Kurdish Human Rights

The Kurds, an ancient people of Indo-European origin living in the mountains and highlands of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Armenia, total more than 20 million people, who continue to suffer oppression at the hands of their respective governments. Seeking an independent Kurdistan, comprising 74,000 square miles, the Kurds have mounted resistance movements since the failed 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which liquidated the Ottoman Empire and provided for creation of an autonomous Kurdish state. It never came to pass, however, due to Turkey's military revival under Kemal Ataturk and the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923. This desire for a nation state of their own has led the Kurds to reject lesser offers and resist subjugation by other nations.

The Kurds trace their ancestry to ancient Corduene, inhabited by the Carduchi (mentioned by Xenophon). Traditionally nomadic herders, they have been continuing victims of external domination. Conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century, the Kurds came under control of the Seljuk Turks (11th century), Mongols (13th to 15th centuries), Safavids (15th to 16th centuries) and Ottoman Turks (16th to 20th centuries). The Ottoman and Persian Empires allowed Kurdish tribes autonomy from the 16th to the 19th centuries, as long as they maintained peace on the border between the two empires. A Soviet-backed Kurdish “republic” briefly existed at the end of World War II. Overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 led to an offer of local autonomy, which the Kurds rejected.

Led by Mullah Mustafa Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Kurds struggled against Baghdad from 1964 to 1975. The Shah of Iran abandoned support of Kurdish resistance in 1975, and in 1979 the new Islamic republic attacked its Kurdish minority. Iraqi oppression throughout the Iran-Iraq War culminated in the death of 200,000 Kurds due to poison gas attacks and executions in 1988. A Kurdish uprising against Iraqi rule, quelled at the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, led 500,000 Kurds to flee to Iran and the Iraq-Turkey border; most eventually returned home under U.N. protection. Fighting between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan ended in 1999, and today they share control of the autonomous region formed in 1992.

In Turkey, 10 million “mountain Turks” are forbidden to use their own language or even describe themselves as Kurds (20% of the Turkish population). Turkish government forces have mounted a 15-year war against their Kurdish minority and militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK, renamed in 2004 [Page 810]Kongra-Gel, the Kurdistan People's Conference), killing 23,000 to 30,000 Kurds since the mid-1980s. In Iran, 5 million Kurds (10% of the population), led by the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), have been suppressed by the Shi'a government. Although Kurdish forces assisted with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the future of four million Iraqi Kurds (23% of the population) is uncertain under a Shi'a-dominated government. In 2004, Syria responded violently to unrest among its one million Kurds (8% of the population), and repression of the PJAK (Iranian branch of PKK) has been severe.

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