https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15043/turkey-kurdish-obsession
The end of First World War left the Kurds in an even worse situation than before. President Woodrow Wilson’s promise of “self-determination” was soon forgotten, leaving behind the dream of independence on the Kurdish side and the fear of Kurdish secession in the Ottoman camp as reconstituted as the Turkish Republic under Mustafa Kemal pasha (Ataturk).
In much of history, at least until recently, systems sustained by ultra-nationalist and/or nativist ideologies have always seen “otherness” as a threat rather than an opportunity of cultural and social enrichment.
In other words, one can commit genocide as long as one makes a speech in favor of Palestine and attends a Shi’ite chest-beating ceremony.
A classical dictum cited by Clausewitz, the father of war studies as an academic discipline, tells us that starting a war is often easy while ending it is always difficult. Does that dictum apply to the war that Turkey has started against the Kurds by invading Syria? Right now, the answer is that no one knows. What is certain, however, is that the best outcome that Turkey might expect, is to be extricated from that hornet’s nest with a minimum of damage.
While the war could be blamed on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s autocratic style of decision-making, the deeper roots of the conflict must be sought in Turkey’s centuries-old Kurdish obsession.
That obsession was present, albeit in embryonic form, even during the Ottoman era, when the Sultan-Caliphs harbored suspicions about their Kurdish subjects on ethnic and religious grounds. Even when drawn into military service, Ottoman Kurds could not, or would not, be assimilated into the dominant Ottoman-Turkish identity. Subscribing to a variety of religious beliefs and traditions, including Alawism, Zoroastrianism, Yazidism and a panoply of Sufi orders stretching from the Balkans to Central Asia, the Kurds would not fit into the official Islamic identity of the empire.
