The Kurds
The community I have chosen to research and blog about are the Kurdish people, also known as the Kurds. They are the largest, stateless ethnic group in the world. It is likely that you have not heard of them. This is an ethnic group that though largely Sunni Muslim, existed before the time of Muhammad and the rise of Islam in the seventh century. The Kurds have their own language and culture, taking pride in having an ancient history. Although they reside in the Middle East, it is important not to mistake them as Arabs; the Kurds are of Indo-European descent and therefore have more in common with Persia (modern Iran,) than Arabia as geographic regions. They live in a geographic region that is part of four modern nations: Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. This geographic zone crosses the already prickly borders of those four nations and is not recognized as an independent state. And that is what most of the Kurds wish to change, to have their own recognized homeland, their own Kurdish nation. Known as “Kurdistan,” and shown on the first map below, this geographic region is where the Kurds have lived for decades and decades. To understand the modern issues facing the Kurdish people is impossible without having a good understanding of how they got their and how circumstances became what they are. To do this we must go back to the first World War, an event which arguably defined the twentieth century. Therefore, the issue focused on in this blog post is World War I’s results and how they affected the Kurds.
Before World War I, the Kurdish people were part of the Ottoman Empire, an empire which had existed and impacted the world for centuries. It was Muslim, but Jews and Christians could practice their faith at the expense of paying a tax under the millet system. Ottoman culture was tolerant of diversity so long as efficiency, and loyalty to the Sultan (sovereign,) were maintained. The Kurds were one ethnic group there along with the Turks and the Arabs. When World War I erupted in in the 1910s, the Ottoman Empire joined an alliance with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary against the “Triple Entente” powers of Great Britain, France, and the Czarist Russia. The United States joined later on in 1917 against the Central Powers. The war went on and the Central Powers were ultimately defeated. The Ottoman Empire, which had existed since the thirteenth century, collapsed. The different Ottoman peoples were all worried what would happen next now that they were part of a fallen empire seemingly at the mercy of European powers they had been fighting. It was in the aftermath of World War I that dozens and dozens of world leaders met at the Paris Peace Conference to try to bargain for their interests and get the best deal they could. Calls for “self-determination” were in the air, but it was the “Big Four” powers of Britain, France, Italy, and the United States who dominated the conference and negotiations. It looked more and more like the doctrine of “self-determination” was to be applied only to the European nations. Europe, England and France really, in the attitude of “to the victor goes the spoils,” carved up the Ottoman territory among themselves with no regard for ethnicity, language, religion, etc. An Ottoman in one region of the former empire was now a “Syrian” controlled by France, and a relative of his in another part was suddenly an “Iraqi” controlled by Great Britain. Kurds realized that under Anglo-French influence they were now, whether they liked it or not, part of either Turkey, Syria, Iraq, or Iran. Their sense of belonging and comfort in the Ottoman Empire and its laws was gone.
Two treaties are pivotal to the history of the Kurds right after World War I. The first was the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. This treaty focused on the region of Turkey and had in its terms a provision for a “Kurdistan” region for the Kurds to live in as their own. This seemed like the promise of a Kurdish homeland to some. But the problem was that although laid out, the Treaty of Sevres was never ratified, it was replaced by another treaty in 1923. The Treaty of Lausanne usurped Sevres and established the modern Republic of Turkey, which was independent of European influence. And the provision, even the idea of a “Kurdistan” region or nation did not appear in the treaty. Some say Lausanne established the precedent of moving populations against their will. These Kurds in Turkey were now seen as Turks by the world. Many of them felt let down if not spat on in that the former provision to give them a homeland was abolished in 1923. This again is the issue for the Kurds in this blog post, the state they were left in in the aftermath of World War I, an unprotected minority living across four new nations with new identities. The affects that this had on the Kurds were extreme. The Kurdish people of the former Ottoman Empire got no “self-determination” following World War I. They had no seat at the international table from which to release their voice. Though they had seen themselves as a single ethnic group living in a vast and diverse empire, they were now against their will Turkish Kurds, Syrian Kurds, Iraqi Kurds, or Iranian Kurds. What would you do in this situation? Imagine you are a member of an ethnic group with its own language and yet your people have been overlooked and cast aside into minority status across four nations, stripped of an international voice and not yet sure if you will have a voice in your new nation.
With the exception of Turkey, after 1923 each of the four nations Kurds lived in were under some form of French or British influence and/or control. Were these nations predominantly Sunni or Shiite Muslim, and were they hostile to whichever was the minority? What minority rights, if any, existed in these new mandated nations? What were the Kurdish relations with the Arab and Turk ethnic groups like now? Did it vary per nation? These are all questions which sprung into the minds of many as the 1920s went on. I believe that the best solution which could have been implemented then would have been for the provision for a Kurdish homeland in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres to have been implemented or ratified in another treaty, despite how controversial it may have been. Even during the existence of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish people lived in that “Kurdistan” region and it would not have done much harm to at least have nationally given them the section of it in modern Turkey. Thousands of different people were left disappointed at the end of the First World War. But the Arabs could look to the Arab peninsula and the nation which would later become Saudi Arabia. The Turks were enjoying their own Republic of Turkey, fully independent and free of European influence. The Kurds…. nothing.