The flag of Kurdistan, the national flag of the Kurdish people. Jens Kalaene/DPA. All rights reserved.In
early December 2016, the burning of a Kurdish flag in the northern Syrian town
of Amuda revealed the fault-lines of intra-Kurdish power relations. The flag
was allegedly burned by supporters of the ruling Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose
armed wing is the People’s Protection Units (YPG), in Syria’s Rojava region.
The YPG is an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a left-wing
Kurdish group fighting for autonomy in Turkey. Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG) in northern Iraq strongly condemned the incident. Moreover, the Barzani
administration has been very uneasy about the PKK’s armed presence in the town
of Sinjar in northern Iraq, which the group has yet to abandon after battling
the Islamic State there in the summer of 2014.
While
Turkey pressures the United States and the Barzani administration to prevent
Sinjar becoming the PKK’s new headquarters, the United States diplomatically
seeks to prevent any intra-Kurdish clashes in the middle of anti-ISIS coalition
efforts. In late December 2016, Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of the KRG, urged the use of force in order to
push the PKK out of Sinjar. Amidst this increasing political tension between the
two major Kurdish groups in the region, the first armed clash between the
PKK-affiliated Yazidi group called Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) and a group
called Rojava Peshmarga, close to Masoud Barzani, led to casualties in early
March, near the town of Khanesor in Sinjar,
northern Iraq.
For
many Kurds, this intra-Kurdish hostility has led to fears of another “Birakuji”
(Kurdish Civil War) that devastated the region during the violence of the 1990s
among competing Kurdish factions. For Middle East experts, this intra-Kurdish
tension has once again raised the question of whether Kurds across the borders
are more likely to unite or clash with each other in the era of the Islamic
State challenge.
Unity or civil war?
There
are basically two arguments. The first is that the rise of the Islamic State,
as an existential threat against the broader Kurdish presence and survival in
their historical homeland, can unite the Kurds, as ethnic nationalism is
assumed to override the ideological differences across factional Kurdish
groups. This argument is more inclined towards the possibility of a greater
Kurdistan across Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran.
The second
argument is that different Kurdish groups such as Barzani’s KDP and Abdullah
Ocalan’s PKK have deep historical and ideological divisions where rivalry is
more likely than unity, even in the face of the ISIS threat. This either-or
approach can be misleading, however. A third way, often neglected, is the
co-existence of rival Kurdish groups with their differences and multiple
sovereignties. This perhaps may be the foundation of the making of the modern
Kurdish world. Like the Arab world or the Arab Middle East, the structure
of the Kurdish Middle East is not necessarily about pan-Kurdish ambitions or
intra-ethnic strife, but it is more about the shared cultural identity, common
memory and similar challenges within their historical territories. Rather than
political unity or civil war, the Kurdish Middle East may become a region of
multiple Kurdish sovereignties with shared cultural identity.
The KRG
in Northern Iraq is already a politically divided territory between
Suleymaniyah province under the dominant influence of Gorran (Change Movement)
and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Erbil province under the
predominant authority of Barzani’s KDP. In northern Syria, or what is often
called Rojava (Western Kurdistan), the power vacuum, left after Bashar Assad abandoned
the area to protect his stronghold capital of Damascus, was filled by the
Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its arm wing, YPG, mostly affiliated with the
PKK’s left-wing worldview. In southeast Turkey, the pro-Kurdish political party
(HDP) has been able to win the majority of Kurdish hearts and minds in the last
elections in 2015. Although the Kurdish issue in Iran has been relatively absent
from the international community’s radar, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan
(PDKI) seeks the option of armed struggle and mobilizes broader populations.
Above all, despite different approaches of the aforementioned actors on the
future of the Kurds and Kurdish cause, the threat of Islamic State has been
able to create a common Kurdish ethnic consciousness and public opinion across
borders. Yet, in the Kurdish Middle East, ethnic solidarity and rivalry can be the modus operandi within the context of shifting
domestic interests, regional alliances and international order. For instance, the recent Kurdistan flag controversy in Iraq’s Kirkuk province is a good example of how
factional Kurdish groups such as the PUK and KDP can become united against Kurdish rivals.
Kurdish political geography
In the
post-Ottoman political context, scholars of the Middle East have widely begun
to use the concept of the Arab World or the Arab Middle East in order to
highlight a highly complex political geography with a shared cultural identity,
language, and history. As a late-comer in its political development, it is now
essential for scholars and pundits to consider the Kurdish political geography
with its variety of actors, ideas, and interests as ‘the modern Kurdish Middle
East.’ This will help to prevent falsely perceiving the Kurds as one homogenous
group on the one hand and the crude idea of greater Kurdistan across borders on
the other.
The
modern Kurdish Middle East consists of around 30 million people with no
independent stateThere is, however, a federal government in northern
Iraq and a de facto autonomous region in northern Syria. Interestingly, the
Kurdish world has neither an equivalent to the pan-Arabism articulated by
Nasserism during the 1960s, nor a corresponding organization such as the Arab
League. Rather the Kurdish world is home to a variety of competing
political and ideological actors including the Islamists (Yekgirtu in Iraq and
Free Cause Party in Turkey), the nationalists (KDP in Iraq, PDK-I in Iran, and Kurdish National Council in Syria) and the leftists (Komala in Iran, PYD in
Syria, and HDP in Turkey). The leadership paradigms in the Kurdish political world are
also varied. Masoud Barzani and his KDP’s independence path dominate northern
Iraq, while Abdullah Ocalan (imprisoned in Turkey) and his PKK’s democratic
autonomy path remains influential in Turkey and Syria.
Although
Barzani and Ocalan have differences as how they imagine ideal Kurdistan and
Kurdishness (more conservative and pro-nation state and more socialist and
anti-nation state, respectively), the rise of the Islamic State as a common
threat to the existential security of historically Kurdish territories has
pushed contextual cooperation and dialogue to the forefront. If you walk around
the Family Mall in Erbil, you will see many nicely framed pictures of Masoud
Barzani and Abdullah Ocalan sold as souvenirs. If you drink a tea in the
historical Hasan Pasha Han in the Sur district of Diyarbakir, Turkey you will
see small souvenir rugs with knitted pictures of Molla Mustafa Barzani (Mesud
Barzani’s father who led nationalist campaigns against Iraqi and Iranian governments
until his death in 1979) and Selahattin Demirtas (the co-leader of the
pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party or HDP in Turkey). An overarching Kurdish
public opinion which welcomes the plurality and co-existence of Kurdish actors
and leaders is greater than the power struggles of the rival Kurdish actors.
Despite
the rivalries and political differences among factional Kurdish
groups, the broader Kurdish public opinion forces them to show ethnic
solidarity in one way or another. The last armed clash in Sinjar between
PKK-affiliated and Barzani-affiliated groups ended in a couple of hours due to
the sensitivities of Kurdish public opinion which does not approve anymore of ‘Birakuji’ among Kurds.
Kurdish Identity and Multiple
Sovereignties
What
is different today about the Kurdish Middle East is that the era of regional
states and international powers using the 'Kurdish card’ against each other is
less likely. There may be competing ideas and conflicting interests of
different Kurdish groups in the region, but an overarching Kurdish public
opinion is strongly in the making, cutting across borders with the self-consciousness
of being their own agents rather than the instruments of ‘others’. This mental
independence is creating the modern Kurdish world from north-western Iran
(Rojhelat) to northern Syria (Rojava) and from south-eastern Turkey (Bakur) to
northern Iraq (Bashur). This is a historical transition from the scattered and
disorganized world of Kurdish tribal lands into a diplomatic, authoritative, self-conscious
political geography with raison d’état.
Yet,
it is still misleading to see the Kurds as a single, homogenous group that
collectively strive for a united or greater Kurdistan. As the Arab Middle East,
the modern Kurdish world is large enough to have more than one Kurdish
sovereign territory, one leader, or one ideology. Today, while the Peshmerga in
Iraqi Kurdistan is a frontier force and a key ally of the international
coalition to liberate Mosul, the YPG as a leading member of the Syrian
Democratic Forces, has begun Operation Euphrates Wrath in isolating ISIS in its
Syrian heartland of Raqqa. Kurds in Iraq are perhaps the closest to having
their own state in the near future. There is a good chance that the Kurds in
Syria may have some form of autonomy in post-civil war Syria. Rather than a
unified Kurdistan across borders, a single ethnic group with multiple sovereign
territories independent from each other is more likely to be the political
foundation of the modern Kurdish Middle East. The key question for the rival
Kurdish actors is how to compete for power and represent broader Kurdish public
interests without falling into another ‘Birakuji,’or civil war.
