Nowadays,
almost everyone agrees that the Palestinian people deserve a state, and that
they should not live under Israeli rule.
Most
Israelis share this view, including even Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who
has reluctantly stated his own commitment to a two-state solution. And in many
Western democracies, a strong left-wing constituency regularly organizes
demonstrations in favor of Palestinian independence.
The
argument for Palestinian statehood is anchored in a fundamentally moral claim
for national self-determination. Yet when it comes to securing the same right
for the Kurdish people, the West has been shamefully and strangely silent.
Western democracies offered no support for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s
independence referendum in late September, and they have not spoken out against
the Iraqi and Turkish governments’ threats to crush the KRG’s bid for statehood
by force.
When
officials in the European Union or the United States give a reason for opposing
Kurdish independence, it always comes down to realpolitik. Iraq’s territorial
integrity must be preserved, we are told, and independence for the KRG could
destabilize Turkey and Iran, owing to those countries’ sizeable Kurdish
minorities.
But these
arguments merely underscore a double standard. Moral claims for
self-determination are justly raised in the case of the Palestinians, but they
are entirely absent from the international discourse about Kurdistan. Worse
still, the brutal oppression of the Kurds over many generations has been
totally overlooked.
In Iraq
under Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were subjected to genocidal chemical-weapons
attacks. And in Turkey, the military has razed hundreds of Kurdish villages.
Among the
arguments used to deny the Kurds their right to self-determination, the defense
of Iraq’s territorial integrity is the most spurious and hypocritical of all.
When British statesmen established Iraq as a distinct political entity after
the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, they did so in accordance with
their own imperialist interests. Accordingly, they disregarded the territory’s
history, geography, demography, and ethnic and religious diversity.
The
residents of this newly conjured state were never actually asked if they wanted
to live in a country with an overwhelming Shia majority and large Kurdish and
Christian minorities. And they certainly were never asked if they wanted to be
ruled by a Sunni dynasty that the British had implanted from the Hejaz, now a
part of Saudi Arabia.
Initially,
under the Treaty of Sèvres, which the defeated Ottoman Empire signed in August
1920, the Kurds, like the Armenians, were promised an independent state. But
the victorious Allied powers later abandoned this promise, and the Kurdish
people have lived under constant oppression ever since.
In what
became northern Iraq, the Kurds, like the country’s Assyrian Christians, were
for decades denied recognition of their distinct language and culture by
hegemonic Arab rulers in Baghdad. In this context, “territorial integrity” is
nothing more than an alibi for ethnic or religious oppression.
Similarly,
the tens of millions of Kurds living in Turkey and Iran have also long been
denied basic human and cultural rights. It is thus understandable that the
Turkish and Iranian governments would object to the KRG’s independence bid:
they fear the emergence, if it succeeds, of similar movements among their own
oppressed Kurdish populations.
But the
prospect of an independent Palestine destabilizing Jordan is never offered as
an argument against Palestinian statehood, and nor should such an argument be
used against Iraq’s Kurds. Moreover, the KRG has already established a
relatively open and pluralistic society. As a semi-autonomous region, Iraqi
Kurdistan operates under a multi-party system the likes of which one will not
find in neighboring Arab countries, let alone in Iran or Turkey, which is
increasingly turning toward authoritarianism.
National
self-determination is a universal right that should not be denied to
populations suffering under oppressive non-democratic regimes. The same
arguments that rightly apply to the Palestinians should apply equally to the
Kurds. Human-rights activists who demonstrate for Palestinian statehood should
be no less vocal on behalf of Kurdish statehood. And human-rights claims –
unless they are applied selectively as part of a hypocritical sham – should
always trump realpolitik.
Throughout
their long, tragic history, the Kurds have repeatedly been abandoned by the
West, to its great shame. This must not happen again. Kurdish Peshmerga have
been Western democracies’ staunchest allies in the fight against the Islamic
State. It would be a bitter travesty to abandon the Kurds to the mercy of the
Iraqi or Turkish governments in their time of need.
By
Shlomo
Avineri, a teacher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former
director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/like-palestinians-kurds-deserve-state/