When do countries break apart? Sure, civil war and
violent conflict often precede secession. For every peaceful separation of
Czechoslovakia, there is a Yugoslavia or India partition. It took decades of
fighting for Eritrea to break away from Ethiopia, or for South Sudan to win its
freedom from Sudan. While the Bangladeshi separation from Pakistan took just a
year, it cost more lives in a year than the Syrian civil war has taken over
five.
In every case, however, a psychological separation preceded the political
division. Eritreans did not see themselves as Ethiopians long before
independence formalized a separate status. Bangladeshis spoke a different
language and had very different cultural identity. Czechs and Slovaks likewise
had distinct histories before being forced into a union and even then spoke
different languages. Not so California, despite all the talk of its succession
in the wake of Donald Trump’s winning the presidency. From the interstate
highway system to the National Football League to Hollywood, California is
America. Californians have fought and died in foreign wars alongside their
compatriots from 49 others states. A majority of Californians may not like
Trump, but then again, a majority of Americans didn’t vote for him either. To
talk about California secession is just to blow off steam, nothing more.
Now to the Middle East: The Kurds describe themselves as the largest
people without a nation. Tens of millions of Kurds are spread across four
countries: Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The Kurdish struggle in Iraq dates
back decades. During the Iraqi monarchy, there were occasional clashes between
the Iraqi Army and Kurdish forces but it was only in 1961, three years after
army officers overthrew the Iraqi monarchy that Kurdish resentment toward
Baghdad erupted into open conflict. Insurgency and low-intensity conflict
continued through the next decade. In 1970, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani, father of its current leader Masoud Barzani,
believed Saddam Hussein might be a pragmatic partner for peace. Together, the
elder Barzani and Saddam negotiated an autonomy accord. Only subsequently did
Barzani realize Saddam Hussein’s insincerity. Fighting once again
erupted. The fiercer the conflict and the more repressive Saddam became, the
more Kurds focused on their own cultural heritage and began to reject the
common identity successive Iraqi leaders had tried to imbue. In 1991, the break
formalized after Saddam miscalculated: he withdrew Iraqi civil servants and
sought to blockade Iraqi Kurds into submission. The Iraqi Kurds seized the
opportunity and established their own government.
More than a quarter century has now passed. The younger generation has
never known Saddam, and most Kurdish civilians have not experienced war, never
mind that the Islamic State battles for control just a few dozen miles away
from major Kurdish cities. They speak Kurdish and do not understand Arabic.
They listen to Kurdish singers and watch Kurdish television. Few have been to
Baghdad, let alone southern Iraq. They feel little if any Iraqi identity. This
is not new — many journalists and academics visit Iraqi Kurdistan and observe
the same. What is interesting, however, is the change in attitude among the
younger generations in Iraq proper. In Basra, Najaf, Karbala, and even Baghdad,
many have heard how different Iraqi Kurdistan is, but few have visited the region.
If they managed to head north for a summer vacation in the Kurdish mountains,
it was as if they visited a foreign country, right down to the passport checks
at the internal federal border. Whereas earlier generations of Iraqis schooled
in Arab nationalism fought for unity, most young Iraqis shrug off the idea that
Iraqi Kurdistan will or even should be fully integrated. Iraqi Kurds have won
not only territorial control, but psychological recognition as well.
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embarked on a bloody and
cynical Kurdish policy. He wooed the Kurds prior to elections, but forgot his
promises once he no longer needed a Kurdish vote. His embrace of the peace
process was insincere. As soon as he realized that Kurds would vote for the Peoples’
Democratic Party (HDP), he launched a scorched earth policy which transformed
towns like Cizre, Silopi,
and Nusaybin into scenes remiscent of Aleppo in Syria.
After trying peace but experiencing violence remiscent of the mid-1980s, most
Turkish Kurds have given up on a common future with their ethnic Turkish
compatriots. But, it is not only the Kurds whose mindset has shifted. As
Erdogan has consolidated control over Turkish broadcasting and newspapers,
Turks are exposed to an ever-shrinking range of permissible voices.
As a result, a new generation of Turks now sees Kurds as the other, if
not the enemy. Add to this the problem that most Western-oriented Turks have
never visited south eastern Turkey, and most Kurds from the southeast if the
country no longer can visit Antalya, Bursa, and Izmir. Turkey is already
undergoing a psychological partition. Indeed, even Erdogan understands at one
level that partition is inevitable, and his economic policies seem to suggest
that he has already written off predominantly Kurdish regions.
Psychological separation is impossible to reverse absent wholesale
ethnic cleansing. That will be nearly impossible to pull off, however, since
the Kurds are armed and experienced. Turks should face reality: Turkey is
effectively partitioned. Its borders will change; the only question is whether
the new lines will be international borders or internal, federal divisions.
Erdogan may see himself as a great leader and a new Atatürk. But while Atatürk
built modern Turkey, Erdogan has killed it. He will go down in history not as a
hero, but as a corrupt villain who destroyed Turkey for his own vanity.
Michael Rubin
December
9, 2016
The American Enterprise Institute
