AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands - The war against the common Islamic State enemy is helping to heal long-standing rifts among Kurds in the diaspora, according to Bakhtiar Bakr, who represents the Iraqi Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the Netherlands. “The different Kurdish parties here now regularly meet together,” Bakr said in an interview. “The atmosphere is much better than before.” There are more than one million people of Kurdish origin living in Western Europe alone, many belonging to families of immigrants from Turkey who came to work there in the 1960s. There are also long-standing exiles and expatriates from all corners of Kurdistan – Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. The most recent arrivals have included those fleeing the civil war in Syria. The Kurds in the West tend to be as divided in their politics as they are back at home. In the past that has led to disputes and lack of cooperation. However, recent events have changed all that, according to Bakhtiar, whose party shares power with the Kurdistan Democratic Party in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. After rival Syrian Kurdish groups recently decided to sink their differences in negotiations in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Dohuk in order to work together against ISIS, their partisans in the diaspora followed suit. “Now, if we go to a demonstration for the support of the Kurdish fighters in Kobane, we don’t even ask who organised it anymore,” said Bakr. “We all have the same concerns, and if we speak in one tongue we can secure more support.” The plight of Kobane, the Syrian border town under siege by ISIS for two months has galvanised Kurdish opinion across traditional divides.A decision by the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq to dispatch reinforcements to the town’s Syrian Kurdish defenders was seen as a turning point. Kobane’s local defenders are from the militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is itself linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which fought a three decades’ insurgency against the Turkish state. PKK supporters tend to be among the most vociferous and organised among the European diaspora, which has led to tensions with other groups. With Kobane, all that has changed, according to Bakr. Kurds from different political groupings last month demonstrated together in front of the Dutch Parliament, as in many other western capitals with big Kurdish communities. In The Hague, demonstrators forced their way into the Parliament Building - a move that caused concern among some Dutch democrats who considered it a violation of democratic norms. Bakr says he realised it would anger some, and then points out that the demonstrators kept to the hall of the building, behaved in a peaceful manner and did not cause any damage. “The cause was too important and the emotions ran too high. If we did not get international support, the chances for a genocide in Kobane were huge.” The demonstration led the next day to a meeting between Kurdish representatives, including Bakr, and a parliamentary delegation of the Parliament. “We found support and understanding. They realised then that not only the Kurds are in danger of ISIS, and that we fight for many others too,” he said. Bakr says he now gets mainly positive reactions from people he meets. “A taxi driver embraced me when I told him about our fight against ISIS,” he said. “People shake my hand at the bus stop when they recognise me.” The ISIS attacks on the Kurds have put Kurdistan on the map, he said. Many Dutch now know who the Kurds are and where they live. “And politicians are no longer careful about recognising the existence of Kurds, after years of putting their links with countries like Turkey first.”
