turks have no right to oppress the Kurds or deny them the fulfillment of their aspirations. Arabs, Iranians, and Turks speak of freedom and their own right to expel colonialism and achieve independence, and they have no right to act contrary to what they proclaim in the media.

The Kurds possess a distinct culture, and have their own cultural and civilizational imprint on the Arab-Islamic region. They are a people like any other, with national aspirations, and simply do not want to remain under the rule of others — they seek to affirm their own identity, and develop their cultural, intellectual, economic, and heritage capacities. They want to return to life to be on equal footing with other peoples.

Arab states like Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority recognize the invading Israel that has usurped land and displaced the Palestinian people, yet there is no official or popular Arab movement to support the Kurds’ legitimate, lawful demands. We, the sons of this Arab-Islamic region, are the people best placed to understand the Kurdish cause, because we have all suffered, over long years, from persecution, repression, pursuit, the theft of rights, the squandering of money, and despotism, and we are supposed to support the wronged just as we demand the world support us against those who wrong us.

Turkey, for example, wants to turn Syria into a democracy, but does not practice democracy toward the Kurds, and continues to pursue them. How can they want to establish democracy in another state while they neither practice democracy nor respect human rights on their own soil? As for Iran, it speaks of liberating Palestine, but does not speak of liberating Iranian Kurds. Iraq and Syria are no different from the rest in falling into moral contradictions.

Peoples’ rights are indivisible, colorless, and not subject to mood — they are principles that must be respected. And if Westerners do not respect the principles they call for, then sincere Muslims are the people best placed to respect these principles, because they are concerned with delivering a moral message to the peoples of the earth.

The repression of the Kurds by Arabs, Iranians, and Turks has driven them to seek help from Westerners and from Israel. Israel has entered Kurdistan, especially from the Iraqi and Iranian sides, and has become more capable of gathering intelligence information about these two states. Had the Kurds felt secure and reassured, felt they were in their own homeland and enjoyed the respect due to them, they would never have sought the Zionists’ help, and would never have accepted security and military cooperation with Israel. Arabs have long pushed minorities into the embrace of their enemies, then blamed them afterward for cooperating with Israel.

Of course, there is nothing that justifies cooperation with Israel, but if a Kurd sees the Arab, the Iranian, or the Turk demolishing his home and displacing him, he will inevitably accept the help others offer him. And Israel is always skilled at seizing and benefiting from opportunities.

Proposed Solutions

We have before us a number of solutions to the Kurdish problem, so that it does not remain a factor of instability in the region, and so that the Kurds do not remain a tool in the hands of colonial states and the Zionist entity, namely:

1. That Arabs, Iranians, and Turks unite under the banner of Islam, forming a unified Islamic state including Kurdistan, with the Kurds as active participants in this union. This is a logical solution, but it suffers from a lack of realism, the reason being that we Arabs, along with the Turks, are peoples of fragmentation rather than unity — we carry within our cultures values of division more than values of togetherness, which calls on us to develop a discipline suited to us called “the science of fragmentation,” hoping it might help us overcome our divisive values.

2. That a broad Kurdish self-rule be formed with the agreement of all concerned parties — Arabs, Turks, and Iranians — with sovereignty remaining divided among the states containing a significant Kurdish minority. This is an internal arrangement that can be crafted. This means each part of the greater Kurdistan region would remain under the sovereignty of the states containing these parts, but an agreement would be drafted among all these states on how to give the Kurds a comprehensive, general self-rule without departing from divided sovereignty.

3. That the Kurds be granted full independence, whereby the Kurdistan region is carved out of the various states containing a significant Kurdish minority. That is, the sovereignty of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria over the Kurdish regions would end, and these regions would be handed over to the Kurds to become the Kurdish national homeland, upon which an independent, sovereign state would be established. This, of course, is the ideal solution, sparing the region internal wars, attrition, and instability.

Let no one think the Kurds will despair and stop their attempts to gain independence. Instead of striking the Kurds, practical solutions to the problem must be sought, and everyone in the Arab-Islamic region must learn from the experiences of colonialism, which peoples ultimately expelled by force.

But it is important that the Kurds commit to not establishing relations of any kind with the Zionist entity, otherwise they will turn the region’s peoples against them. Kurdish leaders have previously established relations with the Zionist entity, and obtained weapons from it to fight Iraq, and there are now strong suspicions that the Iraqi Kurdistan region will make its airports available for Zionist aircraft to strike Iran. Actions of this kind weaken the Kurdish argument in seeking self-determination.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الأكراد وظلم ذوي القربى” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.