The policy has included forced population transfers a ban on use of the Kurdish language, costume, music, festivals, and names and extreme repression of any attempt at resistance. Turkey: For much of its modern history, Turkey has pursued a policy of forced assimilation towards its minority peoples this policy is particularly stringent in the case of the Kurds-until recently referred to as the “mountain Turks”-who make up 20 percent of the total population. Iraqi Kurdistan has two main political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both clan-based and patriarchal. In 2005, after a long struggle with Baghdad, the Iraqi Kurds won constitutional recognition of their autonomous region, and the Kurdistan Regional Government has since signed oil contracts with a number of Western oil companies as well as with Turkey. In 2003, the Kurdish peshmerga sided with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein. After the first Gulf War, the UN sought to establish a safe haven in parts of Kurdistan, and the United States and UK set up a no-fly zone.
Iraq: In 1986–89, Saddam Hussein conducted a genocidal campaign in which tens of thousands were murdered and thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed, including by bombing and chemical warfare. The situation is worse in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where the Kurds are a minority people subjected to ethnically targeted violations of human rights. In Iran, though there have been small separatist movements, Kurds are mostly subjected to the same repressive treatment as everyone else (though they also face Persian and Shi’ite chauvinism, and a number of Kurdish political prisoners were recently executed). After World War I, their lands were divided up between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds, who share ethnic and cultural similarities with Iranians and are mostly Muslim by religion (largely Sunni but with many minorities), have long struggled for self-determination. But the truth is, ideologically and politically these are very, very different systems. right now, yes, the people are facing the Islamic State threat, so it’s very important to have a unified focus. Hen we refer to all Kurdish fighters synonymously, we simply blur the fact that they have very different politics.
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