The Kurdish question without prejudice to its own. Kurds and the Kurdish question. Mikhail Lazarev. Statehood of the Kurds. Her prospects

The Middle East remains a conflict region, but while the view of the world community is aimed at combating ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation), the Kurds are fighting to create their own state.

The Middle East is the cradle of ancient civilizations, and to this day remains home to many ethnic groups, one of which is Kurds... The people living on the territory of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq currently do not have their own statehood, but have been fighting for its creation for a long time, which is hindered by many various factors. First of all, the territorial issue: after all, those lands on which the Kurds plan to declare their independence have access to oil fields. Second, the issue of international law. Until now, the point about the "right of peoples to self-determination" remains controversial, which led to a clash of interests and views of the international community regarding Kosovo and Crimea.

The question of creating an independent Kurdistan arose after the First World War (1914-1918). The Kurds actively participating in the war against the central powers (the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and the Bulgarian kingdom) were given guarantees of the creation of their own state on the territory of the former Turkish possessions. The harsh conditions of the Peace Treaty of Sevres (1920) as a result of the war did not suit the Turks, who again took up arms. As a result, a new Lausanne Treaty was concluded, according to which Turkey (which received a new name after the revolution of Ataturk Kemal) retained its territories. Naturally, in such a situation, the Kurds, who were actually deceived, received nothing.

The main opponent of the creation of a Kurdish state for many years has been Turkey (with Iraq sometimes intervening in the conflict, on whose territory the Kurds also have claims). In 1978, the Kurdistan Workers' Party was formed, leading the guerrilla war.

When the problem of countering the spreading threat of terrorism came to the fore on the international agenda, it would seem that a common enemy appeared in the region and the hatchet of war could be buried. In 2013, a truce was concluded between the Kurdistan Workers' Party, political and guerrilla organizations and Turkey, which, of course, did not last long - Kurdish question was not resolved. The conflict, frozen for a while, was melted by force of arms. The new round of the conflict turned out to be much more serious: aviation, tanks, thousands of military contingents went into action.

It should be noted that the international stability violated by ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation) was used by both the Turkish government, which tried to end the claims of the proud people once and for all, and the Kurds themselves, who, having received weapons in their hands, decided to turn the situation in their favor.

The main difficulty for the Turkish leadership in the fight against the Kurds lies in the fact that it is the Kurdish formations in Syria that are the most combat-ready army to counter terrorism. This point of view is shared by both Russia (along with it the government of Syria) and the United States, which supports the "Kurdish People's Protection Units". According to the US central command, the key goal in the destruction of ISIS is the capture of Raqqa, a kind of capital of terrorism. It is the Syrian Kurds who can play a key role in this matter, for which they, of course, need the weapons that the United States supplies them with. The official decision to start deliveries was made by US President Donald Trump on May 9, 2017.

On May 16, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Washington in order to get the American leadership to stop military supplies to Kurdish groups, which Ankara perceives as terrorist. It is necessary to take into account the fact that after the liberation of Syria, the weapons of the Kurdish units may be directed against the Turkish leadership. This cannot but cause concern for Erdogan, but the results achieved during the meeting did not meet his expectations. Donald Trump has not expressed any definite position regarding the supply of weapons to the Kurds, in connection with which it can be argued that the issue has not been resolved.

Our expert is confident that Donald Trump's rhetoric about the fight against ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation) will soon begin to fade, because Turkey is an important US ally in the region.

Expert opinion

Natalya Aleksandrovna Tsvetkova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Department of American Studies, Faculty of International Relations, St. Petersburg State University, specialist in US foreign policy

“The situation around the Kurdish issue changed dramatically when the war against international terrorism broke out in the Middle East. Kurds now have considerable power that the US president does not represent. In this regard, Trump does not understand how sensitive the Kurdish issue is for Turkey. A positive role in this situation will be played by the US foreign policy establishment, which has always been able to find points of contact with both the Kurdish side and the Turkish leadership.

In my opinion, the situation will develop as follows: Donald Trump, who acts intuitively and proceeds from a personal outlook, will soon curtail the rhetoric that weapons are supplied to fight ISIS, and not against Turkey. The US President will not break with Erdogan, and sooner or later the establishment will be able to drop the rhetoric. American deliveries will continue, but they won't talk about it. "

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As the referendum on the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, which is scheduled for September 25, approaches, tensions in the region are growing. An explosion occurred the other day in Kirkuk, a major city that has become the subject of a territorial dispute between the Iraqi Kurds and the government in Baghdad. During the terrorist attack, three people were killed, about ten were injured. Almost simultaneously, the head of the Iraqi government, Haider al-Abadi, made a statement that "if Iraqi citizens are threatened by unlawful violence, we will begin military intervention."

Al-Abadi's attitude to the Kurdish referendum is also extremely negative. “If you threaten our constitution, threaten the territorial integrity of Iraq and regional state division, this can be perceived as an invitation to revise the borders. A very dangerous decision, ”he said.

Under these conditions, the likelihood of a new war, now between the Iraqi Kurds and the government in Baghdad, looks very high, - Mikhail Magid, a specialist on the Middle East, cultural and political scientist, told Rosbalt in an interview.

- You say that there is a high degree of likelihood of an imminent start of a new war in the Middle East, now between the Kurds and Shiites, who are at the head of the official Iraqi government in Baghdad. Why, in your opinion, is such a scenario possible?

- You know, Victor Pelevin in one of his novels calls the oil demon Kirkuk. I must say that Pelevin may be close to reality. The Iraqi city of Kirkuk has recently been in the spotlight of analysts who follow developments in the Middle East.

- What is the problem here?

- Kirkuk, a million-plus city, the capital of the province of the same name, is located 236 km north of Baghdad and 83 km south of the city of Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. The latter not only has its own armed forces of at least 100 thousand fighters (peshmerga), but has an independent government that independently concludes deals with foreign corporations. The lion's share of the revenues of Iraqi Kurdistan comes from oil exports - 500-600 thousand barrels per day (in total, about 4.5 million barrels are produced in Iraq). Kurds sell them independently of the Shiite central government in Baghdad.

- Yes, and then there's a referendum ...

- Quite right. As you know, on September 25, Iraqi Kurdistan intends to hold a referendum and, based on its results, declare independence. This is causing a sharp reaction from Baghdad. And the point is not only that the formal proclamation of independence will be another act of Iraq's disintegration. Kirkuk is a contested area. In the city itself, the majority of the population are Kurds, and a significant minority are Arabs and Turkmens. And if the former support independent Kurdistan, the latter do not. A referendum will also be held in Kirkuk, which Baghdad has strongly opposed, as decided by the Kurdish-dominated local government and the Iraqi Kurdistan Region government.

Added to the ethnic conflict and the threat of the final disintegration of the country is another key factor - oil. Of the 500-600 thousand barrels of Kurdish oil, 400 thousand are produced in Kirkuk. It is inconceivable that the government in Baghdad would simply say, "By God, take your oil and leave!" In addition, elections will be held in Iraq in the spring of 2018. About 80% of the country's population (not counting Kurdistan) and almost all of its leadership are Shiites, and the question of who will rule Iraq is being decided in the Shiite camp, where a sharp struggle is now going on. And if Prime Minister Abadi demonstrates uncertainty in the dispute over Kirkuk, his own voters will not understand him, who in this case can support the pro-Iranian politician Nuri Maliki, who is gradually gaining political weight, in the elections.

In general, the Shiite camp in Iraq is very split. Do not forget that the government is waging a war with the "Islamic State" (a terrorist organization banned on the territory of the Russian Federation), relying not only on the army, but also on 100-150 thousand Shiite militias from Hashd ash Shaabi (HASH, People's Mobilization Forces "). These units are run by approximately forty independent and powerful field commanders, and approximately 30% of the militias are under the full military and ideological leadership of Iran.

Many militias will be unhappy with Kirkuk's surrender. Tehran is also not interested in strengthening Kurdistan. So Abadi is motivated to fight the Kurds.

- Are Abadi's militant statements caused by this?

- Yes. But the President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, is determined. He needs an independence referendum to bolster his faltering influence, and he needs Kirkuk as the backbone of the economy. In Iraqi Kurdistan, elections have not been held for a long time, the powers of the authorities have expired, the country is in an economic crisis, and for all these reasons, the legitimacy of President Barzani and his party KDP (Democratic Party of Kurdistan) is questionable. He is being challenged by the Kurds of Sulaymaniyah (the influential Talabani clan and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), the Yezidis who are ready to declare their own independence in Shengal, the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) and other groups.

- It turns out that Iraqi Kurdistan is also not a monolith?

- Yes, the fact is that in the modern world there is an illusion that there is Syria, there is Iraq, there is Lebanon. But these countries as a whole have long ceased to exist. Moreover: even the large territories into which they are split are not united, they are also extremely fragmented. I can say that in Iraqi Kurdistan alone (the Kurds themselves call it Bashur, South Kurdistan) there are 15 independent armed militias, various ethnic-confessional communities and parties. Many of them (PUK, PKK, Goran Movement, Yezidi representatives) criticize Barzani. Therefore, it is unlikely that Barzani will seriously discuss the issue of Kirkuk with the Shiites: he already considers it his own.

On the other hand, the struggle for this city, in theory, is capable of uniting all Kurdish factions. Perhaps an attempt to encompass Kirkuk in a referendum, approving the annexation of this territory to Iraqi Kurdistan, is generally the main goal of the referendum. There are experts who think this way. The problem is that such actions by Erbil are unilateral. And this makes Masoud Barzani's policy extremely dangerous.

The operation to liberate the Hawija region in the south-west of Kirkuk province from IS militants, which is being prepared by Baghdad, adds fuel to the fire. Large formations of the Iraqi army and HASH are concentrated here, which especially annoys the Kurds, since the People's Mobilization Forces have already participated in battles with them. Kurds fear that after the release of Khavija, Shiites will turn to Kirkuk. In this area, 42 thousand Iraqi military and Shiite militias are now concentrated. Kurds are also afraid of an attack on Kirkuk by about 2,000 IS fighters ousted from Khavija.

- What is Turkey's attitude to the referendum?

- Very bad! Its president, Recep Erdogan, said that the meetings of the NSS (Turkish National Security Council), which will be held from 22 to 27 September, will be devoted to the referendum in South Kurdistan, and, mentioning the leader of the KDP, Barzani, made the following threatening statement: “Our opinion is known, but now Barzani will see how great our sensitivity on this issue is after the meeting of the National Security Service and the government on September 22. Our border with Iraq is 350 km long. On the one hand, there is Iran, on the other, Syria. The situation in Syria is well known. What is our position? We support the territorial integrity of Iraq. Iran is in the same position. If, in spite of all this, you try to accept the declaration of independence, then no offense, but you should not think that others will simply say 'yes' to you. "

Thus, we see that Erdogan not only threatens the Kurds, but also announces joint actions with Iran. The reasons for this are clear. There are 20 million Kurds living in Turkey (a quarter of the country's population!) And a PKK guerrilla war against the government is underway. The Kurdistan Workers' Party demands autonomy. On the other hand, there are 8 million Kurds living in Iran. There are now clashes between Kurdish demonstrators and the Iranian army, there are killed on both sides, a regular army has been brought into the Bane and Mahabad regions. This is all very serious.

Obviously, for the Turkish and Iranian Kurds, the declaration of independence of Iraqi Kurdistan will be a loud signal. This will strengthen the demands of an independent and united Kurdistan. But the same factor leads to rapprochement between Turkey and Iran, which everyone is talking about now.

And yet, I doubt that Turkey and Iran will launch an attack on Iraqi Kurdistan. First of all, because the KDP (Democratic Party of Kurdistan, controlled by Barzani) daily sells 500,000 barrels of oil to Erdogan.

- How do the great powers, primarily the United States and the Russian Federation, relate to the Kurdish referendum and everything connected with it?

- I think that the United States will try to convince the parties not to open hostilities against each other. America is interested in defeating IS and fears that the scenario of a Kurdish-Shiite war can only be beneficial to the militants. The influence of the United States on the Kurds, the government in Baghdad, and Turkey is still great. There is a high probability that Washington will be able to prevent the war. At the same time, the States are clearly worried. They suggested the Kurds to postpone the referendum for two years. They have their own alternative plan, the details of which have not yet been made public. But I don't think Barzani will follow this advice. He has now dramatically increased his popularity in the Kurdish world precisely because of the idea of ​​a referendum. If this idea was abandoned now, he could be perceived as a traitor and even overthrown.

- It seems that Moscow is calm about the secession of the Kurdish autonomy from Iraq. In any case, indirectly, this can be judged at least by the fact that the Russian state corporation Rosneft recently concluded a major deal with the government of Iraqi Kurdistan for the construction and operation of a pipeline through which gas will be supplied to Turkey and Europe.

- Perhaps. Or maybe Moscow has simply not yet decided on this issue. However, once the battle with IS is over, the likelihood of a Kurdish-Shiite war will increase again. This question is of great importance. The political landscape of the Middle East has changed irreversibly. The collapse of a number of Arab states - Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya became a reality (but there is a special conversation about the latter). First, in the chaos that formed in their place, IS tried to gain a foothold. But after his defeat, the situation changed. Now Iran is gaining strength and gradually subjugates the region. It relies on a network of Shiite militias, including those discussed above, and the friendly governments of Iraq and Syria.

The second factor of the new reality of the Middle East, which is no less important than the Iranian - Kurdish. This is the crystallization of Kurdistan. As it grows, it destroys four states where Kurds live (a total of 40-50 million people in the region) - Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Naturally, neither the three Shiite governments in Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran, nor Ankara like what is happening. Hence the outlined rapprochement between these regimes. It is through the prism of this confrontation that one must look at the events taking place.

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KURDS AND THE KURDISH QUESTION. Kurds compactly inhabit mainly the historical region of Kurdistan in the southwest of the Asian continent, which occupies the adjacent territories of southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq and northern Syria. A significant number of Kurds live in the diaspora (mainly in other countries of the Middle East, Western Europe and the CIS). Currently, the Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world (up to 30 million), deprived of the right to self-determination and state sovereignty.

Geographical position. Kurdistan occupies a key geopolitical and geostrategic position in the Middle East region, and the Kurdish struggle for national liberation makes the Kurdish issue an urgent problem of world politics. A feature of the geographic location of Kurdistan is the absence of clear physical and legally fixed political boundaries. The name Kurdistan (literally - "country of Kurds") does not refer to the state, but exclusively to the ethnic territory, in which the Kurds constitute the relative majority of the population and the geographical coordinates of which cannot be precisely determined, since they are purely evaluative in nature. Due to historical cataclysms, the outlines of this territory have repeatedly changed, mainly towards the expansion of the Kurdophonic area.

Modern Kurdistan is located in the very center of the West Asian (Middle East) region, approximately between 34 and 40 ° north latitude and 38 and 48 ° east longitude. It occupies approximately the entire central part of the imaginary quadrangle, in the northwest and southwest bounded by the Black and Mediterranean Seas, and in the northeast and southeast by the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. From west to east, the territory of Kurdistan stretches for about 1 thousand km., And from north to south - from 300 to 500 km. Its total area is approximately 450 thousand square meters. km. Over 200 thousand sq. km. is part of modern Turkey (Northern and Western Kurdistan), over 160 thousand square meters. km. - Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), up to 75 thousand sq. km. - Iraq (South Kurdistan) and 15 thousand square meters. km. - Syria (Southwest Kurdistan).

Ethno-demographic sketch. According to the main ethnic characteristics, primarily linguistic, the Kurdish nation is very heterogeneous. The Kurdish language is mainly divided into two unequal groups of dialects, northern and southern, each of which has developed its own literary language; in the first - kurmanji, in the second - sorani. About 60% of Kurds living in Turkey, Northwestern and Eastern Iran, Syria, parts of Northern Iraq and the CIS speak and write in Kurmanji dialects (mostly Latin, as well as Arabic script), up to 30% (Western and South -Western Iran, Eastern and Southeastern Iraq) - in Sorani dialects (only Arabic graphics). In addition, among the Kurds of a special ethno-confessional group Zaza (Il Tunceli in Turkish Kurdistan), the language of Zazaki or Dumli (Latin script) is widespread, and among the Kurds of Kermanshah in Iran, the related Gurani (Arabic script). Original literature and folklore developed in these languages ​​and dialects.

Although Kurdish languages ​​and dialects have their own grammatical features, sometimes considerable, linguistic differences in the Kurdish ethnic environment are not so great as to exclude mutual understanding, especially in oral communication. The Kurds themselves do not attach much importance to them, categorically not recognizing their ethno-dividing role. In addition, within one country, many of them were united by bilingualism - knowledge of the main language of the country of residence (Turkish, Persian or Arabic).

The role of religion in modern Kurdish society is relatively small, especially in the area of ​​national identity. The vast majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims (75% of all Kurds), but Sunni orthodoxy, as well as fundamentalist Islam, is little popular. Even in the recent past, the Dervish (also Sunni) orders of Naqshbendi and Qadiri were traditionally influential, now they are much less. Shiites, mostly supporters of the Shiite sects of the Ahl-i Hakk or Ali-Ilahi, live mainly in Turkey (where they are known under the collective name "Alevi"), making up from 20 to 30% of the Kurdophonic population. Zaza Kurds are completely Ahl-i Hakk. In Iran, Shiites inhabit the vicinity of Kermanshah. A special ethno-confessional group of Kurds is formed by the Yezidis (up to 200 thousand), professing a special cult of a syncretic nature, having absorbed, in addition to elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, some ancient Eastern beliefs. Yezidis live dispersedly mainly in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the Caucasus.

Among the Kurds, there is a high natural population growth - about 3% per year, which has led to a significant increase in the number of the Kurdish ethnic group in recent years.

Kurds are settled unevenly in the countries of their residence. Most of them are in Turkey (about 47%). In Iran, Kurds are about 32%, in Iraq - about 16%, in Syria - about 4%, in the states of the former USSR - about 1%. The rest live in the diaspora.

Throughout the historically foreseeable time, the ethnic composition of Kurdistan has repeatedly changed due to the countless cataclysms that have taken place on its territory. These changes are taking place now.

Socio-economic relations. The Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria are distinguished by a lower level of economic development, social relations and social organization of society, as well as culture in comparison with these countries in general and with their most developed regions.

The social organization of Kurdish society partly retains archaic features with remnants of tribal relations, within which the feudal system makes itself felt. True, at present in the Kurdish society there is a rapid erosion of traditional social forms. In the relatively developed regions of Kurdistan, there are almost no tribal ties left.

Nevertheless, socio-economic progress is being observed in the comparatively backward regions of Kurdistan. Economic positions are undermined and the political influence of the Kurdish secular and spiritual nobility is falling, modern social structures are emerging and gaining strength - the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie (urban and rural), the working class.

Changes in Kurdish society have created the basis for the emergence of Kurdish nationalism, both ideology and politics. At the same time, the remaining vestiges of traditional social forms continue to hinder the process of modernization of this society.

The traditional elite of modern Kurdistan, consisting of people from feudal-clerical and tribal circles, still has a noticeable economic and, especially, political and ideological influence. True, there are many democratic and leftist leaders among modern Kurdish leaders. Moreover, it is they who make the weather in the socio-political climate of Kurdish society. However, the influence of archaic traditions continues to be felt, such as religious discord, tribal particularism and parochialism, class and dynastic prejudices, hegemonic claims and leaderism. Hence such negative phenomena in social and political life as political instability, internecine feuds, etc.

The visible features of backwardness in social relations to a large extent stem from an archaic and unproductive economic basis, which, moreover, is currently in a crisis state of transition from old pre-capitalist forms to modern ones.

Remote pastoralism (with seasonal migrations, mainly "vertical", in summer to mountain pastures, in winter to valleys), the basis of the traditional economy of the rural population, has fallen into decay, and intensive methods of agricultural production are hardly adopted. Industry and infrastructure are poorly developed in Kurdistan and have not created enough jobs for impoverished peasants, artisans and small traders. Deprived of their livelihoods, the Kurds rush to the cities of the developed regions of their countries of residence, as well as abroad. There, the Kurdish proletariat is predominantly engaged in unskilled and low-skilled labor, being subjected to particularly strong exploitation. In short, the Kurdish areas are a backward periphery in all the countries that divided Kurdistan. It is characteristic that even where there has been an abundant inflow of petrodollars in recent decades (Iraq and Iran, whose oil riches are largely located in Kurdistan and adjacent regions), there is a noticeable lag in the development of the Kurdish outskirts from the territories inhabited by titular nationalities.

In Kurdistan itself, the level of economic development in different regions is not the same. Until the early 1970s, the economy of Turkish Kurdistan, like that of the whole of Turkey, developed faster, although already from the 1960s Iran began to catch up with the pace of economic development. After a sharp rise in world oil prices in 1973, Iran and Iraq, and then Syria, found themselves in an advantageous position. Although the Kurdish areas of Iran and Arab countries have received relatively little benefit from the oil boom, the flow of petrodollars has somewhat increased their well-being.

Thus, two main problems are inherent in the socio-economic relations of modern Kurdistan: overcoming backwardness and uneven development in its individual parts. The lack of resolution of these problems negatively affects the process of national consolidation of the Kurdish people and the effectiveness of their struggle for their national rights.

HISTORY Kurds are one of the most ancient peoples of Western Asia. The original center of Kurdish ethnogenesis is located in Northern Mesopotamia, in the very center of historical and modern Kurdistan. This process began around the 4th millennium BC. and took at least three millennia, and its participants (Hurrians or Subareans, Kutis, Lullubis, Kassites, Kardukhs) can be considered only the distant ancestors of the Kurds. Their immediate ancestors, Iranian-speaking (especially Median) shepherd tribes appeared on the historical arena in the middle of the 1st millennium BC, when the process of ethnic consolidation of the Kurdish people proper began, in which the Semitic elements also participated. This process, which began within the framework of the ancient Persian civilization (in the 6th – 4th centuries BC in the era of the Achaemenid kings), continued under the Parthian Arshakids and ended under the late Sassanids, already in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. By the time of the Arab conquest of Iran and the fall of the Sassanid state (mid-7th century AD), the Kurdish ethnos had already fully formed and the Kurdish history itself began. However, the ethno-consolidation process among the Kurds was not completed, later other ethnic elements (especially Turkic) were included in it, and it continues to this day.

The formation of the Kurdish people, and later the nation, was not accompanied, as in most other peoples, by the formation of statehood, the tendency to unite into a single centralized state. This was prevented primarily by the external conditions in which the Kurdish people found themselves during and after the Arab conquest and the accompanying violent Islamization. Kurdistan, thanks to its central geostrategic position in the Middle East, has become a permanent arena of endless wars, predatory raids of nomads, uprisings and their terrorist suppression, which abounded in the military and political history of the region during the era of the Caliphate (7-13 centuries), accompanied by endless civil strife, and especially devastating Turkic-Mongol invasions (11-15 centuries). Kurds, resisting the oppressors, suffered huge human and material losses.

During this period, the Kurds repeatedly attempted to achieve independence for individual large tribal associations headed by the most influential and noble leaders who claimed to establish their own dynasties. Some of them held vast territories for a relatively long time as de facto sovereign rulers. Such were the Hasanvaykhids, the rulers of a vast region in Southeastern Kurdistan in 959-1015, the Marvanids, who ruled in Southwestern Kurdistan (the region of Diyarbekir and Jazira) in 985-1085, the Shaddadids (951-1088), whose possessions were in Transcaucasia, finally Ayyubids (1169-1252), also immigrants from Transcaucasia, conquered Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Central and Southeast Kurdistan, the most famous representative of which was the victorious crusader Sultan Salah Ad-Din.

However, none of the Kurdish dynasties proved to be durable and could not turn the territory under their control into a national hotbed of Kurdish statehood. In the empire of Saladin, for example, the majority of the population were not Kurds, but Arabs, and the army consisted mainly of Turks. The idea of ​​national-state unity could not yet spread and receive effective support among the Kurds, divided into tribes and small fiefdoms.

The beginning of the 16th century - the most important milestone in Kurdish history. The Ottoman Empire, which by that time had captured the entire Arab East (and soon the West), and Iran, where the Shiite Safavid dynasty united the whole country, divided the territory of Kurdistan among themselves, about 2/3 of which went to the Turks, who inflicted a crushing defeat on the Persians at Chaldyran in 1514. Thus, the first division of the territory of Kurdistan took place along the Turkish-Iranian border, which has since become the border of the war. Over the next four centuries, Turkey and Iran fought endlessly among themselves for complete domination over this strategically key country, which opens the way for expansion in all directions and is itself a natural fortress due to its mountainous relief and warlike population. In the end, the Turkish-Iranian wars turned out to be ineffectual, because the current border remained basically the same as after the Chaldyran battle. But they caused enormous damage to the national development of the Kurds. The Kurdish lands were periodically subjected to devastation, the people, alternately involved in hostilities on the side of the Turks or Persians (and often both at the same time), suffered heavy human losses (including the civilian population). This situation deprived the Kurds of any hope of unification.

The position of the Kurds in the Ottoman Empire and in the Shah's Iran was ambiguous. On the one hand, they, along with the entire population, perished in endless border wars. On the other hand, in both Turkey and Iran in the Kurdish provinces, a peculiar system of vassalage developed, when real government on the ground was carried out not by government officials, but by the Kurdish tribal leaders themselves and the feudal-theocratic elite - beys, khans, aha, sheikhs - in exchange loyalty to the central government. The existence for a long time of this peculiar buffer in the center-Kurdish periphery system partially eased the position of the Kurdish popular masses, served as an antidote to the assimilation of Kurds by Turks, Persians, Arabs, and contributed to the preservation and strengthening of the Kurdish people of their national identity. However, the direct subordination of the Kurds to the power of their feudal-tribal elite also led to serious negative consequences: the conservation of traditional socio-economic relations in Kurdish society, hindering its natural evolution in a progressive direction. At the same time, separate large separatist demonstrations organized and led by the Kurdish elite (for example, in South-Eastern Kurdistan - Ardelan in the second half of the 18th century) shattered the absolutist regimes in Turkey and Iran and created the preconditions for a subsequent rise there in the 19th and early 20th centuries. national liberation movement.

The Kurds' actions against the Turkish sultans and Iranian shahs took place against the backdrop of a deep crisis and decline of the Ottoman Empire and Iran. Since the beginning of the 19th century. in the territory of Kurdistan, powerful uprisings broke out continuously. In the first half of the 19th century. the main arena of the Kurdish movement was the historical regions of Bakhdinan, Soran, Jazira, Hakari. It was brutally suppressed (the so-called "secondary conquest" of the territory of Kurdistan by the Turks). In 1854-1855, almost all of Northern and Western Kurdistan was seized by the Ezdanshir uprising, in the late 1870s - early 1880s in South-West Kurdistan, in the region of the Turkish-Iranian border and in Northeastern Kurdistan, the largest and most organized uprising of the Kurds took place, one of whose leaders, Sheikh Obeidullah, set the then unrealizable goal of creating an independent united Kurdistan. Several major demonstrations of the Kurds were noted in Turkey during the era of the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908-1909, during the Iranian Revolution of 1905-1911 and on the eve of the First World War. They were all suppressed.

The rise of the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Iran tried to take advantage of primarily Russia and England, and from the end of the century and Germany, seeking to establish their political and economic influence over them. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. the first shoots of Kurdish nationalism appeared as an ideology and as a politician: the Kurdish press and the beginnings of Kurdish political organizations became its bearers.

The second section of Kurdistan and the struggle for its independence and unification. After the First World War, the Entente powers redistributed the Asian possessions of the Ottoman Empire, which was part of the defeated Quadruple Alliance, including the part of Kurdistan that belonged to it. Its southern part (the Mosul vilayet) was included in Iraq, the mandate over which on behalf of the League of Nations was received by England, the southwestern part (the strip along the Turkish-Syrian border) - entered Syria, the mandate territory of France. Thus, the division of Kurdistan has doubled, which significantly complicated the struggle of the Kurds for self-determination and made the geopolitical position of the country more vulnerable by increasing the intervention of Western colonial powers in the affairs of the Kurdish region. The discovery of the largest oil reserves, first in southern Kurdistan and the start of its production there in the 1930s, and soon in other nearby regions of the Arab East, further actualized the importance of the Kurdish issue for the imperialist powers, especially in connection with the rapid rise of the national liberation movement throughout Kurdistan. ...

In the 1920s-1930s, a wave of Kurdish uprisings swept across Turkey, Iraq and Iran, the main demand of which was the unification of all Kurdish lands and the creation of an "Independent Kurdistan" (uprisings led by Sheikh Said, Ihsan Nuri, Seyid Reza - in Turkey, Mahmud Barzanji , Ahmed Barzani, Khalil Khoshavi - in Iraq, Ismail-aga Simko, Salar od-Dole, Jafar-Sultan - in Iran). All these scattered and unprepared performances were defeated by the superior forces of local governments (in mandated Iraq and Syria, supported by Britain and France). Young Kurdish nationalism (its main headquarters at that time was the "Hoibun" ("Independence") committee), both militarily and politically, was too weak to resist its opponents.

During World War II, conditions were created in the Soviet zone of occupation of Iran to activate the democratic wing of the Kurdish resistance. Soon after the end of the war, the first ever Kurdish autonomy was proclaimed there, headed by Qazi Mohammed with the capital in Mehabad, which began to carry out (in a rather limited area south of Lake Urmia) democratic reforms, but it lasted only 11 months (until December 1946) having lost Soviet support in the outbreak of the Cold War, which had a decisive impact on the internal situation in Kurdistan over the next four and a half decades.

Kurdish movement during the Cold War era. Due to its geographic proximity to the USSR, Kurdistan was viewed in the West as a natural anti-Soviet bridgehead, and its main population was Kurds, due to its well-known traditionally pro-Russian and pro-Soviet orientation, as a natural reserve of Moscow in case of possible complications in the Middle East, whose peoples intensified the struggle against imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, the West was then treated with suspicion or outright hostile to the Kurdish national movement, while the anti-Kurdish chauvinist policy of the ruling circles of the Middle East countries - allies of NATO countries and members of its Middle East offshoot - the Baghdad Pact (then CENTO) - was favorably disposed towards. For the same reason, the Soviet Union treated foreign Kurds as potential allies and unofficially supported left-wing Kurdish movements and parties, such as the post-war Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK), the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP) in Iraq and their counterparts under the same name in Syria and Turkey.

After the fall of Kurdish autonomy in Mehabad (which was preceded by the defeat of the Kurdish uprising in Iraq in 1943-1945, led by Mustafa Barzani, then the commander of the armed forces of the Mehabad autonomy and the main figure in the general Kurdish resistance), the Kurdish movement experienced a decline for some time, although several major uprisings were noted eg peasant uprisings in Mehabad and Bokan (Iranian Kurdistan). Only at the turn of the 1950s – 1960s did the preconditions for a new sharp rise in the Kurdish national movement emerge.

The main impetus for its rapid revival was the crisis that rapidly developed since the second half of the 1950s in almost all countries of the Middle East, caused by the aggravated confrontation between the Arab (and also largely Muslim) world and Israel and the desire of two military-political blocks use it to their advantage, to weaken a potential enemy. At the same time, if the West sought to preserve and, if possible, strengthen its imperial positions in the region (primarily control over oil), the USSR and its allies actively supported the sharply intensified local nationalism, which took a clearly anti-Western direction. In Egypt, Syria, Iraq, pro-Western puppet regimes fell. In such a situation, Kurdish nationalism, which was gaining strength, gained relative freedom of maneuver and the opportunity to openly and independently act in the Middle East and the world arena, and its main opponents were regional regimes that pursued a policy of national discrimination against their Kurdish population.

The events in Iraqi (southern) Kurdistan, which became the general Kurdish center of the national movement, began. In September 1961, General Mustafa Barzani, the leader of the Iraqi KDP, revolted there, returning from emigration to the USSR. Soon, Kurdish rebels (they were called "peshmerga" - "going to death") created in the north-east of Iraq, mainly in the mountainous part of it, a large liberated region - "Free Kurdistan", a hotbed of Kurdish independence. The confrontation between the Kurdish rebels and the government's punitive forces lasted for about 15 years (with interruptions). As a result, the resistance of the Iraqi Kurds was temporarily broken, but not completely, and the victory of the government was not unconditional. By the law of March 11, 1974, Baghdad was forced to create a Kurdish autonomous region "Kurdistan" and promise him certain guarantees in the field of local self-government, some social and civil rights, equality of the Kurdish language, etc. This was the first precedent in the modern history of the Middle East indicating that the process of officially recognizing the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination has begun.

The Baath Party (Socialist Party of Arab Renaissance), which came to power in Iraq back in 1968, tried to emasculate the democratic content of the concessions made to the Kurds back in 1970 (which did not satisfy them from the very beginning). The autonomy was actually controlled by emissaries and local collaborators sent from Baghdad. The hostility of the Iraqi ruling circles towards the Kurds became especially evident after the establishment of the sole rule of Saddam Hussein in the country, proclaimed by the president in 1979. Taking advantage of the war he unleashed against Iran in 1980, he organized a gas attack by the Iraqi Air Force on the Kurdish city of Halabja (March 16, 1988); killed, according to various estimates, from several hundred to 5000 civilians, injured about two tens of thousands.

Thus, there remained the reasons why the resurgence of the Kurdish resistance in Iraq was inevitable. The political organizations of Iraqi Kurdistan have tried to draw conclusions from the failures of the past and overcome the divisions that weakened them. In 1976, a group that had previously split from the KDP, led by Jalal Talabani, organized the second most influential Iraqi Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which entered into an alliance with the KDP. In the same year, the rebel movement in Iraqi Kurdistan under the leadership of the KDP and PUK resumed. In the 1980s, Iraqi Kurds continued to rally in preparation for new uprisings.

Syrian Kurds also actively opposed the regime of national lawlessness in Syria and toughened by local Baathists after their seizure of power in 1963. Kurdish democratic parties (KDP of Syria "al-Party" and others) emerged in the country, leading the struggle of the Kurdish minority for their rights. The regime of President Hafez Assad, established at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, did practically nothing to alleviate the plight of the Kurds, trying in its confrontation with Ankara and Baghdad to use the differences between the various Kurdish parties in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, which damaged the unity of the Kurdish national movement ... In 1986, the three main Kurdish parties in Syria merged into the Kurdish Democratic Union.

After a long break, the active struggle of the Kurds of Turkey resumed against the official policy of non-recognition with the resulting prohibitions in the field of language, culture, education, the media, against which were severely punished as a manifestation of "Kurdism", separatism, etc. The position of the Turkish Kurds especially worsened after the military coup on May 27, 1960, one of the main pretexts for which was to prevent the threat of Kurdish separatism.

The military caste in Turkey, which took (directly or veiled) key positions in the system of government and organized two subsequent coups d'etat (in 1971 and 1980), began to fight the Kurdish movement. This only led to an intensification of the Kurdish resistance in Turkey; In the 1960s and 1970s, several Kurdish parties and organizations that operated underground arose, including the Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan (DPTK) and the Revolutionary Cultural Centers of the East (RKOV). In 1970, the DPTK united in its ranks several small Kurdish parties and groups and developed a program with broad general democratic demands, giving the Kurds "the right to determine their own destiny." In 1974, the Socialist Party of Turkish Kurdistan (SPTK) was formed, popular among the Kurdish intelligentsia and youth. At the same time, Kurdish patriots established ties and interactions with Turkish progressive political forces.

By the early 1980s, the situation in Turkish Kurdistan had deteriorated markedly. The growing number of Kurdish legal and illegal organizations intensified anti-government agitation and turned to violent actions. The most popular, especially among the poorest and socially unsettled layers of the Kurdish population, was acquired by the Kurdistan Workers 'Party (more often they say the Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, the Kurdish abbreviation PKK), founded by Abdullah Öcalan in 1978. It was a left-wing extremist organization professing Marxism-Leninism Maoist sense and giving preference to violent methods of struggle, including terrorist ones. Individual partisan actions organized by the PKK were noted already in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and in 1984 the party openly began an insurrectionary struggle against the Turkish authorities and punitive bodies in Eastern Anatolia.

Since then, Turkish Kurdistan has emerged as a permanent new hotbed of tension in the Middle East. None of the warring parties managed to gain the upper hand: the Kurds - to achieve recognition of the rights to self-determination, Ankara - to break the growing Kurdish resistance. The many years of bloody war against the Kurds aggravated the economic and political difficulties experienced by Turkey, gave rise to right-wing extremism destabilizing its political system, and undermined the country's international prestige, preventing it from joining European structures. On the Kurdish movement, both in Turkey and in other countries, the struggle under the leadership of the PKK and its leader Ocalan had a contradictory effect. It everywhere, in the East and in the Western world, evoked responses among the democratically minded strata of the population, attracted the working strata of the population, student youth to the active struggle, contributed to the dissemination of information about the Kurds and their struggle, and the internationalization of the Kurdish issue. At the same time, this party and its followers were characterized by adventurous tactics, indiscriminate choice of means of struggle, like terrorism, inability to reckon with the real situation and artificial running ahead, sectarianism and hegemonism of its leadership in developing a strategic line, which ultimately led it to political isolation from other units of the Kurdish movement and to defeat.

In Iran, the Kurdish problem was not so tense, but it has steadily escalated since the early 1960s under the influence of socio-political tensions that arose in the country during the "white revolution" and events in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1967-1968, under the leadership of the DPIK, an uprising broke out in the region of Mehabad, Bane and Sardasht, which lasted a year and a half and was brutally suppressed.

Despite the defeat, the DPIK did not lose heart and launched an active work on the development of a new program and party charter. The fundamental slogan "democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan" was proclaimed, and the tactics of the party involved a combination of armed struggle with political methods, which were aimed at creating a united front of all forces opposing the regime.

Iranian Kurds took an active part in the growing popular anti-Shah movement in the late 1970s, which culminated in the "Islamic revolution", the overthrow of the Shah’s power and the proclamation at the beginning of 1979 of the “Islamic Republic of Iran”, which is actually the rule of the Shiite “mullocracy”. For the Kurds, as well as for the entire Iranian people, this "revolution", in which they could not prove themselves as an independent political force capable of defending their national demands, turned into a counter-revolution, the dictatorship of Imam Khomeini and his followers and successors. Even in a religious aspect, this medieval-type regime was dangerous for the interests of the Kurdish minority, overwhelmingly Sunni. Khomeinism denied the existence of a national question in Iran, including, of course, the Kurdish one, placing it exclusively within the framework of the "Islamic ummah" as already resolved. The new government decisively rejected the DPIK project on administrative and cultural autonomy for the Kurds.

Disagreements in the spring of 1979 escalated into armed clashes between the forces of the Kurdish resistance (units of the DPIK, the Kurdish left organization "Komala" and the Peshmerga who came to their aid from Iraq, the left formations of the Persians fedayeen and mujahideen) and government forces, reinforced by detachments of the gendarmerie, police and Islamic stormtroopers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). In the summer of 1979, battles between Kurdish rebels and punishers took place almost throughout the territory of Iranian Kurdistan. DPIK established control over most of it, including large cities. In some of them, the authority of the Kurdish revolutionary councils was established. Kurdish religious leader Ezzedin Hosseini has even declared a jihad against the central government. The leaders of the Iranian Kurds have repeatedly called on Tehran to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the conflict and carry out socio-economic and political-administrative reforms in Kurdish-populated areas. However, the negotiations did not take place. In the fall of 1979, the government launched an offensive against the Kurds and managed to push them back into the mountains, where they began a guerrilla war. The Islamic regime has deployed the most severe control in those areas of Kurdistan, over which it managed to regain control.

The defeat of the Iranian Kurds at the beginning of the Islamic regime was largely caused by the lack of unity in the Kurdish movement, traditional Kurdish particularism. The left-wing extremist forces in the parties "Komala", "Ryzgari" and others have done a lot of harm to the Kurdish cause. The DPIK itself turned out to be split, which was used by the Iranian authorities, who by the middle of 1980 completed the establishment of their control over practically the entire territory of Iranian Kurdistan.

In the 1980s, the Kurdish movement in Iran and Iraq was going through difficult times. The Iranian-Iraqi war (1980-1988) created an extremely unfavorable environment for him. The hostilities partly took place on the territory of Kurdistan, the Kurds suffered human and material losses. In addition, both belligerents tried to enlist the support of the enemy's Kurdish population, which served both Tehran and Baghdad as a pretext for anti-Kurdish punitive measures (including the aforementioned gas attack in Halabja). By the early 1990s, the general situation in Kurdistan was extremely difficult and tense.

The Kurdish question at the present stage. The world-historical changes that occurred at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s in connection with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR directly and indirectly affected the Kurdish national movement. It continued to develop in the geopolitical reality that required new approaches in the strategy and tactics of struggle. First of all, this concerned the situation in Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan.

In the 1980s, taking advantage of the war with Iran, Iraq canceled out all the concessions it had made to the Kurds. The Autonomous Region became subordinate to Baghdad. Measures were taken to resettle Kurds from border villages, as well as against Kurds suspected of anti-government activities. By the early 1990s, when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 triggered another acute crisis in the Middle East, Iraqi Kurdistan was on the eve of another major Kurdish uprising.

In Iran, both during Khomeini's lifetime and after his death in 1989, the Kurdish autonomous movement was suppressed; it could only function underground and in exile. In July 1989, the DPIK General Secretary A.Kasemlu was killed in Vienna, in September 1992 the new DPIK General Secretary S.Sharafkandi was killed in Berlin. Negotiations with Kurdish nationalists on the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan with the Iranian leadership were thwarted.

During the presidency of Khatami, when the position of supporters of the liberal realist course strengthened, there was a tendency to make some concessions to the Kurdish population in the field of culture, education and information policy in order to reduce the intensity of protest moods. At the same time, the authorities tried to play on the ethnic and linguistic kinship of the Persians and Kurds, who seem to have identical state and political interests. On this basis, the Kurds have no representatives in the Mejlis, although there are deputies from other non-Persian ethnic groups (including Assyrians and Armenians) there.

Since the second half of the 1980s, the PKK-led insurgency has noticeably increased in southeastern Turkey. There were regular attacks on police stations, gendarme posts, and military bases. Kurdish suicide bombers appeared. The organizational and propaganda activities of the PKK crossed the Turkish borders, the influence of the party spread to a significant part of the Syrian Kurds (Ocalan himself with his headquarters moved to Syria). PKK activists have launched extensive campaigning among the Kurdish diaspora in Western and Eastern Europe in the press they run and on Kurdish television (MED-TV).

For its part, the Turkish government has stepped up its repression against the Kurds. Turkey extended the scope of anti-Kurdish campaigns to northern Iraq, into whose territory, pursuing the retreating Kurdish partisans, they deepened 20-30 km. Events in Turkish Kurdistan acquired a general Kurdish scale, as well as anti-Kurdish actions of all Middle Eastern governments.

Thus, under pressure from Ankara, at the end of October 1998, Damascus denied Ocalan the right of political asylum. After several days of wandering around different countries, Ocalan was seized by the Turkish special services, tried and sentenced in June 1999 to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. The arrest and trial of Ocalan sparked a huge explosion of discontent in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. However, the Kurdish movement in Turkey has declined sharply. Ocalan himself called on his associates from prison to lay down their arms and enter into negotiations with the government on the basis of partial satisfaction of their demands, which was done: a Kurdish press, radio and television appeared in Turkey. The Öcalan case showed that left-wing extremism in the Kurdish movement in Turkey was based mainly on the charisma of its leader, and not on objective grounds; with his departure from the political arena, the uprising was doomed to defeat, and the main problems of the Turkish Kurds remain unresolved.

The defeat of Iraq in Kuwait in early 1991, inflicted on it by the US-led coalition ("Desert Storm"), marked the beginning of a new stage in the liberation struggle of the Iraqi Kurds, although the Kurdish question occupied a subordinate place in these events. In February 1991, a spontaneous uprising broke out in Iraqi Kurdistan, the participants of which relied on the help of the United States and their allies and liberated the entire country in a short time. However, the Kurds were once again sacrificed to the geopolitical interests of the West, in this case the United States, which were not interested in further destabilizing the situation around Iraq (mainly in its Kurdish and Shiite regions) and therefore allowed Saddam Hussein to suppress the Kurdish uprising.

However, the Americans soon changed their attitude towards Iraq. Over the Kurdish and Shiite regions of Iraq, an American-British air umbrella was installed - a no-fly zone for Iraqi aviation, a regime of economic sanctions (embargo) was introduced, and a long-term confrontation of Iraq, mainly with the United States and England, began. As a result, for the first time in history, a favorable situation for the part of the Kurdish people living in Iraq has emerged that allows them to achieve their demands.

In April-May 1992, the South Kurdistan Front, which included all the main Kurdish parties, organized elections for the first Kurdish parliament (national assembly). About 90% of the votes were received by the two main Kurdish parties - KDP and PUK; the voices between them were almost equally divided. The leaders of these parties, Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, became the country's two informal leaders. A government was formed and a declaration on the Federal Union was adopted. Thus, the beginning of the Kurdish statehood was laid and the structure of state administration was outlined. The new government controlled most of southern Kurdistan (55 thousand square kilometers out of 74), called "Free Kurdistan". Only the oil-bearing district of Kirkuk remained under the rule of Baghdad, in which a policy of supporting the Turkic minority of the Turkmens and the territory north of the 36th parallel adjacent to Mosul were pursued. "Free Kurdistan" enjoyed military-political and partly economic (mainly humanitarian aid) support from the United States and its closest allies, but did not have any international legal status. It was autonomy in full, which for the Kurds was undoubted progress and an important step in the struggle for national self-determination, especially since the United States and its allies were on their side.

The first years of Free Kurdistan's existence were not easy. Despite the undoubted successes in establishing economic life, solving pressing social problems and organizing public education, serious mistakes were made in creating a healthy internal political climate. Affected by the low level of political culture, expressed in the non-obsolete ideas of traditional society, first of all, typically Kurdish particularism and leaderism. In 1994, a sharp conflict arose between the KDP and the PUK, which resulted in a prolonged confrontation with the use of armed force.

There was a threat that the Iraqi Kurds would lose their achievements. However, a process of reconciliation began, which, based on its own interests, was strongly supported by the United States. On September 17, 1998 in Washington, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani signed an agreement on a peaceful settlement of the conflict. It took quite a long time to finally resolve the conflict and reconcile the remaining controversial issues, but in the end all the differences were overcome. On October 4, 2002, after a six-year hiatus, the first session of the united Kurdish parliament was held in the capital of southern Kurdistan, Erbil. It was decided to unite the judiciary, as well as to organize new parliamentary elections in 6-9 months.

Vasilyeva E.I. Southeast Kurdistan in the 17th - early 19th centuries M., 1991
Mgoi Sh.Kh. The Kurdish national question in Iraq in recent times... M., 1991
Musaelyan Zh.S. Bibliography on Kurdish Studies(starting from the XVI century), part I – II, St. Petersburg, 1996
History of Kurdistan... M., 1999
Gasratyan M.A. Kurdish problem in Turkey (1986–995). M., 2001

Find " KURDS AND THE KURDISH QUESTION" on

The Kurdish question is a complex problem associated with the desire of the Kurds in the countries of Western Asia - Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria - to achieve national self-determination. From this point of view, this issue is an important internal problem of these countries, whose governments regard the Kurds as a non-dominant ethnic group, obliged to obey the existing policy in the field of national relations in these countries. At the same time, the Kurdish issue in West Asia is a part of a complex knot of interstate contradictions, in which not only internal anti-government opposition forces of different political orientations are involved, but also international forces. This determines the international and regional significance of this problem. Zhigalina O.I. The Kurdish question as a regional and local conflict. // East. - 1995. - No. 6. - P. 91

The reasons for the conflicts of the Kurds with the regimes of their countries of residence in Western Asia should be sought in the historical past of their relationship. The geopolitical region of compact residence of Kurds in Western Asia - ethnographic Kurdistan is a vast continental region with a complex geographic relief. Kurdistan (literally, "the country of the Kurds") does not have clear, fixed borders, because there is no such state - Kurdistan. The real content of this toponym is reduced to a set of definite and unchanging physical and geographical features and to the presence of an absolute or relative majority of Kurds in the ethnic composition of the population. If the first signs are constant, then the second are variables, confirmed by the vicissitudes of the historical process, at least from the middle of the 1st millennium BC. One of the main components of this process is the ethnogenesis of the Kurds themselves, which has not yet been completed. The other is the violent political cataclysms that took place in the settlement area of ​​the Kurdish ethnic group. They were accompanied by major ethno-demographic changes as a result of wars, forced displacements and mass genocide. As a result, the configuration of the conditional borders of Kurdistan has changed several times.

Kurdistan took its modern shape after the First World War, when it was divided between Turkey, Iran and then dependent on England and France, Iraq and Syria (in Turkey - over 200 thousand sq. Km., In Iran - over 160 thousand sq. Km.) km., in Iraq - up to 75 thousand sq. km., in Syria - up to 15 thousand sq. km.).

The geographic coordinates of modern Kurdistan are 34-40 degrees north latitude and 38-48 degrees east longitude. In the meridional direction it stretches for about 1,000 km, in the latitudinal direction - for 300-500 km. Lazarev M.S. Kurdistan in a geopolitical aspect. // East. - 1998. - № 6. - P. 53 (see the map of Kurdistan in the Appendix).

There is a high natural increase among the Kurds - about 3% per year. Therefore, despite the predominantly mountainous terrain, thanks to the fertile valleys of Kurdistan, the population density reaches the average for Asia (up to 45 people per sq. Km.). Its population is approximately 30 million. Thus, the Kurds are the largest national "minority" in Western Asia and the largest nation in the world that has not received the right to national self-determination. Complete chronology of the twentieth century. M .: Veche, 1999. // www. Russ.ru

From VIII to XIX centuries. in the Middle East, there were large Kurdish principalities, which were states by the standards of that time. The Kurds played a large role in the progress of the civilization of Mesopatamia, Iran, the Arab and Islamic world, as well as the Ottoman Empire. The Kurds ruled the Islamic world twice: under Salahaddin Eyubi and under Karim Khan Zenda, who ruled over all of Iran and part of Iraq. Barzani Nechirvan. The Kurdish problem and modernity (report at a conference at the American University). // Kurdish thought. - 2001. - No. 1. // www. Kurdistan.ru

From the time of the formation of the Arab Caliphate (VII century AD) up to the present day, the Kurds at different times fought against the Arab, Turkish, Mongolian, Turkmen, Persian and other oppressors. Independent Kurdish dynasties (Shedadids, Mervanids, Ravadids, Hasanvaykhids, Ayubids) ruled not only individual principalities, but also such large countries as Egypt and Syria.

Since the beginning of the XVI century. Kurdistan has become the scene of incessant wars. Two Muslim powers, Iran and the Ottoman Empire, argued for its possession. The result of these wars was the Zohab Treaty of 1639, which divided Kurdistan into Turkish and Iranian parts. The governments of the Ottoman Empire and Iran tried to weaken and then liquidate the Kurdish principalities for the purpose of economic and political enslavement. This section did not put an end to civil strife, but, on the contrary, further increased the feudal fragmentation of the country. In modern times, the liberation struggle of the Kurds continued.

In the 19th century, in accordance with the terms of the Gulistan Peace Treaty of 1813, the Turkmanchay Treaty of 1828 and the Berlin Congress of 1878, part of the historical Kurdistan was ceded to Russia and the Kurds who lived there became its subjects. In the first decades of the twentieth century, he became the object of the economic and political claims of France and the United States.

So, in the era of the late Middle Ages and modern times, the geopolitical position of Kurdistan was determined, on the one hand, by the Turkish-Iranian relations, on the other hand, by the colonial aspirations of Russia and the Western powers, their struggle for hegemony in the Middle East, where the Kurdish region occupied a strategically central position.

The last partition of Kurdistan was carried out after the First World War, when the Kurdish country was split between the four states of Western Asia: Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria. As a result, parts of ethnographic Kurdistan turned out to be territorially different in size, different in terms of the size of the Kurdish population. In each of these parts, the Kurds had a different nature of socio-political experience, different degrees of external influences. The general trends were socio-economic backwardness, political and economic dependence on the states between which they were divided, as well as the passionate desire of all Kurds to protect their area of ​​residence from outside encroachments.

Kurds seek to legitimize the right to dispose of the territory of their ancestral habitat, which is necessary for the flourishing of their national, spiritual and material culture. The Kurds are also characterized by high social and political activity. The idea of ​​protecting the area of ​​their compact residence - Kurdistan - was implemented in the slogans of "independent" or autonomous Kurdistan. It was most clearly understood by the Kurdish sheikhs and passed down by their ancestors from generation to generation, was the generator of many Kurdish uprisings, which were often led by the sheikhs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, traditional leaders repeatedly tried to unite the Kurds with the help of the idea of ​​"independent Kurdistan" and encourage them to create their own statehood. But each time these efforts turned out to be unsuccessful, since the Kurds, due to their political inexperience, became the object of political manipulation by interested political forces.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, the Kurdish issue became a regional conflict, when elements of nationalism began to form in Kurdish society. In 1880, Sheikh Obeidullah tried to unite the Turkish and Iranian Kurds into one nation state under his rule. The uprising was suppressed. Jalila J. The 1880 Kurdish Uprising. M., 1966. - P. 76 The main reason. What determined the defeat of the Kurds at that time was the absence of socio-political and economic prerequisites for their unification around a common national idea. The positions of Great Britain and Russia played a prominent role in the failure of Sheikh Obedullah. The British tried to use the Kurdish uprising in order to put pressure on Russia and weaken its position in Iran. The Russian government was interested in maintaining its influence in Iran and helped the Shah's government to organize a defense against Obeidullah. Russia has put heavy pressure on Turkey in order to force it to stop conniving and secretly supporting the Kurds. Lazarev M.S. Kurdistan and the Kurdish problem. M .. 1964. - p. 31

The geopolitical significance of the problem of Kurdish statehood was especially clearly defined after the First World War, when the change in the domestic and foreign political conditions of their very existence gave the Kurds the prospect of national liberation. By Sevres agreement on the initiative of England, there was talk about the creation of an Independent Kurdistan (Articles 62 and 64). But not a single state that signed it took these articles into account, and none of the countries, except Italy, ratified it. The proposed project of statehood was perceived as a joke, as the idea of ​​an ephemeral state, which simply means Britain's conquest of Mosul and Kirkuk. Since England then leaned towards the idea of ​​forming nations out of various ethnic substrates, the Kurds, as a substratum in this case, extremely inappropriate, was thrown away, and instead the British undertook to form a part of the Arabs into the Iraqi nation in the territory under their mandate in northern Iraq. This project seemed more realistic to them. Lurie S. New Media? // Special Forces of Russia. - 2003. - № 4. But this policy has generated at the same time new shades of conflict. Interested in political stability, the regimes of the Kurdish countries in West Asia resorted to forceful methods of solving the problem, sought to "decapitate" the Kurdish movement, to deprive it of its leaders, who came from the Kurdish elite. The position of England and France was very ambiguous. Britain has essentially not obstructed the promotion of Kurdish nationalism in one part of Kurdistan and its suppression in others. This position of the British was especially strengthened after the demarcation of the Turkish-Iraqi border, when Mosul, formerly belonging to Turkey, withdrew to Iraq, and the signing of the Lausanne Peace Treaty in 1924. France, supporting the Kurdish nationalist organization Hoibun, based at that time in Damascus, sought primarily to ensure its interests in Turkey and Syria, and not to provide real assistance to the Kurdish people. The result of this policy was the signing, with the assistance of Great Britain, in the period between the two world wars by the governments of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, according to which none of the signatory parties encouraged Kurdish nationalism in each of these countries. Zhigalina O.I. The Kurdish question as a regional and local conflict. // East. - 1995. - No. 6. - P. 93

From the second quarter of the XX century. the regionalization of the Kurdish issue is gradually being replaced by its localization according to the countries of residence of the Kurds in Western Asia, where the Kurds were among the non-dominant ethnic groups. Representatives of a single ethnic group - the Kurds - became citizens of not one state, but a whole group of the aforementioned states. In this regard, one part of it had to be connected to the ethnic system of the Turkish super-ethnos, the other - the Iranian, and the third - the Arab (Syrian or Iraqi). A complex process of adaptation of the Kurdish ethnic group to the conditions of existence within the framework of this or that state formation with legislative, administrative-territorial and other systems specific to each of them began. This contributed to the process of disintegration of the Kurds in social and political terms. At the same time, the division of the Kurds did not allow any of the interested countries or political forces to seize advantages in ethnographic Kurdistan. This region not only in the past, but also now attracts the attention of both the countries of the Western Asia region and a number of developed countries in Europe, Asia and America. It is, as it were, a buffer connecting transport, trade and other routes from West to East, which determines its geostrategic significance. This partly explains the fact that none of the Kurdish countries in West Asia wants to allow the divided parts of the Kurdish socio-cultural system to be united into one whole. The ruling circles of these countries were traditionally guided in the Kurdish issue by nationalist ideology, which did not recognize the Kurds' right to free ethnic development. They were denied the right to use their native language in the education system, and Kurdish rituals and symbols were prohibited. This is due, on the one hand, to the fact that in the countries of Kurdish residence in Western Asia, the policy of integration of "small" peoples is based on the concept of a "single nation" (for example, Turkish, Iranian, etc.), based on the priority the most active ethnic group in social and political structures. The models of social development in these states leave no room for the national development of the Kurds. Therefore, a clash of fundamentally different norms and foundations of social life, notions of prestige and duty, proceeding in one case from the principles of civil society, economic relations of the states of residence of the Kurds, their ethno-national orientation and religious ethics, and in the other - from the peculiarities of the Kurdish socio-cultural system is inevitable. ...

Subjected to national discrimination, Kurds cannot freely change their social status. This is possible only on condition of their transition to the socio-cultural system of the dominant ethnic group, which is not encouraged, but condemned in Kurdish society, especially by the functionaries of some Kurdish political organizations, because such a transition is seen as detrimental to the preservation of the Kurdish gene pool. For example, in Turkey, in the absence of "equality of opportunity", the Kurds feel alienated in society. They are forced to leave the country in search of a place where they could fully realize their intellectual and other abilities. Along with this, the impossibility of overcoming the barrier of public bias increases the desire of the Kurds to find new protective forces and restore traditional forms of struggle against legal discrimination. These actions are intensifying not so much because the Kurds cannot fit into the social, economic, political and other institutions existing in their countries of residence, but because of the conscious resistance to this process in order to protect the Kurds' right to an independent path of national development.

For a long period, the Kurds continued to try to acquire their own statehood (see Appendix). This incentive stimulates integration processes within the Kurdish ethnic community. The Kurdish community, which has not yet freed itself from traditional social ties, is trying to create a new type of sociality based on a socio-political community.

The largest scale of the Kurdish national movement acquired in Iraq, where from 1961 to 1975 there was an uprising under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani (he created the Iraqi branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1946). All the liberation actions in South Kurdistan from the beginning of the 30s to the middle of the 70s are associated with his name. He put forward the task of achieving the granting of autonomous rights to the Kurds, primarily within the limits of the Iraqi state. His position was that the Kurdish people have the right to realize the age-old dream of an independent and united homeland. It is not without reason that Barzani is considered a national hero of the Kurds, who inspires them in their struggle for a just cause.

Since the formation of the Iraqi state in 1920 up to the present day, there have been constant armed clashes between the Iraqi ruling regimes and the Kurdish national forces. During this long period, four agreements were concluded (in 1944, 1964, 1966, 1970), which provided for a peaceful (albeit only partial) solution to problems related to the status and rights of the Kurds. But the Iraqi government has used every respite to orchestrate new violence against the Kurds. Mgoi Sh. Mustafa Barzani. // Asia and Africa today. - 1998. - No. 2. - P. 11

After the Iraqi revolution of 1958, when the authorities in Baghdad were at the helm of various factions of Arab nationalists, replacing each other, until the most extreme of them, Baath, defeated in 1968, relations between the Arab and Kurdish nationalists sharply escalated, which escalated into an armed struggle in 1961. ... One of the most important points of disagreement between Barzani and the central government was the borders of Kurdistan, in particular, Barzani's demand to include Kirkuk and its environs in the Kurdish Autonomous Region, where most of Iraqi oil was produced.

As a result of a stubborn and bloody struggle, the Kurds were able to achieve the right to national autonomy within the framework of the Iraqi state. March 11, 1970 ("The March Manifesto") an agreement was signed between the Kurdish autonomists and the Iraqi government called "Declaration on the autonomy of the Kurds"... This document summed up a nine-year armed epic. Its significance is briefly reduced to the fact that for the first time in the history of the Kurds in one part of their divided homeland, the Iraqi government recognized their right to national autonomy, which was also enshrined in the country's constitution. But the Baathist regime, when finalizing the Law No. 33 on Kurdish Autonomy of March 11, 1974, narrowed its scope to scant self-government. However, the autonomous status of the Kurds was enshrined in the constitution of the Iraqi Republic. Mgoi Sh. Thorny path to freedom. // Asia and Africa today. - 1998. - No. 8. - P. 28

In March 1975, an Iranian-Iraqi agreement was signed in Algeria (participants: US Secretary of State, Iran, Iraq), according to which the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, pledged not to further assist Barzani and prevent the rearmament or regrouping of Kurdish forces on the territory Iran. In response, Iraq agreed to move its border with Iran along the river. Shatt al-Arab in the section below Basra from the left (eastern) bank to the middle line of the channel.

In 1979, after the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the KDP (Democratic Party of Kurdistan), led by Barzani's sons Idris and Masud, relying on the new Shiite regime in Iran, again came out with arms against Baghdad.

The next milestone in the geopolitical development of Kurdistan was the bloody Iran-Iraq war. Representatives of the Kurdish national movement believe that the first factor in unleashing the war was the unilateral cancellation of the Algiers agreement by the Iraqi government. Ihssan M. The Kurdish Issue and the Ruling Problem in Iraq (paper from Denmark conference). // www.kurdistan.ru This skirmish (war) was the longest regional war of the twentieth century, which led to huge human casualties (the number of killed ranged from 0.5 to 1 million people, approximately the same number of wounded; about a million people from both countries became refugees), the complete depletion of financial and material resources, the destruction of the main industries of the opponents, without giving any gains or benefits to either Baghdad or Tehran. Seyranyan B. Star and the life of a dictator. // Asia and Africa today. - 1994. - No. 4. - P. 8

Saddam Hussein's aggressive policy manifested itself in the Kuwaiti adventure of 1990-1991, which directly affected the Kurds. Ultimately, all the actions of the Iraqi dictator on the external borders of the country led to the results directly opposite to those expected. Such excesses as the gas attack on Halabja and surrounding villages, undertaken in March 1988 as an act of revenge against the allegedly disloyal Kurds, the extermination of Kurds under Sulaymaniyah - supporters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal al-Talabani near Sulaimaniyah, caused enormous indignation in everything. Kurdistan and abroad, contributing to a new upsurge of the Kurdish national movement. The main thing is that these events, like no others, led to the internationalization of the Kurdish issue. Zgersky D. A Torn Nation. // New time. - 1991. - No. 47. - P. 22

Saddam Hussein's Kuwaiti adventure entailed an acute international crisis, which ended with the defeat of the Iraqi army during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when the United States and the leading powers of the anti-Iraqi coalition announced the protection of Iraqi Kurds, opposition to Baghdad, as well as Shiites in southern Iraq from possible air and artillery attacks.

The development of the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan took place under the influence of events related to the truce concluded between Iran and Iraq, with the defeat of Iraq in the war against the US-led coalition, as well as with the changes that took place in Eastern Europe. During this period, the Kurdish question again took the form of a regional conflict.

The Iraqi Kurds tried to use the events unfolding in the Middle East in order to restore the autonomy lost in 1974. They were very active in the initial period of the Middle East crisis, outlining a plan according to which, with the help of the United States, it was supposed to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein and thus regain autonomy. It is obvious that the Kurdish opposition in Iraq itself did not pose a real threat to the ruling regime. But this project apparently did not comply with the interests of the United States, since President Bush, having provided Turkey with various economic and trade benefits and concessions, obtained from Turgut Ozal (President of Turkey) permission to use the Turkish base for the deployment of American aircraft that bombed Iraq ... During the invasion of Iraqi troops into Kuwait, Bush even tried to get congressional consent to the introduction of troops into Iraq. This was no coincidence. After all, Turkey pursued its own goals in the north of Iraq. She was interested in the return of the Kirkuk-Mosul region, which had ceded to Iraq in the 1920s and previously belonged to Turkey. Even during the Iran-Iraq war, the issue of Turkey's claims in Iraq was discussed in the foreign press. Now the question of their practical implementation could arise. Therefore, Ozal began to flirt with the Iraqi Kurds. If before the Iraqi aggression in Kuwait, Ankara and Baghdad cooperated in suppressing the political activity of the Kurds in both countries, then during the war T. Ozal said that he was not against the federal structure of Iraq and the granting of autonomy for Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens. As for the Kurds of Turkey, he noted that two-thirds of them are scattered throughout the country, and the rest are integrated into Turkish society. In this regard, the problem of the Kurds in Turkey allegedly does not exist.

The favorable prospect, outlined in the speeches of the Turkish leader, interested, however, the leaders of the Kurdish organizations in Iraq, who expressed their readiness to discuss the Kurdish issue with him. From 1961 to 1988, functionaries of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP) controlled the Turkish-Iraqi border with Ankara's approval. The latter, meanwhile, expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the KDP (M. Barzani) did not prevent the PKK (A. Ocalan) from using the part of the road controlled by it for communication with the outside world. The PKK's reaction to the establishment of relations between the KDP and Ankara was naturally negative, since, according to its leader, the Kurdish problem in Iraq could be solved at the expense of the PKK. Indeed, Ankara's promises forced the Iraqi Kurds to declare that they would not allow Iraqi Kurdistan to be used to deploy military operations in Turkey. And the PKK's fears were justified, since special Turkish units were deployed to suppress its activities in Iraq.

The Iraqi Kurds were not involved in the war, although they were prepared for it. On March 18, 1991, they raised an uprising that covered 95% of the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan controlled by them. The situation has reached a critical point. Kurdish leaders have already begun to develop plans to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. At the same time, they did not rule out that the Iraqi army would destroy the Kurds with the help of chemical weapons. Therefore, the Kurdish leader J. Talabani, who was at that time in Damascus, said that if Iraq takes this step, the Kurds will blow up the dam and flood Baghdad. Through the efforts of the United States, the possibility of opening a "second front" in Iraq was eliminated. Thus, political tension was removed, but the settlement was carried out at the expense of the interests of the Kurds. Iraqi forces defeated the guerrillas who left Kirkuk. Kurds turned to the West and the United Nations for help, but US President Bush said the Kurdish issue was an "internal conflict." The escalation of violence was influenced by the so-called "Shiite factor". In the midst of events in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraqi Shiites, with the active support of Iran, launched widespread protests against Saddam. Then in Baghdad they began to exaggerate the idea of ​​the "threat" of the establishment of Islamic fundamentalism in the country. Alarmed by this nature of events, the United States and its Western allies in order to prevent the strengthening of Shiite fundamentalism in Iraq, despite their recent promises to protect from Saddam's raids, left them alone with Hussein's army, armed to the teeth. The latter was eager to take revenge for the fiasco in Kuwait by reprising the defenseless Kurds. Saddam's reprisal against the Kurds was extremely brutal. More than 2.5 million Kurds were bombed and shelled. Mgoi Sh. Thorny path to freedom. // Asia and Africa today. - 1998. - № 8. - P. 29 Hussein's army used the "scorched earth" tactics. Iraqi troops wiped out many Kurdish towns and cities from the face of the earth, and genocide was unleashed against the civilian population. Saddam's soldiers rushed into hospitals, killing the wounded and sick, and staged public executions. According to eyewitnesses, the atrocities of the Iraqi regular army surpassed even the horrors of the gas attack against the Kurds from the city of Halabaji. Borovoy Y., Chudodeev A. Looking death in the eyes. / / New time. - 1991. - № 15. - P. 25 The Kurds found themselves in a difficult situation: people were starving, many were dying of the cold. However, in order to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the Kurds, the Americans began to drop humanitarian aid from the air. In addition, Bush ordered Baghdad not to interfere in the affairs of the Kurds.

After a rather long delay, the governments of the United States, Britain, France, and the UN have developed a series of measures, including humanitarian aid and the creation of a "security zone" (or "liberated zone") in northern Iraq, where Iraqi aircraft are prohibited from flying. The "liberated zone", however, excludes the oil-bearing regions of Kirkuk. President Ozal also agreed with this decision. Demchenko P. Kurds are hostages of big politics. // Echo of the planet. - 1993. - No. 15. - P. 6

Thus, after the completion of Operation Desert Storm north of the 36th parallel, a "free region" ("Free Kurdistan" with the center in Erbil) was created in the areas of compact settlement of Kurds in Iraq in accordance with UN Resolution 688 under the tutelage of American armed forces located at a military base in Turkey. Elements of Kurdish statehood began to form in it: on May 19, 1992, elections were held to the Kurdish parliament (National Assembly), where two authorities - M. Barzani and J. Talabani - shared power, a cabinet of ministers was elected, the "experiment de -mocracies ”on Kurdish soil. "Free Kurdistan" has become not only an object, but to a certain extent also a subject of modern international relations. As such, it is recognized by the UN and the Security Council. UN agencies directly entered into political and economic contacts in Erbil, provide security and economic assistance to the Kurds under their control. Shahbazyan G. On a minefield. // Asia and Africa today. - 1998. - No. 2. - P. 22

The existence of independence in Iraqi Kurdistan instilled optimistic confidence in the future of the Kurdish people, who viewed the "liberated zone" as a hotbed of Kurdish statehood. But until now, it depends on the annual humanitarian aid provided by the United States and the West, and is estimated at $ 145 million. It was guarded from the Saddam army by US, British and French warplanes starting from a NATO military base in Turkey. But Kurdish independence is being carried out in conditions of a tough economic blockade. Borders with the rest of Iraq, Iran and Syria are closed. The only supply corridor remains the Turkish border, which is under the vigilant control of the Ankara authorities. Despite economic hardships and severe social hardships, the Kurds managed to do a lot in the development of national culture, education, the media, to establish the work of 24 hospitals and small clinics, despite the lack of medicines, medical services and equipment.

Domestic political life and all the events that took place in South Kurdistan were under the close scrutiny of the intelligence services not only of Iraq, but also of Turkey, Iran and Syria. Unable to openly interrupt the processes that had begun in South Kurdistan, these countries actively used their special services, which could not be resisted by the weak and ineffective security agencies of South Kurdistan. These forces spurred on the already heated contradictions between internal political forces. The confrontation between the KDP and the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) resulted in an open armed clash that began in May 1994. The leaders of the Kurdish movement in South Kurdistan were caught up in inter-party struggles. Mutual hatred and mistrust fenced them off from the vision of the real situation and, moreover, from the perspective of the national movement. The outbursts of hostility between them nearly derailed the barely begun experiment. On the one hand, the Turkish authorities, fighting against PKK guerrillas who are more radical than the Kurdish parties in Iraq, are trying to exploit these feuds and incite hostility between the Iraqi Kurds. On the other hand, the maximalism of the PKK often causes clashes between Iraqi Kurds, since in order to preserve the "Turkish channel", Kurdish leaders in Iraq have to adhere to positions that contradict the objectives and goals of the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Iran. Although the aggravation of these contradictions prevented the elections of local self-government bodies planned for May 1995 in Iraqi Kurdistan, the leading organizations of the Kurdish national democratic movement of the Iraqi Kurds - the KDP and PUK - found the courage to sign an agreement on peace and cooperation in 1995. ...

All this testifies to the fact that the Kurdish movement in Iraq does not always succeed in overcoming the tendency of the traditional split in the political leadership, which is characteristic of the entire Kurdish movement in West Asia. The reasons for the stability of this tendency lie, obviously, in the still low political culture of the Kurds, in the personification of political activity and a number of other factors.

The existence of a "liberated zone" in Iraqi Kurdistan reveals unresolved contradictions that have survived in the system of interstate relations in the West Asia region from the past. As in the historical past, the countries of residence of Kurds in Western Asia oppose the existence of any form of Kurdish self-government, regardless of their relationship to the United States and the West. Apart from Turkey, none of them has such favorable relations with the latter. Therefore, it is unlikely that the states of residence of the Kurds will welcome the line of the United States and Europe to support Kurdish independence in Iraq.

On October 13, 1997, after some lull and at a time when the next meeting between the KDP and PUK delegations was expected, new armed clashes began between the KDP and PUK detachments. After the exchange of messages between the KDP chairman Massoud Barzani and the PUK Secretary General Jalal Talabani and December 1997, with the mediation of the authoritative Kurdish politician Aziz Mohammed, a negotiation process began on a peaceful solution to the conflict between the warring parties. During the negotiations, the principles of creating a government of national unity, the conditions and principles for holding new parliamentary elections and the formation of a legitimate government, a program for transferring sources of income into the hands of the newly formed government were discussed.

The negotiation process is accompanied by peaceful reactions from the Kurds. there are no fundamental differences between the KDP and the PUK, and most importantly, the position of the broad masses on a common Kurdish scale plays a significant role, demanding the achievement of national unity in the struggle for full autonomy. Mgoi Sh. Thorny path to freedom. // Asia and Africa today. - 1998. - No. 8. - P. 31

In November 2003, the Kurdish parliament approved two fundamental documents - the constitution of the Kurdish region and the constitution of a future federal Iraq. The latter means that the actions of the Kurds are again becoming offensive. “Iraqi Kurds are becoming key players in Iraqi and regional politics,” said Kurdish Prime Minister Barham Saleh. And many independent experts believe that the Kurds have the right to expect that their role in the new leadership will be more significant than their share in the Iraqi population. Lurie S. New Media? // Russian Special Forces. - 2003. - No. 4

Kurds compactly inhabit mainly the historical region of Kurdistan in the southwest of the Asian continent, which occupies the adjacent territories of southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq and northern Syria. A significant number of Kurds live in the diaspora (mainly in other countries of the Middle East, Western Europe and the CIS). Currently, the Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world (up to 30 million), deprived of the right to self-determination and state sovereignty. Kurdistan is rich in natural resources, occupies a key geopolitical and geostrategic position in the Middle East region, and the national struggle of the Kurds for national liberation makes the Kurdish issue one of the most acute and urgent problems of world politics.

Ethno-demographic sketch

Despite the predominantly mountainous terrain, thanks to the fertile valleys and gorges of Kurdistan, the population density reaches the average for Asia (about 50 people per sq. Km). According to rough estimates, the population of Kurdistan is now approaching 30 million. The number of Kurds themselves, including those living outside ethnic Kudistan, is no less significant.

Socio-economic relations

The Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria are distinguished by a lower level of economic development, social relations and social organization of society, as well as culture in comparison with these countries in general, and with their most developed regions in particular. This is explained by the extremely unfavorable internal and external conditions in which the Kurdish people found themselves throughout their centuries-old history, and most importantly by the absence of their own national state.

The social organization of Kurdish society partly retains archaic features with remnants of tribal relations, within which the feudal system makes itself felt. True, at present in the Kurdish society there is a rapid erosion of traditional social forms. In the relatively developed regions of Kurdistan, only memories of tribal ties remain.

Yet in the comparatively backward regions of Kurdistan, social and economic progress is making its way. Economic positions are undermined and the political influence of the Kurdish secular and spiritual nobility is falling, modern social structures are emerging and gaining strength - the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie (urban and rural), the working class.

Progressive changes in Kurdish society have created the basis for the emergence of Kurdish nationalism, both ideology and politics. At the same time, the remaining vestiges of traditional social forms continue to hinder the process of modernization of this society.

The traditional elite of modern Kurdistan, consisting of people from feudal-clerical and tribal circles, still has a noticeable economic and, especially, political and ideological influence. True, there are many democratic and leftist leaders among modern Kurdish leaders. Moreover, it is they who make the weather in the socio-political climate of Kurdish society. However, the influence of archaic traditions continues to be felt, such as religious discord, tribal particularism and parochialism, class and dynastic prejudices, hegemonic claims and leaderism. Hence such negative phenomena in social and political life as political instability, internecine feuds, etc.

The visible features of backwardness in social relations to a large extent originate from an archaic and unproductive economic basis, which, moreover, is currently in a crisis state of transition from old pre-capitalist forms to modern ones.

Remote pastoralism (with seasonal migrations, mainly "vertical", in summer to mountain pastures, in winter to valleys), the basis of the traditional economy of the rural population, has fallen into decay, and intensive methods of agricultural production are hardly adopted. Industry and infrastructure are poorly developed in Kurdistan and have not created enough jobs for impoverished peasants, artisans and small traders. Deprived of their livelihoods, the Kurds rush to the cities of the developed regions of their countries of residence, as well as abroad. There, the Kurdish proletariat is predominantly engaged in unskilled and low-skilled labor, being subjected to particularly strong exploitation. In short, the Kurdish areas are a backward periphery in all the countries that divided Kurdistan. It is characteristic that even where there has been an abundant inflow of petrodollars in recent decades (Iraq and Iran, whose oil riches are largely located in Kurdistan and adjacent regions), there is a noticeable lag in the development of the Kurdish outskirts from the territories inhabited by dominant nationalities.

In Kurdistan itself, the level of economic development in different regions is not the same. Until the early 70s. the economy of Turkish Kurdistan, as well as of the whole of Turkey, developed faster, although already from the 60s Iran began to catch up with the pace of economic development of Turkey. After a sharp rise in world oil prices in 1973, Iran and Iraq, and then Syria, found themselves in an advantageous position. Although the Kurdish regions of Iran and Arab countries have benefited relatively little from the oil boom, the flow of petrodollars has spurred their economies somewhat.

Thus, two main problems are inherent in the socio-economic relations of modern Kurdistan: overcoming backwardness and uneven development in its individual parts. The lack of resolution of these problems negatively affects the process of national consolidation of the Kurdish people and the effectiveness of their struggle for their national rights.