On March 18, Afrin, one of the pivotal cities of the Kurdish resistance, fell to the hands of Turkish regular troops and Syrian opposition military groups in the north of Syria. The latter, as well as the entire Kurdish region of Afrin, was considered one of the key bases of the national liberation struggle for the Kurdish people. His fall on the basis of the decades-long Turkish-Kurdish military-political confrontation had a great psychological impact on the Kurdish community that fought for freedom. This, in turn, led to the emergence of deep doubts and pessimism among the Kurdish people regarding the future of finding their place and importance in the region.
The loss of Afrin would not have had such a great psychological impact on the Kurds, if it were not for the destructive artillery that has been accompanying the people during their struggle for half a year. After years of struggle for independence and freedom, after all, in 2017 On September 25, an independence referendum was held in Iraqi Kurdistan, which promised to be the biggest achievement in the life of the Kurds. However, the military and political successes recorded in Syria and Iraq in the previous years turned into a problem in the lives of forty million people just as quickly, turning the victories into military and political defeats at a dizzying speed.
The Kurdish people live in the clutches of the three state-creating societies of the Middle East: the Turks, the Arabs and the Iranian peoples, having no access to the sea. It is no coincidence that after the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds were immediately targeted by the governments of Iran and Iraq and within a few weeks they lost all the “disputed territories”, including Kirkuk, one of the largest centers of the oil industry in the world. Similarly, the self-defense of the Kurds of the Afrin region against the attacks of the Turks and the “Free Syrian Army” group, which enjoys their patronage, lasted only two months. Today, many people are trying to find explanations why the Kurds, despite their respectable number and opportunities, are unable to record significant successes in the national liberation struggle.
This issue is not only important for the Armenian community from the point of view that the national-liberation struggle of the Kurds mainly refers to the problem of facing the threats coming from Turkey (a problem that is equally relevant in the case of Armenians), but also from the point of view that the Armenians have lived in the grip of three state-creating communities: Turks, Russians and Iranian peoples for the past centuries, and now the Republic of Armenia similarly has no access to the sea.
Many people see the answer to the question in the fact that the Kurds, with their clan (tribal, tribal) social structure, are far from the possibility of becoming a state-creating community. Looking out at the world from the coastal castles on the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris, for now only terror is turning into a political factor. The constant fears expected from the “world’s strong” make them captive to the idea that “power begets right” in the recognition of one’s own state and rights. And that “power”, since it is mainly in the hands of others, you can act against the power centers of the region and recognize your own rights only if you are supported by other regional or geopolitical forces. The destructive effect of this bio-philosophy begins to work from the moment when, at some point in the struggle, individual figures (in essence, the leaders of the ashirets) question the ideas of others about the power balance created in the region and find that the guarantee of victory against some other power in the current situation is so great that it is necessary to make an agreement with him, at least to extract the maximum benefit for his “country” or group (ashiret).
It was this devastating mechanism that worked in 2017. after the September 25 referendum. Although 92 percent of the population said “yes” to independence, the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, as a sum of the fears of the entire political elite, promised not to declare independence immediately, offering his neighbors who formed a coalition against him to help him establish a dialogue with official Baghdad and hold discussions on the territory’s status. A few days later, the process of independence of Kurdistan was already completely defeated, when it became known that the powerful Kurdish “Talabani” clan representing the south of the country signed a separate agreement with the leadership of Iraq, betraying the pan-Kurdish struggle. After that, Bafel Talabani, the son of the former president of Iraq, the former leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani, tried his best to deny the accusations that he betrayed and allowed the Iraqi forces and the Shia militia to occupy Kirkuk. The latter stated that the forces led by him withdrew in order to avoid heavy losses, while at the same time providing greater rights and opportunities for Iraqi Kurdistan, fixed in an agreement with official Baghdad.
During the events unfolding around Afrin in recent months, the phenomenon of “betrayal” among the Kurds appeared again. However, in this case, it was not their own people who betrayed them, but Russia, the external power which, according to the Kurds, was obliged to support the Kurds while protecting their own rights and freedoms.
Regardless of whether the “betrayal” has internal or external recipients, as well as regardless of whether there is actually betrayal or it has become a way for the Kurds to justify their own defeats, we have a problem to see that we are dealing with a phenomenon that is equally typical of Armenians. After all, like the Kurds, we also look at the outside world in almost the same way, recognizing the subjects related there as absolute centers of power, on which the recognition of our rights depends.
Kurds’ failures and disappointment have one basis. It is the deep-rooted conviction in the consciousness of the Kurds that their salvation depends on the outside world. According to that philosophy, the power centers of the region and the world lie on the way to form their own state power, and by persuading them and making agreements with them, possible rights were obtained. The power of the sovereign, thus, is the result of the energy received from external forces. And this is possible only when you are able to combine your own interests with the political interests of others and get a concrete result in the form of statehood.
This vicious philosophy will still take away many cities and regions from the Kurds. Apart from Russia, everyone, including the USA, will turn the Kurdish question into a coin, until the Kurdish political mind comes to the truth that there is no greater source of power and energy than firmly established self-determination. Self-determination of living in one’s hearth by one’s own laws and defending them with the force of arms. A subjective decision, during which the Kurds will disregard their own fears, the opinions of their neighbors, the calculations about the lack of funds, the lack of allies in the outside world, the concerns of ever being abandoned and betrayed.
The Kurdish national-liberation struggle needs their “Karabakh movement” – a movement whose philosophy outlined the path of Artsakh’s freedom in the past, but which is currently considered nonsense or is not understood even by our political apolitical “figures”. In contrast to the formula “conscious right gives birth to power”, the formula “power gives birth to right” has a history of thousands of years both among us and among the Kurds. Perhaps the problem is that aging nations do not seem to have the potential to rejuvenate. Why live freely, if you can sell the elements of sovereignty and live easily and safely under the roof of others. As a result of Bafel Talabani’s agreement with official Baghdad, from the fact of Iraqi troops entering the territories under Kurdish control to the fact of formation of Russian military police units in Gyumri is one step. The mentality of seeking power in the outside world unites Armenians and Kurds today.
Saro Saroyan