Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016: New World Embassy, Rojava: installation view, Oslo City Hall, 2016. Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava & Studio Jonas Staal. Flickr/István Virág. Some rights reserved.The situation of the Kurds in a drastically changing Middle East has received little attention in academia and less in the media despite their growing impact on regional and international politics. The biggest stateless people living in the Middle East are on the verge of a new status, not only in Iraqi Kurdistan, where a referendum for independence takes place on September 25, 2017, but also in Syria and Turkey. Then there are the Iranian Kurds. Their stories and the conditions they live in are the least known, not only by the international community but also by fellow-Kurds living in three neighbouring countries, due to an intense isolation. This week’s short series looks at current political struggles of the Kurds in four neighbouring countries or in a country that does not exist on the world map but in the hearts and mind of 40 million people. Mehmet Kurt, series editor.
In less than a week, the people of Bashur will go the polls to vote on independence. As the referendum decision has created ripples through the Middle East and beyond, the reactions of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq have been predictably hostile. After all, in the last hundred years since the World War One, these states have repeatedly tried to keep the Kurds in line through a combination of war, repression, and even attempts at genocide.
So, one should not be so surprised as they throw various threats at the KRG now. More interesting, however, is how the political fractures among Kurdish people and different parts of Kurdistan have become more manifest. Indeed, we now have at least two Kurdistans: Bashur with its capitalist modernization and Rojava and its allies with their democratic confederalism.
