Concept in Definition ABC

Most people who are asked about the great Saladin believe that this medieval nobleman and statesman was an Arab, although he came from family Kurdish despite being born in Tikrit (a city in an Arab area but close to what is now Iraqi Kurdistan).

Again topical due to the wars in the Middle East and, especially, the Civil War in Syria where they have achieved a high degree of autonomy until reaching independence. de factoKurds are in the news almost every day, but in general we know little about their history.

Like so many other peoples in the Middle East region, the origin of the Kurds is lost in the mist of history.

Some historians have linked them to peoples of classical antiquity, including the Medes, although what is certain is their Indo-European origin.

The first mention as Kurds (although semantically, their name could also go back to classical antiquity) dates from the 7th century of our time, from Arab sources, who invaded the region inhabited by the Kurds in the age half.

That of the Kurdish people is a history of resistance, because despite not having a state of their own for centuries, and having been harshly repressed, they have kept their language and culture intact.

However, what did not resist was their original polytheistic religion, being converted to Islam by their conquerors, a faith that ended up permeating society.

From this point an independent Kurdish kingdom ends (with the exception of some rebellion punctual and some ephemeral principality), and the Kurdish people are divided between various kingdoms.

Initially, and due to the divisions of their territory, they will be divided mainly between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Sassanid.

From the subsequent struggle between both entities, the Ottoman Empire will emerge as the winner, absorbing the territories of present-day Kurdistan and managing them in its own right. diversity ethnic.

At this point, Kurdish history fades, passing for centuries as an integral part of the Empire. Ottoman, until the First World War ends up liquidating this empire and its territories remain divided.

It is precisely the Treaty of Sèvres (August 10, 1920) that provides for an independent state for the Kurds in what is now Turkish territory.

However, this treaty was rectified by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, in which an independent Kurdish state was no longer recognized.

From that moment, and due to the interests of the Western powers (mainly the United Kingdom and France), the Kurdistan and the Kurdish people will be divided among four countries: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, in order from greater to less population of Kurdish origin.

There is also a small Kurdish minority in what is now Armenia, territory that in the decade of the 20s it was part of the now extinct Soviet Union.

In all these countries, the Kurdish people form a minority that has been culturally and physically repressed, in the context of the national affirmation after the First World War and the process of formation of the current states based on hegemonies ethnic.

In this context, the Kurds will actively confront the majority ethnic groups in each of the states of which they are part.

Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish nationalist movement promised autonomy and respect to the Kurds if they sided with them to drive foreign troops out of postwar occupied Turkey, betraying such promises to posteriori.

The language and Kurdish traditions were banned (the same word "Kurdish" or "Kurdistan" as well).

In 1925 the first armed revolt of the Kurds of Turkey took place, the call of Sheikh Saïd, which he will follow in 1927 (and until 1931) the revolt of Mount Ararat, to end this period in 1936 (and until 1938) with the revolt of Dersim.

While crushing these attempts with an iron fist, the Turks also practice a politics of deportations of Kurds out of their natural territories to other parts of Turkey to denature them, along with the territories Kurds are repopulated with ethnic Turkic people, giving rise to what is now a mixture of populations in an area that was previously clearly Kurdish.

After the Second World War, Kurdish nationalists will ask the newly created UN to articulate a state of their own, alluding to the Sevres treaty.

This claim was based on the proclamation of the Republic of Mahabad in the Iranian Kurdish region, encouraged by the Soviets who had occupied the north of the country in 1941, and until in 1947 they reached an agreement with the Iranian central government, withdrawing their troops - and, consequently, their protection - from the area in exchange for concessions. oil.

We have to wait until 1961, this time in Iraqi Kurdistan, to see a new Kurdish armed revolt.

Its leader was Mustafa Barzani, who in the 1930s had fought against the authority Iraqi central, and in the 1940s against the Iranians.

It was a guerrilla war, in which Barzani (who already possessed the aura of a very capable commander from the Republic of Mahabad, and who had received military training in the USSR) commanded the peshmergas Kurdish (guerrilla) with great efficiency, resisting for almost fifteen years a far superior enemy.

In 1975, Saddam Hussein managed to isolate the Iraqi Kurds from their international supports (Iran and the United States) and ended up winning in the conflict, causing a Kurdish diaspora in the area.

The Iraqi Kurds would rise again in 1991, after the Iraqi defeat in the Gulf War, being violently attacked by Saddam Hussein's forces, who used chemical weapons against the population civil.

But let's go back a bit further: in 1978, Abdullah Öcalan founded the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party in Kurdish), a political organization with one arm (HPG, Popular Defense Forces for its acronym in Kurdish), which in the 1980s began to carry out attacks and punishment operations against Turkey in the form of a war of guerrillas.

At the beginning of the nineties, Kurdish nationalism moved, and in 1992 a Kurdish Parliament in Exile was created, specifically in the Dutch city of The Hague.

However, a hard blow (although it also meant putting the Kurdish question in the world today) was the arrest of Öcalan in Kenya in 1999, who would later be extradited to Turkey.

In 2003, with the US invasion of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan became the northern front, with forces American special forces collaborating with the Kurdish guerrillas, who will end up becoming a real army.

Since then, Iraqi Kurdistan has enjoyed such autonomy that, in 2017, it led the region to hold an independence referendum, won by more than 90% of the votes.

However, the declaration of independence was suspended a posteriori due to the risk of an attack by the Iraqi armed forces, and the lack of international recognition.

Another recent event that has helped spread the Kurdish national struggle has been the Syrian Civil War.

The Syrian Kurdistan region has risen up in the same way as Iraqi Kurdistan did previously, constituting its own state and armed forces, and commendably resisting the threat Islamic State, thanks in large part to US military support.

Although in this case there has been no declaration of independence, the region is de facto.

Photo: Fotolia - Bilalizaddin

Topics in Kurdish