The Kurds have taken the city of Kirkuk, which they have always considered their capital, and its oilfields. The Iraqi government appears to have accepted that as a fait accompli, while still protesting the Kurds have no right to sell oil independents, but they’re doing that anyway, to Turkey and now to Israel. Some are speculating they will soon declare independence, and if they do there’s probably nothing the Iraqi government, in its present straits, can do to stop them; besides, it needs them as an ally against ISIS.
If so, how will the Turks react? The largest part of Kurdistan is within their territory, and the Turkish government (like the Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian governments) have always been implacably hostile to the idea of an independent Kurdish state anywhere in the region, for fear it will encourage their own Kurds to join it. OTOH, you know, oil. And the Iranians also want all the allies they can get against ISIS, they don’t want a radical Sunni theocracy on the borders of their radical Shi’a theocracy.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Kurds, who have militias active in Syria’s civil war, have been pushing for regional autonomy. It is possible they’ll raise the stakes to outright independence if they have a larger Kurdish state to unite with.
I’m for an independent Kurdistan, I suppose, the Kurds are always going to make trouble until they get one, and it could be a useful buffer state in the region. Of course, it would have all the problems of a landlocked country with possibly hostile neighbors. But, you know, oil.
How wise/clever are they? Might they get better results by playing it coy and cagey, always on the verge of declaring statehood, but never quite, so as to wring the maximum concessions from Turkey?
It’s a scaled-down version of the Palestinian problem: if they declare statehood, with the borders they want, they antagonize Turkey, but if the declare statehood with borders that other countries could accept, they deny themselves a whole lot of land they really want.
It’s not as though ISIS are putting suppressing fire inbetween government officials and their laptops. They can make decisions whatever’s going on, and if they’re focused on the threat, well, this is a very easy thing they can do to help reduce the threat.
I hope they do. It will be good to have one state in the region that is reasonably friendly to Israel. Kurds and Jews were never enemies (yes, there were some bellicose Jumblatt utterings, but that guy can be excused for having to deal with Lebanon politics).
Flatout declaring statehood from a crumbling/weak central government didn’t work for Somaliland; 23 years later they still are unrecognized.
The only way for full recognition (not the half measures that Taiwan/Kosovo/NCyprus have) is to have the larger country you’re ceding from, acknowledge your sovereignty. In other words, they need Baghdad’s blessing or they will become a non/half-state pariah.
And Israel has always had a good relationship with the Kurds. It’s part of a decades-long policy to nurture relations with non-Arab minorities in the Middle East, which led to Israel’s former friendships with Iran and Turkey, among others
I knew I should have been more specific: scaled down in terms of the urgency in terms of worldwide interest.
The declaration, tomorrow, of Palestine as a state would be a major upheaval. The declaration of Kurdistan would be much less dramatic in overall world interest.
My fault for not being clear on what dimension I was scaling.
Define ‘Kurdistan’. ‘Greater Kurdistan’ includes parts of Turkey, Syria and Iran. That’s why they tend to have opposed an independent Kurdistan. Thin end of an unpleasant nationalist wedge.
Well…probably better to say he claims Kurdish ancestry. His family has been in the Chouf for many generations and seem pretty thoroughly Arabized. The PSP were definitely pan-Arabists in an earlier generation.
Splitting hairs maybe, but while there are some Kurds in Lebanon, I don’t believe there are many in Walid Jumblatt’s constituency.
The former, I’m sure; it’s the territory they want to keep, the people are a headache, and anyway there are at least 12 million Kurds in Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan has no room for them all.
For some reason, it seems to have escaped almost everyone’s notice, but Turkey has recently become much more friendly to the Iraqi Kurds than it has been.
Yeah, Flyer, I’ve brought it up a few times that Turkey and Kurdistan have been doing some big business. The kurds just completed an oil pipeline to a Turkish port city. You quote above though is pretty illustrative that Turkey is not that worried about an independent Kurdistan.
I don’t know if they will, but it would at least make some sense. The borders of these countries don’t really make any sense now- they were drawn by basically colonial powers who wanted to keep the place under control. If the whole area gets repartitioned, even by these means, well, I doubt it will make anyone like us or each other much more than they did before, but at least it will have a greater perceived legitimacy than what exists now. The factions and the geography will (sort of) line up, and will be the result of negotiations or wars between the resident parties. Brilliant!