The story of the Kurdish people is as complex as their existence. A traditionally nomadic society spread across modern day Turkiye, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Armenia, the Kurdish people have been moving around for more than a century in search for Kurdistan — a state which has been imagined by its people ever since the concept of a ‘nation state’ trickled down from the West to the Ottoman empire. Kurdish societies were spread across the Ottoman empire, and never managed to unite under a single identity like the Armenians and the Turks. Therefore, they were unable to make a claim for a separate state, as European powers moved in to carve out the region after the First World War, rendering them stateless in modern geopolitics. Modern-day nationalist sentiments, especially in Turkiye, tend to take away the authenticity of Kurdish people. Bulent Arinc, former Deputy Prime Minister of Turkiye, had reportedly said “Kurdish is a language without a civilisation” while he was speaker of the parliament in 2012. The underlying theme in Turkish resentment towards the Kurds is visible in this statement: Kurds are a people without a history. The struggle to become a people Even though fragmented by local struggles for power between different tribes, the Zagros range of mountains that form the heartland of a hypothetical Kurdistan, home to Kurds of different identities — majorly Sunni Muslims, few Shia Kurds, and some Alevi tribes (not to be confused with Alawites of Syria) — is rich with history. The Ottoman rule at its height saw the Kurds as a powerful ally against neighbouring Persia. They went from being nomads to soldiers to tribes and at one point even had their own emirates. But Ottoman efforts to modernise rule and centralise power saw the emirates go back to being divided small tribes. However, the Treaty of Sevres, signed on August 2, 1920, did bring the Kurdish people closer to statehood than ever before and ever since. The Treaty, largely drafted by Britain, said that a commission composed of Allied appointees would “Draft within six months....a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates”. “...No objection shall be raised by the Principal Allied Powers to the voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish state of the Kurds inhabiting the part of Kurdistan which was hitherto been included in the Mosul Vilayet [parts of British occupied Mesopotamia]”, the treaty had said. But the Kurds failed to capitalise on the treaty. They were unable to unite under a single identity due to their tribal composition. The tribal chiefs were faced with two options — to form a state that would probably come under British influence and risk detaching from Muslim Ottoman heartlands that they had occupied for a long time or remain stateless. Many tribal chiefs chose the latter. The Turkish republic, born after the First World War, had its roots in the nationalist idea of a homogenous society and was driven by the fear of external threats affecting national unity. While the Ottoman government in Istanbul had signed the Treaty of Sevres, it had not ratified it. And it did not survive to implement it. The loss of Mesopotamia and Syria, the entry of the French and the invasion of Istanbul by the Greeks all led to the revolt in Anatolia led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk which resulted in the Turkish state in 1923. While the Kurds fought against Armenian and Greek threats alongside Kemal hoping for a Muslim state, the Ataturk (meaning father of the Turks) had clear intentions of establishing a nation-state. Kemal abolished the Sultanate in 1922 and the Caliphate in 1924, the two pillars of the Muslim state, rendering the spiritual base from which the Kurdish Aghas and Sheiks derived their authority, obsolete. A peace treaty finalised in July 1923, following a conference in Lusanne, rejected the British request to recognise Kurds as a national minority. Kurdish associations, publications, religious fraternities, and schools were all banned. But this setback to the Kurdish identity only served to strengthen the people’s resolve to unite different Kurdish viewpoints. The threat to the Aghas (tribal chiefs) and Sheiks paved way for a loosely connected organisation called Azadi. But a brief mutiny of its troops led to the leadership being rounded up and brought its end in 1924. Another short-lived Kurdish revolt broke out in February 1925, in the Diyarbakir region led by Naqshbandi Sheikh Said. But this revolt was confined to Zaza-speaking Sunni Kurds. The remaining Sunni groups remained indifferent to the cause with some Alevi Kurds even assisting the authorities. The revolt failed to seize Diyarbakir and collapsed due to the fragmented nature of the Kurds. It also had a disastrous aftermath. It led to widespread suppression of the Kurds and gave Kemal the pretext for a one-party state. Thousands were killed and countless Kurdish villages were razed to the ground. Another revolt in 1928, this time in the Mount Ararat region lasted till 1930, and Turkiye had to insist that Iran cede territory on its side of the Ararat to encircle the region. This revolt was also pacified with great brutality, with security forces being given a free hand without consequences. The brutal repression silenced the Kurdish resistance for decades, and the region of Kurdistan remained a military zone closed to foreigners till 1966. A revival of the movement The authoritarian one-party system in Turkiye was relaxed in 1946, and opposition parties, like the Democrat party, saw opportunity in the Kurds and began trying to woo the Aghas, reviving Kurdish identity. Conscription and mechanisation of agriculture led to the rise of a Kurdish proletariat. It was among this class that the Kurdish revival gained momentum. The young Kurds picked up by the state for assimilation began to propagate the problems of the ‘East’, a euphemism used for Kurdistan. The rise of the Kurdish proletariat saw demonstrations and expressions in the press to which the state replied by crackdowns and seizure of publications. But interconnected organisations carried the Kurdish movement forward, mixed with left politics. This period is marked by several polarities. The political left against right, nationalist Kurds against Turks, religious Sunnis against Shias, Sunnis against Alavis and Sunnis against secularists. The growing polarity led to Kurds, despairing even the Turkish left, forming their own left-wing parties, among them the Partiya Karkari Kurdistan or the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) under Abdullah Ochalan, which would define the Kurdish struggle for decades. The emergence of the PKK The PKK adopted a Marxist-Leninist doctrine and induced it with a guerrilla campaign. Their main targets were the fascist right, Turkish left, state agents, and, above all, Kurdish landlords who worked in tandem with the state to exploit the Kurdish masses. While the Kurdish masses were initially shocked by the PKK’s violence, the increasingly degrading treatment they endured at the hands of the state, including military sweeps, arbitrary arrests, and widespread torture made them receptive to the PKK. The PKK managed to grow beyond the borders of Turkiye with its allies, like the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, the Free Life of Kurdistan Party (PJAK) in Iran, and the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK) in Iraq. The Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) serves as an umbrella organisation for all the groups and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), formed in 2012 during the Syrian civil war, serves as the armed wing for the cause. International dynamics While Turkiye, the U.S. and the European Union designates the PKK as a terrorist organisation, it has an ally in Russia. “Neither PKK nor the PYD are considered terrorist organisations by either Russia or the United Nations Security Council”, then-Russian Ambassador to Turkiye, Andrey Karlov, had said in 2015. The PKK had received training and material support through Soviet proxies and even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the PKK had held a congress in Moscow in 1996. While Kurdish identity was forever in conflict with the Turkish state, things were different in neighbouring nations. Iraq’s new Constitution that came into effect in 2005, following the U.S. invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein, recognised the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan under a federal structure. Occupying northern Iraq, including the oil-rich Kirkuk, Iraqi Kurdistan prospered and held a referendum of independence in 2017 with overwhelming Kurdish support. However, the referendum triggered a military response from the Iraqi government which retook regions, including Kirkuk, in a significant blow to Kurdistan aspirations. In Syria, the PYD and YPG utilised the Syrian civil war to carve out a de facto autonomous region for the Kurds, Rojava, run by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The U.S., in the fight against the ISIS, lent assistance to the YPG to form the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Turkiye sees as a threat due to its links with the PKK. Following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the interim government led by former militant Abu Muhammad al-Jolani managed to convince the SDF to lay down arms and integrate into the state, leaving questions over the future of Rojava. And recently, on March 1, the PKK declared a ceasefire with Turkiye. Since this declaration, by Mr. Ochalan to the PKK to lay down its arms and dissolve the organisation, the future of Kurdistan is uncertain.