# Syria: Opportunity for Kurds? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 30, 2016, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603 "2016-03-30T02:47:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/21 "2016-03-31T01:12:35Z")
That’s not a compromise. That’s Turkey getting to drive out its Kurds and keep their land. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/22 "2016-03-31T01:52:19Z")
It would be interesting to see what happened if the EU offered full membership to Turkey in return for allowing Kurdistan to happen, including giving up part of South East Turkey. Erdogan would never agree to that but a future Turkish government might. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/23 "2016-03-31T05:04:52Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > It would be interesting to see what happened if the EU offered full membership to Turkey in return for allowing Kurdistan to happen, including giving up part of South East Turkey. Erdogan would never agree to that but a future Turkish government might. First, Erdoğan is going to be the leader of Turkey for a long time to come. Second, he is a symptom of the problems with Turkish governance: corruption, lack of respect for individual liberties, a winner take all mentality and insufficient differentiation between the branches of government. Third, nationalism in Turkey is not something specific to Erdoğan’s AK party. MHP and CHP are also very nationalist, the former much more so than the latter but not by a whole lot. Only HDP is even remotely the type of party to trade land for peace. They represent 13% of the voting population. They will not represent more than that anytime soon. Given this context, the best label to put on land for peace proposals is “ridiculous”. Fourth, the EU probably has a huge list of priorities for Turkey to follow for EU entry. Kurdistan is not on that list. Giving in to a recognized terrorist organization is not on that list. Fifth, not even Abdullah Öcalan speaks of splitting up Turkey for a Kurdistan. Though he would like a federal arrangement and wants the PKK to cease hostilities. Sixth, nobody in Turkey gives a shit about getting into the EU anymore. That ship has sailed. Seventh, trying to create a single nation out of the KRG combined with Rojava is going to be a blood bath. One side, the PYD/YPG isn’t exactly best buds with the KRG/Pershmega. When outside forces like ISIS are removed they will turn their attention to each other. Eighth, is it really a reasonable proposal to throw a bunch of Turkish Kurds into the mix just because it seems like a gosh-darn-aw-gosh-gee-whiz good idea? No. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/24 "2016-03-31T05:27:33Z")
Fair enough if the Turkish kurds don’t want to be part of greater kurdistan thats up to them. I wasn’t aware of that. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/25 "2016-03-31T12:54:32Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > …trying to create a single nation out of the KRG combined with Rojava is going to be a blood bath. One side, the PYD/YPG isn’t exactly best buds with the KRG/Pershmega. When outside forces like ISIS are removed they will turn their attention to each other. I would be surprised if they fell into real fighting with one another. The KRG pretty much needs peace with Ankara (which relationship benefits Turkey as well), yet they have tolerated and sometimes assisted PKK activity in their section, both before and during the Syrian war. There may be legitimate grievances between Kurdish factions, and it may be mistaken to push for a unitary state, but that doesn’t mean pan-Kurdish nationalism doesn’t still count. For an optimistic long term scenario, I can see a confederal arrangement between the provinces, maybe eventually a transnational one. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/26 "2016-04-01T18:16:11Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > I would be surprised if they fell into real fighting with one another. The KRG pretty much needs peace with Ankara (which relationship benefits Turkey as well), yet they have tolerated and sometimes assisted PKK activity in their section, both before and during the Syrian war. There may be legitimate grievances between Kurdish factions, and it may be mistaken to push for a unitary state, but that doesn’t mean pan-Kurdish nationalism doesn’t still count. For an optimistic long term scenario, I can see a confederal arrangement between the provinces, maybe eventually a transnational one. My understanding is there are two major sets of Kurdish political organizations across Syria, Iraq and Turkey: PKK/PYD types and Kurdish National Council types. These aren’t extremely well organized divisions either. For example, the PYD and PKK seem t act independently of each other although they seem to share the core of their ideology. Anyway, the parties that make up these groups have been in armed conflict with each other so I worry that it might get worse once the pressures that unite these groups are removed. But perhaps I am oversimplifying something I do not understand well enough (which seems to be a major theme of this thread). My main point here is that there are a lot of complications that make the idea of internationally determining a region for Kurds, exerting intense diplomatic pressure to make it happen, and following up with mass population movements is really just a pipe dream based on a superficial understanding of what is happening there. It’s an idea too intensely focused on the perceived positive outcome of being able to point to a region on the map and saying it’s the internationally recognized state of Kurdistan while discounting pretty much everything we know about the wants and needs of all involved. A lot more can be done for the Kurdish people as a whole and the region in general by exerting diplomatic pressure on the nations in the region to adopt better standards of government. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/27 "2016-04-01T18:55:57Z")
> [@OldOlds](#): > > What if we (the collective world we) carved out a chunk of northwestern Syria and allowed the Kurds to build a state there? I am thinking that we might be able to negotiate with both the Kurds and Turkey that such a state would be given friendly status with Turkey and the west, and in return the Kurds would relinquish any claims to Turkish territory as part of a Kurdistan. Ethnic (?) Kurds would be allowed to either stay in Turkey as willing Turks, or migrate to the newly formed Kurdistan and take part in the building of a nation. Good luck with that. As others have noted the Kurds are not a monolithic group or unitary faction by any means. For example, back during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s both sides provided arms and backing for the Kurds. The Iraqis provided arms to the Kurds in Iran to make problems for the Iranians, and the Iranians provided weapons to the Kurds in Iraq to make problems for the Iraqis. From [here](http://www.mei.edu/content/kurdish-factor-iran-iraq-relations): > [@](#): > > Shortly after the onset of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Iraqi government began to woo the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) as potential leverage in its war effort. In January 1981, Saddam Husayn’s regime established its first major weapons supply route to the KDPI near the Iranian cities of Nowdesheh and Qasr-e Shirin. > > By 1983, Iran began to play its own Kurdish card against Saddam Husayn’s forces. Having secured the support of both Massoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP) and Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and forming a united front against the Iraqi regime, Saddam Husayn, in a last ditch effort to untangle the Iranian-Kurdish threat in the north, opened a secret channel of negotiations with the Kurds by promising them greater autonomy in their internal affairs. All this time and essentially unrelated the [PKK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party) was causing problems for Turkey; the PKK was a Marxist–Leninist group up until 1999 when it drifted away from that being its central tenant with the capture of Abdullah Ocalan. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603/28 "2016-04-01T22:07:47Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Fair enough if the Turkish kurds don’t want to be part of greater kurdistan thats up to them. I wasn’t aware of that. I’m pretty sure Turkish Kurds would _love_ to be part of a new Kurdistan. The sticking point is that they almost certainly want the land they’re currently living on to also be part of that new Kurdistan. Turkey does not want to give up the land. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syria-opportunity-for-kurds/750603.md?page=1)