Nationalism and the Kurds

On October 6^th, Egyptians marked the 30^th anniversary of their 1973 war with Israel.  The Egyptian government hoped that public rallies and celebrations to mark the anniversary might help unite a polarized nation.  Since Morsi’s ouster, of course, Egyptians seem more divided than ever before.  Focusing the nation’s emotions on an external enemy to help unite it is an old strategy, and every Egyptian government since 1973 has held similar events on October 6^th.  Nationalism remains a very useful tool for governments, and nations who feel proud of themselves and their accomplishments also tend to develop a stronger sense of citizenship and public virtues that can prove useful.

This year’s Ocober 6^th celebrations and rallies in Egypt ended in violence, unfortunately. Pro-Morsi demonstrators clashed with Pro-General Sisi ones and security forces, and several city blocks in many of Egypt’s cities descended into armed melees. It seems even a day meant to temporarily focus Egyptians’ attention on their exploits against an external group was not enough to make them set aside their differences. 

Perhaps it was also never a good idea in the first place to celebrate a war Egyptians essentially lost against an enemy they went on to sign a peace treaty with.  Maybe glorifying armed conflict and hatred of the other only breeds internal conflict and hatred.  Perhaps governments and society’s elites, via the anniversaries they choose to celebrate and the themes they decide to focus on, promote either destructive nationalisms or productive nationalisms.

If this is true, I think the Kurds might be doing relatively well for themselves.  Like every group, of course, they have their martyrs and their commemorations of important revolts and battles.  Commemoration of the revolts and the armed conflicts seem more often somber affairs, however, as they remember the pain and suffering endured during those times.  Commemoration of uprisings that led to freedom, such as the March 5^th 1991 Uprising that began in Ranya or even the Newroz Spring Equinox holiday (and its legend about a simple blacksmith’s uprising against a cruel king), are happier affairs. 

What I see Kurds taking the most national pride in, however, has little to do with military exploits or the defeat of their enemies on the field of battle. The Kurdish national discourse today seems to attach much greater importance to other things, such as free and fair elections in Iraqi Kurdistan–starting in 1992, in the very first weeks of autonomy and still in the shadow of Saddam’s regime.  When they feel boastful, I rarely hear Iraqi Kurds talk of things like the 1966 battle of Hendrin, when their outnumbered peshmerga mauled a much larger Iraqi military force and pushed it out of their mountains with its tail between its legs.  Instead, I hear them talk about how persecuted Iraqi Christians from Baghdad, Basra and other parts of Iraq have found refuge and safety in Kurdistan.  I hear them talk about how the Turkmen in Kurdistan have their own schools, their own newspapers and their own community organizations that all function freely in the Turkmen language.  I hear them point out how the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan never, even after the darkest days of defeat (such as in 1975 and 1988), resorted to terrorism against Iraqi Arab civilians. 

This last observation about eschewing terrorism seems true of all the modern non-Islamist Kurdish parties except the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in fact.  It’s hard to find any accounts of groups like Komala, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran or even PKK-affiliated groups in Iran and Syria targeting civilians.  There are a few instances here and there, but even these often appear ambiguous. The PKK also came to renounce its 1990s policy of attacking the families of pro-Turkish state village guards, and at least goes to the trouble of denying bomb attacks on civilian targets in Turkey (whether or not the denials are always convincing is another matter). At the very least, one never hears a discourse of ethnic hatred towards Turks from the PKK. Several of the PKK’s founders were in fact ethnic Turks, and the movement’s hatred seems reserved for the Turkish state and the old Kemalist ideologies.  In the same vein, one never hears the various Iranian Kurdish parties dehumanize ethnic Persians or Azeris or others. The same can not be said of too many armed groups and nationalist movements in the world, unfortunately.

If I am not too biased and far off the mark in my assessment of Kurdish nationalists, then the Kurds and other national groups of Kurdistan may have a bright future ahead of them. Not dehumanizing their enemies may even help them manage their own disagreements more peacefully in the future.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since August 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press).

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