Am I the Only One Who Cringes at the Term "Kurdistan"?

[On the Road]

The usage has become almost universal on all sides.

As far as I know, the term "Kurdistan" is not the traditional way of referring to northern Iraq, but reflects the hope for a future independent state composed of and ruled by Iraqi Kurds. Who can blame them for wanting self rule?

On the other hand, using the name of a proposed independent is a way of foreshadowing secession. Creating a breakaway state carries with it the potential to trigger widespread civil war, especially if the Kurds attempt to take the oil fields with them. It could also trigger a revived separatist movement in Turkey (which I understand outlaws use of the term "Kurdistan") and trigger renewed suppression of Turkey's own Kurdish minority or even an invasion of newly independent Kurdistan.

Five years from now, I am hoping that Kurdistan is not grouped with Bosnia, Chechnya, or Farclandia.

[MADem]

1. Kurds don't cringe. Kurdistan is an historical entity, that encompasses territory

found in Iraq and Iran along either side of the Zagros mountains, and eastern Turkey. In ancient times, Kurdistan was said to extend all the way to eastern Syria and as far north as parts of the old USSR.

Kurdistan, or greater Kurdistan, is NOT about Iraq. It's about Kurds in Turkey and Iran as well.

Kurds, you see, don't speak Arabic or Farsi or Turkish...at least not as a first language. They speak Kurdish, and it's the same language no matter if you are in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan, or Turkish Kurdistan. Also, Kurds are not Shi'a, like the bulk of the populations in Iraq or Iran. They are not Arabs, they are not Persians, they are not Turks. They are KURDS.

The Kurdish Library in NYC has some of the best information about the culture and the people. They ARE a distinct people, and they once-upon-a-time had a distinct homeland. The term shouldn't make you cringe. It is representative of a nation these guys had since before the US was even a nation, and have been trying to regain since the western powers chopped up the Middle East and gave it to warlords and neglected to cut those fellows in.

[On the Road]

3. Yes, They are Certainly a Distinct People

So are all kinds of ethnic groups that are incorporated into larger states. I do not believe there has been an independent Kurdish state or Kingdom since before the Ottomans, which would make it almost 500 years.

Most of Africa was divided into states based on colonial borders that grouped enemies and split ethnic boundaries. As a result there have been plenty of internal conflicts. However, the only reason that Africa hasn't been torn apart by interstate warfare has been that early on the Organization for African Unity wisely decided that all national boundaries were fixed and there would be no fights over borders.

Inevitably, there were breakaway movements, often with some justification. But those movements frequently turn into Biafras. That is not an appealing fate for the Kurds.

[MADem]

9. Not just a distinct people. A distinct culture. A distinct language. A distinct sect from two

of the three nations where they live (and distinct methods of practicing their faith from the one country where they are on the same page).

They've always run their own affairs, so any argument about 'statehood' was meaningless back in the day when they did their own thing and no one came around and bothered them. They've only been under a boot really, since the 1920s. They had autonomy up until they end of the WW1, when they were screwed over.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/kurds3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Mahabad


From the Treaty of Sevres in WW1, to Nixon, to FDR, to GHWB, they understand being screwed, but that isn't going to make them give up--they are the most determined people I've ever met:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,930623,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101055.html

Make no mistake...the Kurds are PATIENT. They won't give up on the idea of regaining their nation. They have never lost their national identity, and they will NOT assimilate--they deliberately, without equivocation, refuse to so do. Again, they aren't Persian, they aren't Arabs, they aren't Turks. They don't speak any of those languages. They are blonde and brown haired, blue and gray eyed, many of them, and they look more like Afghans than anyone else in the neighborhood. They're tall as hell, too, some of them. Their DNA is different, their culture is different, their language is different, even their religion is different.

They don't cover and hide their women, and they aren't afraid of the cold. Tough people, they are...and they are no 'Biafra'--not by a long shot. There's at least twenty five million of them (they say at least forty), and they won't give up that easily. In any event, they are the largest group of distinct people, by cuture, language and DNA, without a doggone designated nation.

http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc0111BB100.html

The Turks hate the idea of an independent Kurdistan, but they can't keep crapping on them if they want full EU membership... http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,12700,1414790,00.html I think the Kurds will get their way eventually...they will outlast and outwit, and get their way.

[SCantiGOP]

2. ask that question to Turkey

A recent article in The Economist said that US officials are convinced that Turkey will invade "Kurdistan," or northern Iraq, to take out groups that are conducting cross-border raids into the Kurdish areas of Turkey. This will occur sometime in the spring as the weather would make it impossible now. This article speculated that the US and Turkey had already agreed that the US would raise hell about this, but Turkey would have promised only to go so deep into Iraq and to only stay so long. It's a bit hypocritical if we are fighting 'terrorism' not to let a country defend itself from groups conducting what they see as terrorist raids on their territory. Turkey has for long been on the record saying they would go to war to stop an independent Kurdistan from being established, even outside their borders. Of course, if things go wrong (not that anything the US has done in the Mideast has possibly gone wrong) you could see a shooting war between two NATO countries.

[On the Road]

4. I Didn't Know the Turks Were Already on Record

as committing to an invasion, but it doesn't surprise me.

Breakaway regions are always a difficult thing to judge, even without border state conflicts and minority populations elsewhere. People have a right to self-governance, but states also have a right to maintain their integrity. Those rights have to be balanced.

The more of these ethnic and internecine wars I see, the less I support new breakaway states except under extreme duress. Thomas Jefferson wrote about "a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinces a design to reduce <the people> under absolute Despotism". That was true under Saddam but not since then. So whereas the Iraqi Kurds used to meet Jefferson's requirements for revolution, I don't know that they do any longer.

States should not abuse their minority populations, but calls for secession and revolution most often result in failure and heartbreak. In today's world, life and prosperity are more important than national boundaries.

[SCantiGOP]

5. Turkey not committed to invasion..

..unless the Kurds declare an independent state. The article speculated that they would make a brief incursion into Iraq in the spring to wipe out the bases of their armed groups. I have definite mixed feelings about their independence, but this is one more complication in a hopelessly complicated situation. I'm so glad George decided to dump us into the middle of it.

[The2ndWheel]

6. States only exist because of violence

The sad thing is that everything we enjoy today we owe to violence. Or the threat of it, an example being this Turkey/Kurd situation. States would fall apart if not for force, or the threat of it.

Either way, it's a fun reality we've got going.

[MADem]

11. Kurdistan is not a 'new, breakaway state' though. It existed before IRAQ and TURKEY did.

It existed when IRAN was PERSIA....

If any state has kept its borders, its culture, its language and people intact, it is Kurdistan. The only thing they don't have is a shitload of oil, Kirkuk excepted.

I don't see them as a "minority population." I see them as a state that has been carved up by western powers and handed to potentates, unjustly, unfairly and without due process. The Kurds have never accepted this, and they never will. And nationalism IS important to them--it's the first thing small children learn; who they are and what nation they belong to. All the exhorting in the world for them to give up on their goal will fall on deaf ears. They will never, ever give up. The only way they'll stop is if someone kills them all.

[MADem]

10. Well, that will flush them with the EU, then NT

[genie_weenie]

7. Screw the Kurds. No peoples have the right of self-deterimination.

The Leaders of States can not allow people's to be free, no matter how much they may yearn. All the flowery speeches at the UN are so much window dressing.

[Igel]

8. The portion of Kurdistan in Iran has the stupefying

and traditional name "Kordestan", at least as transcribed on my map. I suspect that "Kurdistan" would also be a reasonable transliteration.

Otherwise you confuse framing with reality and words for things, and there's no point in attempting the 800 millionth refutation of that. The word "Kurdistan" is not the problem, it merely reflects the fact that there are millions of Kurds with some sort of ethnic identity in the area; the real problem is the thousand years of repression and oppression.

[MADem]

12. They've only been messed with since the 1920s

If you've ever been to the Zagros mountains, it's pretty inaccessible. No one bothered them much until the Germans started building roads in the area, then it was hell to pay...

[Igel]

13. The Kurds used to have a hefty presence right down to the

Black Sea and in accessible areas. They lost the accessible areas and stayed in the inaccessible places, just as the Arumanians had in the Balkans.

Anti-Xian and anti-Jewish pogroms in Arab countries over the last thousand years are much more reported in travelers' accounts than in native accounts. It's the same with brutalization of blacks in the 1800s: Most were done in the background, and they weren't worth reporting until they were newsworthy. Slave *prices* were noteworthy. Even in the pushing of the Slavs from the Elbe and from Austria you have to look at language, personal names, and the renaming of cities and townsto see the trends; Slavs were oppressed and wronged for centuries, but the Germans didn't make a big deal out of it, just as they didn't make a big deal about the weather on 3/13/1638 or what the mayor in some berg had for breakfast on 5/12/1388. Bantu oral histories don't take much note of the genocide of the San over the last millennium, except in areas where the ethnic cleansing was recent enough and the enemy still present in the people's consciousness so as to be named.

You seldom see the victor's version of history focusing on such mundane and trivial matters, esp. when the official line is how hunky-dory everything was, and things like oppression and pogroms were simply impossible. It's not until the Ottoman Empire fell that the Kurds were any more than a local issue, emphasis on 'local'. They resisted being Turkicized, unlike most of the Greek-speaking population (although some Greek-speakers stayed ethnically Greek, only to be ethnically cleansed, and their dialect with vowel harmony wiped out--not something much noted, esp. since that happened under the Ottomans and was an internal issue).

[On the Road]

14. Whoever Uses the Word "Kurdistan"

is giving implicit support to a breakaway state that if pursued could cost hundreds of thousands of lives. I think many people in the US use the term casually without meaning to do that. Same with using "Western Sahara" in Morocco -- they even outlaw maps showing that distinction.

At least, that is my undertanding of the political connonations of that term as it is used in that region. At least in Turkey, which of course is part of the picture. I'm open to correction, but that's what I've heard.

[LeftyMom]

15. It's important to remember that borders in the middle east are functions of Imperial convenience

and often have little relationship to how the people within those borders see themselves.

If Iraqi Kurds see themselves as Kurds first and foremost, their government should reflect that if they so choose. Certainly they're the only group that's shown any capacity for effective self government, they've fashioned a self-governing and thriving proto-Kurdistan in Northern Iraq since the Gulf War, and by all accounts it's the most livable part of the country at this time.

[On the Road]

16. I Completely Agree

What I question is whether an attempt at going from an autonomous region to an independent state will destroy all that.

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

17. Deal with it!

It is a fact. It exists. It IS independent from Iraq proper, and has been self-governing for more than 15 years. It will cease to exist only when every Kurd is DEAD. It is a done deed, dude, a fact on the ground.

Pretending that it remains a piece of "Iraq" does not alter the fact.

[On the Road]

18. I am Afraid that the Turks, the Iranians, and the Rest of Iraq

will 'deal with it.' Which will be followed by the US betraying the Kurds for the third time. And no one taking any responsibility.

It's like saying "The Republic of Chechny" every time the subject comes up. Bad omen.

One reason for the horrors in the former Yugoslavia was the West's overeager embrace of separatist movements. Each one was worse: Slovenia was easy, Croaita was a little worse, Bosnia was a horror, Kosovo finally got the US involved directly. I hope they do not foreshadow the fate of the indpendent Republic of Kurdistan.

[dorkulon]

19. As far as you know?

Why not try learning before posting?

The Kurds are the largest nationless people in the world, over 30 million. It wasn’t always that way—their country was actually drawn out of existence by the English and the French when they divvied the Middle East between themselves after WWI. The Kurds, who wanted their oil-rich land for themselves, found their territory suddenly divided five ways, mainly between Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. The Europeans literally drew lines on a map—also creating Kuwait in the process. The Kurds found themselves arbitrarily and irrevocably torn asunder, in what may have been one of the biggest strategic blunders of the 20th century. Since then, they have been one of the most oppressed minorities in history, brutalized repeatedly by some of the most ruthless and xenophobic rulers in the world, all with the help of the US. It was we who supported and armed Saddam Hussein as he used lethal and torturous chemical weapons against Kurds within his own borders. It was we who supported and armed the Turkish effort to exterminate the Kurdish Workers Pary (PKK) in their fight for independence. Time and again, we pander to the Kurds when it suits us, and then jump ship when we no longer need their help, knowing that they will have no choice but to take us back when we need them again.

There are 15 million Kurds in Turkey, out of about 67 million inhabitants, yet they are not even recognized as an ethnic group within its borders. The Kurdish regions of Turkey have been in a “state of emergency” for over 70 years, due to armed insurrections. The Turkish government hates and fears its Kurdish minority, and is dead set against any autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq or anywhere else, for fear that it will further encourage Turkish Kurds to agitate for their own independence.

In Turkey, it has been illegal to wear traditional Kurdish clothing, to engage in Kurdish traditions and rituals, to have a Kurdish name, and even to speak Kurdish until recently, when Turkey started grooming itself for entry into the European Union. (Sadly, both the EU and the US tend to overlook human rights abuses when there’s money to be made, and the EU has asserted no requirement for Turkey to resolve the Kurdish issue. Rather, the PKK has made the EU’s list of banned ‘terrorist’ organizations.) “Language suppression” has been Turkey’s main strategy for assimilating the Kurds. Most have managed to retain their native tongue, although literary development has effectively ceased in Turkey.

http://www.buffalobeast.com/43/turkey.html