[Militant, No 495, 21 March 1980, p 10 and No 498, 11 April 1980, p. 10]
| John Pickard, in the first of a two-part article, looks at oppression of Kurdish people. In a later article, he examines the situation in Iran, and the question of self-determination for the Kurdish nation. |
„The Kurds have no friends.“ So the Kurdish proverb goes. And considering the position of the Kurdish nation at present, it is hardly surprising that the people have come to find such expression in their language.
The Kurds are the fourth most numerous nation in the Middle East, numbering somewhere between a minimum of 7 million and a maximum of 17 million.
The Kurds can also claim a separate and identifiable history of their own, stretching back to at least three thousand years in the same geographical area, a history that has also given them their own language and culture. Yet the Kurds have no state.
They are one of the largest nations in the world not to have a separate state of their own, scattered as they are between Turkey, Iran and Iraq (in that order of population), with smaller groups in Syria and the USSR.
The vast area of Kurdistan, covering over 500,000 square miles (greater than the total area of France, for example) is divided between these three main states and in each case the Kurdish areas are among the most backward and underdeveloped of all their regions.
The states that have come into being in the region (and for that matter in many other parts of the world) owe nothing to the ’natural‘ ethnic or national divisions between peoples, but on the other hand owe their shape and size to the history of capitalist intervention in the first part of the century.
Thus, the state of ‚Iran‘ was created where the Iranians were an actual minority of the peoples (Turks, Turkomans, Arabs, Baluchis, etc. being the majority) and Turkey and Iraq likewise were formed as patchwork states covering a multiplicity of national groups.
The victorious capitalist powers divided the spoils of World War 1 without the slightest interest in the aspirations of the colonial masses, and it was at this time that these three modern states were formed. Despite the 1920 Sèvres Treaty – which gave a commitment towards the setting up of a state of Kurdistan – the imperialist powers who were signatories made no attempt to prevent the crushing of Kurdish national aspirations.
Time after time there have been national uprisings of the Kurds, and in each case these have been drowned in blood. The national movement at the beginning of the century was partly influenced by the events in Russia, so that in both 1905 and in 1918, soviets were set up in parts of Kurdistan.
After the promise of statehood in 1918-20, the national movement was viciously suppressed by Kemal Atatürk, the ‚founder‘ of modern capitalist Turkey, with the death of 250,000 Kurds, according to the estimates of the Kurds themselves.
Towards the end of the second world war a new Kurdish republic was set up under the influence of Russia, but with the withdrawal of Russian troops in 1946, that also was crushed, this time by the Iranian army, backed up by British and American imperialism.
Turkey
Since 1924 the Kurdish language has been banned in Turkey. Despite the fact that up to 8 million people are Kurds, the language is in effect confined to the home. There are no publications in Kurdish and the language cannot be taught in schools.
The government has even banned the wearing of the Kurdish national costume. The official ‚Turkification‘ has even gone to the extent that the government refuses to accept that there is a Kurdish nation – they are referred to as ‚mountain Turks‘ in official circles.
The Kurdish parts of Turkey are the most underdeveloped in an already underdeveloped country.
There are fewer roads, vehicles and social amenities of all kinds, as compared to the rest of the state.
There is almost no industry. Illiteracy and disease are far more prevalent in these areas than in Turkey as a whole.
Recently, as a result of the Iranian revolution, there has been a resurgence of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. Official government circles were horrified and shocked when the work ‚Kurd‘ even appeared once or twice in newspapers and when a government minister, himself a Kurd, admitted to using the language in the privacy of the government office, there were even calls for his resignation.
The predictable response from the ruling class in Turkey to the Kurdish question has been the re-imposition of marshal law, so that all 16 Kurdish provinces are now under military jurisdiction.
The military law has not prevented many attacks on Kurds and other national minorities in eastern Turkey by neo-fascist thugs from the Turkish National Action Party.
Iraq
The same under-privileged position that applies to Kurds in Turkey applies also in Iraq. Despite the fact that the Iraqi economy is almost entirely dependent on oil – most of which now comes from the Kurdish regions around the town of Kirkuk – only three per cent of industry is in Kurdish areas.
The percentage of Kurds in secondary schools is half that of the Arab population, less than seven per cent of university places go to Kurds (who are about twenty per cent of the population) . Illiteracy and infant mortality are higher than in the rest of Iraq … and so the story goes on.
The Kurds in Iraq have been engaged in a more prolonged and bitter struggle for autonomy than elsewhere – although the Iraqi government have been forced to grant greater concessions in the way of language and education than have the Turks, nevertheless these offers have been completely inadequate as far as economic and political rights were concerned.
While publicly preferring the olive branch, the Iraqi government has over the years been engaged in the most bloody and brutal suppression of the Kurdish movement. For a few years up to 1975. the Kurdish guerrilla army was able to increase its size and effective fighting strength with the assistance (for his own reasons) of the Shah of Iran.
The Kurdish revolt in those years took on the scale of a bloody civil war in which the Iraqi regime was forced to deploy a big proportion of its regular army, involving the most sophisticated tanks, aircraft, and so on.
By the time that the Shah and the Iraqis came to an agreement, in 1975, to seal their border and starve the Kurds of weapons and supplies, hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been driven from their homes.
In the decade and a half up to 1975, nearly 750,000 Kurds were displaced from their homes as a result of the genocidal war policy of the Iraq government (aided, in later years by Russian arms and advisers) . About 100,000 homes and 1,500 villages have been destroyed or partially destroyed.
In order to strengthen its position after the defeat of the Kurds, the Baathist government in Iraq has been following a policy of ‚Arabisation.‘ 300,000 Kurds have been forcibly moved from their own region to the southern regions of Iraq to face hardship and unemployment in an unfamiliar surrounding.
At the same time the government have tried to encourage Arabs to move north in order to alter the demographic balance of the oil-producing areas of Kurdistan especially.
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„The Kurds have no friends.“ In the first part of a two-part article John Pickard looked at the truth of this Kurdish proverb in the relationship to Iraq and Turkey (21 March].
In this article he looks at Iran, and the Kurdish nationalist movement’s struggle for self-determination.
Iran
It has been in Iran there has been the most recent resurgence of Kurdish nationalism. Kurdish workers and peasants were as involved as were the masses elsewhere in the country in the overthrow of the vicious Shah dictatorship.
The collapse of the old regime inevitably raised the hopes of national rights. In the past, demands for autonomy or self-government had been presented in vain, but now the workers and peasants were prepared to present their demands from a position of strength, after the collapse of the imperial army of the Shah.
For several months after February 1979, there was in effect a ‚de facto‘ autonomy in the Kurdish parts of Iran, due simply to the weakness of the central government .
But despite promises and declarations to the contrary, the new theocratic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini was not prepared to extend any new rights to the Kurdish regions – fearing the spread of such movement to the other national minorities. The Ayatollah was afraid in effect that Kurdish self-government would lead in the end to the disintegration of Iran itself.
The new-found power and confidence of the workers and peasants in the Kurdish areas was reinforced by the fact that the masses were also armed, and given the intransigence of the new mullahs‘ regime, new clashes were inevitable. After Kurdish militias occupied key towns in the north-west of Iran, they were evicted by the militia units and army units loyal to the central government.
After fierce fighting last September and October Khomeini reversed his position and announced that he was in favour of giving the Kurds limited national rights, but not the full autonomy they have been demanding.
Nationalism
Despite their common language and culture, the Kurdish national movements in each of the three main states have functioned largely independent of each other. The KDP – the Kurdish Democratic party – has led a more or less separate existence as the leading Kurdish party in Turkey, Iran and Iraq.
The political demands have varied so that in Iraq, the Kurdish political leaders have been demanding ‚autonomy‘ whereas in Iran and Turkey, at least up to recently, the KDP has confined itself to the demand for national rights in the sphere of language, education and so on.
The leaders of the national movements in the past have often been among the biggest landowners in Kurdistan, where at least in rural areas, semi-feudal land relations are quite common. Although there have been attempts, with some temporary success, of playing one state off against another, in reality all three governments concerned, Turkey, Iran and Iraq – as well as the USSR and Syria have all a lot to gain by the status quo.
As a result of the movement in Iran in the last year, the Kurdish movement has been re-awakened in all these areas and the response of the governments concerned has been for greater collaboration than ever before. Thus the armed forces of Turkey, Iraq and now the Ayatollah’s militias are actively working together to seal their mutual borders and cut off the Kurdish militias from any aid or arms.
The heroic struggles and the disappointment of the last few years has not passed by the Kurdish leadership itself. It seems that there is a growing polarisation within the national movement between the old-style nationalists and those drawing the conclusions that social revolution and national revolution go together. The impact of the Iranian revolution has had a profound effect on these developments within the Kurdish national movement.
None of the governments that include Kurdish minorities are prepared to ever grant the Kurdish areas anything like full national rights. None of the major imperialist powers would be in favour of promoting Kurdish movements for self-determination, because of the social and political implications that would ensue.
The Russian bureaucracy, because of its own Kurdish population and because of its close relations with Iraq is not prepared to assist Kurdish rights. It would indeed appear that „the Kurds have no
friends. „
Self-determination
But for socialists, the aspirations of several millions cannot simply be wished away or decreed out of existence. The Kurdish question raises issues that will place themselves on the political agenda many times in the coming months and years.
The National Question today probably carries more force in political and social movements than at any time in decades. The international labour movement cannot look upon the state boundaries that exist at present as inviolable. State boundaries based upon the gunboats and garrisons of imperialism have no justification.
The demand for the right of self-determination for the Kurds must be supported within the labour movement. The struggle for social change in the countries of the Middle East, the struggle for socialism necessarily means the struggle against all forms of national oppression .
A socialist federation that would include all the nationalities would also include, if the different sections of the Kurdish people so desire, a socialist Kurdistan, in which there could be a full flowering of the language and culture of the Kurdish people.
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