What, in your view, is the best solution for the Kurdish
Question? Discuss with reference to either Iraq, Turkey or Iran
The Kurdish Question, or the issue of statehood for the Kurdish
people, has been at the center of one of the biggest political
debates in international politics since the creation of the modern
Middle East (Gunter, 2004). Today, Kurdish people in the region
number up to over thirty million people, making it the largest
nation in the world without an independent state, although the vast
majority of Kurds still live in the geographical area of Kurdistan,
an historical region divided since the end of World War I between
Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.While in the last decade both Iraqi
and Syrian Kurds have managed to gain de facto autonomy from their
sovereign states in what has been called Kurdish Spring (Hess,
2013), and after decades of war, Kurdish-Turkish party PKKs
diplomatic talks with Turkeys government have paved way for
possible peace between the two sides, the fate of Iranian Kurds has
largely remained unchanged. Positive developments in the Kurds
struggle for self-determination in the Middle East have, however,
undoubtedly affected the Iranian Kurds situation and may very well
contribute in a region-wide breakthrough, which Iranian Kurdistan
has the potential to be an extremely fertile soil for. This essay
will try to demonstrate the importance of Iranian Kurdistan in the
eventual solution of the Kurdish Question, by accurately analyzing
the unique identity and societal condition of Irans Kurds, the
nature of Irans Kurdish nationalism and the political history of
the Kurdish minority in the country.
The Kurdish IdentityAn Iranian people speaking a Indo-European
language of the Iranian branch, unlike in other countries, Kurds in
Iran are closely related to the ruling majoritarian ethnicity,
lessening the obstacles encountered by their Iraqi or Turkish
counterparts in their relations with their own national governments
(Kreyenbroek, 1992). While Kurds in Iraq or Turkey have always been
considered detrimental for the upholding of respectively Arab and
Turkish nationalisms, Iranian Kurds were an integral part of the
Iranian nation in the nationalism endorsed by secular Pahlavi
dynasty (Banuazizi, 1986). While since the birth of modern Iran,
Kurds have never been completely equal to their fellow Persian
citizens, their nature of non-Arabs and Muslims has granted them,
both under Imperial and Islamic rule, a better social and political
position than any other minority existing in Iran today (Natali,
2005). It is important to note as well that Iran is not, unlike its
neighbouring countries, the result of the fragmentation of an
empire, and its Kurdish population is deeply historically embedded
in the states history, which is seen by scholars as one of the
reasons why, again unlike other Kurdish minorities, the leaders of
Iranian Kurdistan have rarely sought complete independence from
Iran (McDowell, 1992) and the reason why Irans government has,
although strongly opposing any suggestion of autonomy by the
minority, never employed the same amount of violent repression
against its Kurds witnessed in other countries (Kreyenbroek,
1992).During the Pahlavi dynasty, some high officers in the army
and members of parliament were Kurds, and even Kurdish Minister of
Education Karim Sanjabi was a member of this minority.
Kurdish Culture in modern IranHowever, although related, the
separate ethnic identity of the Kurds was strongly denied by the
Pahlavi dynasty, and while Mohammed Reza Pahlavi defined the Kurds
pure Iranians (Izady, 1992), the Kurdish press was banned under the
Pahlavis (van Bruinessen, 2000) and the denial of the Kurdish
language, culture and ethnicity were central to the discursive
strategy of Pahlavi Iran. Those Kurds who stressed their nature as
different from the Persians became the other in opposition to the
sovereign, used by the Pahlavis to enforce their new order (Vali,
1995). This denial of Kurdish culture has also massively affected
Kurdish cultural and political life. Unlike Ottoman Kurds, Iranian
Kurds did not have a formed secular intelligentsia during the first
days of the modern Middle East (Vali, 1995) and to later Kurdish
scholars, the Persian culture in its greatness, posed as a very
foundation to Iranian nationalism was more attractive than a
,purely Kurdish, culture (Cottam, 1979).Iranian Kurds, therefore,
lack the cohesion found in their Turkish and Iraqi counterparts:
not only many Kurdish intellectuals in Iran have chosen Iranian
nationalism as a tendency over Kurdish nationalism, but those
allowed to participate in national politics have been coopted into
the dominant groups of their country (Entessar, 1984), leaving the
nation excluded from their personal achievements.
A great part of the reason for this is that, unlike the dominant
majority of Kurds worldwide, a significant portion (27%) of Iranian
Kurds are not Sunni muslims, but adhere to Shiism, like the Persian
majority (UNPO, 2008). While the religious identity of Kurds had
little or no importance under the secular Pahlavi Dynasty, after
the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the new theocratic government expelled
Sunni Kurds from public office, greatly restricted their freedom of
expression and heavily militarised the Kurdish inhabited region of
the country (Natali, 2000), causing the Sunni majority to question
Iranian national identity in the peripheral regions of Iran
(Abrahamian, 2008), while Shia Kurds in the Kermanshah region are
still strong opponents to the idea of autonomy, preferring the
direct rule of Tehran (Romano, 2006). With a minority of the Kurds
in Iran fully integrated in the wider society, the already existing
lack of cohesion in the Kurdish population of Iran has widened,
with a Shia percentage able to boast important political figures
such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, current mayor of Tehran and
runner-up in the latest political elections and Mohammad-Reza
Rahimi, former First Vice-President of Iran, while the Sunni
majoritys "social, political and cultural rights have been
repressed, as have their economic aspirations" according to Amnesty
International (2008). Since the Islamic Revolution though, it is
important to notice that, even for the Sunnis, the situation has
indeed improved, mainly under the presidency of Mohammed Khatami in
the second half of the 1990s. Khatamis rule was characterised by
the opening a new cultural and political space for the Kurds, which
they used to promote unprecedented cultural activities after the
example of the PKK (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010). Under
Khatamis leadership Abdollah Ramezanzadeh was the first-ever
Kurdish politician to be appointed governor of Irans Kurdistan
region (Koohi-Kamali, 2003). Khatami also received unprecedented
support from the Kurds, both Sunnis and Shias, which could be seen
as an attempt by the Kurds to obtain greater autonomy and freedoms
rather than an armed conflict: his presidency also coincided with
the end of two decades of Iranian military control of Kurdistan.
(Koohi-Kamali, 2003).
The Birth of Kurdish NationalismIranian Kurdish nationalism has
existed for as long as its Iraqi or Turkish counterpart. Already
during the rise to power of Reza Khan Pahlavi, Kurdish tribal
leader Simko Shikak led a tribal revolt calling for an independent
Kurdistan (Cottam, 1979), although most historians argue that
plunder and tribal culture and not Kurdish identity were the major
issue in Simkos revolt (Kreyenbroek, 1992), he is still regarded as
one of the fathers of Kurdish nationalism in Iran(Ahmadzadeh and
Stansfield, 2010), and Reza Khans brutal repression of tribal
identities during the 1920s contributed to developing nationalism
among the tribes themselves (Kreyenbroek, 1992).This early
nationalism culminated in the Iran Crisis of 1946, which saw,
alongside the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Kurdish Republic (or
Mahabad Republic), the only, to date, example of an independent
Kurdish state. The Republic was the offspring of KDPI, the
Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, and the leader of the party,
Qazi Mohammad, also became the Republics first and only president.
The Mahabad Republic lasted less than a year, but is still
considered another major turning point in the realisation of
Kurdish nationalism (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010)(Entessar,
1984), and not only in Iran.
Iranian Kurds and the Islamic RevolutionIrans KDPI also helped
Iraqs Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), led by Moustafa Barzani, in
the armed conflict against Baghdads forces. While Iraq was
effectively funding the KDPI to actively fight against the Iranian
government, Tehran was funding Barzanis efforts. This led to yet
another fragmentation in Iranian Kurdish politics, with the KDPI
splitting in two between those loyal to Barzani and the
Revolutionary Committee (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010). Kurdish
nationalist aspirations were once more crushed when, abandoned by
the other faction, the Committee was defeated by the Iranian Army
and at the same time, with the Algiers Agreement of 1975 between
Iran and Iraq, Barzanis movement lost all funding coming from
Tehran. The Shah abandoned its Kurdish allies in exchange for
boundary concessions, yet he allowed some fifty-thousand Iraqi
Kurdish refugees in its borders (van Bruinessen, 2000), while the
KDPI leadership was effectively exiled to Iraq until the collapse
of the Pahlavi dynasty (Hassanpour, 1994).The memory of the Shahs
betrayal of the Kurds was an added incentive to join the revolution
of 1979 (Entessar, 1984) and alongside Iranian Persians, Kurds
organised effective anti-regime protests, especially via the Zagros
Committee, organised by the KDPI for this purpose. (Ahmadzadeh and
Stansfield, 2010). Furthermore, during the first year of the
Revolution, Iranian Kurds enjoyed de facto autonomy under the
control of the KDPI and Komalah, the two main political parties
(van Bruinessen, 2000), and after decades as an underground
organisation, the KDPI declared its overt acivities in 1979 in
Mahabad (Romano, 2006), while its members returned from exile, were
freed from Pahlavi jails and built an organisation firmly rooted in
the local population, comprising even a military branch (van
Bruinessen, 1986).While different political groups and even
ethnicities and minorities directed their effort towards obtaining
a foothold in the new regime, in Kurdistan both Komalah and the
KDPI started demanding autonomy for their region and put the
governments institutions on a secondary plane (Van Bruinessen,
1986). This sudden burst of Kurdish nationalism came as a surprise
to the government, instead of granting Kurdistan a greater
autonomy, the new regime saw the mainly Sunni-inhabited region as a
threat. Abdul Rahman Qassemlu, KDPIs leader advocated of Kurdish
cooperation with the new regime, if Kurdistans autonomy rights
would have been guaranteed by it (Ahmadazadeh and Stansfield,
2010), took part in the election of the Assembly of Experts in
1979, was elected but was denied a voice in the Assembly by the
Ayatollah (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010). The Ayatollah declared
jihad against those two and a half million Sunni Kurds who sought
autonomy, while leaving the Shias untouched (Weinstock, 2011) and
by 1984, Kurdish militas had been yet again pushed into Iraqi
territory by Irans superior army (Olson, 1992).
The Trans-nationalisation of the QuestionAs mentioned before,
the period of the Iran-Iraq war that started in 1980 saw the
massive militarisation of Irans Kurdistan. Due to the Communication
Revolution of the end of the 1980s, the Kurdish question abandoned
national boundaries, and publications and political activism even
from the Iranian Kurdish diaspora became available, increasing
Kurdish nationalism in the region and helping to develop a
trans-national concept of the Kurdish problem (van Bruinessen,
2000). These publications often showed that the old parties like
Komalah and the KDP were losing popularity among the new generation
of politically active Kurds (Ahamadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010), and
the trans-national nature of Kurdish nationalism pushed even some
Shias to adhere to it due to the outrage for the violent
suppression of Kurds in Sunni regions and abroad (McDowall, 1996),
while it is important to point out that, although military conflict
is still active in the region, there is no evident Shia Kurd
insurgency in the area (Romano, 2006). In 1999, this renewed
nationalism was evident in the protests in Iranian Kurdistan for
the arrest of Abdullah calan, leader of Turkish PKK (Olson, 2000)
and by the creation of PJAK, a militant Iranian Kurdish group,
trained and funded by the PKK based in Iraqi Kurdistan (Katzman,
2009). PJAK is widely looked at with suspicion by both the Iranian
government and other Kurdish political parties (Brandon, 2006), and
recently the KDPI has officially rejected contacts with PJAK,
accusing the movement to be merely an extension of the PKK (Hess,
2013).
Conclusion and Future ProspectsWith Iranian Kurdish nationalism
on obviously the rise, stirred by Iraqi and Syrian Kurds successes
in the last decade, other groups are emerging, such as Berey
Yekgurtuy Kurd, or Kurdish United Front, founded by Kurdish
activists and several Kurdish members of the Majlis (the Iranian
Parliament), aiming for equal cultural, political, societal and
economical rights for all Iranians (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield,
2010). It is clear that the new generations response to their
multifaceted discrimination by the Islamic Republic (Hess, 2013) is
no longer confined to an incoherent political struggle confined to
Irans Kurdistan and Kermanshah region. New technologies, including
social networks and world-wide medias today can make the voice of
small groups heard throughout the world, and what is happening just
outside the border is no mystery for the Kurds of Iran. Hassan
Rouhanis reformist presidency has indeed promised to prepare a
civil rights charter that may very well include larger autonomy for
the Kurdish people in Iran, and may also provide a more fertile
soil for diplomacy between Tehran and Mahabad, similarly to what
happened in 1997 with Khatamis presidency. A reckless continuation
of the armed struggle, especially if not supported by the larger
and more organised PKK military infrastructure, could easily lead
to the refusal of Tehran to treat with the Kurds, other than
continue to stall the development of the region, who still suffers
from the events of the Iran-Iraq War and a full decade of clashes
between the IRCG and PJAK. It is therefore clear that the only way
Iranian Kurdish parties can carve out a new standing for their
people is via the use of extensive and coherent diplomacy, aided by
the external pressure of Iraqi Kurdistan and by the developments of
the Question in Turkey. An autonomous Iranian Kurdistan based on
the the Iraqi model could, given time, solve the Question itself by
both granting a safe haven for Sunni Kurds in Iran, while not
disrupting the privileged condition of their Shia brothers in the
Kermanshah area.
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