After 100 years of armed struggle, what next for the Kurds?

Kurds in Iraq and Syria today enjoy relative autonomy, with money from oil sales and security from increasingly well-equipped fighting groups, such as the Peshmerga.

Andrei Cojocaru

The history of Kurdish factions’ demands and tactics across four states is fascinating, not least for their relationships with the states in question.

After 100 years of armed struggle, what next for the Kurds?

Rustum Mahmud

last update on 13 Feb 2024

Across vast swathes of Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq live the Kurdish people in various states of autonomy. The population of these four countries is about 230 million. Kurds make up significant minorities in each.

Sharing both a language and a culture, the Kurds are sometimes called “the world’s largest nation without an independent state”. But the picture is complicated.

There are disparate and assorted representatives who champion Kurdish nationalism, many with armed affiliates. The nature and structure of these groups vary widely across the region.

In the federal region of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Peshmerga Forces operate as constitutionally recognised semi-regular armies. Next door, the Syrian Democratic Forces act as a de facto governing body over extensive territories.

In Turkey and Iran, however, there is a stark contrast. Groups like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and various Kurdish nationalist parties engage in armed resistance against their respective governments, often from the shadows.

The main armed Kurdish groups active in Turkey and Iran are based outside the country in question.

From abroad, they launch raids and operations, so Iranian and Turkish armed forces often attack them in neighbours’ territory.

Andrei Cojocaru — Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq have established a degree of relative security.

Terrorists or liberators?

Decades ago, Kurdish political movements in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq shifted decisively towards armed struggle, establishing military factions and organisations.

They embarked on military operations against national armies, aiming to secure national rights for Kurds within their borders.

This proliferation created two deeply polarised viewpoints regarding the consequences and roles of these Kurdish armed groups.

This polarisation persists today.

On the one hand, these Kurdish armed groups are seen as agents of destabilisation serving foreign interests, aiming to dismantle and fragment successful nation-states.

It should come as no surprise that the holders of this viewpoint are typically representatives of states' ruling establishments and their majority populations.

They say Kurdish militant activity hinders political progress, bolsters the state's own nationalists, exacerbates division, and heightens societal tension by reducing the debate to one of identity when it should be about modernisation and governance.

Decades ago, Kurdish political movements in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq shifted decisively towards armed struggle.

Kurds' view of the state

On the other hand, critics say this narrowly defines the state as an apparatus of 'public power,' controlled by the majority to the exclusion of others. The state should instead foster an inclusive public identity, they say, and not just consolidate power.

Kurds argue for a state that embraces ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity, with equality before the law for all its citizens and the fair distribution of resources and benefits across all of its regions, irrespective of how residents identify.

What Kurds also say is that their take-up of arms was a last resort, not a choice that was made while others were available. They say it was driven by the state's failure to embody modern values and standards within its governance.

According to these narratives, Kurdish militias see themselves as agents of modernisation, challenging the state's tendency towards extreme actions against its own people, up to and including genocide.

The Kurdish struggle, in Kurdish eyes, is a quest to instil the values of modernity into the state's fabric. They see armed struggle as a means to achieve what has been unreachable through peaceful methods.

They will lay down their arms when this is achieved. Until then, they will remain armed, having learnt from history that states routinely use military force against them.

Mistrust and fear

The debate is still a live one in all four countries. In each, there are different ideas about the state and its role, how its authority is formed, and its assumed position on the Kurdish minority.

This leads to misunderstanding, which stems from mistrust. Kurds believe deep in their bones that states will oppress them regardless and that they should be ready for this.

Saddam Hussein's use of nerve agents against them in 1988 is perhaps the nadir. At the same time, political elites and majority nationalities and ethnicities in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria see in Kurdish armed groups a threat to their very being.

They do not believe that Kurdish calls for democracy, modernisation, human rights, and equal citizenship are genuine. They think Kurds' real aim is to dismantle the state and establish a Kurdish state instead.

The history of Kurdish armed struggle is already a long one and can be seen in three stages, yet each had a clear position on the state, which formed the backbone of their ideology, discourse, and political aspirations.

Kurds say the taking up of arms was a last resort, driven by the state's failure to embody modern values and standards.

Armed iterations

In the early 20th century, after the collapse of the region's ancient empires, Kurdish armed movements first sprang up in Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and even Syria.

They took part in several significant uprisings in Iraq and Turkey, including the revolution of Sheikh Mahmoud al-Hafid in 1919, the rebellion of Sheikh Said Biran in 1925, the Arafat rebellion in Agri in 1930, and the Dersim uprising in 1937.

In Syria, the Kurdish Khoibun armed group were active, while Iran witnessed the declaration of the State of Kurdistan in the city of Mahabad in 1946.

For these movements, the new states were refusing to recognise their legitimacy. The armed Kurdish fighters saw themselves as liberators and the states as occupiers of Kurdish land.

In that sense, they felt part of the global liberation movement that arose after World War I and the dismantling of empires. To the Kurds, their colonisers simply swapped from states far away to states in the region.

From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, Kurdish nationalist movements were largely dormant, both politically and militarily. Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), called this period "the decade of national death".

A picture of Abdullah Ocalan in the northern Syrian city of Al-Hasakah.

During these years, the four nations solidified their statehood, established modern military forces, aligned with regional and international coalitions, and developed governments with productive economies, institutional frameworks, and authoritarian ruling classes.

Against this backdrop, Kurdish armed movements reactivated, beginning with the September Revolution in Iraq in 1961.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran made a call to arms in the late 1970s, and the PKK initiated armed conflict against the Turkish state in 1984.

Kurdish fighters in the early 20th century saw states that refused to recognise their legitimacy as occupiers of Kurdish land.

Autonomy, not statehood

These movements framed their demands within the sovereignty of the states in which they operated.

In other words, they explicitly did not seek statehood but rather national recognition, autonomy, and self-governance within the wider state.

Their supporters' rallying cry - for a "Kurdistan State" – was in fact subordinated to the political pragmatism of Kurdish leaders, who acknowledged the complex realities that made any creation of a 'State of Kurdistan' such a challenge.

Analysts who wonder whether the world's 30 million Kurds will remain "the world's largest nation without a state" look at regional developments.

Kurds in Iraq and Syria today enjoy relative autonomy, with money from oil sales and relative security from increasingly well-equipped fighting groups, such as the Peshmerga.

Yet, now, more than 100 years since Western powers made provision for a Kurdish state in the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, it is still the closest they have come.

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