What, in your view, is the best solution for the Kurdish

Question? Discuss with reference to either Iraq, Turkey

or Iran

The Kurdish Question, or the issue of statehood for the Kurdish people, has
been at the center of one of the biggest political debates in international
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politics since the creation of the modern Middle East (Gunter, 2004). Today,
Kurdish people in the region number up to over thirty million people, making it
the largest nation in the world without an independent state, although the vast
majority of Kurds still live in the geographical area of Kurdistan, an historical
region divided since the end of World War I between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and
Syria.
While in the last decade both Iraqi and Syrian Kurds have managed to gain de
facto autonomy from their sovereign states in what has been called Kurdish
Spring (Hess, 2013), and after decades of war, Kurdish-Turkish party PKKs
diplomatic talks with Turkeys government have paved way for possible peace
between the two sides, the fate of Iranian Kurds has largely remained
unchanged. Positive developments in the Kurds struggle for self-determination
in the Middle East have, however, undoubtedly affected the Iranian Kurds
situation and may very well contribute in a region-wide breakthrough, which
Iranian Kurdistan has the potential to be an extremely fertile soil for. This essay
will try to demonstrate the importance of Iranian Kurdistan in the eventual
solution of the Kurdish Question, by accurately analyzing the unique identity
and societal condition of Irans Kurds, the nature of Irans Kurdish nationalism
and the political history of the Kurdish minority in the country.

The Kurdish Identity

An Iranian people speaking a Indo-European language of the Iranian branch,
unlike in other countries, Kurds in Iran are closely related to the ruling
majoritarian ethnicity, lessening the obstacles encountered by their Iraqi or
Turkish counterparts in their relations with their own national governments
(Kreyenbroek, 1992). While Kurds in Iraq or Turkey have always been
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considered detrimental for the upholding of respectively Arab and Turkish

nationalisms, Iranian Kurds were an integral part of the Iranian nation in the
nationalism endorsed by secular Pahlavi dynasty (Banuazizi, 1986). While since
the birth of modern Iran, Kurds have never been completely equal to their
fellow Persian citizens, their nature of non-Arabs and Muslims has granted
them, both under Imperial and Islamic rule, a better social and political position
than any other minority existing in Iran today (Natali, 2005). It is important to
note as well that Iran is not, unlike its neighbouring countries, the result of the
fragmentation of an empire, and its Kurdish population is deeply historically
embedded in the states history, which is seen by scholars as one of the
reasons why, again unlike other Kurdish minorities, the leaders of Iranian
Kurdistan have rarely sought complete independence from Iran (McDowell,
1992) and the reason why Irans government has, although strongly opposing
any suggestion of autonomy by the minority, never employed the same
amount of violent repression against its Kurds

witnessed in other countries

(Kreyenbroek, 1992).
During the Pahlavi dynasty, some high officers in the army and members of
parliament were Kurds, and even Kurdish Minister of Education Karim Sanjabi
was a member of this minority.

Kurdish Culture in modern Iran

However, although related, the separate ethnic identity of the Kurds was
strongly denied by the Pahlavi dynasty, and while Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
defined the Kurds pure Iranians (Izady, 1992), the Kurdish press was banned
under the Pahlavis (van Bruinessen, 2000) and the denial of the Kurdish
language, culture and ethnicity were central to the discursive strategy of
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Pahlavi Iran. Those Kurds who stressed their nature as different from the
Persians became the other in opposition to the sovereign, used by the
Pahlavis to enforce their new order (Vali, 1995). This denial of Kurdish culture
has also massively affected Kurdish cultural and political life. Unlike Ottoman
Kurds, Iranian Kurds did not have a formed secular intelligentsia during the first
days of the modern Middle East (Vali, 1995) and to later Kurdish scholars, the
Persian culture in its greatness, posed as a very foundation to Iranian
nationalism was more attractive than a ,purely Kurdish, culture (Cottam, 1979).
Iranian Kurds, therefore, lack the cohesion found in their Turkish and Iraqi
counterparts: not only many Kurdish intellectuals in Iran have chosen Iranian
nationalism as a tendency over Kurdish nationalism, but those allowed to
participate in national politics have been coopted into the dominant groups of
their country (Entessar, 1984), leaving the nation excluded from their
personal achievements.

A great part of the reason for this is that, unlike the dominant majority of Kurds
worldwide, a significant portion (27%) of Iranian Kurds are not Sunni muslims,
but adhere to Shiism, like the Persian majority (UNPO, 2008). While the
religious identity of Kurds had little or no importance under the secular Pahlavi
Dynasty, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the new theocratic government
expelled Sunni Kurds from public office, greatly restricted their freedom of
expression and heavily militarised the Kurdish inhabited region of the country
(Natali, 2000), causing the Sunni majority to question Iranian national identity
in the peripheral regions of Iran (Abrahamian, 2008), while Shia Kurds in the
Kermanshah region are still strong opponents to the idea of autonomy,
preferring the direct rule of Tehran (Romano, 2006). With a minority of the
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Kurds in Iran fully integrated in the wider society, the already existing lack of
cohesion in the Kurdish population of Iran has widened, with a Shia percentage
able to boast important political figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf,
current mayor of Tehran and runner-up in the latest political elections and
Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, former First Vice-President of Iran, while the Sunni
majoritys "social, political and cultural rights have been repressed, as have
their economic aspirations" according to Amnesty International (2008).
Since the Islamic Revolution though, it is important to notice that, even for the
Sunnis, the situation has indeed improved, mainly under the presidency of
Mohammed Khatami in the second half of the 1990s. Khatamis rule was
characterised by the opening a new cultural and political space for the Kurds,
which they used to promote unprecedented cultural activities after the
example of the PKK (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010). Under Khatamis
leadership Abdollah Ramezanzadeh was the first-ever Kurdish politician to be
appointed governor of Irans Kurdistan region (Koohi-Kamali, 2003). Khatami
also received unprecedented support from the Kurds, both Sunnis and Shias,
which could be seen as an attempt by the Kurds to obtain greater autonomy
and freedoms rather than an armed conflict: his presidency also coincided with
the end of two decades of Iranian military control of Kurdistan. (Koohi-Kamali,
2003).

The Birth of Kurdish Nationalism

Iranian Kurdish nationalism has existed for as long as its Iraqi or Turkish
counterpart. Already during the rise to power of Reza Khan Pahlavi, Kurdish
tribal leader Simko Shikak led a tribal revolt calling for an independent
Kurdistan (Cottam, 1979), although most historians argue that plunder and
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tribal culture and not Kurdish identity were the major issue in Simkos
revolt (Kreyenbroek, 1992), he is still regarded as one of the fathers of Kurdish
nationalism in Iran(Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010), and Reza Khans brutal
repression of tribal identities during the 1920s contributed to developing
nationalism among the tribes themselves (Kreyenbroek, 1992).
This early nationalism culminated in the Iran Crisis of 1946, which saw,
alongside the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Kurdish Republic (or Mahabad
Republic), the only, to date, example of an independent Kurdish state. The
Republic was the offspring of KDPI, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan,
and the leader of the party, Qazi Mohammad, also became the Republics first
and only president. The Mahabad Republic lasted less than a year, but is still
considered another major turning point in the realisation of Kurdish nationalism
(Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010)(Entessar, 1984), and not only in Iran.

Iranian Kurds and the Islamic Revolution

Irans KDPI also helped Iraqs Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), led by Moustafa
Barzani, in the armed conflict against Baghdads forces. While Iraq was
effectively funding the KDPI to actively fight against the Iranian government,
Tehran was funding Barzanis efforts. This led to yet another fragmentation in
Iranian Kurdish politics, with the KDPI splitting in two between those loyal to
Barzani and the Revolutionary Committee (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010).
Kurdish nationalist aspirations were once more crushed when, abandoned by
the other faction, the Committee was defeated by the Iranian Army and at the
same time, with the Algiers Agreement of 1975 between Iran and Iraq,
Barzanis movement lost all funding coming from Tehran. The Shah abandoned
its Kurdish allies in exchange for boundary concessions, yet he allowed some
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fifty-thousand Iraqi Kurdish refugees in its borders (van Bruinessen, 2000),

while the KDPI leadership was effectively exiled to Iraq until the collapse of the
Pahlavi dynasty (Hassanpour, 1994).
The memory of the Shahs betrayal of the Kurds was an added incentive to join
the revolution of 1979 (Entessar, 1984) and alongside Iranian Persians, Kurds
organised effective anti-regime protests, especially via the Zagros Committee,
organised by the KDPI for this purpose. (Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010).
Furthermore, during the first year of the Revolution, Iranian Kurds enjoyed de
facto autonomy under the control of the KDPI and Komalah, the two main
political parties (van Bruinessen, 2000), and after decades as an underground
organisation, the KDPI declared its overt acivities in 1979 in Mahabad (Romano,
2006), while its members returned from exile, were freed from Pahlavi jails and
built an organisation firmly rooted in the local population, comprising even a
military branch (van Bruinessen, 1986).
While different political groups and even ethnicities and minorities directed
their effort towards obtaining a foothold in the new regime, in Kurdistan both
Komalah and the KDPI started demanding autonomy for their region and put
the governments institutions on a secondary plane (Van Bruinessen, 1986).
This sudden burst of Kurdish nationalism came as a surprise to the
government, instead of granting Kurdistan a greater autonomy, the new regime
saw the mainly Sunni-inhabited region as a threat. Abdul Rahman Qassemlu,
KDPIs leader advocated of Kurdish cooperation with the new regime, if
Kurdistans autonomy rights would have been guaranteed by it (Ahmadazadeh
and Stansfield, 2010), took part in the election of the Assembly of Experts in
1979, was elected but was denied a voice in the Assembly by the Ayatollah
(Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010). The Ayatollah declared jihad against those
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two and a half million Sunni Kurds who sought autonomy, while leaving the
Shias untouched (Weinstock, 2011) and by 1984, Kurdish militas had been yet
again pushed into Iraqi territory by Irans superior army (Olson, 1992).

The Trans-nationalisation of the Question

As mentioned before, the period of the Iran-Iraq war that started in 1980 saw
the massive militarisation of Irans Kurdistan. Due to the Communication
Revolution of the end of the 1980s, the Kurdish question abandoned national
boundaries, and publications and political activism even from the Iranian
Kurdish diaspora became available, increasing Kurdish nationalism in the region
and helping to develop a trans-national concept of the Kurdish problem (van
Bruinessen, 2000). These publications often showed that the old parties like
Komalah and the KDP were losing popularity among the new generation of
politically active Kurds (Ahamadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010), and the transnational nature of Kurdish nationalism pushed even some Shias to adhere to it
due to the outrage for the violent suppression of Kurds in Sunni regions and
abroad (McDowall, 1996), while it is important to point out that, although
military conflict is still active in the region, there is no evident Shia Kurd
insurgency in the area (Romano, 2006). In 1999, this renewed nationalism was
evident in the protests in Iranian Kurdistan for the arrest of Abdullah calan,
leader of Turkish PKK (Olson, 2000) and by the creation of PJAK, a militant
Iranian Kurdish group, trained and funded by the PKK based in Iraqi Kurdistan
(Katzman, 2009). PJAK is widely looked at with suspicion by both the Iranian
government and other Kurdish political parties (Brandon, 2006), and recently
the KDPI has officially rejected contacts with PJAK, accusing the movement to
be merely an extension of the PKK (Hess, 2013).
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Conclusion and Future Prospects

With Iranian Kurdish nationalism on obviously the rise, stirred by Iraqi and
Syrian Kurds successes in the last decade, other groups are emerging, such as
Berey Yekgurtuy Kurd, or Kurdish United Front, founded by Kurdish activists
and several Kurdish members of the Majlis (the Iranian Parliament), aiming for
equal cultural, political, societal and economical rights for all Iranians
(Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010). It is clear that the new generations
response to their multifaceted discrimination by the Islamic Republic (Hess,
2013) is no longer confined to an incoherent political struggle confined to Irans
Kurdistan and Kermanshah region. New technologies, including social networks
and world-wide medias today can make the voice of small groups heard
throughout the world, and what is happening just outside the border is no
mystery for the Kurds of Iran. Hassan Rouhanis reformist presidency has
indeed promised to prepare a civil rights charter that may very well include
larger autonomy for the Kurdish people in Iran, and may also provide a more
fertile soil for diplomacy between Tehran and Mahabad, similarly to what
happened in 1997 with Khatamis presidency.
A reckless continuation of the armed struggle, especially if not supported by
the larger and more organised PKK military infrastructure, could easily lead to
the refusal of Tehran to treat with the Kurds, other than continue to stall the
development of the region, who still suffers from the events of the Iran-Iraq
War and a full decade of clashes between the IRCG and PJAK. It is therefore
clear that the only way Iranian Kurdish parties can carve out a new standing for
their people is via the use of extensive and coherent diplomacy, aided by the

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external pressure of Iraqi Kurdistan and by the developments of the Question in

Turkey.
An autonomous Iranian Kurdistan based on the the Iraqi model could, given
time, solve the Question itself by both granting a safe haven for Sunni Kurds in
Iran, while not disrupting the privileged condition of their Shia brothers in the
Kermanshah area.

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