Language is one notable example of these differences. A common language is one of the basic building blocks of a national culture, and the various communities of Kurdish people in the Middle East and beyond do not share one. The two most common Kurdish languages are Kurmanji and Sorani, and while they are related, linguistic experts have compared the difference between their grammatical structures to the difference between German and English. Furthermore, they employ different scripts: Kurmanji is usually written in Latin script and is spoken in Turkey, northern Syria and Iraq; Sorani is written in Arabic script and is spoken in much of Kurdish Iraq and western Iran. The Kurdish languages also do not have an extensive written tradition; writing systems were standardized only in the 1920s, when the first stirrings of Kurdish national awareness were emerging. On this most basic level, it is hard to speak of a mature Kurdish national identity.
Besides the differences in language, another important element to keep in mind is that Kurdish affiliations are still much more tribal than they are national. This is not to say that Kurdish nationalism doesn’t exist – it does, and it has a diverse range of manifestations. But the Kurdish peoples have never really had an independent state, and that is because the “state” has never been the ideal organizing principle of Kurdish hierarchy. The only independent Kurdish state of the modern era was the short-lived Republic of Mahabad, which was located in present-day Iran. But this exceptional and obscure piece of history just confirms the importance of tribal ties, rather than nationalist sentiments or formal state structures, to the Kurds.
Mahabad emerged because the Soviet Union supplied it with significant military and economic assistance. The leaders of Mahabad, including Mustafa Barzani, the father of the current president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), used this aid to buy the loyalty of neighboring tribes. As part of the negotiations at Yalta, where ironically for these Kurds Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt discussed the future of a post-World War II world based on principles of national self-determination, the Soviets agreed to withdraw, and Mahabad was reabsorbed into Iran without strong resistance. Many Kurdish tribes welcomed the reabsorption because without Soviet aid, the economic conditions of the fledgling republic rapidly deteriorated. In a tribal system, people’s loyalty is with their kin and their leader because the tribe provides for and defends its members. The transition from tribe to state requires that tribal leaders give up those powers and agree to work within a political framework, and the idea that the diverse population of the Middle East’s Kurdish groups are going to do that is little more than fantasy.
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