In the fight against the Islamic State, the West gratefully accepted the commitment of the Kurdish militias, but now the US is abandoning the Kurds, as it has done so often. We recall that it was the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that defeated ISIS in its former center, Raqqa, in September 2017. A remarkable fact because the SDF is largely composed of members of the Kurdish militia YPG (People’s Protection Units). This paramilitary group has close ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which exists in neighboring Turkey but has been banned by Erdogan’s government.
It was not surprising that the Kurds fought on the front lines, achieving multiple victories against ISIS, threatening the jihadists with “surrender or death” during the battles. This scenario has been seen all too often in the fight against ISIS jihadists in Syria and Iraq. Where state armies failed and were defeated, the Kurds held the front line in northern Iraq and Syria. And where Western-backed, mainly Islamist groups, including weapons and money, fled, the Kurds courageously and persistently led the fight against ISIS.
They undoubtedly assumed that they would be able to consolidate their territorial claims and perhaps even support their ambitions for their own state. After all, they not only drove the Islamic State from key areas and cities, but also governed these areas themselves. This has been seen since 2014 in oil-rich Kirkuk in Iraq and in large parts of northeastern Syria such as Rojava. With Western support, the Kurds were doing well. But that was only true when the war with the Islamic State was in full swing and before the jihadists took Damascus. Meanwhile, the Kurds have noticed that the ground has shifted beneath their feet, frustrated to find that the Western powers that supported them in the war have not done so in the aftermath.
In this way, the Kurds’ former allies have made it possible to revive old regional animosities. All those who had frozen their antipathy towards the Kurds’ political ambitions during their fight against the jihadists have now rediscovered their aversion to the Kurdish statehood, now that the Islamic State has acquired a state entity and after ousting the Western-unpopular Assad. Now Turkey, under the pretext of declaring the YPG a terrorist organization, in collaboration with the jihadist regime in Damascus, has launched a military operation to expel the Kurdish militia from northern Syria.
In his usual belligerent rhetoric, Turkish President Erdogan says: “We are taking decisive measures against the YPG terrorist organization and we will continue,” adding ominously: “There is no question of concessions to the Kurds.” According to Ankara, the military measures are fully justified under United Nations Security Council resolutions 1624, 2170 and 2178. These supposedly allow Turkey to invade foreign territory in the name of self-defense and the fight against terrorism.
It is undoubtedly a shameful and largely opportunistic act by a state that tolerated and armed the real Islamic State terrorists on its borders, as long as it kept the Kurds in check. But as unforgivable and harmful as the Turkish state’s behavior is, it is neither surprising nor unprecedented. Since 2015, Turkish planes have been bombing Kurdish forces in Syria, mirroring the equally brutal actions of the Turkish military against the minority minority in their own country.
Perhaps even more shameful is the reaction of those in the West who, in recent years, have let Kurdish militias do their dirty work for them. This is especially true of the United States. The American government has found almost no words of support for its Kurdish allies in Turkey’s latest military offensives. Instead, it sided with its NATO ally, Turkey. Just as the US and its allies responded to the Iraqi Kurdish referendum with condemnation and threats, they are responding to Turkey’s attacks by calling for restraint and ensuring that the military operation remains limited in scope and duration and conscientious in order to avoid civilian casualties. This sounds like telling a murderer to at least clean up the crime scene. Thus, Erdogan’s hostility to the Kurds is fueled by a combination of diplomatic ignorance and outright cowardice on the part of the US government.
One thing must be said very clearly at this point: The Kurds have been used. Not by Turkey, not by the Assad regime, not even by Iraq or Iran. All of these states feared territorial losses and uprisings in their own country in the event of Kurdish independence. Therefore, they opposed the idea of a purely Kurdish state from the beginning. The Kurds knew this too. So, as so often in the past, they were used and betrayed exclusively by Western powers.
After all, it was the US that had armed and supported the Kurdish militias in their struggle. It was the US that had provided air support. And it was the US that had encouraged the Kurds to take military action in both Iraq and Syria. In return, the Kurds were willing to sacrifice their lives. Of course, not without self-interest. In addition to the need to protect themselves, they saw an opportunity to advance their national project. That was the only reason they were willing to fight the Islamic State with such conviction. The Kurds fought hard against the jihadists because the outcome was important to them, since the idea of a Kurdish state was worth fighting for.
The only problem is that Kurdish ideas in the post-war period have always differed from those of the West. The Kurds were useful, yes, but only as a means, as a fighting force against Islamic terrorism, and not as an end in themselves. The West wanted the Kurds to help stabilize the region, not to reorder it. In fact, the US acted ambiguously at best regarding the Kurdish ambitions. The US government, like other Western countries, has followed Turkey’s lead and designated the PKK a terrorist group. On par with al-Qaeda and, yes, even the Islamic State itself. Now that the tide of war has seemingly turned in the West’s favor in Syria and the Kurds are no longer needed, Washington is dropping them like a hot potato. Just as in 1920, when the British state promised the Kurds their own territory in the Treaty of Sèvres to make a treaty with Turkey possible, and after the treaty was signed, paid no further attention to the Kurds. If the Kurds cease to be useful, they will be mercilessly betrayed without anyone in the West batting an eyelid.
The bitter irony is that the very thing that makes the Kurds such courageous fighters, namely their devotion to their common cause for a new nation to be founded and their self-confidence and courageous commitment to the cause, are the very reasons why they will never receive the support they deserve from the West. The pursuit of national self-determination combined with the strong will to fight for it are values that have long been treated with contempt by Western elites. The Kurds would perhaps have been better off if they had lost to the Islamic State and had become something the West has no problem supporting: Victims. But the Kurds’ biggest problem is their strongest virtue, their willingness to fight for what too many in the West no longer believe in: national self-determination and sovereignty.
Greece should openly support this national self-determination, with a political approach that will not be plagued by prejudices and stereotypes. Unfortunately, this political approach to the Kurdish situation is mostly spent on the defeat or dismemberment of Turkey by the “Kurdish invasion” in its soft underbelly, without critical thinking and with the main characteristic of the distortion of rationality and the dominance of sentimentality.
All Greek governments of the 21st century, panicked by the awakening of Turkish nationalism, but also by the consequences of the policy dictated by NATO, are trying slyly to appease Ankara, brutally disregarding the rights of the Kurdish people who, along with the Palestinians, are the most tortured in the entire Middle East, and this from a country that wants to advertise itself as “the homeland of democracy.” In our time, the ultimate question, ignoring the guilt and phobic syndromes of official Greece that stem from the handover of Öcalan to the Turks, is:
- Can the Kurds be allies in confronting Turkish aggression (Blue Homeland, “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”);
- Do the cataclysmic developments in the Middle East and the Kurdish struggle for autonomy or independence concern us or do they simply concern us secondarily as an extension of “belonging to the West”?
- What is the realistic approach?
- Are the Kurds a “natural” ally of Greece in the Middle East?
Support for the Kurds, whether material or moral, primarily presupposes a fundamental reform of Greek foreign policy. Greece must adopt an “extended deterrence doctrine”, such as the Common Defense Area Doctrine (1994 – 1999). Only this time, the boundaries of this doctrine will not stop at the coasts of Cyprus but will extend to the mountains and deserts of Kurdistan. So either we seize the opportunity that developments in the Middle East unexpectedly offer us or we simply continue to evolve even further into a satellite of revisionist Turkey.
