Regional turmoil, the rise of Islamic State, and Turkey's multiple Kurdish dilemmas
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702016666007 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Bill Park |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
International Journal
2016, Vol. 71(3) 450–467
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702016666007
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Scholarly Essay
Regional turmoil, the
rise of Islamic State,
and Turkey’s multiple
Kurdish dilemmas
Bill Park
King’s College, London
Abstract
This article traces the interrelationship of the roles played by Turkey and by various
Kurdish non-state actors such as the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Kurdistan
Workers Party, and the Democratic Union Party, in the current turmoil in Syria and
Iraq. It considers their varying perspectives on Islamic State and other jihadi groups, the
tensions between the region’s Kurdish non-state actors, and the differences between
them in their relationships with Turkey. The background to these differences is
explored, as is their impact on relationships with other actors, most notably the US.
The article concludes by noting that Turkey as a regionally powerful and coherent actor,
and the Kurds as a distinct ethnic group with aspirations to self-determination, will
continue to be powerful elements in the region’s politics.
Keywords
Islamic State, Kurds, Kurdistan regional government, Middle East, PKK, PYD, Turkey
The Kurds are frequently referred to as the world’s largest contiguously located
ethno-linguistic or cultural group without a state of their own.
1
They also consti-
tute the fourth largest ethnic group of the Middle East region, after Arabs,
Persians, and Turks. However, in the post-First-World-War carve-up of former
Corresponding author:
Bill Park, King’s College London, Defence Studies, JSCSC, Shrivenham, Swindon, SN6 8TS,
United Kingdom.
Email: william.h.park@kcl.ac.uk
1. For background reading on the Kurds, see Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael M. Gunter, eds.,
The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2007); Philip G.
Kreyenbroek and Stefan Sperl, eds., The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview (London: Routledge,
1992); David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I.B.Tauris, 1997); David
Romano and Mehmet Gurses, eds., Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East:
Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Martin van Bruinessen, Agha,
Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London: Zed Books, 1992).
Ottoman territory, Kurds were not allocated a state of their own but instead found
themselves dispersed between Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and of course Iran. The com-
bined Kurdish population of these four countries is usually estimated to be between
30 and 40 million. Around half reside in Turkey, where they constitute around
20 percent of its inhabitants. This offers just one reason why Turkey’s relationship
to the region’s Kurds is crucial. Kurds make up a similar percentage of Iraq’s
smaller population, whereas in Iran and Syria the Kurdish population is usually
put at 10 percent or less. Kurdish self-determination has since been fiercely opposed
by those states, but at the cost of considerable oppression and violence.
Over the past century, Kurds have experienced considerable migration and
assimilation. Kurdish is written in varying scripts, if at all. In religious terms,
although the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims it is reckoned that about a
quarter of Turkey’s Kurds adhere to Alevism, a syncretic Sufi-inflected branch of
Shia Islam.
2
There is also a host of other minority sects. The region from which
Kurds originate and in which they mainly reside is land-locked and mostly moun-
tainous. Communication and interaction in such a terrain can be difficult, which
has contributed to the enduring clan and tribal structure throughout much of
‘‘Kurdistan.’’ In the past, Kurdish tribes have often been recruited to defend the
frontiers of a succession of political formations and empires—the Ottoman, and
various Persian and Arab entities—against encroachment from neighbours.
Taken together, and whether fairly or not, these features of Kurdish life have
generated a reputation for violence, feuding, lawlessness, and general ungovern-
ability. Intra-Kurdish struggles such as the civil war fought in the mid-1990s
between the two leading Iraqi Kurdish political parties;
3
or the tensions between
Turkey’s PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistani, or Kurdistan Workers Party) and
the state-recruited and funded ‘‘village guards’’;
4
or today’s rivalry for the leader-
ship of Kurdish nationalism between the feudally based and politically and socially
conservative Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG), and Abdullah Ocalan, head of the secular and leftist KCK (Koma
Civaken Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Communities Union), incorporating the PKK
and its Syrian and Iranian affiliates,
5
have all tended to reinforce this impres-
sion of disputatiousness. Even where Kurdish identity politics has surfaced, both
2. Michiel Leezenberg, ‘‘Kurdish Alevis and the Kurdish nationalist movement in the 1990s,’’ 197–214;
Paul J. White, ‘‘The debate on the identity of ‘Alevi Kurds’,’’ 17–32, both in Paul J. White
and Joost Jongerden, eds., Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2003).
3. Ofra Bengio, The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne
Rienner, 2012), 211–215; Michael M. Gunter, ‘‘The KDP-PUK conflict in northern Iraq,’’ Middle
East Journal 50 (Spring 1996): 225–241.
4. Metin Gurcan, ‘‘Arming civilians as a counterterror strategy: The case of the village guard system in
Turkey,’’ Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 8, no.1 (2015): 1–22; McDowall, A Modern History,
421–424.
5. See, for example, Vager Saadullah, ‘‘PKK and KDP: There’s drama between Kurdistan’s two best
frenemies,’’ 12 February 2015, http://ekurd.net/pkk-and-kdp-theres-drama-between-kurdistans-
two-best-frenemies-2015-02-12 (accessed 25 June 2015).
Park 451
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