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Mohammad Ali Shabani
in Turkey and Iran, for example, have faced wholly contrasting experiences, which have
shaped them accordingly.
Two years before the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern
Turkish Republic, the governor of Dersim, General Abdullah Alpdo
ğ
an, coined the term
“Mountain Turk” in reference to Kurds inhabiting Turkey. “Mountain Turks” would later
be referred to as “Eastern Turks”.
2
This basic denial of Kurdish identity has been systematic,
and not wholly relegated to the distant past. Indeed, “as late as the 1980s, it was a crime
in Turkey to claim that a people called ‘Kurds’ existed because such a claim was seen as
tantamount to propagating ‘separatism’ and even ‘terrorism.’” Moreover, Law 2932, which
was only annulled in 1991, banned publishing and broadcasting in the Kurdish language,
while Law 1587 banned Kurdish names for children.
3
In Iran, the founder of the modern Iranian state, Reza Shah Pahlavi – whom in many
ways sought to emulate Atatürk – as well as his successor, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
also pursued identity politics with far-reaching consequences. The Pahlavi dynasty’s
“Persianism” had the profound effect of turning non-Persian Iranians into minorities. The
Islamic Republic of Iran has sought to mitigate the consequences of the “Persianism” of
the Pahlavi state, but at the same time continued to pursue many aspects of it, leading to
the continued marginalization of non-Persian Iranians, including Kurds. Recent moves to
mitigate the “Persianization” of Iran – a multicultural and multi-ethnic nation – include
efforts to introduce Kurdish-language schoolbooks. However, Iranian Kurds, as both an
ethnic – and largely – religious minority, continue to face marginalization.
It would be overly simplistic to reduce the long and complex experiences of the Turkish
and Iranian Kurdish communities to those described in the paragraphs above. Indeed, the
sole intention here is to present a basic idea of the reality that Kurds are not a monolith and
harbour vastly different political views and ambitions depending on the context.
The prospect of an independent Iraqi Kurdish state aside, another often neglected,
but for various states concerning development – including Iran – would be the secession
of the southern, Shia-majority sector of Iraq. While discussion of Southern secession only
occasionally surfaces in political debates, this scenario is worthy of further examination –
less so because of its prospect, but more so to gain an understanding of Iranian influence,
and by extension, interests.
Contrary to popular perceptions of Tehran being in favour of outright Shia domination,
the secession of the South presents both challenges and opportunities for the Islamic
Republic.
For Iran, the concern is not only the subsequent likely emergence of a Sunni-dominated
central Iraqi region. The reality is that 90% of Iraqi oil, which accounts for 90% of central
government revenues, is exported through the South, and not via territory controlled by
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the North. A simplistic sectarian reading
of regional politics would have one believe that the emergence of a small, oil-rich Shia
2 Reicher S, Hopkins N (2001).
Self and nation
. London: Sage, p. 156.
3 Aktürk S (2012).
Regime of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia and Turkey
. New York:
Cambridge University Press, p. 117.