Kurds

Ancient History of the Kurds

The issue of Kurdish origins has long been perplexed. Htorical evidence cannot exist for the exact identification of the genesis and the course of evolution of the contemporary Kurdish ethnic identity for the most part because Kurds have being the end-product of numerous immigrations, genetic blends and cultural influences.

An early documentation of the name 'Kurd' appears in Assyrian documents around 1000BC. Assyrians named the inhabitants of Hizan near Lake Van as 'Kurti' or 'Kurkhi'. According to this documentation, it was believed that Kurdish origins trace their roots in the Carduchi population, who resisted the retreat of the Ten Thousand in the 4th century BC. Other documentation is that of the Greek historian Polybius, who refers to Kurds as 'Kurtioi'.

However, the earliest evidence associated to a distinct culture shaped by the inhabitants of the Kurdish mountains is traced during the period of the Halaf Culture (6000BC-5000 BC). Named after the site of Tell Halaf in northeast Syria (today's Syrian Kurdistan), the Halaf Culture was known for its exceptionally sophisticated pottery. Delicately painted and designed, Halaf pottery has been found from Iran to southeast Turkey and it is easily recognizable.

In regards to whether Halaf Culture is indeed the original homeland of the Kurds, archaeologists point out that shared pottery is an effective method to classify prehistoric cultures in the Middle East. By determining the boundaries of Halaf Culture, archaeologists are almost certain that they match with the geographical area that modern Kurds consider their homeland: from Afrin to Lake Van and from Kirmanshah to Adyaman. Besides, it is highly unlikely that the inhabitants of Halaf Culture were immigrants. According to historical and linguistic evidence, the Halafian population was the result of an internal migration that led to the cultural unification in Kurdistan.

The Halaf Culture was followed by the expansion of the Ubaidian Culture (5300BC-4000BC). The Ubaidians developed a mixed culture integrating the earlier influence of the Halaf Culture with their own culture heritage. Their relation to the Kurds is that they named the two main rivers of Kurdistan, Tigris and Euphrates and nearly all the cities that the contemporary world recognizes as Sumerian.

The Ubaidian Culture was followed by the spread of the Hurrian Culture (4300BC-600BC). Spreading into the mountains of Taurus and Zagros, the Hurrians never really expanded far from the mountains, and, according to linguistic evidence, they spoke a language that belongs to the Caucasian family of languages. Around 2500BC, they built larger political and military entities, out of which the most notable were Urartu, Mushku, Subaru and Guti/Qutil. By the end of the Hurrian Culture, Kurdistan had been ethnically and culturally unified.

Today, the city of Mush in northern Kurdistan is named after Mushku; Mount Ararat is the inheritance of Urartu; the Kurdish tribal association of Zubari is named after Subaru. The extraordinary legacy of the Hurrians to the contemporary Kurdish culture is manifested in mythology, religion, martial art and genetics. Religious symbols are ever present in the Kurdish art, while nearly 65 percent of Kurdish names are of Hurrian descent.

However, already since 2000BC invading Aryans had arrived in Mesopotamia. Their influence on the Hurrian population was overwhelming. Religion, architecture, decorative arts, and farming techniques remained relatively unchanged although gradually the Hurrians learned an Iranic dialect and were forced to worship new deities. Almost every aspect of present Kurdish culture can be attributed to the Aryan influence.

Another major influence was that of many Aramaic populations that never settled to Kurdistan, but introduced to the Kurdish culture elements of Judaism and later Christianity. The role of Islam on the Kurdish society is more complex to examine. In Kurdistan, Arab populations settled and assimilated with the Kurds, leaving their genetic imprint in the later Kurd generation, for the most part the darker color. Similarly, Kurdistan had a major cultural influence for Turkic steppe nomads that aimed to Turkify the area.

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History

Commonly identified with the ancient Corduene, which was inhabited by the Carduchi (mentioned in Xenophon), the Kurds were conquered by the Arabs in the 7th cent. The region was held by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th cent., by the Mongols from the 13th to 15th cent., and then by the Safavid and Ottoman Empires. Having been decimated by the Turks in the years between 1915 and 1918 and having struggled bitterly to free themselves from Ottoman rule, the Kurds were encouraged by the Turkish defeat in World War I and by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's plea for self-determination for non-Turkish nationalities in the empire. The Kurds brought their claims for independence to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

The Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which liquidated the Ottoman Empire, provided for the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state. Because of Turkey's military revival under Kemal Atatürk, however, the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which superseded Sèvres, failed to mention the creation of a Kurdish nation. Revolts by the Kurds of Turkey in 1925 and 1930 were forcibly quelled. Later (1937–38) aerial bombardment, poison gas, and artillery shelling of Kurdish strongholds by the government resulted in the slaughter of many thousands of Turkey's Kurds. In the British mandate of Iraq, there were unsuccessful uprisings in 1919, 1923, and 1932. The Kurds in Iran also rebelled during the 1920s, and at the end of World War II a Soviet-backed Kurdish “republic” existed briefly.

With the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the Kurds hoped for greater administration and development projects, which the new Ba'athist government failed to grant. Agitation among Iraq's Kurds for a unified and autonomous Kurdistan led in the 1960s to prolonged warfare between Iraqi troops and the Kurds under Mustafa al-Barzani. In 1970, Iraq finally promised local self-rule to the Kurds, with the city of Erbil as the capital of the Kurdish area. The Kurds refused to accept the terms of the agreement, however, contending that the president of Iraq would retain real authority and demanding that Kirkuk, an important oil center, be included in the autonomous Kurdish region.

In 1974 the Iraqi government sought to impose its plan for limited autonomy in Kurdistan. It was rejected by the Kurds, and heavy fighting erupted. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran (1979), the government there launched a murderous campaign against its Kurdish inhabitants as well as a program to assassinate Kurdish leaders. Iraqi attacks on the Kurds continued throughout the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), culminating (1988) in poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages to quash resistance and in the rounding up and execution of male Kurds, all of which resulted in the killing of some 200,000 in that year alone.

With the end of the Persian Gulf War (1991), yet another Kurdish uprising against Iraqi rule was crushed by Iraqi forces; nearly 500,000 Kurds fled to the Iraq-Turkey border, and more than one million fled to Iran. Thousands of Kurds subsequently returned to their homes under UN protection. In 1992 the Kurds established an “autonomous region” in N Iraq and held a general election. However, the Kurds were split into two opposed groups, the Kurdistan Democratic party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which engaged in sporadic warfare.

In 1999 the two groups agreed to end hostilities; control of the region is divided between them. Kurdish forces aided the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, joining with U.S. and British forces to seize the traditionally Kurdish cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkish fears of any attempt by Iraqi Kurds to proclaim their independence from Iraq—and thus revive the longstanding hopes of Turkish Kurds for independence (see below)—led Turkey to threaten to intervene in N Iraq. Although Kurds were given a limited veto over constitutional changes in the subsequent interim Iraqi constitution (2004), many Iraqi Shiites found this unacceptable. Kurdish leaders were wary, as a result, of political developments as the United States ceded sovereignty to a new Iraqi government. In 2004 the two main Iraqi Kurdish groups agreed to unify the administration of Iraq's Kurdish region, but that had not been achieved by Jan., 2006, when an additional unification agreement was signed.

In Turkey, where the government has long attempted to suppress Kurdish culture, fighting erupted in the mid-1980s, mainly in SE Turkey, between government forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which was established in 1984. The PKK has also engaged in terrorist attacks. In 1992 the Turkish government again mounted a concerted attack on its Kurdish minority, killing more than 20,000 and creating about two million refugees. In 1995 and 1997, Turkey waged military campaigns against PKK base camps in northern Iraq, and in 1999 it captured the guerrillas' leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who was subsequently condemned to death. The PKK announced in Feb., 2000, that they would end their attacks, but the arrest the same month of the Kurdish mayors of Diyarbakir and other towns on charges of aiding the rebels threatened to revive the unrest.

Reforms passed in 2002 and 2003 to facilitate Turkish entrance in the European Union included ending bans on private education in Kurdish and on giving children Kurdish names; also, emergency rule in SE Turkey was ended. However, in 2004, following Turkish actions against it, the PKK—renamed Kongra-Gel (the Kurdistan People's Congress—announced that it would end the cease-fire and resumed its attacks. In 2006 there was renewed fighting with Kurdish rebels and outbreaks of civil unrest involving Kurds; an offshoot of the PKK also mounted bomb attacks in a number of Turkish cities. In Sept., 2006, and again in June, 2007, the PKK unilaterally declared cease-fires, but Turkey rejected them, and fighting continued, at times spilling over into Iraq and threatening to become a wider war involving Iraqi Kurds. Beginning in Oct., 2007, Turkey launched a series of attacks into N Iraq, including a significant ground incursion in Feb., 2008. Some 40,000 people are thought to have died in Kurdish-Turkish fighting since the mid-1980s. The legal Democratic Society party is now the principal civilian Kurdish voice in Turkey; in the most recent parliamentary elections (2007), it won 20 seats. It has called for expanded rights for Kurds and autonomy for largely Kurdish SE Turkey.

There were also clashes between the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq in the 1990s and Kurdish unrest in Syria in 2004 and Syria and Iran in 2005. In 2007, Iran shelled Kurdish positions in Iraq in retaliation for Kurdish rebel operations in Iran.