Washington Kurdish Institute
December 23, 2019
A brief review of the events in Kurdistan – in all four parts of the nation divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria – over the last two months provides a sadly accurate account of the persecution to which the Kurdish people have been subjected by their oppressors for many decades. The protests and bloody regime response in Iran, the demands for change to the constitution in Iraq, the Turkish military invasion of Kurdish areas in Syria, and the removal and jailing of democratically-elected Kurdish representatives in Turkey all paint a picture of a persecuted nation struggling for survival.
In Iran, 40 years after the founding of the Islamic regime, harsh persecution of any and all opposition groups continues, and the Kurds are subjected to especially intense measures. The Iranian Islamic regime consolidated its power through the implementation of bloody policies and mass killings, and this has not changed. The regime’s response to recent protests has been has been brutal and inhuman. On November 15, more than 100 cities in 21 provinces in Iran simultaneously rose against the Iranian regime. The protests began after the regime has raised the fuel prices, which angered the people who have already been suffering for years, enduring great economic hardship. The Iranian protestors repeated the chants of 2017-18 protests, shouting “death to the Dictator” and other slogans against Iran’s intervention in Lebanon and Syria. The slogan “death to the Dictator” is directed against the country’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who has been the key decision maker in Iran since 1989. As before, the regime reacted with great force. Despite blackouts on reporting and internet bans, it has become known that about 3,000 people have been detained and at least 1500 people have been killed by regime forces. As before, the Kurds bore the brunt of the regime’s brutality, and the number of fatalities reported in Kurdish regions rose rapidly. In the Kurdish city of Marivan, upon the start of the demonstrations, the Iranian regime deployed its military and members of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and shot tens of people. Soon after that they, cut the internet and detained hundreds of Kurds. A present, many Kurds are missing while, on a daily basis, the death toll increases. The situation is similar in the other Kurdish provinces and cities like Kermanshah, Saqqez, Sanandaj, Bokan, Javanrud, and Mehabad. To rally people around the flag and regime, the Iranian authorities have labelled Kurdish protestors as “separatists (tajziya talib)” or “infidel (kafir)”, terms previously used by the founder of the Islamic republic, Ruhollah Khomeini.
The Iranian regime’s economic discrimination against the Kurds, have left tens of thousands of young Kurds jobless as the Kurdish region suffers severe poor living conditions. Many of those been left with no choice but to risk their lives and work a border porter known in Kurdish as Kolbars, who semi-legally carry goods to and from Iran to Iraq and Turkey. Kolbars have been around for decades, but they have dramatically increased in number over the past four years. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of tragic stories involving Kolbars, who are often killed or injured by Iranian border guards, fall victim to old land mines in border areas, or freeze to death or die in avalanches. 90% of their deaths are caused by the Iranian regime. Since the beginning of 2019, more than 60 Kolbars have been killed and 125 others have been injured. Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights advocacy organization, has reported 23 incidents in November, resulting in the death of 6 Kolbars and the injury of 13 others by Iranian forces, with 2 others killed by land mines and one falling from a cliff. The plight of the Kolbars is not mentioned in Iran and, for the most part, is ignored internationally as well.
In Iraq, after decades of persecution and massacres of the Kurds, the dictator Saddam Hussein was removed from power and Iraq entered a period of representative democracy and adopted a new constitution that officially recognized the rights of the Kurds, even though many articles of this constitution have been ignored. The Kurds in Iraq in a difficult position since 2014 when the federal government cut their budget allocation and then ISIS spread through Iraq and nearly entered the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In 2017, the Kurds of Iraq voted for independence in a referendum, and Iraq’s central government responded by sending its forces and allied Iranian-backed militias into Kurdish areas. Nonetheless, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq continued to administer three Kurdish majority provinces of the country after these clashes and also continued their participation in the Iraqi parliament and government in Baghdad. Since October of this year, mass protests against government corruption have occurred in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country. The demands of the loosely organized protestors include, among other things, redrafting the constitution, as many of the young protestors have no faith in the governmental system that they have known for much of their lives. That said, the Kurds are worried about any change to the constitution or political system in the country since such changes may well remove safeguards that protect the rights and interests of the Kurdish people, who were persecuted greatly by not only Saddam Hussein but also other dictatorial Iraqi leaders who preceded him. Indeed, systematic changes could easily reflect pressure from Iraq’s powerful neighbors such as the Turkish state or Iranian regime, who often describe the Kurds as “American slaves” or “new Israel”.
The Iraqi protests have prompted many institutions in Iraq to show their true colors. Over the past few weeks, Iranian-backed government militias have killed hundreds of protestors in cold blood. These same militias previously attacked Kurds and committed war crimes in Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu and, at the time, were praised by many Iraqis for doing so. Despite unrest in several provinces in the south and center of the country, Kirkuk for example remain under the grip of the Iranian-backed militias and the federal government’s appointed administration which already faces tens of corruption charges. The Kurds now have no say in Kirkuk’s security and administration, but fear rising up as they know how the militias will respond, and fully expect other in Iraq to unite against them if they did so under the pretext of “fighting separatists”. In other words, if you are a Kurd in Iraq and you demand reforms, you are a separatist and your demands are not only illegitimate but also dangerous. Iraq is once again unstable and faces an uncertain future, and, for Kurds, the future is especially cloudy as their status in the country is in question.
In Syria, the Kurds and their allies, members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), were the leading ground force in the battle against ISIS and were supported by the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. While the Kurds fought ISIS in Syria, Turkey funded various jihadist groups that were fighting the Kurds, and thought to delegitimize, weaken, and ultimately destroy the YPG/J and SDF. After receiving a green light from Russia, Turkey occupied the Afrin region in 2018, and, in October of this year, launched a large-scale campaign of military aggression against the rest of the Kurdish region of Syria. This Turkish military invasion, perpetrated in cooperation with various jihadist groups under their command, killed hundreds of civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands. It also resulted in the escape of many ISIS terrorists and sympathizers from Kurdish custody. The most recent update on casualties provided by Kurdish officials states that 478 civilians have been killed and another wounded 1,070. The Turkish-backed jihadist groups have the same ideology as ISIS and use the same tactics, and indeed some former members of ISIS are among their ranks and have committed well-documented war crimes. For the Kurds, the US betrayal that paved the way for this Turkish military invasion was shocking, unlike the Russian one in Afrin. A senior Kurdish official told the US congress that the US administration had promised the Kurds that they would remain in Syria and not leave them alone. After President Trump’s betrayal, the Kurds were forced to go to the Assad regime as a “lesser evil” to try to make a deal to protect themselves from the Turkish forces and their jihadist proxy militias. Assad and with Russia’s pressure could grant the Kurds safety for the short term, but in the long-term Russia may choose to please Turkey by abolishing the system self-administration set up by the Kurds in their regions, and the dictator Assad will almost certainly seek to retake control over the region. The Syrian Kurds have courage and administration skills, but they are doomed to face Turkey and the Turkish-backed jihadist militias on one hand while forced to maneuver between America’s betrayal and Russia’s attempts to restore dictatorship in Syria on the other.
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s atrocities against the Kurds have established him as an especially brutal leader. After ending the peace process with the Kurds in 2015, Erdogan has laid waste to Kurdish regions of Turkey and continued to intimidate and jail the elected representatives of the Kurds of Turkey. In October and November of this year alone, thousands of Kurdish activists and members of the progressive Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were arrested by the Turkish police. Meanwhile, 27 elected Kurdish officials, mainly mayors, have been removed from their posts and by pro-Erdogan trustees since March’s local elections. The HDP’s former co-leaders both remain in prison, facing numerous baseless accusations. The are among the most prominent of the tens of thousands of real and perceived opponents of Erdogan, including Turks, who have been accused of “membership of a terrorist organization”. Many Kurds in Turkey have lost hope in the mainstream opposition to Erdogan as, after supporting Ekrem İmamoğlu, the opposition candidate for mayor of Istanbul, earlier this year, they heard him praising Turkish military aggression in Syria. His narrow victory over AKP candidate and former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım was made possible by the overwhelming support of the Kurds of Istanbul. A similar stance is shared by the leader İmamoğlu’s party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), as Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu described the occupation of the Kurdish region of Afrin in 2018 as “beautiful.” While the HDP continues to call for the democratization of Turkey as a means to achieving Kurdish rights along with all citizens of Turkey, it seems that the Kurds are treated as tools by both the ruling party and the opposition. Turkey has never experienced real democracy, and, with Erdogan strengthening his grip on power, this seems unlikely to change.
The past two months have a dark time for Kurds, and are sadly reflective of the nature of the oppression endured by the Kurdish people across borders. As 2019 draws to a close, the Kurds seem destined to experience more atrocities at the hands of various forces who unfortunately enjoy worldwide legitimacy.