For a long period of time, Kurdish intellectuals have advanced the argument that the Kurdish people, as a minority group spread over four different countries, have been victimized, suppressed and deceived by their governments. As the argument goes, Kurds must have a right to have an independent state. The reason why Kurdish intellectuals raise this argument is to seek external legitimacy and beg for help from the international community to have Kurds recognized as a nation without a state. Hence, they seek to mobilize the international community to intervene on behalf of the Kurdish people in the region. As a matter of fact, this strategy has been an effective tool, and they have received some degree of recognition from Western romantic liberals.This argument, however, is haunted by several problems:
1. Kurdish intellectuals do not seem to understand that states do not act based on romantic fantasies in the international arena. States act as rational actors, which calculate the costs and benefits of their dealings with other states. Thus, although some romantic international nongovernmental organizations could succeed in lending some support to the Kurdish cause and put pressure on undemocratic governments to revise their policies toward ethnic groups, they would not go as far as openly supporting the idea that “because Kurds are suppressed, they should have their independent state.”
Moreover, once the regional states initiate democratic rules and regulations, such as Turkey, the Kurdish intellectuals' claim loses its base in the international arena, diminishing the persuasiveness of the claim that Kurds are a suppressed minority. This process, as a result, could render it impossible to seek an independent state, which Kurdish intellectuals wish to gain through this claim. For example, even international nongovernmental organizations have stopped arguing against Turkey's policies toward Kurds during the last couple of years because of Turkey's initiative to change its policies pertaining to Kurds under the European Union negotiation process.
2. The victimization argument has been overused so much that it has lost some of its value for the international community. The victimization argument has been used too many times since the Holocaust. Since inequality is almost everywhere in the world and since almost all minorities are applying for the “victimization visa” to call the international community to intervene in the states under which they live, the argument has lost its practical appeal. Thus, for example, even in the worst cases, such as Chechnya in Russia, East Turkistan in China or Kashmir in India, the international community tends not to hear the victimized communities' screams. The Kurdish people's situation, especially for Kurds in Turkey, is almost “perfect” when compared to those mentioned above.
In addition, the threshold of victimization that could trigger the international community's intervention is too high. Kurdish intellectuals don't seem to be aware of the fact that the international community's consideration of victimization level starts from the genocide of the Bosnian people. Even in a case like Darfur, the international community failed to intervene effectively.
It is surprising for us to see that Kurdish intellectuals still have hope regarding the international community despite its reluctant attitude during the Halabja incident. Kurds should realize that the intervention standards of the international community based on the victimization argument are too high. They should never forget what happened in Halabja in 1988 when the international community did not raise a finger as the horrible attack took place.
They should also realize that in Middle Eastern culture, however wrong it may be, as a matter of fact problems are solved within the family. Whenever one calls on outside help, he is treated as a traitor. Thus, tinkering with the international intervention game could only help to increase the hatred of other ethnic groups. Therefore, it is highly likely for Kurds to be considered traitors.
3. One of the faces of the victimization argument looks toward the Kurdish masses, which Kurdish intellectuals, through the victimization argument, attempt to galvanize around the unified Kurdistan area. However, there are two major shortcomings in this argument to galvanize the Kurdish masses around Kurdish nationalism. First, unlike the Cold War period where the national borders were tightly controlled, today Kurds in the region easily travel to the other parts of “Kurdistan” to see their relatives and at the same time to see the differences between the different parts of Kurdistan. For instance, not to mention the heavy smuggling activities, there is no visa requirement to go to Iran or come to Turkey as long as Kurds have a passport of one of the two countries. Therefore, they could easily communicate with each other, and in practice, there is little effect on ordinary Kurds' lives if they are in Hakkari or the other side of the border. The same rules can be applied to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq, as the workers of the Turkish companies that established their branches there are from either Kurdish region. In addition, people and businesses in Turkey and Iraq are so highly integrated that they do not feel a national border is separating them from one another. Better relations with Syria in the last 10 years also lifted the borders between Syria and Turkey, so that anyone who wants to go there to visit their relatives can do so easily. Therefore, in reality the “dividedness” argument is losing its ground and turning into a romantic fantasy for only the Kurdish nationalists, who seek to establish a unified-Kurdistan.
Second, Turkey's EU membership bid has fundamentally changed the concept of nation-state, and it diverted the argument to focus on individual rights rather then the right to have a nation-state. Therefore, while the rest of the world is debating the benefits of lining in borderless territories, Kurdish nationalists' victimization argument, which highlights their demands to establish a Kurdish nation-state, does not make sense for ordinary Kurds. This is especially important for Kurds in Turkey because in almost every home there are one or more people who have relatives in Europe. Thus, for the majority of Kurds, being a part of Europe is not wishful thinking, but it is the reality of their everyday life. It is the reality that many Kurds depend on the money that comes from Europe through their relatives in Europe. Hence, dreaming of attaining a nation-state through the victimization argument is just a dream for Kurdish nationalists, but not the majority of Kurds in the region.
*Dr. Emre Uslu is an analyst working with The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.
