The "Arab Spring's" effect on Kurdish political fortunes.

• Author: Romano, David
• Position: COMMENTARY

The analysis presented here attempts to survey both the significant opportunities as well as the grave dangers faced by Kurdish political actors as a result of the changes related to "the Arab Spring." The effects of the Arab Spring, especially where attempts to overthrow authoritarian governments went awry, were not limited to the Arab world. Kurdish populations, especially in Turkey, Iraq and Syria, were deeply affected by the changes sweeping the Middle East. Generally speaking, the instability shaking up the Arab world presented dangers but also great opportunities to change a regional status quo most Kurds find deeply unsatisfactory. Although still suffering from deep internal divisions among themselves, Kurdish political actors have moved to take advantage of the increasing power vacuums in Syria and Iraq to advance their goals of self-determination.

In many senses, the "Arab Spring" appears to have benefitted Kurds in Iraq and Syria more than Arabs, who have fallen victim to grinding sectarian civil wars that have brought devastation, especially to Sunni Arab parts of these countries. While Kurds in Iran still appear somewhat removed from these events, unrest in Syria and Iraq appears to have spread to Turkey's domestic political scene, where Kurdish and pro-Kurdish actors now appear locked into renewed conflict with the Turkish state. While the friction between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Ankara revolves around many factors independent of events in neighboring states, the international campaign against the Islamic State (ISIL) and the PKK's important participation in this campaign, have offered the PKK significant opportunities to strengthen its position vis-a-vis Ankara.

Kurdish Opportunities and the Winds of Change

With a few exceptions, modern Kurdish uprisings have generally occurred whenever the central governments in Turkey, Iran and Iraq have appeared weak. (1) Such a phenomenon could only be expected, of course, given the historic repression of Kurdish identities and Kurdish political actors in all the states with large Kurdish minorities. Weakness at the center offers Kurds on the political periphery the chance to carve out their own space and pursue varying measures of self-rule.

Syria

In the case of Syria, the uprising against the Assad regime that began in 2011 offered the Syrian Kurds their first real opportunity. As the Assad government withdrew its forces from majority Kurdish areas in the north of the country, various Kurdish political parties--long suppressed and living a precarious underground existence under the Ba'athists--quickly began jockeying to fill the resultant political vacuum. Of these, the PKK-linked Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing (Peoples Protection Units, YPG) quickly became ascendant. With a large number of experienced fighters from the PKK, the PYD was able to take control of three Kurdish zones in northern Syria--Afrin, Kobane and Jazira--and declare "democratic autonomy" in these areas.

As the YPG's armed wing fought off rivals, especially amongst jihadi Syrian rebel groups, they also recruited some Arab tribes, Christians and Yezidis both into their militia and into the new governing structures of Rojava ("Western Kurdistan," a term used by the Kurds to refer to the part of Kurdistan in Syria). The three PYD-controlled cantons quickly began setting up Kurdish language services and schools while at the same time allowing other communities to set up their own schools and services and use their own languages. As per the model envisioned by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, each canton likewise guaranteed prominent roles for women, instituting, among other things, a "co-leadership system" wherein every leadership position had to be occupied by a male and female co-leader. The PYD's hegemony in Rojava remained contested, however, especially by rival Kurdish parties (many of whom received support from the Barzani-led Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP, in Iraqi Kurdistan) who accused the PYD of undemocratic practices and human rights abuses. (2) In 2015, Turkish government officials also accused the PYD of the ethnic cleansing of non-Kurdish populations from areas under its control, which the PYD vehemently denies. (3)

Whatever the truth of the criticisms of the PYD, the civil war and power vacuum in Syria led to an unparalleled, historic opportunity for Kurdish political actors there. The Syrian Kurdish experiment in self-rule remained largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, however, until the summer of 2014 when ISIL burst onto the international community's consciousness. It was then that the world took notice of the Syrian Kurds' long-running fight against ISIL. Images of female YPJ (the women's wing of the YPG) fighters engaged against the reviled jihadis in particular earned Syrian Kurds and the PYD (and by extension the PKK as well) attention, credibility and accolades that they could never have hoped to achieve otherwise. The heroic defense of the isolated canton of Kobani against repeated ISIL assaults created Kurdish heroes both within the Kurdish nationalist imagination and in the eyes of much of the world. In Europe and the United States, political campaigns were launched to support the PYD and to remove the PKK from various terror lists, which caused great alarm in Ankara. (4)

When in August 2014 ISIL launched a massive assault against the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, the dire circumstances the KRG found itself in ironically offered the Kurds the greatest moment of political unity they ever witnessed. The PYD, PKK and PJAK (the Iranian equivalent of the PYD) forces were among the first to come to the KRG's aid. While Turkey initially refused to take action to assist the...