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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 3 (February 2001)
By: Antero Leitzinger, March 2001
Translation: Anssi Kullberg
The edition is based on Antero Leitzinger’s lecture in the University of Helsinki, in the Studia Generalia series "Crisis Kettles and Religions in World Politics", part "Nations without State" on 8th March 2001.
Contents:Western thinking leads us to figure out nations on the basis of a common language or religion. According to the principle of nation-state, each nation must have a homeland. But are the Kurds one united nation, or rather a heterogeneous group of various nations in the same way as, for instance, the Scandinavians [Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders] or the Baltic Finns [Finns, Estonians, Karelians, Ingrians, Veps, Livonians]?
The Kurds speak several languages and confess even more religions. Equally big differences prevail between Kurdish languages as between them and Persian. If Gurani and Luri are just dialects of one and same language, then are not also Sorani and Kurmandji dialects of Persian? If the Kurds still need a state separate from other Iranic nations, would there next be a liberation movement of Zazakistan within independent Kurdistan?
There are several Kurdistans, "lands of the Kurds", in the world – not only because the traditional territory inhabited by Kurds is divided between at least six states, but also because each Kurdish party has their own idea of the borders, governance and future of their ideal state. The Kurds have dozens of nationalist parties, and besides, many Kurds support cross-country parties that exceed ethnic boundaries in those countries where free party activity is legal at all.
In Iran, there is a province called Kordestan, rooted in medieval times, but the Kurdish state that declared independence in 1946 was not located in Kordestan, but in the province of Western Azerbaijan. In Iraq, the Kurdish region is divided into three parts: the stripe governed by the Baath party, and the territories of the competitor Kurd parties KDP and PUK. The "Red Kurdistan" that officially belongs to Azerbaijan, is presently ruled by Armenia. Part of Syria’s Kurds have lacked citizenship and civil rights for four decades already. In Turkey, the position of Kurds is better than in any of her neighbouring countries, but still it is the Turkish Kurds, whose human rights are usually covered by international media.
Whose Kurdistan is the right one? The Iraqi Kurds are under the protection of the NATO, but the PKK considers NATO their enemy. Founding a national state in the Middle East has its model in Israel, but the idea was once agitated by the Soviet Union. The Kurdish national identity is often shaped among the immigrants in Europe, and under the influence of controversal political programmes. The problem touches Europe, but is it necessarily a problem?
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The Kurds and Kurdistan – a nation and a state? Western line of thinking leads us to the idea of nation-state, but can it be suited to the reality of Middle East? What is a nation? Does every nation need a state on their own? Does one Kurdistan exist, or are there several of them?
Before we concentrate in the Kurds, it is a good idea to pay some attention on their bigger neighbour nations: the Turks, the Arabs, and the Persians.
The relationship between Iran and Turkey is interesting. Every fourth Iranian is ethnically Turk. In Iran’s Southern Azerbaijan there are more of Turkish "Azeris" than in the formally independent Northern Azerbaijan. Iran also has Turkmen population larger than Turkmenistan. These Turkish tribes differ from each other about as much as Savonians and Karelians [two Finnish tribes].
Azerbaijan and Kurdistan are in many ways like mirror images of each other. Both were promised independence at the end of the World War I. Both got to taste Soviet-styled independence after the World War II. Ten years ago, Northern Azerbaijan and Southern Kurdistan became free from the occupation of Russia and Iraq, but their independence is still weak. On the other hand, Iran, now surrounded by newly independent states, fears more than ever before that her Western parts would split up.
The world around the Kurds is not whole and not simple. The problems are common.
Are the Kurds one, united nation, or are they a group of Iranic tribes? Can the difference between a nation and a tribe be objectively defined?
According to the Persians, the Kurds speak various dialects of Persian. According to others, Kurdish is a distinct relative language to Persian. The boundary is soft, and Luri might be as well a Persian dialect as a Kurdish language. After all, the choice is political: which group one wants to be identified with.
Between Kurdish dialects or languages there are so big differences that they must be taken into consideration in interpretation. The differences are bigger than between German and Danish or between Spanish and Portuguese.
In Iran, three important Kurdish languages are spoken:
The fourth important Kurdish language is Zaza or Dimili, which is spoken in Turkey. Many Zazas aim at forming a special area of Zazakistan, instead of independent Kurdistan. Despite their geographic distance, Zaza and Gurani are closer to each other than to Sorani or Kurmandji. This is due to the fact that Kurdish settlement has spread westwards with rapid and long pulses.
Linguistic disunity is not as such a hindrance to united national feeling. Nationalism has often been based on a hardly common written language. In the neighbourhood of the Kurds, the Georgians and the North Caucasians have proved this. Also Italian language and the Slavonic languages of the Balkan countries were only created in the 1800s to support the ideas of national unification and political independence.
The Kurdish languages are strongly based on Arabic loan words. So were also Persian and Turkish based on Arabic loans before the linguistic reforms of the 1900s, in which the written language was "cleaned" of "alien" elements. When the differences between the three great linguistic groups of the Middle East were emphasised, the Kurdish languages fell in between. In a way, the Kurds were born in the vacuum left by the narrow interpretation of the dominant cultures.
One Kurdish dictionary has been published in Finnish, by Lokman Abbas. The Kurdish in it is Sorani. In Sweden one has published a pocket dictionary in Kurmandji. Also in other European languages there are Kurdish vocabularies, but the quality differs. Kurdish literature is plentiful but developing a useful written language still takes its time. Culture cannot be ordered like a home pizza; one has to toil for it devotedly, and there must be lasting need for it.
Besides language, religion can be used to unite or separate nations.
Most of the Kurds are Sunnite Muslims of the Shafi discipline. Disciplinary differences are however that small that they do not relevantly separate the Kurds from their Hanafi neighbours, the Turks and the Arabs.
As Sunnite Muslims, most Kurds are separated from the Shi’ite Islam, which is the state religion of Iran. Yet the Iraqi Feilis are Shi’ite Kurds. Besides, many sects with Shi’ite origin are represented among Kurds, and many of these sects also have strongly non-Islamic influences.
Many believe that the most genuine Kurds are the Yesids, whose religion is a strange mixture of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. On the other hand the Yesids feel deep distrust at all outsiders, and often they are not even classified as actual Kurds.
Nowadays the Assyrian Christians of Northern Iraq declare they are Kurds. The Jewish Kurds were once evacuated to Israel. So, there are Kurds belonging to every main religion of the region.
The Kurds cannot be exclusively defined by language, religion or any single cultural feature. Even the spring celebration Nevruz, which the Kurds will celebrate after two weeks at the time of the spring equinox, is an old all-Iranian tradition. It is also celebrated by Central Asian Turks.
The Kurdish culture changes in time. Some "age-old Kurdish traditions" were in fact born in Germany in recent decades. This is nothing unusual, as many nations without state have found their identity in exile, in Diaspora.
The strength of the Kurds and the vitality of Kurdish culture are in their ability to create new, and to combine traditions of the Middle Eastern dominant cultures and numerous minorities. The variety and flexibility of expression, typical for spoken language, the religious plurality, and the whole wide scale of culture are not necessarily weaknesses splitting up the community, and by no means they are reasons for shame. The Kurds have not succeeded in imitating European nationalism of the 1800s, but they have succeeded in what today’s Europeanity is dreaming about: unity in variety.
A nation without state may feel orphan or homeless. In that case, however, the state has been given tasks that it could hardly fulfil.
The main Kurdish parties are all state-centrist, their background being hard-line socialist. The KDP and its Iranian brother party were founded in Stalin’s protection. In that time the Kurds were hailing Stalin as "the liberator of small nations".
When the KDP was released from the Soviet Union’s guidance in the 1960s, the PUK was founded to defend fundamentalist Marxism. The Kurdish section Komala was split up from the Iranian Communist Party.
By time, the number of Kurdish parties was increased by splitting. Those shocked of the collapse of Soviet power founded Workers’ Communist Party (WCP) in Iraq and Iran. This party has spectacular presence in the virtual reality, in internet.
Also "Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse Tung’s thought" gained supporters among Kurds. They founded the Kurdish Workers’ Party, PKK, which is internationally the best-known, but by no means the only, Kurdish organisation.
There are dozens of specially Kurdish parties. Many of them are one-man enterprises or stages of the main parties. All in all, they share a common belief in the idea that a state on their own would solve all the problems of the Kurds, and the problems are understood as basically economic exploitation.
Because the Kurds have many but dear parties, also the goals of independence are rather party politics than national projects. There is no consensus on Kurdistan’s borders, form of government and symbols like flag. Each party has its own Kurdistan. Each party also has its own army, its schools, and its health system. The parties have adopted many tasks of tribes. Membership in a party is often strategic allegiance of family and tribe, not free and ideological choice of the individual.
Each party has its international sponsors: PUK has historically leaned at Syria, and KDP at Turkey. PKK has leaned at both Syria and Iraq. Exploitation has been mutual.
The Kurdish parties are fighting each other. For three years now, KDP and PUK have respected their ceasefire, mainly due to external pressure, but meanwhile, PKK has fought against both these Iraqi Kurdish parties.
In democracy it is natural that parties disagree. Usually they do, however, agree on large-scale national questions, and in the times of war they act under common war command. For example, the Chechens demand independence before all, and only secondarily come the questions of the country’s future systems of justice and economy. The Finnish Jäger [Finnish freedom fighters trained in Germany before the independence] included Red and White, Monarchists and Republicans. Among the Kurdish parties, such agreement is missing.
Kurdistan has been founded many times and in many places.
In Iran, the Kurds declared independence in 1946, but it happened in the city of Mahabad, not in the actual province of Kordestan.
The Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, recognised by the Iraqi government in 1970s, the de facto independent regional administration of Kurdistan since 1991, and the no-flight area controlled by NATO, do not entirely coincide in coverage. Besides, KDP and PUK have divided their interest spheres along the dialect boundary.
In Turkey, Kurdistan has never been profoundly defined. It has been at its best a vague anthropological conception, a bit like the "wolf zone" in Finland [expression of periphery].
In the World War I, the European colonial powers Russia, France and Britain were seizing new colonies by sharing the Middle East between each other. They planned to found two newly old Christian protectorats in Eastern Turkey: Armenia and Assyria. Both these regionally overlapped with Kurdistan. Hatred was incited between the Christian groups and the Islamic Kurds. This resulted massacres, for which it is nowadays fashionable to blame Turkey, while the guilt of the European counterparts is forgotten.
Turkey’s enemy in the World War I [Russia] as well as the fanatic bandit groupings of the different parties have apparently got absolution from their sins. Instead of Armenia and Assyria, Kurdistan has appeared on the maps. It has traditionally had dangerous results when European powers [like Russia and France] have started to redraw Middle Eastern maps.
Today, Turkey’s Kurdistan could be defined in accordance with those provinces that have state of emergency. However, most Turkish Kurds live outside that region – many of them in the Turkish metropoles far west from Kurdistan. For them, cultural autonomy would sound more sensible than regional privileges.
Separation of the three dominant cultures of the Middle East left the Kurds in between. As the Kurds were not "good" Arabs, and all of them did not become "proper" Iranians or Turks, they were pushed aside and they had to search for their own identity.
This has not always been the case and it need not be so forever. An American journal appointed as "the man of 12th century" the Kurdish chief Saladin, who led Islamic troops against the Crusaders. Saladin is also the Arabs’ hero, and a historical regent admired by even his European enemies. He was known for his religious tolerance and the nobility of his character. Saladin was not profiled as rebel or terrorist leader, but as the one who united the Middle East.
Kurdish nationalism and political activity is for a great part a reaction to the policy of the states in the region. When the Kurds have been respected, they have produced great statesmen like Saladin for the honour of the whole Middle East. When the Kurds have been despised, they have corroded the structures of all the states in the region.
The most miserable situation prevails in Syria, where most of the country’s Kurdish population has lacked all citizen rights for 40 years – literally.
Iraq’s situation is formally decent, but what value do laws and contracts have, if the government cannot be trusted? In 1988, Saddam Hussein’s troops murdered with gas raids estimated 200’000 Kurds within only half a year. Is it then a wonder that the Iraqi Kurds want to establish a humanitarian refuge for themselves and their families in Europe, anticipating the worst?
When Armenia conquered territories from Azerbaijan, thousands of Muslim Kurds were murdered and expelled from their home villages. Only the Yesids got mercy from Armenians.
Guerrilla war took place in Iran and Turkey in 1980s and 1990s. In both countries 40’000 people were killed, in Iran probably more. Leaders of Iranian Kurds were assassinated in Europe, but for some reason the Western press has been mainly interested in the arrest of the Turkish PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, two years ago.
Yet Öcalan is about the worst possible example of a typical Kurd. Öcalan speaks Turkish. The emissaries of the PKK in Europe speak Turkish with each other. Öcalan has not for a single day fought as a guerrilla, but still he has ordered death penalties to traitors, deserters, school teachers and dissidents of his party. Öcalan’s original idols were Che Guevara and Pol Pot. A Kurdish activist hiding in Germany, Selim Cürükkaya, published a book named ‘PKK’ four years ago. In his book, Cürükkaya describes the horrible ways of discipline, paranoia and personal cult prevailing in the PKK. The fanaticism of the supporters, child soldiers and suicides by burning have caused immense damage to the reputation of the Kurds and their cause. It is not without reason that Germany, France, Britain and the United States have prohibited the PKK as a criminal organisation.
Hikmet Cetin, who has acted as the chairman of the Turkish parliament and even as the acting president, is not at all less a Kurd than Öcalan, even though he condemns the PKK. Every fifth parliamentarian in Turkey is a Kurd. Also in Iran, the Kurds are represented in government, police and army. All Kurds do not support specially Kurdish parties and they do not demand a special Kurdish state. In the violence of Turkey and Iran, there have been features of a Kurdish civil war.
Iraq’s Kurds have their own great leaders. The deceised Mulla Mustafa Barzani was virtuously leading his guerrillas, the "peshmergas", in the mountains of four countries for 30 years. Barzani’s son and colleague are now leading opposite parties.
An average Kurd, however, is not a politician and not even politically persecuted. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds are living in Europe, a couple of thousands of them in Finland. Most of them are ordinary, honest and hard-working immigrants, in whose home villages the emigration started as early as in 1960s. They try to earn their living and secure the future of their families. They want to save their mother tongue, their religion and their customs on the level of ordinary life. As citizens of Finland they are faithful to their new fatherland, although Kurdistan remains in their memories and dreams.
Many nations without state have to keep nationality apart from citizenship.
Nobody denies that the Kurds as individuals would deserve full human rights and that these rights have been violated in many countries. However, are the Kurds also a nation? According to the British researcher David McDowall, the Kurds became a nation at the end of the World War I. Many other researchers are still confused at the question.
Who has the right to represent a nation? Are there some particular "collective rights" that belong to a nation or its representatives?
Unfortunately we do not even know the actual number of Kurds, because all the estimations appearing in the literature are based on other estimations made decades ago. A nation without state is like a soup without case – it slips out of hands and avoids attempts to define.
"Kurdistan" is a word that raises passions. Many governments are allergic to it. On the other hand, many European politicians and journalists are connecting rather romanticised ideas with Kurds. Superficial and sensational supply of information is presenting things in a simplistic form.
Europe has had the bad habit of playing hypocrite with human rights. Minorities have been used as tools in superpower politics, but in critical situations the minorities have been betrayed and abandoned. The Kurds have gained selective publicity, whenever European powers have wanted to avoid speaking about Basques or Bretons. The Turkish idea of understanding all citizens of Turkey as "Turks" does not differ from the similar conception of nationality in France and Spain.
The Kurds have also been employed as examples of the Marxist theory of empoverishment. The Australian Paul J. White, who published a book on Kurds last year (‘Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers’), still in our times describes the Kurds as Turkey’s "proletariat". This is artificial, condescending and insultive. Equally well the Savonians and Karelians could be branded as Finland’s discriminated proletarians, who is suffering in Helsinki’s suburbs. All Kurds would not like to be characterised as eternal losers and they do not want to mourn their fate and beg for sympathy.
Sometimes national identity is being interpreted in so purpose-bound ways and so widely that it is hard to be taken seriously. A Turkish Arabic-speaking Christian declares himself as a Kurd, because he feels different and discriminated in his home country. If he becomes unemployed, his bad luck is easy to explain as "persecution". Is anybody a Kurd if he feels loser?
According to an increasing point of view, the Kurds are present Europe’s nomads, wandering asylum-seekers. But is this really only due to difficult circumstances in the coutries of origin, or is it rather due to the reluctant immigration policy of Europe, which prefers sharing social support to admitting work permissions? To what extent do the European countries encourage to apply and wait for an asylum instead of giving equal treatment and fair chance to work and embrace one’s own culture?
The Kurds are an inseparable part of the whole Middle East’s cultural heritage. In them, also the best sides of Turkey, Iran and the Arab countries are combined. Far too often the European discussion connects the Kurds with problems, and presents the Kurds as evidence of the social undevelopment of the Middle Eastern countries. This only strengthens the negative attitudes in these countries.
Kurdistan is situated where Turkey, Persia and Arabia meet. Whether it is a point of friction or a meeting-point, a gap or a bridge, is a crucial question for the Kurds and their home countries still for a long time for future.
The Kurds also belong to Europe. They are permanently present among us.
Europe has always been involved in the Middle Eastern affairs, and thus she cannot avoid her responsibility when things are entangled into troubles. Responsibility calls for knowledge and knowledge demands research. The Kurds still deserve even more research and from broader views. Also difficult questions most be discussed without fervour.
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Published with the lecturer’s permission. Antero Leitzinger is a political historian, researcher of the Finnish Directorate of Immigration, and author of several books on Turkey, the Middle East and the Caucasus.