The Kurdish mosaic of discord
1989; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01436598908420193
ISSN1360-2241
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
ResumoThis article aims to analyse Kurdish collective movements and to examine the impact of Kurdish ethno-nationalism on the politics of Turkey, Iran and Iraq today. The Kurds, an ethnic minority numbering some 19 million people, are primarily concentrated in these three countries, with residual communities found in Syria and the USSR. Modern-day Kurds trace their origins to the Medes, a tribe that descended from Central Asia into the Iranian plateau at the end of the second millenium and ruled the area from 614 BC to 550 BC as one of the principal pre-Islamic dynasties.1 After the Arab conquest in the middle of the seventh century, the name 'Kurd' was used to refer to the people inhabiting the Zagros mountain ranges of northwestern Iran. Although the Kurds have never ruled for a sustained period over Kurdistan (land of the Kurds), Kurdish personalities have had a significant impact on the contours of Middle Eastern politics for centuries. Perhaps the most notable Kurdish leader was the legendary Salah-ed Din Ayubbi (Saladin) who led the Islamic forces against the Crusaders. Saladin, however, did not emphasise his Kurdish ethnicity and considered himself to be a Muslim leader and warrior, not a Kurdish nationalist. With the advent of the Safavid dynasty in Iran in 1501 and the intensification of Ottoman-Persian rivalry, the Kurdish-inhabited buffer zone between these two competing empires gained strategic prominence in regional politics, and the Kurds were wooed by the Persians and the Ottoman Turks. This allowed the Kurdish tribal chiefs to become more assertive politically, and some of them succeeded in establishing semiindependent principalities in the region, a few of which survived into the first half of the nineteenth century.2 Following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the delegates of the Allied Powers and the defeated Ottoman Sultan signed the Treaty of Sevres, which promised the Kurds an independent homeland of their own. However, due to the emergence of Mustafa Kemal as an important stabilising factor in the new Turkey and the rise of British economic interests in Iraq, the provisions of the Treaty of Sevres were never implemented with regard to the creation of a sovereign Kurdish nationstate.3
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