While everyone has been focused on the Obamacare and Iranian-nuke debacles, the Kurdish region of Syria declared itself autonomous, which combined with the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq and the large Kurdish region in Turkey, may mark a significant step towards the establishment of a Kurdish state.
Since the Kurds are not in conflict with Jews (and generally are quite friendly towards Israel), Kurdish national aspirations don’t get much attention at the U.N. or elsewhere. No one much cares that Kurds, a truly distinctive cultural identity who number several times the “Palestinians,” do not have a nation of their own.
As reported by Al Arabiya:
Following a series of military gains, Syrian Kurds in the northeast of the country announced on Tuesday the formation of a transitional autonomous government.
The latest declaration comes amid a general strengthening of Kurdish rights in neighboring Turkey, and increasing moves towards independence by Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.
Long oppressed under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Kurds view the civil war as an opportunity to gain the kind of autonomy enjoyed by their ethnic kin in neighboring Iraq.
The announcement was made after talks in the mostly-Kurdish town of Qamishli, and comes after Kurdish leaders announced plans to create the temporary government in July.
Intra-Kurdish rivalries pose a major danger to the autonomy holding.
Turkey, which repeatedly has taken military action against Kurdish separatists (resulting in world silence, unlike when Israel defends itself against outside attack), is not pleased:
Turkey rejected a unilateral declaration of autonomy over Syria’s Kurdish lands by the country’s dominant Kurdish group, while the larger opposition representing the Kurds said the move was an “anti-revolution and supportive of” the Damascus regime.
On Tuesday, leaders of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) announced an interim government over Syria’s Kurdish areas in the northeast. It said Kurdish, Arab and Christian leaders had agreed to turn Syrian Kurdistan – or Rojava – into three semi-independent provincial areas, within a larger Kurdish autonomy in the northeast.
“Such autonomy cannot be declared unilaterally,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu on Turkey’s NTV.
As I noted before, It’s time for a free and independent Kurdistan.
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Comments
I’d love to know, how and why, the British ignored the Kurds when they carved up the Middle-East.
history is fascinating….
How do you know they ignored them? Perhaps they considered but aimed for larger less ethnic centric entities. Perhaps they thought they sucked .
Their main objective was to break the Ottoman Empire.
Borders either get imposed & accepted or won/ lost.
Come back with something intelligent to offer, or keep your inner thoughts to yourself.
Brown dog .My nation fought the Ottoman Empire in 1915 in the Dardinelles
My army daughter is here & I see the emblem of that battle pinning up the side of her hat. Her great grandfather was shot in the head & miraculously survived thanks to British medicine . Not bad for 1915 !
Retribution was ours in the carve up of the Ottoman Empire . We wanted to crush those fucks & that we did. Sorry you don’t know history but maybe you never had to know about the ME. WW1.because you had no stake.
There was plenty of unspoken criticism of the commander of that campaign – a fellow named W Churchill for our huge losses. However he & we obtained our goal – the decimation of the Ottoman Empire ( for which the Kurds were foot soldiers ) .
The massive sea evacuation was the template for Dunkirk . History never stops but fools rush in without looking at it.
Kurds are Muslim & will slit your throat should their iman tell them. You can have them.
I must say, BG is right: the goal of Britain after WWI was indeed to carve up the Ottoman Empire.
However, it had less to do with any desire for retribution and more with politics, power, and money. The Brits were good at those things too 🙂
Defanging the Ottomans was a long-term goal of the Brits, along with using the Ottomans to keep the Russians from getting direct access to the Med. In the early 1900s it became clear that Arabia and Mesopotamia had abundant supplies of cheap oil, and in the 1910s the Brits were converted their big battleships from coal to oil. You can see the interest.
The Ottomans had been losing control of the more distant parts of their Empire, but after WWI the Brits wanted to grab the choicest bits for themselves or their surrogates. They created the state of Iraq and put a weak king in charge; Iraq had the oil around the Persian Gulf. For good measure, the Brits wanted Iraq to control the oil in the region in the north around the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. That was traditionally Kurdish land.
But there was a problem. The Brits had kinda, sorta promised the Kurds a land of their own. But the Brits REALLY wanted that oil to be part of Iraq since they could control the king, and without that land a Kurdish state (then to be spread over the remaining Ottoman Empire [i.e., Turkey], Syria and Iran) wasn’t viable.
Iraq won, Kurdistan lost.
That’s the history.
Yep, and my initial post was a mere one sentence, and you responded with “what if’s”, and how do you know?–
Followed by self aggrandizing gloating….when all I asked for was historical information.
Being a smart, learned, man of the world, you above all could have simply provided such knowledge to an ignorant peon peasant such as myself. But, no.
Now, I shall squander the rest of my days perplexed.
Thanks.
Good article. But it’s a shame you had to insinuate an Israeli/Palestinian perspective.
Also the long terrorist history of the PKK & predecessors is overlooked.
We always cotton on to ‘pet people ‘ eg the Eritreans were just so much more noble than those base Ethiopians . I have decided to adopt pygmies & the Bushmen of The Kalihari as mascots. Really they are only little & do no harm . That is until they start to annoy me then I will find another obscure lot.
Never gonna get round to Palestinians though.
re: “Never gonna get round to Palestinians though.”
Have you ever seen the movie Fargo? There is a specific scene in that movie, where one criminal is stuffing his buddy through a wood-chipper, that reminds me of the Palestinians. That’s a good spot for the Palli’s, through the old wood-chipper and then we can all hear them whine.
As for the PKK being terrorists? I’ve always considered them to be ‘freedom fighters’, especially after the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. Actually, anyone who opposes those devious blood thirsty Turks has my vote. They want to cry about the Kurds? Then they should try returning Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia, which they’ve held onto for the past 500+ years. I hope the Kurds bleed them out good, just before forming their own nation.
The PKK were training in the Bekaa with the PLO in the early 80s. I was in Armenia about that time & I can assure you there is no way Armenians of 1915 or Armenians of 1982 or Armenians of 2013 want to be associated with this murderous lot.
You can have them .
AND EXACTLY where were they supposed to get the training to fight the Turks, NATO? USSR? China? Nobody likes to eat from a garbage dump, but sometimes that’s all you have.
As for training with the PLO, well if that was today they would be training with American troops – since that’s who’s training Israel’s enemies today. Not only training the Palestinians, but arming them as well. YUP, the Good Old U.S. of A., training the enemies of God’s Chosen People. That doesn’t speak much for our own virtue and friendship, but we’ve still got to pay the butcher’s bill on that bad decision. God is faithful though, and we will pay that price – or so go my thoughts.
Killers are killers, and we can see that the only thing that the Turks (and Muslims for that matter) respect is brutal strength. America’s metro-sexual males scares no one; even the French mock us. Between our sissified society and the devious leaders we’ve elected for the past 50 years, how else should rebels act? Through a voting booth? ROFL
You said it – Muslims.
I have not thought of the wood chopper but I am certainly out of sympathy.
When I was deployed to Iraq in 2004-2005, we’d often take the hour drive north from Mosul to Dohuk (Kurdish controlled city) for supplies. We were fighting insurgents every day in Mosul, but were able to walk around with unloaded weapons and no body armor in Dohuk. Amazing how they policed that place.
thanks for your service.
ex MP Army 86-89, DAV now.
When it comes to the Obama/Kerry vision of the middle east, I am sure the Kurds will not get in the whey.
A clip from Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations:
http://www.travelchannel.com/video/a-kurdish-picnic-15715
(war time, northern Iraq)
Next you will be putting up a Chobani yogurt advert.
Thanks for the video. It’s a delight to see that a tyrants works cannot stand the test of time.
As to the Israel-Arab conflict, just once I’d like to see someone whose heart bleeds for the Palestinians and who will not perhaps condone savage barbarity but “understands” it, it’s fair to ask why their concern for the inalienable righgts of people does not extend to the Kurds.
Aye.
RE: “… not perhaps condone savage barbarity but “understands” it…”
THERE IS so much here with which to work with in your statement, yet such a small space. Entire libraries have been written upon these themes.
I believe that the main issue is ‘Focus’. Why is the world Focused so much upon little Israel and any bloody indiscretions she may have been a part of, but everyone else gets a grudging pass? Why does Turkey get a pass for her wars of conquest? Before the Kurds were the Armenians, and before them the Greek atrocities…but the Turks get a pass. It worries me that the Turks are separating the Syrian Christians in the refugee camps, ostensibly because of Muslim conversions. I wonder if they plan on feeding the non-Muslims, or just plan on letting them starve?
Am I a friend of the Kurdish push for independence? Only as far as it’s a severe thorn in the Turks backside and they remain peaceful within their own borders after independence. Am I a friend of the Muslim worldview – conquest and barbaric submission? NEVER! Hell, even the peaceful Buddhist monks of Burma are taking up weapons to fight the Muslim immigrants, and for good reason. It seems that wherever you find Islam you can find abject tyranny of the human soul, along with a love for barbaric death lavished abundantly upon whoever will accept it.
Inalienable rights? What inalienable rights? Hasn’t the past 12+ years taught you anything? The concept of inalienable rights is a western worldview, not associated with Islam. The only ‘rights’ Muslims recognize is the right to submit to whomever holds the sharpest sword. Your question makes about as much sense as condemning a snake for not hopping like a rabbit. A snakes locomotion is based upon a different paradigm entirely. Snakes + bunnies equal dinner for one of them. Taquiyya speaking slimballs, you can know what their intentions are from the very beginning. They can keep their swords (and submission tactics) out of my neighborhood entirely.
Kurdish organizations have officially apologized to Armenian organizations for participating with the Turks in the Armenian Genocide in 1915, and I accept that apology.
Therefore, in spite of the big negative that they are Muslims, I support their struggle for nationhood.
Taquiyya.