The Infamous Kurd! (Part 1)
- MaddiW
- Jan 11, 2019
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 17, 2019
Hello! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I'm glad you guys are back to learn about another wonderful culture in the world with me today! If you couldn't tell by the title, today I will be talking about the Kurdish people, their history, and their culture. I will let you all know, this will be split into two parts like the last because there is so much interesting and important information to tell, I can't put it all in one. So let's get started!
So I wanted to look up things about the Kurds because I feel like I always hear about them but I never really knew what they were. Which is why Google is my best friend for these types of things.
The Kurds are an ethnic and linguistic group of people who are now mostly found in Iran, Iraq and Turkey as well as other nations ( Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Europe, Lebanon, and Syria). Even though the Kurds don't have an official nation, most people identify the parts of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey where they are most prevalent as Kurdistan. Their name "Kurds" has been confirmed to be given to the tribe during their conversion to Islam in the 7th century. Today, most Kurdish people are Sunni Muslims, some who practice Sufism. Sufism is a mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. It consists of a variety of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the nature of humanity and of God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of divine love and wisdom in the world.
One thing we know is that the Kurdish people were traditionally nomadic. The Kurds usually followed flocks of sheep and only practiced marginal agriculture. The Kurds also, traditionally, had endogenous marriages, meaning they would marry people within a certain tribe or group. Males would usually begin to marry at the age of 20 while females would get married at the age of 12. Households usually only had a father,mother, and their children. Other than these facts, many don't know much about Kurdish per-history.
The traditional way of living changed after World War I (WWI). Because of WWI, Kurdish people where forced to abandon their traditional ways and settle farms and get nontraditional jobs. As the Kurdish people began to detribalize, their culture urbanized and began to assimilate with those of other nations. During this time, Kurdish people began pushing for nationalism. At the end of WWI, The Treaty of Sèvres gave the Kurds an autonomous Kurdistan, giving them the freedom to govern themselves. Sadly, the treaty was never ratified and was replaced with Treaty of Lausanne. Since WWI, Kurds have been discriminated a number of times in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.
The Kurds of Turkey have received unsympathetic treatment at the hands of the government. The Turkish government had tried to deprive them of their Kurdish identity by designating them as “Mountain Turks,” outlawing the Kurdish language (or representing it as a dialect of Turkish), and by forbidding them to wear distinctive Kurdish dress in or near the important administrative cities. The Turkish government also encourages the migration of Kurds to the urbanized western portion of Turkey to dilute the concentration of Kurdish population in the uplands. Because of this acts of discrimination, periodic rebellions occurred in Turkey. In 1978, a man named Abdullah Öcalan formed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known by its Kurdish acronym, PKK), a Marxist organization dedicated to creating an independent Kurdistan. PKK attacks and government retaliation led to a state of virtual war in eastern Turkey during the 1980s and ’90s. Following Öcalan’s capture in 1999, PKK activities reduced for several years before the party resumed small activities in 2004. The Kurds gained victory in Turkey when the government began to show broadcasts in the Kurdish language and began integrating the language into it's education system, due to pressure from the European Union (EU).
Kurds also felt strong assimilation pressure from the national government in Iran and endured religious persecution by that country’s Shīʿite Muslim majority. Shortly after World War II (WWII), the Soviet Union backed the establishment of an independent country around the largely Kurdish city of Mahābād, in northwestern Iran. The so-called Republic of Mahābād collapsed after Soviet withdrawal in 1946, but about that same time the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) was established. Thereafter, the KDPI engaged in low-level hostilities with the Iranian government into the 21st century.
Although the pressure for Kurds to assimilate was less intense in Iraq (where the Kurdish language and culture have been freely practiced), government repression has been the most brutal. One of the most brutal Kurdish Episodes took place in 1988. In a series of operations between March and August 1988, code-named Anfal (Arabic: “Spoils”), Iraqi forces sought to quell Kurdish resistance; the Iraqis used large quantities of chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians. Although technically it was not part of Anfal, one of the largest chemical attacks during that period took place on March 16 in and around the village of Ḥalabjah, when Iraqi troops killed as many as 5,000 Kurds with mustard gas and nerve agent. Despite these attacks, Kurds again rebelled following Iraq’s defeat in the Persian Gulf War (1990–91) but were again brutally suppressed—sparking another mass exodus. With the help of the United States, however, the Kurds were able to establish a “safe haven” that included most areas of Kurdish settlement in northern Iraq, where the IKDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—a faction that split from the IKDP in 1975—created an autonomous civil authority that was, for the most part, free from interference by the Iraqi government.
Violence and instability in Iraq following the removal of Saddam Hussein and in Syria following the outbreak of civil war in 2011 threatened the security of Kurdish communities but also offered new opportunities for Kurds to advance their claims to autonomy.The primary threat to Kurds was the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which captured and occupied territory adjacent to Kurdish areas in Iraq and Syria in 2013. Kurdish fighters in northern Syria entered into heavy fighting with ISIL and quickly proved to be some of the most effective ground forces against the group.
I hoped this was informative. Even the the Kurds have a somewhat sad history (in my opinion anyways), I'm glad that their culture is still being passed down and celebrated despite the discrimination against them in certain countries. I hope that one day they get their freedom to govern themselves and to spread their culture happily!
My next update will be more about the Kurdish culture (Food, Dance, Dress, etc.) Please come back for that one!
Thank you for reading. If you have any opinions, put them in the comments or you can tell me yourself if you'd like!
Until Next Time!
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