Prompt: “Kurdish statehood aspiration is mirror image of Palestinian statehood aspiration. Both will bring regional security and stability.” (Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, leader of the Islamic moderate Wasatia Movement).
Riding somebody’s coattails?
The Kurdish community of about 35 million souls possessed of a unique language and culture has been fighting for decades their division across five states that have been able to militarily dominate them and forestall their developing a seaport (that’s a long way off).
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/08/10/impromptu-kurdistan-israel-usa/
Back in the 1970s, the Kurdish liberation story appeared posed similarly by the same Moscow masters in the form of a PKK, which became also a terrorist organization that remains so to this day. However, Kurdish leadership has been both able to distance itself from the PKK identity (even though it’s still there) by moving its behavior and politics strongly westward in geopolitical courtship while diminishing Moscow’s old role in the formulation of its own independent political culture and its values (reference the Rojava Revolution that it appears to have in it something of communal and liberal value for everyone).
Now, if the Palestinians should wish to dance with the Israelis and the west . . . well that would seem a revolution indeed!
For background:
- 9/6/2017
The feel of the Kurdish struggle: not-ready-for-prime-time democratic coherence — but here they are whether the surrounding powers like it or not.
That’s a good stance for independence but one of questionable character: authoritarian? Soviet / post-Soviet? Kleptocracy? Rojava Revolution Utopia?
Many things have been and remain possible.
However, there comes a place where dreaming must stop and the functional administration of a state of some form must ensue.
Among things certain, however, one should not miss the murderous persecution of the Kurdish People by Turkish forces, nominally bound to NATO but in the realpolitik much influenced by President Putin’s autocratic effects on President Erdogan — and for grease: Turkish Stream.
Addendum
Since composing the response at the top of this post, the Kurdish People have expressed in referendum their desire for a state apart from their generally demeaning hosts who with force keep them from freedom. One state, however, has supported the Kurdish Liberation struggle:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement ahead of the referendum saying Israel “supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own.”
At a conference on counter-terrorism last month, Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked added her support, saying, “A free Kurdistan should be established, at least in Iraq. It is in the United States’ and Israel’s interest for this to happen. It is time for the US to support the process.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/02/middleeast/iraqi-kurdistan-israel-support/index.html – 10/2/2017
Related: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Netanyahu-scoffs-at-Erdogans-claim-that-mossad-behind-Kurdish-referendum-506396 – 10/1/2017
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