The Kurdish problem or the future of the Middle East Kurdish independance Though there is no reliable and recent census, the number of Kurds could be about 30 millions, an important number, if we consider the population of Syria (less than 14 millions), or Jordania (less than 4 millions). The total surface of Kurdistan is almost equal to the surface of France. Kurdistan has a strategical situation between Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia : that is why the Kurds are simultaneously in conflict with Arabian, Persian and Turkish people. Moreover, Kurdistan is one of the wealthiest Eastern countries in raw materials. We must not forget that before the embargo ordered by United States, Irak was the fourth producer of petrol in the world. And 70 % of this petrol was extracted in Kirkuk, in the Kurdistan of Irak. But more than petrol, the problem of water is essential : the Tigris and the Euphrates, the two long rivers watering Irak, Syria and Eastern Turkey, have their sources in the Kurdistan of Turkey. So Turkey put pressure on his neighbours with dams that will deprive Syria and Irak of water. It is one of the reasons why Hafez el-Assad, the Syrian president, had sheltered for a long time the staff and the basis of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), using their presence as reprisals The Kurdish problem is not recent. After the division of the Ottoman Empire by the League of Nations and the treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Kurds could not be independant and were divided by four countries three of which practices an ethnical nationalism (ba’athism and kemalism) that oblige them to belong to the Arabic and Turkish "races" a citizen's duty. The kemalist creed that sing each morning the Turkish pupils , "I am Turk, Great is my race" has its equivalent in Syria and Irak. But the situation and the oppression of Kurds are not the same in previously mentioned states. Iran, for example, federates since milleniums a mosaïc of people and though under the reign of the Shah, the cultural rights of the Kurds were restricted and at present, the Kurds, sunnit at 95% should live under a shiit rule, the Kurdo-Iranian conflict is essentially politic In Syria, the Kurds (about 1 million) had profited by the accession to the presidence of a non-muslim minority that had seeked to gain the other minorites' goodwill against the Muslim movements. Then, the most part of the President's personnal guard is Kurdish. However, the publication of Kurdish books or reviews is forbiden, as the learning of the Kurdish language, though it is allowed for the Armenians of Syria. Moreover, Kurds of Eastern Syria had been expulsed from their home when Syria wanted to "arabize" its frontiers and thousands of Kurds are deprived of citizenship, have no right to existence In Irak, the outbreak of Kurdish conflict tooke place with the creation of this state with arbitrary frontiers drawned by the British who wanted to control the production of petrol in the area. It is important to know that the North and the South of Mesopotamia were never united, neither geographically, economically nor demographically. The name of Irak is just the Arabic name of Southern Mesopotamia, very anciently occupied by Arabic and Semitic populations : it includes a land of plains and irrigated marshes and a large part of the Syro-Irakian desert, peopled by Bedouins. The North of Mesopotamia was for a long time a part of a large country that Arabians called Jazirah : it is a mountainous area, very anciently peopled by Kurds, Armenians and later by Turkmens, that includes a part of Northern Syria and Eastern Anatolia. Moreover, the Arabs of Irak are mostly shiites, in opposition to the sunnit Kurds.

The Kurdish problem or the future

of the Middle East

Though there is no reliable and recent census, the number of Kurds could be about 30 millions, an important number, if we consider the population of Syria (less than 14 millions), or Jordania (less than 4 millions). The total surface of Kurdistan is almost equal to the surface of France. Kurdistan has a strategical situation between Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia : that is why the Kurds are simultaneously in conflict with Arabian, Persian and Turkish people. Moreover, Kurdistan is one of the wealthiest Eastern countries in raw materials. We must not forget that before the embargo ordered by United States, Irak was the fourth producer of petrol in the world. And 70 % of this petrol was extracted in Kirkuk, in the Kurdistan of Irak. But more than petrol, the problem of water is essential : the Tigris and the Euphrates, the two long rivers watering Irak, Syria and Eastern Turkey, have their sources in the Kurdistan of Turkey. So Turkey put pressure on his neighbours with dams that will deprive Syria and Irak of water. It is one of the reasons why Hafez el-Assad, the Syrian president, had sheltered for a long time the staff and the basis of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), using their presence as reprisals.

The Kurdish problem is not recent. After the division of the Ottoman Empire by the League of Nations and the treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Kurds could not be independant and were divided by four countries three of which practices an ethnical nationalism (ba’athism and kemalism) that oblige them to belong to the Arabic and Turkish "races" a citizen's duty. The kemalist creed that sing each morning the Turkish pupils , "I am Turk, Great is my race" has its equivalent in Syria and Irak. But the situation and the oppression of Kurds are not the same in previously mentioned states. Iran, for example, federates since milleniums a mosaïc of people and though under the reign of the Shah, the cultural rights of the Kurds were restricted and at present, the Kurds, sunnit at 95% should live under a shiit rule, the Kurdo-Iranian conflict is essentially politic.

In Syria, the Kurds (about 1 million) had profited by the accession to the presidence of a non-muslim minority that had seeked to gain the other minorites' goodwill against the Muslim movements. Then, the most part of the President's personnal guard is Kurdish. However, the publication of Kurdish books or reviews is forbiden, as the learning of the Kurdish language, though it is allowed for the Armenians of Syria. Moreover, Kurds of Eastern Syria had been expulsed from their home when Syria wanted to "arabize" its frontiers and thousands of Kurds are deprived of citizenship, have no right to existence.

In Irak, the outbreak of Kurdish conflict tooke place with the creation of this state with arbitrary frontiers drawned by the British who wanted to control the production of petrol in the area. It is important to know that the North and the South of Mesopotamia were never united, neither geographically, economically nor demographically. The name of Irak is just the Arabic name of Southern Mesopotamia, very anciently occupied by Arabic and Semitic populations : it includes a land of plains and irrigated marshes and a large part of the Syro-Irakian desert, peopled by Bedouins. The North of Mesopotamia was for a long time a part of a large country that Arabians called Jazirah : it is a mountainous area, very anciently peopled by Kurds, Armenians and later by Turkmens, that includes a part of Northern Syria and Eastern Anatolia. Moreover, the Arabs of Irak are mostly shiites, in opposition to the sunnit Kurds.

Since and after the creation of Irak, the Kurds revolted and faughted against the British and the Arabic Irakians. The revolution of 1958, that suppressed the monarchist constitution, did not resolve the Kurdish problem. Though the Irakian Constitution guaranteed the political and cultural rights of the Kurds, the conflict never stopped because of the bad will of Irakian authorities to accept the Kurdish autonomy. The persecution reached its climat during the war between Iran and Irak (1980-1988). Saddam Hussein wanted to neutraliz its Kurdish population that Iran tried to arm against him. About 5.000 villages were destroyed, some regions were entirely burnt down with napalm, some others were systematically depopulated : so 182.000 persons disappeared in the region of Germiyan and most of them were secretly executed. The attacks by gas of the town of Halabja, whose pictures affected public opinion, took place in many Kurdish towns of Irak.

After the Gulf War and the operation Provide Comfort that set up a secure area in Northern Irak for defending the Kurds against what it remains of the Irakian army, Kurds could establish a kind of autonomy, in despite of the embargo that deprived the Kurdish regions and the violent conflict opposing the two principal political factions : KPD and PUK. But the frequent raids of the Turkish troops in this area and the scorched earth policy practiced with napalm along the Turkish border disturbed this hope of a Kurdish state. Bombardments aimed officially to destroy the military basis of PKK, but Turkey wanted essentially to control the territories of Mossul and Kirkuk, that it never stop to claim since the set up of the frontier by Britannics.

In Turkey, the Republic founded by Kemal Atatürk based immediately its Constitution and the criterions of its citizenship on the belonging to the "Turkish race". Then, de juro and de facto, to refer oneself from an else ethnical origin is a treason. Dissident populations as the Greeks or the Armenians had been almost entirely eliminated, by massacres or deportations. Then the Kurds was the most numerous and the most undisciplined " minority ". Repression began since the 20s. Every rebellion was bloodily reprimed. Some populations were deported to Turkish regions, and Eastern Anatolia was a forbidden land until the 60s.

During the 70s, a lot of political extremist movements, from leftwing as well as from rightwing, stirred up the country. Students, excited by the war of VietNam or the Palestinian claims, were very influenced by the fights in the Third World and the anti-colonialism leaders. But at this time, the Kurds militated for the leftwing in parties with Turkish and Kurdish members. The particularity of PKK (Workers' Party of Kurdistan), was not its programm (the same of the marxist liberation movement's one) but in its will to consider the Kurdish problem in Turkey as a colonialist problem. PKK was founded the 27th november 1978 at Diyarbakir, by a student's group, amongst them was Abdüllah Öcalan, the leader recently imprisonned. The actions of PKK were at first political. But after the coup of 1980 that set up a military power and started a hard political repression in Kurdistan, PKK chose to fight as a military organisation. Some of its staff and its leader had fled in Lebanon and coached troops in the Palestinian camps. The guerilla began really in 1984 and had never ceased, althoug the three unilateral ceased-the-fire declared by PKK since 1993. Even the restauration of the political power in Turkey did not change the attitude of the regim concerning the Kurdish problem. Until 1991, speaking an else language than Turkish was forbidden, the Kurds had had no historical nor legal existence, and to mention them was a crime of separatim. The Turkish sociologist Ismaïl Besikci has been condemned to fifteen years of prison for having mentionned the existence of the Kurds. The low economical development of Kurdistan and the hardness of repression had nothing done but radicalized the conflict, and all the attempts of a political resolution is blocked by the refuse of the Turkish political class and the government to admit a "Kurdish problem". The Human Right's associations, syndicates, newspapers and Kurdish parties are systematically repressed murdered, prison or are forbidden. So, five of HADEP MP's are in jail, after one of them, Leyla Zana, spoke in Kurdish in Parliament and most of its leader are imprisonned too, as well as thousand of its sympathizers.

Nowadays, though PKK gave up claiming independance and just claims a federalist or autonomist solution, or a democratic constitution for Kurds in the Turkish Republic, Turkey is de facto divided between a more urbanized and democratic Western part and Eastern Anatolia with its emergency law and courts, and its militias. This war of 14 years had made 36.000 victims, whose 20.000 Kurds. 4.000 villages had been destroyed and thousand of villagers of Anatolia crowded in the shantytowns of some Kurdish and Turkish towns as Diyarbakir, Istanbul, Ankara, Konya. This migration can move the conflict, until nowadays limited to the South-East of Turkey, into the Western metropoles. War is the cause of a serious economic recession and a lot of networks belonging to mafia, profiting to drug connexion, and many scandals had shown kinks between mafia and government. Then it is clear that the Kurdish problem is as a cancer in all the levels of the Turkish society. And with the Kurds' demographic growth, they could become during the next century the most numerous population in Turkey.

The arrest of Abdullah Öcalan and the strong protests of the Kurds in the world show that the Kurdish problem is more than a case of terrorism around a leader, as repeat for many years the Kurdish diplomacy. In fact, the two thousands Kurds of Iran, who had defiled the 20th February 1999 at Teheran, the 4.000 Kurds of Suleïmanieh in Irak, the Syrian Kurds who rushed in Lebanon for a demonstration, the Kurds of the diaspora who had began a serie of actions in the world are not all members or sympathizers of PKK. Western diplomacy must be aware of the importance of the Kurdish problem and the serious consequences that it could have in the future of the Near and the Midddle East. The Kurdish problem will be probably one of the most essential and one of the most dangerous of the XXIth century.

Sandrine Alexie - July 1999

Summary