Kurdistan

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: For the Iranian province of Kurdistan, please see Kurdistan Province, Iran.

Kurdistan is an area in the Middle East inhabited mainly by the Kurds, covering parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and Syria. (Most Kurds speak the Kurdish language.) Its borders are hard to define, as none of the states in question acknowledge Kurdistan as a demographic or geographical region, but it is generally held to include those regions with large Kurdish populations. According to one account it includes 25 million people in a 190,000 km² (74,000 sq. mi) area. Others estimate as much as 40 million Kurds are on the globe and their land covers an area as big as France. The Kurdistan Province in Iran and the Kurdish Autonomous Region in Iraq are both included in the usual definition of Kurdistan. Kurdish people are found in regions far from their ancestral homeland. The largest Kurdish enclave outside Kurdistan is the Kurdish region in north Khorasan in north-eastern Iran. Other scattered smaller communities are found in Alburz mountain range in northern Iran, Guilan province in northern Iran and Sistan and Baluchistan province in southeastern Iran. (See [] and [])

Kurds were first promised an independent nation-state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which divided the former Ottoman Empire between the United Kingdom, Turkey and others, and gave independence to Armenia. Since that time Kurdish nationalists have continued to seek independence in an area approximating that identified at Sèvres. However, the idea of an independent nation-state came to a halt when the surrounding countries joined to reject the independence of Kurdistan.

History

Kurds were the founders of Median Empire and came under Persian rule during the reign of Cyrus the Great and Darius. Centuries later, Kurdish-inhabited areas in Middle East witnessed the clash of two competing super powers of those times, namely the Sassanid Empire and Roman Empire. At their peak, The Romans ruled large Kurdish-inhabited areas, particularly the western and northern Kurdish areas in Middle East (See []).

In 7th century A.D., Arabs conquered most of the Middle East, and Kurds became subjects of Arab Umayyad and Abbassid caliphates. Kurds in medieval period were living in several semi-independent states called "emirates". A comprehensive history of these states and their relationship with their neighbors is given in the famous textbook of "Sharafnama" written by Prince Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in 1597 . For a list of these entities see . The famous Kurdish Emirates included "Baban", "Soran", "Garmiyan" (all parts of Iraq), "Bakran", "Bokhtan(Botan)"(both parts of Turkey), "Mukriyan","Ardalan"(both parts of Iran).

During the following century, Ahmadi Khani (Ehmedê Xanî ) wrote "Mem û Zîn", the Kurdish national epic, and he was seen by some as an early advocate of Kurdish nationalism (see ).

In 16th century A.D., the Kurdish inhabited areas were split between Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire after long wars. Before World War I, most Kurds lived within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire in the province of Kurdistan. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies created several countries within its former boundaries. Originally, Kurdistan along with Armenia was to be one of them, according to the never-ratified Treaty of Sèvres. However, the reconquest of these areas by Kemal Atatürk and other pressing issues caused the Allies to accept the renegotiated Treaty of Lausanne, giving this territory to Turkey and leaving the Kurds without a self-ruled region. Other Kurdish areas were assigned to the new British and French mandated states of Iraq and Syria under both treaties. These boundaries were drawn with more concern for the division of oil resources and influence between different colonial powers and for rewarding pro-Allied Arab leaders than with ethnic distribution.

Since WWI, Kurds have been divided between several states, in all of which they are minorities. Many Kurds have campaigned for independence or autonomy, often through force of arms. However, there has been no support by any of the regional governments or by outside powers for changes in regional boundaries. A sizable Kurdish Diaspora exists in Western Europe that participates in agitation for Kurdish issues, but most of the governments in the Middle East have historically banned open Kurdish activism.

In Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, Kurdish guerrilla groups, known in the Kurdish culture as 'Peshmerga', have fought for a Kurdish state. In Northern Iraq, Peshmerga fought against the Iraqi government before and during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and now police the Kurdish Autonomous Region there. Another militant group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), has fought an armed campaign in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran for over thirty years. In Turkey, more than 30,000 Turkish and Kurdish people have died as a result of the war between the state and the PKK, with alleged atrocities being committed by both sides. There are also some casualties in Iran, Syria and Iraq.

The Region

Northern Kurdistan

Northern Kurdistan is a geocultural region located in present-day southeastern Turkey. After the Treaty of Sèvres, Kemal Atatürk often referred to "Turko-Kurdish cooperation" during the years of Millî Mücadele ("National Struggle"). This was in accord with acts of the Ankara government such as sending a team of instructors to train the Kurdish rebels, who were then fighting against British troops in modern day Iraq under the banner of the Kingdom of Kurdistan. It has been argued that Atatürk promised Kurdish people in North Kurdistan that he would respect the conditions of the Treaty of Sèvres, implying Self-determination for the Kurdish people in exchange for their crucial help in defeating the Allies (The Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara, which was formed in 1920, had rejected the Treaty of Sèvres within the first weeks of its meetings, hence the doubt).

As soon as victory over the allies was secured, Kurdish people started uprisings in eastern Turkey, suppression of which resulted in the Turkish government reacting by outlawing the publishing of newspapers and speaking of Kurdish on government property, and the starting a "geographical nation policy". Since then, the constitution of the Republic of Turkey calls everybody who lives within the borders of Turkey a "Turk," declares the official language of Turkey (and of Turkish Government) "Turkish," and that education will be made in "Turkish." Kurds were officially referred to as "Mountain Turks".

Until the 1960s and 1970s speaking Kurdish was forbidden in all areas of public and private life in Turkey. Since the 1980s militant (initially Maoist then Marxist) Kurdish organizations, such as the PKK, have campaigned for an independent Marxist state through force of arms, while other Kurdish activists that were campaigning constitutionally for the same ends were suppressed, as the government sought to put down all forms of separatism.

In 1999, a joint operation by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT), and the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks Agency (Mossad) located and arrested/captured the leader of the Kurdish terrorist group PKK, "Abdullah Ocalan", in Kenya. The Turkish Intelligence Agency later declared that he was staying in the Greek embassy in Nairobi with a Greek Cypriot passport, issued in Greece. The Greek bureaucrats responsible were forced to resign, and Abdullah 'Apo' Ocalan was tried and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment in the island of Imrali. This is the only proven case of Western assistance to the PKK. Earlier, PKK had support from Syria, Iran and various Kurdish clans in Iraq. Ocalan was originally based in Syria but was forced to leave in late 1998 following Turkey's deployment of large numbers of troops on the Syrian border. Remnants of the PKK are based in Northern Iraq who from time to time cross the mountains border into Turkey for attacks.

PKK/KADEK has been described as a terrorist group by the United States since 1997 and more recently in 2004 by the European Union.

Meanwhile over the last decade, to comply with the European Union's standards to start membership accession talks, the Turkish Government has lifted almost all the bans on Kurdish speech, press, visual/audio production, and education, and also started broadcasting Kurdish language programs in the government TV and radio channels. This, however, did not stop the PKK from breaking its ceasefire of 1999 later in 2001 and in 2005. The PKK has come under pressure fom Kurdish leaders recently to end its campaign, following overtures from Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Southern Kurdistan

Southern Kurdistan is a geocultural region located in present-day Northern Iraq. The southern boundary of the present-day Kurdistan Regional Government - known as the 'Green Line' - passes roughly through the middle of the area in which most Iraqi Kurds live, leaving a number of Kurds outside the autonomous zone. On the other hand, this transitional region (which includes the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk) is ethnically quite diverse, as it includes the bulk of Iraqi Turkmen and Assyrians as well as large numbers of Sunni and Shia Arabs.

The Kurdish Autonomous Region was designated for three northern provinces in 1970. Since the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the Kurdistan Democratic Party under the leadership of Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan under the leadership of Jalal Talabani have controlled much of Southern Kurdistan. The capital of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region is Arbil (also known as Hewlêr in Kurdish), although the main Kurdish parties have indicated their preference for Kirkuk as the capital of an eventual Kurdish state. The latter city is currently hotly contested by Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen factions, and there is a strong and vocal opposition of Turkey to permanent Kurdish control of the city.

Iranian (Eastern) Kurdistan

This area in Northwestern Iran along the borders of Iraq and Turkey spans (parts of) the provinces West Azarbaijan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Ilam.

A very early record of confrontation between the Kurds and the Sassanid Empire appears in a historical text called the Book of the Deeds of Ardashir son of Babak. The book explains the life of "Ardashir Papagan" or Ardashir I of Persia, the founder of the Sassanid Dynasty, and is written in Pahlavi language. In this book, the author explains the battle between Kurdish King Madig and Ardashir. (Chapter 5)

During Safavid rule, the government tried to extend its control over Kurdish inhabited areas in western Iran. At that time, there were a number of semi-independent Kurdish emirates such as the Mukriyan (Mahabad), Ardalan (Sinne) and Shikak tribes around Lake Urmiye and northwest Iran. Kurds resisted this policy and tried to keep some from of self-rule. This led to a series of bloody confrontations between the Safavids and the Kurds. The Kurds were finally defeated, and as a result the Safavids decided to punish rebellious Kurds by forced relocation and deportation of Kurds in 15-16th century. This policy began under the reign of the Safavid King Tahmasp I (r. 1514-1576).

Between 1534 and 1535, Tahmasp I began the systematic destruction of the old Kurdish cities and the countryside. Large numbers of Kurds from these areas found themselves deported to the Alborz mountains and Khorasan (Khurasan), as well as the heights in the central Iranian plateau; the Laks suffered most. At this time the last remnant of the ancient royal Hadhabâni (Adiabene) tribe of central Kurdistan was removed from the heartland of Kurdistan and deported to Khorasan, where they are still found today. See and under the title "Khurasani Kurdish Dances".

The Khurasani Kurds are a community of nearly 1.7 million people deported from western Kurdistan to Khurasan (Northeastern Iran) by Persia during the 16th to 18th centuries. Also see "Izady, Mehrdad, H. ,The Kurds: A Concise Handbook, Crane Russak, 1992". For a map of these areas see [].

Although Iran had declared its neutrality in the Second World War, it was occupied by allied forces. A Kurdish state was created in the city of Mahabad in 1946 by the Kurdish Movement Komeley Jiyanewey Kurd under the leadership of Qazi Muhammad. The Republic of Mahabad, as it is often called, lasted less than a year, as the end of the war and the withdrawal of the occupying Soviet forces allowed the central government to crush the separatists and return Kurdistan to Iran. Another wave of nationalism engulfed eastern Kurdistan after the fall of Pahlavi dynasty in the winter of 1979, and as a result Ayatollah Khomeini, the new religious leader of Iran, declared a jihad (holy war) against Kurds. The crisis deepened after Kurds were denied seats in the assemblies of experts gathering in 1979, which were responsible for writing the new constitution. Kurds were therefore deprived of their political rights under the new Iranian Constitution, since majority of them belonged to the Sunni branch of Islam. In the spring of 1980, government forces under the command of President Abolhassan Banisadr conquered most of the Kurdish cities through a huge military campaign, sending in mechanized military divisions to Kurdish cities including Mahabad, Sinne, Pawe, and Marivan.

In the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, all language minorities including Kurdish speakers have the right to teach the language in schools and have publications, although these rights are often not respected by the government. Several newspapers have been closed by the Iranian authorities because of alleged "promotion of Kurdish separatism."

Half of the Kurdish population lives under the administration of the West Azarbaijan province, in which ethnic Turks and Persians (mainly Shiites) have held a monopoly on important posts for the last 60 years. These areas were cut off the Kurdistan province after the Fall of the Mahabad Republic led by Peshewa Qazi Muhammad. Kurds also suffer discrimination in the Iranian legal system, in which Sunnis (which includes most of the Kurds) are barred from standing as candidates for important posts such as the Presidency.

The Shivan Qaderi Incident On July 9 2005, a Kurdish opposition activist, Shivan Qaderi (a.k.a Shwane Qadri or Sayed Kamal Astam) and two other Kurdish men were shot by Iranian security forces in Mahabad. According to witnesses, the security forces then tied Qaderi's body to a Toyata jeep and dragged it through the streets. Iranian authorities confirmed that Qaderi, "who was on the run and wanted by the judiciary", was shot and killed while allegedly evading arrest.

For the next six weeks, riots and protests erupted in Kurdish towns and villages throughout Eastern Kurdistan such as Mahabad, Sinne(Sanandaj), Sardasht, Piranshahr (Xanê), Oshnavieh (Şino), Baneh, Bokan and Saqiz (and even inspiring protests in Southwestern Iran and in Baluchistan in Eastern Iran) with scores killed and injured, and an untold number arrested without charge. The Iranian authorities also shut down several major Kurdish newspapers arresting reporters and editors.

Links on the Shivan Qaderi Incident