The Kurdish

Awakening
Unity, Betrayal, and the Future of the
Middle East
By Henri J. Barkey

We’ve been fighting for a long time in Syria,” said U.S. President Donald
Trump in the last days of 2018. “Now it’s time for our troops to come back
home.” The president’s surprise call for a rapid withdrawal of the nearly
2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria drew widespread criticism from
members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. But it came as an even
greater shock to the United States’ main partner in the fight against the
Islamic State (or ISIS), the Syrian Kurds. For weeks prior to the
announcement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been
threatening to invade areas of northern Syria controlled by Kurdish
militants. The only thing stopping him was the presence of U.S. troops.
Removing them would leave the Kurds deeply exposed. “If [the Americans]
will leave,” warned one Syrian Kurd, “we will curse them as traitors.”

Details about the U.S. withdrawal from Syria remain sketchy. But whatever
Washington ultimately decides to do, Trump’s announcement marked a
cruel turn for Kurds across the Middle East. Back in mid-2017, the Kurds
had been enjoying a renaissance. Syrian Kurds, allied with the world’s only
superpower, had played the central role in largely defeating ISIS on the
battlefield and had seized the group’s capital, Raqqa. The People’s
Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia, controlled large swaths of
Syrian territory and looked set to become a significant actor in negotiations
to end the country’s civil war. Turkish Kurds, although besieged at home,
were basking in the glow of the accomplishments of their Syrian
counterparts, with whom they are closely aligned. And in Iraq, the body
that rules the country’s Kurdish region—the Kurdistan Regional
Government, or KRG—was at the height of its powers, preparing for a
September 2017 referendum on independence.

By the end of 2018, many of the Kurds’ dreams appeared to be in tatters.

After the overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurds voted for independence in
the KRG’s referendum, the Iraqi government, backed by Iran and Turkey,
invaded Iraqi Kurdistan and conquered some 40 percent of its territory.
Overnight, the KRG lost not only nearly half of its land but much of its
international influence, too. The Turkish Kurds, despite gaining seats in
parliament in the June 2018 elections, had endured relentless assaults from
Erdogan and his government throughout the year, including a renewed
military campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a left-wing
separatist group. In Syria, Turkey invaded the Kurdish-controlled town of
Afrin in March 2018, displacing the YPG and some 200,000 local Kurds.
Then, in December, the Syrian Kurds learned that their American
protectors might soon abandon them altogether.

These setbacks, however, belie a larger trend—one that will shape the
Middle East in the years ahead. Across the region, Kurds are gaining self-
confidence, pushing for long-denied rights, and, most important,
collaborating with one another across national boundaries and throughout
the diaspora. To a greater extent than at any previous point in history,
Kurds in the four traditionally distinct parts of Kurdistan—in Iran, Iraq,
Syria, and Turkey—are starting down the road of becoming a single Kurdish
nation. Significant barriers to unity remain, including linguistic divisions
and the presence of at least two strong states, Iran and Turkey, with an
overriding interest in thwarting any form of pan-Kurdism. Yet recent events
have initiated a process of Kurdish nation building that will, in the long
run, prove difficult to contain. Even if there is never a single, unified,
independent Kurdistan, the Kurdish national awakening has begun. The
Middle East’s states may fear the Kurdish awakening, but it is beyond their
power to stop it.

AHMED JADALLAH / REUTERSA pro-independence rally in Erbil,

Iraq, September 2017.

THE LOST CAUSE

Around 30 million Kurds currently live in Greater Kurdistan, a contiguous
region stretching across southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern
Iraq, and northeastern Syria. Kurdish tribes interacted with the Arab,
Persian, and Turkic empires over the centuries, sometimes cooperating
with them and sometimes rebelling against them. Modern Kurdish
nationalism has its roots in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after
World War I. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, signed between the Allies and the
defeated Ottomans, called for an independence referendum in the Kurdish-
majority areas of modern-day Turkey. Yet following Turkey’s war of
independence, the new Turkish government renegotiated with the Allies.
This resulted in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which guaranteed Turkish
sovereignty over what could have potentially been an independent
Kurdistan.
Kurdish demands for independence, however, did not go away. Throughout
the twentieth century, Kurdish revolts, often backed by rival states, erupted
in nearly every country that had a significant Kurdish population. Turkey
put down Kurdish rebellions in 1925, 1930, and 1937. Then, in the mid-
1980s, the PKK launched an armed insurgency in Turkey that has
continued off and on until the present day. In Iran in 1946, Kurds backed
by the Soviet Union established the first genuine Kurdish government, the
independent Republic of Mahabad, which lasted for one year before
collapsing after Moscow withdrew its support. Iraqi Kurds have also
frequently revolted against their central government. Supported by the
shah of Iran, they fought two wars against Baghdad during the 1960s and
1970s, only to be defeated in 1975 after the shah struck a deal with the Iraqi
strongman Saddam Hussein, abandoning the Kurds to their fate.

This agitation has meant that for each of the four states with a large
Kurdish minority, suppressing Kurdish nationalism has been a paramount
policy objective. The new Turkish state under President Kemal Ataturk
banned the use of the Kurdish language in 1924 and over time introduced
draconian rule in Kurdish areas, burning villages, displacing people, and
confiscating their property. (Although U.S. intelligence was always
confident that Turkey could handle any challenge posed by the Kurds, a
1971 CIA report conceded that Turkish policies, especially those preventing
the use of the Kurdish language, were at the root of Kurdish unrest.) Iran
similarly banned Kurdish dialects in the 1930s. In Syria, the central
government not only prohibited the teaching and learning of Kurdish but
also placed restrictions on Kurdish landownership. And beginning in the
1960s, Damascus revoked the citizenship of tens of thousands of Syrian
Kurds, rendering them stateless. All across the Middle East, Kurdish areas
were economically neglected and marginalized.

In the face of this repression, the Kurds have succeeded in preserving and
even strengthening their identity across generations. As the Kurdish scholar
Hamit Bozarslan has observed, Kurds have been treated as a minority by
the governments of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, but they do not see
themselves as one. They are a majority in their homeland, Kurdistan, which
only through an accident of geopolitical history has been rendered an
appendage of other states. And it is the Middle East’s modern state system
that has, historically, been the main obstacle to Kurdish national
aspirations. A prescient 1960 intelligence report by the CIA argued that the
Kurds of Iran and Iraq had all the necessary elements for autonomy—
military strength, leadership, and the possibility of material support from
an outside power, the Soviet Union. “Only the relative stability of parent
governments,” the report noted, “stands in the way of active Kurdish
separatism.”

TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK

For most of the twentieth century, the only possible path to Kurdish
autonomy (or independence, for that matter) ran through state failure. And
in effect, this is exactly what has transpired over the past two decades. If the
Kurds today have a glimmer of hope in Iraq and Syria, it is because of the
collapse of authority in Baghdad and Damascus. In particular, the actions
of the United States—its support of the Kurds following the Persian Gulf
War, its 2003 overthrow of Saddam and subsequent occupation of Iraq,
and its more recent efforts to combat ISIS in Syria—have created the
conditions for the revival of Kurdish political aspirations. Washington,
unintentionally and in service of its own strategic needs, has midwifed
Kurdish nationalism.

American military and political engagement with the Kurds began in

earnest with the 1990–91 Gulf War. After the Iraqi army was evicted from
Kuwait, it turned its guns on the Kurds and Shiites who had responded to
U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s call to rise up against Baghdad.

Faced with the possibility of a humanitarian crisis, the United States, with
support from France and the United Kingdom, declared a no-fly zone over
the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq. Protected by the no-fly zone, the Iraqi
Kurds were able to carve out regional autonomy, founding the KRG in 1992.
Iraqi Kurdistan became a bastion of pro-American sentiment in the
country, especially after the United States’ invasion in 2003, promoting
further U.S.-Kurdish cooperation. Kurdish forces allied with U.S. troops in
the initial war against Saddam, and in the ensuing years, Iraqi Kurdistan
provided an anchor of stability as the rest of the country descended into
civil war.
RODI SAID / REUTERS
Kurdish fighters celebrate their capture of Tel Abyad, Syria, June 2015.

The founding of the KRG provided an important psychological boost to the

Kurds, not just in Iraq but across the rest of the Middle East, too. It
demonstrated that Kurds could govern themselves and secure international
recognition. It also began to reshape Kurdish relations with other states.
Although Turkey has traditionally disapproved of Kurdish demands for
autonomy, the Turkish government under Erdogan chose not to confront
the KRG but to build political and economic links with it instead. The
landlocked Iraqi Kurds needed a channel for diplomacy and commerce—
especially oil exports—and Ankara was happy to provide one. In 2010,
Turkey opened a consulate in the KRG’s capital, Erbil. Then, in 2012, the
KRG and Turkey signed a deal to construct an oil pipeline from Iraqi
Kurdistan to the Mediterranean. By 2018, some 400,000 barrels of KRG oil
were reaching the Turkish port of Ceyhan every day. Ankara has provided
an economic lifeline to the KRG, granting it the breathing room to
consolidate itself in Iraq. For a time, Erdogan also profited domestically, as
Turkish Kurds close to the KRG’s president, Masoud Barzani, began voting
for Erdogan’s party in Turkish elections. Confident of his Kurdish bona
fides, in 2009, Erdogan launched a domestic peace process with the PKK.

Yet soon, another U.S. action was to unintentionally change the Kurds’
position in the Middle East. In 2014, the Obama administration began a
bombing campaign to prevent Kobani, a Syrian Kurdish town on the
Turkish border, from falling to ISIS. At the time, ISIS had just swept
through northern Iraq and Syria, capturing large stretches of territory,
including Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. Washington’s decision to
protect Kobani elicited frenzied objections from Erdogan, since the United
States would be directly supporting the YPG, which had close ties with the
PKK in Turkey. The U.S. partnership with the YPG was a battlefield success,
and the Kurds’ eventual victory at Kobani became a turning point in the
fight against ISIS. But this very success began to ring alarm bells in Ankara.

For Erdogan, a U.S.-YPG alliance represented a game changer for the

region. What the Turkish president feared most was the emergence of a
second KRG, this one in Syria. After all, the KRG itself was the product of a
U.S. intervention that led to a civil war and the breakdown of central
authority in Baghdad, culminating in the creation of a federal system in
Iraq, with the KRG as a constituent element. With Syria already consumed
by civil war, Ankara believed that Washington was on the verge of repeating
what it had done in Iraq—that is, transforming Syria into a federal state in
which the Kurds would gain the right to govern themselves. Erdogan could
not assent to federal arrangements in two neighboring countries, much less
to a Syrian-Kurdish one closely linked to the PKK. In 2014, Erdogan
abandoned his negotiations with the PKK and began a policy of outright
conflict with both the Turkish and the Syrian Kurds. He sought to
delegitimize all Kurdish political activity by associating it with the PKK,

arresting large numbers of Kurdish activists and politicians. Washington,

unintentionally and in service of its own strategic needs, has midwifed

Kurdish nationalism.

But if the United States inadvertently disrupted Kurdish-Turkish relations,

U.S. policy in Iraq and Syria, taken as a whole, has earned the Kurds an
unprecedented degree of international legitimacy. France, the United
Kingdom, and the United States have all extended diplomatic recognition to
the KRG, as well as providing it with economic and other forms of support.
And the Syrian Kurds, previously ignored by the outside world, have been
able to raise their global profile thanks to their role in the fight against ISIS.
This recognition has come not only from Western powers. In a draft
proposal for a new Syrian constitution, put forward in 2017 through the
Astana peace process, Russia suggested two important concessions to the
Kurds: dropping the word “Arab” from the name Syrian Arab Republic and
creating a “culturally autonomous” region in the country’s northeast, where
children would be educated in both Arabic and Kurdish. These concessions
were rejected by Damascus, and there is no guarantee that they will ever be
granted. But their inclusion in the Russian proposal demonstrated that
despite the Syrian Kurds’ precarious position, outside powers are beginning
to recognize them as an autonomous force to be reckoned with.

THE KURDISH RENAISSANCE

Kurds mobilized throughout the twentieth century to win cultural
autonomy and some degree of self-rule from central governments. For
nearly 100 years, rebellions and resistance constituted the backdrop of
ordinary Kurdish life. Now, this is changing, as Kurds have acquired
governing experience—not just in the KRG but also in numerous
municipalities in Syria and Turkey. This, in turn, has caused Kurdish
identity to begin to coalesce across national boundaries.

So far, the Kurds’ experience in power has been fraught with problems. The
KRG, for instance, is on the path to becoming a petrostate, dependent on oil
sales and beset by corruption, patronage, and the outsize power of its two
leading political families, the Barzanis and the Talabanis. The political wing
of the YPG, the Democratic Union Party, has succeeded in efficiently
providing services in the areas of Syria that it controls, but it has also
constructed a one-party proto-state. And in Turkey, although
representatives of the left-wing, Kurdish-dominated Peoples’ Democratic
Party (HDP) won 102 municipalities in the March 2014 local elections,
Erdogan has since removed 94 of them from office. He has vowed to act
similarly after the next round of municipal elections this March. Future
HDP success may even motivate Erdogan to have the party shut down by
the Constitutional Court, as Turkey’s generals did to the HDP’s
predecessors.
But even if Kurdish self-government has not been an unalloyed success, it
has been a boon for Kurdish culture and language across the region. This is
especially true in Iraqi Kurdistan, which boasts its own Kurdish-language
institutions, including schools and media organizations. Despite challenges
such as the existence of two distinct Kurdish dialects, which roughly
correspond to the KRGs political divisions— Kurmanji is spoken in areas
dominated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, whereas Sorani is spoken in
those run by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—the KRG has established a
rich Kurdish cultural environment in the territory it controls. There are
now hundreds of Kurdish television channels, websites, news agencies, and
other cultural products, such as novels and movies. And in Syria, where for
decades Damascus banned even private education in Kurdish, the
Democratic Union Party has formally introduced Kurdish-language
education in the areas under its control. After nearly a century of
attempting to prevent the dissemination of Kurdish language and culture,
central governments have now decisively lost that battle.

Iraq’s Kurdish-language renaissance has in turn stimulated a renewal of

Kurdish self-awareness in transnational social media and diaspora
communities. The Kurdish diaspora is especially strong in Europe, to which
over one million Kurds have immigrated over the past six decades—initially
as guest workers and then as refugees fleeing repression. Free to organize
and collaborate with other civil society groups, Europe’s Kurds have raised
public awareness of Kurdish issues and put pressure on national
governments in Germany, France, and the Netherlands—as well as on the
EU as a whole—to change their policies toward Iran, Iraq, Syria, and
Turkey. In this, they have been aided by the rise of Kurdish-language social
media.
The flourishing of Kurdish has extended even to Iran and Turkey, where the
Kurds have relatively little power. During Erdogan’s brief opening to the
Kurds between 2009 and 2014, there was a proliferation of Kurdish-
language institutes, publications, and private schools. The resulting
euphoria did not last long; by the end of 2017, almost all of these had been
eliminated by Ankara, which went as far as systematically taking down all
signs in Kurdish, traffic signals as well as signs for schools and municipal
buildings. But not everything has been lost. Some Turkish universities still
allow students to study Kurdish, and the Turkish state has created a TV
channel dedicated to official broadcasts in Kurdish. In Iran, meanwhile, the
government has, since 2015, allowed optional high school and university
Kurdish-language classes in the country’s Kurdish-majority regions.

pporters at a rally in Diyarbakir, Turkey, June 2018.

MAKING A NATION
The increasing fluidity of physical boundaries between Kurds, the creation
of Kurdish-run governments such as the KRG, the emergence of strong
diaspora communities (especially in Europe), and the rise of Kurdish-
language social media and cultural products—all have combined to
strengthen pan-Kurdish identity. Today, Kurds from Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Turkey, and the diaspora are all engaged in a common conversation. They
do not speak in unison, but the days of Kurd-on-Kurd political violence,
which flared up in Iraq during the 1990s, are gone, in large part because the
Kurdish public will not tolerate it. The Kurds have acquired all the
attributes of a nation, except sovereignty.

This newfound unity is reflected in the emergence of pan-Kurdish military

units. Turkish Kurds have fought with the YPG in Syria, just as Syrian and
Turkish Kurds have been integrated into the armed forces of the KRG.
Diaspora Kurds have also volunteered to fight, particularly with the YPG.
The PKK commands armed forces in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria and in 2004
created an affiliate in Iran. The erosion of intra-Kurdish boundaries was
greatly accelerated by ISIS’ advance through Iraq and Syria in the summer
of 2014, which imperiled Kurds in both countries and fostered pan-ethnic
solidarity. Faced with a genuine existential peril, the Kurds put their own
fractious politics aside and appeared as one. And the more that they do so,
the more they will begin to reshape the politics of the Middle East.

In both Iraq and Syria, the fragility of central governments provides Kurds
with an opportunity for self-rule that is still unthinkable in Iran and
Turkey. This process is much further along in Iraq, where the KRG’s
autonomy is protected by the constitution. Yet the KRG is still vulnerable,
as Baghdad’s reaction to the disastrous 2017 independence
referendum demonstrated. In Syria, the Kurds may have an opportunity to
reach a deal with the Assad regime that would grant them a degree of
regional autonomy. Such a result is far from guaranteed, however, and a
U.S. withdrawal from the country could leave the Syrian Kurds at the mercy
of Damascus and Ankara. Even so, any Syrian or Turkish campaign to
eliminate the YPG, however bloody, would engender a backlash among
Kurds across the Middle East. Nothing builds national consciousness like a
David taking on a Goliath.

In Turkey, the Kurds have made a great deal of progress over the past
decade, despite the recent deterioration in their relations with the central
government. Erdogan’s efforts to sabotage the HDP’s electoral chances—
imprisoning candidates, imposing media blackouts, and harassing Kurdish
voters—have not prevented the party from entering the Turkish parliament
in three successive elections. (Many HDP politicians, including the party’s
leader, Selahattin Demirtas, are even now languishing in jail.) The new
Turkish constitution, passed by referendum in April 2017, has transformed
Turkey into a presidential system and neutered its parliament, so the HDP’s
influence, despite its significant number of deputies, is greatly limited.

Nonetheless, the fact that the party came in third in the June 2018
elections, behind only the ruling party and the main opposition party, is an
indication that the Kurdish issue has been institutionalized in Turkish
politics. The HDP’s success will encourage the mobilization of Kurdish civil
society and, eventually, the development of Kurdish ties with others in the
Turkish opposition. And the proliferation of Kurdish organizations in
Europe may help to move European attitudes toward Turkey in a more pro-
Kurdish direction. It is the Turkish Kurds who, although divided between a
military wing (the PKK) and a political wing (the HDP), are in the best
position to assume a leadership role for Kurds across the region. This is
because they, unlike the other Kurdish communities, are part of a country
embedded in Western institutions. Even if Turkey’s practices diverge from
Western norms, Turkish Kurds have benefited from exposure to the values
and principles associated with the West.

The case of the Iranian Kurds is the most opaque, given Tehran’s strained
relations with the outside world and the secretive nature of the regime
itself. Yet events in other parts of Kurdistan are influencing developments
in Iran’s Kurdish regions. Iran has always pursued a multipronged policy
toward the Kurds. Domestically, it has repressed them, including through
the liberal use of capital punishment against activists. At the same time, it
has forged ties with the KRG in a successful effort to control Iranian
Kurdish groups residing in Iraqi Kurdistan. Yet as Iran finds itself
overstretched in the region, its leaders worried about regime stability and
the country’s worsening economy, the central government may come to see
the Kurds as an even greater threat. Iranian Kurds have had little
experience with self-rule, having lived for decades under a government that
interferes in all aspects of daily life. But Iran, like Syria, is a brittle state.
Change will start at the center. The more pan-Kurdish identity and
confidence grow, the more likely it is that Iranian Kurds will be prepared
for instability in Tehran.

Finally, the United States remains the single most important actor when it
comes to determining the future of the Kurds, particularly in Iraq and
Syria. Trump may be ending the U.S. partnership with the YPG, but the
Syrian Kurds have nonetheless benefited from the relationship, as they
were previously considered by outside powers to be the least important
Kurdish population in the region. Now they are on the map: hours after
Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from Syria, a
spokesperson for the French foreign ministry claimed that France would
“ensure the security” of the Syrian Kurds. Yet Washington’s move will force
the Syrian Kurds to negotiate with Damascus earlier than they had planned
to, and from a position of relative weakness. A full U.S. withdrawal,
moreover, could cause a destabilizing scramble among regional powers in
Syria, with disastrous results for the Kurds.

Concerned about these repercussions, U.S. officials, including Secretary of

State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, have
warned Turkey not to intervene against the Kurds in northern Syria.
Having stumbled into the Middle East’s perpetual Kurdish conundrum, the
United States is finding it hard to extricate itself. Washington will have to
employ all its persuasive powers to ensure that the Kurds are not crushed
by Ankara, Damascus, and other regional powers. That, in turn, will require
a degree of interest and policy coherence not previously evident in the
Trump administration. But to the extent that the United States values
democracy, human rights, and minority rights, it should support Kurds
across the Middle East within the existing nation-state system. Even if
Trump is unwilling to expend much political capital to support the Kurds,
there are other centers of power and influence in the United States, such as
media and civil society organizations, that can do so.

Whatever happens in the near future, however, there can be no going back
to the status quo that obtained only a few decades ago, before the United
States’ interventions in the region set the Kurds on a fundamentally new
path. Despite frequent setbacks, continued repression, and over a century
without a homeland, the Kurds are finally emerging as a unified people. A
Kurdish state may be a long way off, but if one ever does emerge, there will
be a nation there to populate it.

CORRECTION (March 11, 2019): An earlier version of this article

incorrectly referred to the HDP's performance in July 2016 elections. The
elections referred to took place in March 2014. We regret the error.