Ethnopsychology. Peoples of the Caucasus

Chapter 1. The Kurdish Community in the United States of America

§one. Kurds as an ethnic community.

Kurds are one of the most ancient peoples of Western Asia. The beginning of the process of ethnogenesis of the Kurds dates back to the 4th millennium BC. 5, and its focus was the territory in southwestern Asia, in Northern Mesopotamia, located in the center of the modern ethnogeographic region of Kurdistan. The question of the origin of the Kurds is extremely controversial, but it is obvious that in the process of the formation of the Kurdish ethnos, which lasted several millennia, dozens of peoples who were in different historical epochs in this territory took part, among them the Hurrians, Guti, Lullubey, various Iranian-speaking and Semitic peoples are distinguished. ... The relative formation of the Kurdish ethnos was completed by the 7th century. n. e., but the process of ethnic consolidation of the Kurds continued further, primarily due to the influence of the Turkic-speaking peoples. This ethno-consolidation process has not yet been completed, which is why today's Kurdish people are an ethnically heterogeneous aggregate of numerous tribal groups.

This ethnic heterogeneity is manifested in the linguistic aspect. The Kurdish subgroup of the Iranian language group includes languages ​​such as Kurmanji, Sorani, South Kurdish, Laki, Zazaki and Gorani, which have significant grammatical, primarily morphological, differences. Nevertheless, at the everyday level, in the process of oral communication, speakers of various Kurdish languages ​​and dialects are able to reach mutual understanding, therefore, the absence of a single codified Kurdish language does not lead to ethnic separation between various Kurdophonic groups.

One of the most important ethnic markers for the Kurds as a special people is the presence of the historical territory of their compact settlement - Kurdistan (Kurd. Kurdistan - "country / land of Kurds"). Although this name is not official, and the territory of Kurdistan does not have any legally fixed or well-defined geographical boundaries, this region has an important geopolitical significance, which is facilitated by the struggle of the Kurds to create an independent state of Kurdistan - the so-called "Kurdish issue" in world politics. Modern Kurdistan occupies the territory of four adjacent states: southeastern Turkey (Northern and Western Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan) and northern Syria (Southwestern Kurdistan).

Most Kurds, about three-quarters, are Sunni Muslims. The remainder is predominantly of Kurdish Shiite Muslims, among which the Alevis of Turkey should be singled out. There is also a special ethno-confessional group of Yezidi Kurds, whose religion - Yezidism - is a syncretic cult that has absorbed the features of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and some ancient Eastern beliefs. In general, among the Kurds, religion plays a relatively insignificant role (especially in comparison with other peoples of Western Asia): the Kurdish people are not distinguished by religious orthodoxy, Islamic fundamentalism is extremely rare, and religion is not perceived as an important component of Kurdish national identity.

The number of Kurds in the world is estimated at approximately 30-32 million people, of which 15-16 million live in Turkey, 6 million in Iran, 5-6 million in Iraq, 2 million in Syria and 1.5-2 million in diasporas of other countries outside Kurdistan 6. Such a significant number of Kurds in the world makes them one of the largest nations without representation. Starting from the 1st millennium AD NS. the Kurdish people regularly attempted to create an independent Kurdish state, but the successes were local and short-lived, and at the present stage, the Kurdish state entity, which has a fairly wide autonomy, exists only on the territory of Iraq 7.

§2. Kurdish immigration to the United States.

The key factor that led to the emigration of Kurds from the countries on whose territory Kurdistan is located was the unresolved Kurdish national question, which led to a complex of social, economic and political reasons: the search for salvation from a disastrous material situation up to hunger and poverty, salvation from the repression of the authorities and constant wars, inability to fully realize the interests of national identity. As a result of the active immigration of Kurds to Western countries during the XX century, by the end of the last century there were significant Kurdish diasporas outside Kurdistan with a total number of 1.2 million people, half of which settled in Germany, as well as popular countries for the mass entry of Kurds were: France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, UK, Greece and the United States 8.

The earliest wave of Kurdish immigrants to the United States began after the end of the First World War. According to the Sevres Peace Treaty of 1920, which was strongly influenced by the concept of US President W. Wilson on the right of peoples to self-determination, it was supposed to create an independent Kurdistan, the borders of which were to be determined by Great Britain, France and Turkey. However, this treaty never entered into force, and after the end of the Turkish War of Independence it was replaced by the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923, which no longer spoke of the creation of a self-governing Kurdish territory 10. The cancellation of the Kurdish claims to their own state, as well as permanent military actions (the national liberation movement of the Kurds led by Sheikh Mahmoud Barzanji and its suppression, the anti-British uprising in Iraq, the war for Turkey's independence) led to the beginning of active Kurdish immigration, first from the elites, and then the masses. Immigration of Kurds to the United States at this stage was very chaotic and small in number and did not lead to the creation of a consolidated Kurdish diaspora in any locality of the United States. In view of this, and also due to the absence of new waves of immigration in the following decades, representatives of this very first wave of Kurdish immigration quickly assimilated into American society.

The second wave of Kurdish immigration to the United States began in 1976. The reason for this was the suppression of the uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1961-1975. This uprising was initially supported by the United States and Iran, but in 1975 S. Hussein managed to conclude an agreement with the Iranian government on joint actions against the Kurdish rebels, hundreds of thousands of Kurds, who had lost foreign support and feared possible punitive actions by the Iraqi regime, became refugees to neighboring countries. A relatively small number of them - about 200 people 11 - moved to the United States. But this group compactly and completely settled in one locality - the city of Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, thereby laying the core of the future largest Kurdish diaspora in the United States. The choice of Nashville was determined by a number of circumstances that can be called a “fluke” 12. First, the geographical proximity of Nashville to the Fort Campbell military base, where most of the arriving Kurdish refugees were transported. Secondly, this fast-growing city was considered quite comfortable to live in due to the many entry-level jobs that did not require skilled skills, which was very suitable for people with little or no knowledge of English. Third, the climate and surroundings of the capital Tennessee were relatively similar to those of their native Kurdistan. Finally, in the 1970s. Already active with refugee immigrants, the Catholic Charity of the Diocese of Nashville, which allowed Kurdish refugees to settle in a new place and start working in an organized manner.

The number of Kurdish immigrants in the United States increased due to the third wave of immigration that followed in 1979 from Iran. The reason was the rejection by many Kurds of the new theocratic system of government that arose as a result of the Islamic Revolution, and many of Iran's Kurds, who openly opposed Ayatollah Khomeini, feared persecution from the government that came to power. In addition, the emigration from Iran was facilitated by the socio-economic upheavals and general political instability that are customary for the revolutionary process. Again, as a result of this flow of Kurdish settlers, most of them settled in Nashville, however, the total number of Kurdish population in this city remained relatively small until the early 1990s.

The fourth wave of Kurdish immigration, which took place in 1991-1992, turned out to be the largest in terms of the number of immigrants. Its participants were refugees who survived the mass genocide of the Iraqi Kurds in 1987-1989, known as the Anfal campaign, committed by the Saddam Hussein regime in response to the support of Iran by the Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. In the course of this campaign, targeted chemical attacks were carried out on areas where Kurds live, 4.5 thousand Kurdish villages were destroyed and about 180 thousand Kurds were killed 13. As a result, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees left Iraq, and the number of those who chose the United States as a resettlement country has already reached several thousand 14.

From various sources of information and the media, we everywhere today observe that in some countries some passions are raging, large-scale events such as wars with neighbors, revolutions and coups, and in others - like peace and quiet, people live a calm measured life, avoid conflicts on the simple principle "my house is on the edge."
Many of you will have questions here. Where does such a distinctive energy come from? What or who is driving them?
The history of mankind demonstrates by examples that the behavior of peoples is not only different at some time, but fundamentally changes in its chronology. In this article we will try to touch upon the problem of passionarity (in simple words of passion) of the Kurdish people, both as a whole and in its individual elements.
Look at the modern Kurds living in the divided Kurdistan Region. Who would have believed that, remembering the recent past, the Kurds, a freedom-loving and childishly naive people, will shake not one or two countries, but all four countries that divided the ethnic Kurdistan among themselves. Plus, Europe, America and other regions of the world, in general, are more than once familiar with the so-called Kurdish issue, and many specific actions of Kurdish and European activists are already an example. Only one CIS Kurds at the end of the train. This is not self-criticism, but reality. The Kurds of the former Soviet Union can be called relatively passive than their European brothers.
What is the reason? Where to find the root of the problem?
Frankly, some Kurdish public figures of the CIS are largely looking for the reason in the activities of representatives of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) on the ground. They say the "apochists", that is, followers of the ideas of the party leader Abdullah Ocalan (Kurd. Apo - uncle), took all the political and social activities of the Kurds into their own hands and do not give the people relative independence. Here, for a holistic analysis of this problem, let's turn to the scientific thought of the Russian ethnologist Gumilyov and his theory of passionateness. It will be strange for someone to confuse politics with ethnology, but still.
For some, this concept is not at all new and they are already familiar with it, but for some, for the first time, they hear the term "passionarity", especially in the shell of the Kurdish issue. In any case, a brief overview of this theory will nudge the Kurds of the CIS and make them think.
According to Gumilyov, one of the main reasons for such differences in the behavior of different ethnic groups and the reasons for the change in this behavior during the life of each ethnic group lies in the "factor X" discovered by him, the passionate energy of the people who form this ethnic group. It is not difficult to assess the intensity of the people's passionarity. The density and intensity of social and political events is nothing more than the outbursts of passionate energy like prominences on the Sun.
You will see how the Near and Middle East, which has been in hibernation for many centuries, demonstrates a very passionarity today. But the CIS Kurds are not in the Middle East and, logically, they are calmer than the Kurdistanis. What then to say about the European Kurds? After all, one should not forget most of them are emigrants from historical Kurdistan, and only a small part of the Kurds of the former USSR with a characteristic set of folded attitudes and stereotypes of behavior.
Gumilev in his writings proves that in a certain territory and in a time interval, energy is pumped into human populations living in these territories. This energy manifests itself in the form of a mutational process, which leads to the appearance of a mass of mutant passionaries. Fluxes of cosmic rays are assumed as a possible source of energy. The result of such an impact is called by the author "passionary impulse". The territory covered by the passionary impulse can be traced in the form of a wide strip.
The Kurdish national leader Abdullah Ocalan reflects in his writings so much about such golden territories where a surge of passionarity could occur. And as the main example he takes the region of the Tavro-Zagros arc.
“The Tauro-Zagros arc, which contributed to the birth of civilization in the center of the Fertile (Golden) Crescent, brought its life-giving principle beyond the borders of Mesopotamia. During the development of Sumer, Babylon and Assyria, the center of civilization was invariably located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. If we take into account the stages of formation and structuring in the Neolithic era and the period from the 6th millennium BC. before the fall of Assyria in the 600s. BC, it turns out that the values ​​that determine civilization come from this area. " In his writings, the leader of the Kurds repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the climatic conditions of this area and the role of the careful attitude of people to nature.
The antiquity of this region and the preservation of the origins of this civilization determine the foundations of the passionarity of the Kurds in their historical homeland. This topic is so mysterious and interesting that it requires deep systematic research. After all, the information received is of exceptional importance for forecasting political events in Kurdistan. A doctor who begins to get to know a patient first of all learns about his
age, and no one needs to explain why this information is so important. Why do not political scientists and public figures put this issue as a top priority? Because they do not know how to use this information, especially since historians often misjudge the date of birth of an ethnic group.
The Kurdish ethnos of the CIS can rightfully be called that fell under the influence of Soviet culture, and in particular Russian. Calm in their character, the Kurds only sometimes come out and demonstrate their national "I" and then when they are either very bad, or, on the contrary, very good, in terms of "ethnic lawlessness". Any people of the former USSR are subject to these attitudes. Well, what can you do, the circumstances are so.
This explains the partial hyper-passionarity of the Kurds of Central Asia and Armenia. After all, it is the majority of the youth who become partisans of the Kurdish movements who come from these areas. They are in difficult life situations, fall under a subjectively justified hatred of the enemies of Kurdistan, and in order to pour out all their energy they become militant patriots of their homeland. But this is not the question, because these are isolated cases. In the first place in terms of activity are still the Kurdistanis. Let's move on to some examples of history.
So in history, starting from the XVIII century BC. and until the XIII century A.D. there were 9 passionary impulses of ethnocultures. After each push, new ethnic groups and superethnoses - civilizations were born. Knowing from what impetus a given ethnos was born, it is possible to determine the age of this ethnos, and, consequently, to determine at what stage of ethnogenesis it lives. The Kurds of the CIS countries are just an ethnos of the communist past and its age can be determined a little more than a century. They are much younger than their brothers in Europe and are, let's not be afraid of this word, at the stage of childhood.
Let us recall that according to the same theory of the famous Russian ethnologist Gumilyov of passionarity, each ethnic group goes through several stages in its life: the rise - childhood, the akmatic phase - youth, breakdown - the transition from youth to maturity. Then comes the inertial phase, which is the phase of civilization - this is already maturity, the happiest period in the life of the people (the Kurds of Europe were lucky enough to live during this period). Finally, the last phase comes - obscuration. This ethnogenetic stage corresponds to old age. Western Europe has entered the phase of obscuration today, and its social and political problems are the problems of an aging organism. Fortunately, Kurdistan is not yet in "senile marasmus" like Europe, and it has a long, long road ahead of it - ethnogenesis.
After all, the ethnogenesis of the people is considered by Gumilev to be similar to human life, which is naturally divided into periods: intrauterine, childhood, youth, turning age, maturity, old age and death. In each of these periods, the behavior of the people, like that of a person, changes in a predictable way. Consequently, knowledge of the age of a certain people gives the key to understanding its behavior, and hence the forecast of political events associated with this people.
In relation to the Kurds of the CIS, one can consider that this is a revived ethnos, and this revival is not without the efforts of only one party. The Kurds of the former Union have a fairly large number of passionaries, both harmonious and, moreover, patriots. But it is impossible to understand the problems of ethnogenesis without answering the question, what is the phenomenon itself - ethnos. There are enough definitions of the concepts of ethnos, nation, people, but none of them covers the whole variety of human communities. "There is not a single real sign for the definition of ethnicity, applicable to all known cases." At the same time, almost every Kurd, without any scientific terminology, especially without hesitation, knows what ethnic community he belongs to, who is close to him, who is his own and who is alien. This circumstance indicates, first of all, the fact that the concept of ethnos is very complex and goes deep into human nature. In our article, we adhere to the formulation of L.N. Gumilyov that ethnos is a biological and geographical phenomenon and it is this statement that is the essence of his theory of ethnogenesis and distinguishes this theory from all others.
Another important aspect of the concept of "ethnos" is a systemic analysis of it as a complex phenomenon. Gumilev proposed a hierarchical scheme for the classification of ethnic integrity. According to the ethnic systematics he proposed, the top of the ethnic hierarchy is the so-called. superethnos (only humanity as a whole will be above this level). Its more familiar synonym is "civilization."
According to Gumilyov, a superethnos is a group of ethnic groups that manifests itself as a mosaic integrity and emerged simultaneously in one region. Such entities are today the Russian superethnos, which includes the majority of peoples, and consists not only of Orthodox Slavic peoples, but also includes indigenous peoples and emigrant peoples, including the Kurds.
The Kurds, as we were not afraid to note above, in the CIS countries have re-entered the stage of childhood, because the process of ethnogenesis is ambiguous. But at the same time they are a part of the CIS super-ethnos. That is, the Kurds combine a certain commitment to the Soviet past - this is mainly the older generation, and the passionate rise of Kurdish youth. Often these attributes characterize the same person, hence the ideological and religious division of the Yezidi Kurds into those who recognize themselves as Kurds and into those who renounce this in every possible way. This example is characteristic not only of the Kurds, but also of many peoples of the CIS. For example, the indigenous population of Azerbaijan, the Talysh, were equally divided into those who consider themselves Talysh and those who call themselves the so-called ancient Azerbaijanis. This is ethnogenesis and it is very contradictory in its essence.
So ethnoses, in turn, are divided into communities - systemic integrity of a lower order, called by Gumilev subethnos. And the above example of Yezidis by nation can be called the prototype of the Kurdish subethnos because we do not know how the situation will develop tomorrow in such a dynamic world. The reality of their existence can be illustrated by the fact of ethnic differentiation of large peoples. For example, for the Russian ethnos in tsarist Russia, these are the Cossacks, Old Believers, Pomors, hereditary Siberians - for a long time they did not recognize themselves as Russians in their nation at all. In France, these are Normans, Bretons, Provençals; they survived as provincial features without violating the ethnic integrity of the French ethnos.
In the Middle Ages, these today's sub-ethnic groups were independent ethnic groups. The Yezidis called themselves as a people (Arabic: Miliat), and their modern descendants took this word exactly as a nation and, far from Kurdistan, for a little more than a century, they were forming a new nation for themselves. In the process of ethnogenetic consolidation, many nations lost most of their identity and became part of a single whole, retaining only some differences at the sub-ethnic level. This is what the right-wing Yezidi Kurds are afraid of - to lose their identity and the ancient religion of Yezidism, considering the process of integration with all Kurds to be the destruction of their nation. In this case, the Kurds of the CIS develop a certain passionarity, but it is directed not at an alien culture, but precisely at their own - at indisputable Kurdism.
Thus, we come to the conclusion that the Kurds of the CIS combine a dual nature. This is, firstly, a trace of the Soviet past and the influence of Russian culture, and, secondly, it is a commitment to their past - the past of refugees and love for their historical homeland of Kurdistan. The specificity of the mentality of the Kurds of the CIS is not in any way identical with the Kurdistanis, therefore, a big mistake in stimulating passionarity in the work of Kurdish public and political figures is the transfer of experience from one Kurds to another and work according to established patterns.
Sources of
1. L.N. Gumilyov. Ethnogenesis and the Earth's biosphere. Gidrometizdat, Leningrad, 1990.
2. L.N. Gumilev, K.P. Ivanov. Ethnic processes: two approaches to the study.
Sociological Research, 1992, No. 1, pp. 50-57.
3. Abdullah OJALAN. FROM THE SUMERIAN STATE OF Priests TO DEMOCRATIC CIVILIZATION. Moscow 2003 - http://www.abdullah-ocalan.com
4. Samuel Huntington. Clash of civilizations. Ed. AST, M., 2003.
5. Alexander Bushkov. Russia, which did not exist. Ed. "OLMA-PRESS", M., 1997.

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KURDS AND THE KURDISH QUESTION. Kurds compactly inhabit mainly the historical region of Kurdistan in the southwest of the Asian continent, which occupies the adjacent territories of southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq and northern Syria. A significant number of Kurds live in the diaspora (mainly in other countries of the Middle East, Western Europe and the CIS). Currently, the Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world (up to 30 million), deprived of the right to self-determination and state sovereignty.

Geographical position. Kurdistan occupies a key geopolitical and geostrategic position in the Middle East region, and the Kurdish struggle for national liberation makes the Kurdish issue an urgent problem of world politics. A feature of the geographic location of Kurdistan is the absence of clear physical and legally fixed political boundaries. The name Kurdistan (literally - "country of Kurds") does not refer to the state, but exclusively to the ethnic territory in which the Kurds constitute the relative majority of the population and the geographical coordinates of which cannot be precisely determined, since they are purely evaluative in nature. Due to historical cataclysms, the outlines of this territory have repeatedly changed, mainly towards the expansion of the Kurdophonic area.

Modern Kurdistan is located in the very center of the West Asian (Middle East) region, approximately between 34 and 40 ° north latitude and 38 and 48 ° east longitude. It occupies approximately the entire central part of the imaginary quadrangle, in the northwest and southwest bounded by the Black and Mediterranean Seas, and in the northeast and southeast by the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. From west to east, the territory of Kurdistan stretches for about 1,000 km, and from north to south - from 300 to 500 km. Its total area is approximately 450 thousand square meters. km. Over 200 thousand sq. km. is part of modern Turkey (Northern and Western Kurdistan), over 160 thousand square meters. km. - Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), up to 75 thousand sq. km. - Iraq (South Kurdistan) and 15 thousand sq. km. - Syria (Southwest Kurdistan).

Ethno-demographic sketch. According to the main ethnic characteristics, primarily linguistic, the Kurdish nation is very heterogeneous. The Kurdish language is mainly divided into two unequal groups of dialects, northern and southern, in each of which its own literary language has been formed; in the first - Kurmanji, in the second - sorani. About 60% of Kurds living in Turkey, Northwestern and Eastern Iran, Syria, parts of Northern Iraq and the CIS speak and write in Kurmanji dialects (mostly Latin, as well as Arabic script), up to 30% (Western and South -Western Iran, Eastern and Southeastern Iraq) - in Sorani dialects (only Arabic graphics). In addition, among the Kurds of a special ethno-confessional group Zaza (Il Tunceli in Turkish Kurdistan), the language of Zazaki or Dumli (Latin script) is widespread, and among the Kurds of Kermanshah in Iran, the related Gurani (Arabic script). Original literature and folklore developed in these languages ​​and dialects.

Although Kurdish languages ​​and dialects have their own grammatical features, sometimes considerable, linguistic differences in the Kurdish ethnic environment are not so great as to exclude mutual understanding, especially in oral communication. The Kurds themselves do not attach much importance to them, categorically not recognizing their ethno-dividing role. In addition, within one country, many of them were united by bilingualism - knowledge of the main language of the country of residence (Turkish, Persian or Arabic).

The role of religion in modern Kurdish society is relatively small, especially in the area of ​​national identity. The vast majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims (75% of all Kurds), but Sunni orthodoxy, as well as fundamentalist Islam, is little popular. Even in the recent past, the Dervish (also Sunni) orders of Naqshbendi and Qadiri were traditionally influential, now they are much less. Shiites, mostly supporters of the Shiite sects of the Ahl-i Hakk or Ali-Ilahi, live mainly in Turkey (there they are known under the collective name "Alevi"), accounting for 20 to 30% of the Kurdophonic population. Zaza Kurds are completely Ahl-i Hakk. In Iran, Shiites inhabit the vicinity of Kermanshah. A special ethno-confessional group of Kurds is formed by the Yezidis (up to 200 thousand), professing a special cult of a syncretic nature, having absorbed, in addition to elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, some ancient Eastern beliefs. Yezidis live dispersedly mainly in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the Caucasus.

Among the Kurds, there is a high natural population growth - about 3% per year, which has led to a significant increase in the number of the Kurdish ethnic group in recent years.

Kurds are settled unevenly in the countries of their residence. Most of them are in Turkey (about 47%). In Iran, Kurds are about 32%, in Iraq - about 16%, in Syria - about 4%, in the states of the former USSR - about 1%. The rest live in the diaspora.

Throughout the historically foreseeable time, the ethnic composition of Kurdistan has repeatedly changed due to the countless cataclysms that have taken place on its territory. These changes are taking place now.

Socio-economic relations. The Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria are distinguished by a lower level of economic development, social relations and social organization of society, as well as culture in comparison with these countries in general and with their most developed regions.

The social organization of Kurdish society partly retains archaic features with remnants of tribal relations, within which the feudal system makes itself felt. True, at present in the Kurdish society there is a rapid erosion of traditional social forms. In the relatively developed regions of Kurdistan, there are almost no tribal ties left.

Nevertheless, socio-economic progress is being observed in the comparatively backward regions of Kurdistan. Economic positions are undermined and the political influence of the Kurdish secular and spiritual nobility falls, modern social structures are emerging and gaining strength - the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie (urban and rural), the working class.

Changes in Kurdish society have created the basis for the emergence of Kurdish nationalism, both ideology and politics. At the same time, the remaining vestiges of traditional social forms continue to hinder the process of modernization of this society.

The traditional elite of modern Kurdistan, consisting of people from feudal-clerical and tribal circles, still has a noticeable economic and, especially, political and ideological influence. True, there are many democratic and leftist leaders among modern Kurdish leaders. Moreover, it is they who make the weather in the socio-political climate of Kurdish society. However, the influence of archaic traditions continues to be felt, such as religious discord, tribal particularism and parochialism, class and dynastic prejudices, hegemonic claims and leaderism. Hence such negative phenomena in social and political life as political instability, internecine feuds, etc.

The visible features of backwardness in social relations to a large extent stem from an archaic and unproductive economic basis, which, moreover, is currently in a crisis state of transition from old pre-capitalist forms to modern ones.

Remote pastoralism (with seasonal migrations, mainly "vertical", in summer to mountain pastures, in winter to valleys), the basis of the traditional economy of the rural population, has fallen into decay, and intensive methods of agricultural production are hardly adopted. Industry and infrastructure are poorly developed in Kurdistan and have not created enough jobs for impoverished peasants, artisans and small traders. Deprived of their livelihoods, the Kurds rush to the cities of the developed regions of their countries of residence, as well as abroad. There, the Kurdish proletariat is predominantly engaged in unskilled and unskilled labor, being subjected to particularly strong exploitation. In short, the Kurdish areas are a backward periphery in all the countries that divided Kurdistan. It is characteristic that even where there has been an abundant inflow of petrodollars in recent decades (Iraq and Iran, whose oil riches are largely located in Kurdistan and adjacent regions), there is a noticeable lag in the development of the Kurdish outskirts from the territories inhabited by titular nationalities.

In Kurdistan itself, the level of economic development in different regions is not the same. Until the early 1970s, the economy of Turkish Kurdistan, like that of the whole of Turkey, developed faster, although already from the 1960s Iran began to catch up in terms of economic development. After a sharp rise in world oil prices in 1973, Iran and Iraq, and then Syria, found themselves in an advantageous position. Although the Kurdish areas of Iran and Arab countries have received relatively little benefit from the oil boom, the flow of petrodollars has somewhat increased their well-being.

Thus, two main problems are inherent in the socio-economic relations of modern Kurdistan: overcoming backwardness and uneven development in its individual parts. The lack of resolution of these problems negatively affects the process of national consolidation of the Kurdish people and the effectiveness of their struggle for their national rights.

HISTORY Kurds are one of the most ancient peoples of Western Asia. The original center of Kurdish ethnogenesis is located in Northern Mesopotamia, in the very center of historical and modern Kurdistan. This process began around the 4th millennium BC. and took at least three millennia, and its participants (Hurrians or Subareans, Kutis, Lullubis, Kassites, Kardukhs) can be considered only the distant ancestors of the Kurds. Their immediate ancestors, Iranian-speaking (especially Median) shepherd tribes appeared on the historical arena in the middle of the 1st millennium BC, when the process of ethnic consolidation of the Kurdish people proper began, in which Semitic elements also participated. This process, which began within the framework of the ancient Persian civilization (in the 6th-4th centuries BC in the era of the Achaemenid kings), continued under the Parthian Arshakids and ended under the late Sassanids, already in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. By the time of the Arab conquest of Iran and the fall of the Sassanid state (mid-7th century AD), the Kurdish ethnos had already fully formed and the Kurdish history itself began. However, the ethno-consolidation process among the Kurds was not completed, later other ethnic elements (especially Turkic) were included in it, and it continues to this day.

The formation of the Kurdish people, and later the nation, was not accompanied, as in most other peoples, by the formation of statehood, the tendency to unite into a single centralized state. This was prevented primarily by the external conditions in which the Kurdish people found themselves during and after the Arab conquest and the accompanying violent Islamization. Kurdistan, thanks to its central geostrategic position in the Middle East, has become a permanent arena of endless wars, predatory raids of nomads, uprisings and their terrorist suppression, which abounded in the military and political history of the region during the era of the Caliphate (7-13 centuries), accompanied by endless civil strife, and especially devastating Turkic-Mongol invasions (11-15 centuries). Kurds, resisting the oppressors, suffered huge human and material losses.

During this period, the Kurds repeatedly attempted to achieve independence for individual large tribal associations headed by the most influential and noble leaders who claimed to establish their own dynasties. Some of them owned vast territories for a relatively long time as de facto sovereign rulers. Such were the Hasanvaykhids, the rulers of a vast region in South-Eastern Kurdistan in 959-1015, the Marvanids, who ruled in South-Western Kurdistan (the region of Diyarbekir and Jazira) in 985-1085, the Shaddadids (951-1088), whose possessions were in Transcaucasia, finally Ayyubids (1169-1252), also immigrants from Transcaucasia, conquered Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Central and Southeast Kurdistan, the most famous representative of which was the victorious crusader Sultan Salah Ad-Din.

However, none of the Kurdish dynasties proved to be durable and could not turn the territory under their control into a national hotbed of Kurdish statehood. In the empire of Saladin, for example, the majority of the population were not Kurds, but Arabs, and the army consisted mainly of Turks. The idea of ​​national-state unity could not yet spread and receive effective support among the Kurds, divided into tribes and small fiefdoms.

The beginning of the 16th century - the most important milestone in Kurdish history. The Ottoman Empire, which by that time had captured the entire Arab East (and soon the West), and Iran, where the Shiite Safavid dynasty united the whole country, divided the territory of Kurdistan among themselves, about 2/3 of which went to the Turks, who inflicted a crushing defeat on the Persians at Chaldyran in 1514. Thus, the first division of the territory of Kurdistan took place along the Turkish-Iranian border, which has since become the border of the war. Turkey and Iran over the next four centuries endlessly fought among themselves for complete domination over this strategically key country, which opens the way for expansion in all directions and is itself a natural fortress due to its mountainous relief and warlike population. Ultimately, the Turkish-Iranian wars were unsuccessful, because the current border remained basically the same as after the Chaldyran battle. But they caused enormous damage to the national development of the Kurds. The Kurdish lands were periodically subjected to devastation, the people, alternately involved in hostilities on the side of the Turks or Persians (and often both at the same time), suffered heavy human losses (including the civilian population). This situation deprived the Kurds of any hope of unification.

The position of the Kurds in the Ottoman Empire and in the Shah's Iran was ambiguous. On the one hand, they, along with the entire population, perished in endless border wars. On the other hand, in both Turkey and Iran in the Kurdish provinces, a kind of vassalage system developed, when real government on the ground was carried out not by government officials, but by the Kurdish tribal leaders themselves and the feudal theocratic elite - beys, khans, aha, sheikhs - in exchange loyalty to the central government. The existence of this kind of buffer in the center-Kurdish periphery system for a long time partially eased the position of the Kurdish popular masses, served as an antidote to the assimilation of Kurds by Turks, Persians, Arabs, and contributed to the preservation and strengthening of the Kurdish people of their national identity. However, the direct subordination of the Kurds to the power of their feudal-tribal elite also led to serious negative consequences: the conservation of traditional socio-economic relations in Kurdish society, hindering its natural evolution in a progressive direction. At the same time, separate large separatist uprisings organized and led by the Kurdish elite (for example, in South-Eastern Kurdistan - Ardelan in the second half of the 18th century) shattered the absolutist regimes in Turkey and Iran and created the preconditions for a subsequent rise there in the 19th and early 20th centuries. national liberation movement.

The Kurds' actions against the Turkish sultans and Iranian shahs took place against the backdrop of a deep crisis and decline of the Ottoman Empire and Iran. From the beginning of the 19th century. in the territory of Kurdistan, powerful uprisings broke out continuously. In the first half of the 19th century. the main arena of the Kurdish movement was the historical regions of Bakhdinan, Soran, Jazira, Hakari. It was brutally suppressed (the so-called "secondary conquest" of the territory of Kurdistan by the Turks). In 1854-1855, almost the entire Northern and Western Kurdistan was covered by the Ezdanshir uprising, in the late 1870s - early 1880s in South-West Kurdistan, in the region of the Turkish-Iranian border and in Northeastern Kurdistan, the largest and most organized Kurdish uprising took place, one of whose leaders, Sheikh Obeidullah, set the then unrealizable goal of creating an independent united Kurdistan. Several major demonstrations of the Kurds were noted in Turkey during the era of the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908-1909, during the Iranian Revolution of 1905-1911 and on the eve of the First World War. They were all suppressed.

The rise of the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Iran tried to take advantage of primarily Russia and England, and from the end of the century and Germany, seeking to establish their political and economic influence over them. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. the first shoots of Kurdish nationalism appeared as an ideology and as a politician: the Kurdish press and the beginnings of Kurdish political organizations became its bearers.

The second section of Kurdistan and the struggle for its independence and unification. After the First World War, the Entente powers redistributed the Asian possessions of the Ottoman Empire, which was part of the defeated Quadruple Alliance, including the part of Kurdistan that belonged to it. Its southern part (the Mosul vilayet) was included in Iraq, the mandate over which on behalf of the League of Nations was received by England, the southwestern part (a strip along the Turkish-Syrian border) - entered Syria, the mandated territory of France. Thus, the division of Kurdistan has doubled, which significantly complicated the struggle of the Kurds for self-determination and made the geopolitical position of the country more vulnerable by increasing the intervention of Western colonial powers in the affairs of the Kurdish region. The discovery of the largest oil reserves, first in southern Kurdistan and the beginning of its production there in the 1930s, and soon in other nearby regions of the Arab East, further actualized the importance of the Kurdish issue for the imperialist powers, especially in connection with the rapid rise of the national liberation movement throughout Kurdistan. ...

In the 1920s-1930s, a wave of Kurdish uprisings swept across Turkey, Iraq and Iran, the main demand of which was the unification of all Kurdish lands and the creation of an "Independent Kurdistan" (uprisings led by Sheikh Said, Ihsan Nuri, Seyid Reza - in Turkey, Mahmud Barzanji , Ahmed Barzani, Khalil Khoshavi - in Iraq, Ismail-aga Simko, Salar od-Dole, Jafar-Sultan - in Iran). All these scattered and unprepared actions were defeated by the superior forces of local governments (in the mandated Iraq and Syria, supported by Britain and France). Young Kurdish nationalism (its main headquarters at that time was the "Hoibun" ("Independence") committee), both militarily and politically, was too weak to resist its opponents.

During World War II, conditions were created in the Soviet zone of occupation of Iran to activate the democratic wing of the Kurdish resistance. Soon after the end of the war, the first ever Kurdish autonomy was proclaimed there, headed by Qazi Mohammed with the capital in Mehabad, which began to carry out (in a rather limited area south of Lake Urmia) democratic reforms, but it lasted only 11 months (until December 1946) having lost Soviet support in the outbreak of the Cold War, which had a decisive impact on the internal situation in Kurdistan over the next four and a half decades.

Kurdish movement during the Cold War era. Due to its geographic proximity to the USSR, Kurdistan was viewed in the West as a natural anti-Soviet bridgehead, and its main population was Kurds, due to its well-known traditionally pro-Russian and pro-Soviet orientation, as a natural reserve of Moscow in case of possible complications in the Middle East, whose peoples intensified the struggle against imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, the West was then treated with suspicion or directly hostile to the Kurdish national movement, and the anti-Kurdish chauvinist policy of the ruling circles of the Middle East countries - allies of NATO countries and members of its Middle East branch - the Baghdad Pact (later CENTO) was favorably disposed. For the same reason, the Soviet Union treated foreign Kurds as potential allies and unofficially supported left-wing Kurdish movements and parties, such as the post-war Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq and their counterparts under roughly the same name in Syria and Turkey.

After the fall of Kurdish autonomy in Mehabad (which was preceded by the defeat of the Kurdish uprising in Iraq in 1943-1945, led by Mustafa Barzani, then the commander of the armed forces of the Mehabad autonomy and the main figure in the general Kurdish resistance), the Kurdish movement experienced a decline for some time, although several major uprisings were noted eg peasant uprisings in Mehabad and Bokan (Iranian Kurdistan). Only at the turn of the 1950s – 1960s did the preconditions for a new sharp rise in the Kurdish national movement emerge.

The main impetus for its rapid revival was the crisis that rapidly developed since the second half of the 1950s in almost all countries of the Middle East, caused by the aggravated confrontation between the Arab (and also largely Muslim) world and Israel and the aspirations of two military-political blocks use it to their advantage, to weaken a potential enemy. At the same time, if the West sought to preserve and, if possible, strengthen its imperial positions in the region (primarily control over oil), the USSR and its allies actively supported the sharply intensified local nationalism, which took a clearly anti-Western direction. In Egypt, Syria, Iraq, pro-Western puppet regimes fell. In such a situation, Kurdish nationalism, which was gaining strength, gained relative freedom of maneuver and the opportunity to openly and independently act in the Middle East and the world arena, and its main opponents were regional regimes that pursued a policy of national discrimination against their Kurdish population.

The events in Iraqi (southern) Kurdistan, which became the general Kurdish center of the national movement, began. In September 1961, General Mustafa Barzani, the leader of the Iraqi KDP, revolted there, returning from emigration to the USSR. Soon, Kurdish rebels (they were called "peshmerga" - "going to death") created in the north-east of Iraq, mainly in the mountainous part of it, a large liberated region - "Free Kurdistan", a hotbed of Kurdish independence. The confrontation between the Kurdish rebels and the government's punitive forces lasted for about 15 years (with interruptions). As a result, the resistance of the Iraqi Kurds was temporarily broken, but not completely, and the victory of the government was not unconditional. By the law of March 11, 1974, Baghdad was forced to create a Kurdish autonomous region "Kurdistan" and promise him certain guarantees in the field of local self-government, some social and civil rights, equality of the Kurdish language, etc. This was the first precedent in the modern history of the Middle East indicating that the process of officially recognizing the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination has begun.

The Baath Party (Socialist Arab Renaissance Party), which came to power in Iraq back in 1968, tried to emasculate the democratic content of the concessions made to the Kurds back in 1970 (which did not satisfy them from the very beginning). The autonomy was actually controlled by emissaries and local collaborators sent from Baghdad. The hostility of the Iraqi ruling circles towards the Kurds became especially evident after the establishment of the sole rule of Saddam Hussein in the country, proclaimed by the president in 1979. Taking advantage of the war unleashed by him in 1980 against Iran, he organized a gas attack by the Iraqi Air Force on the Kurdish city of Halabja (March 16, 1988); killed, according to various estimates, from several hundred to 5000 civilians, injured about two tens of thousands.

Thus, there remained the reasons why the resurgence of the Kurdish resistance in Iraq was inevitable. The political organizations of Iraqi Kurdistan have tried to draw conclusions from the failures of the past and overcome the divisions that weakened them. In 1976, a group that had previously splintered from the KDP, led by Jalal Talabani, organized the second most influential Iraqi Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which entered into an alliance with the KDP. In the same year, the rebel movement in Iraqi Kurdistan resumed under the leadership of the KDP and PUK. In the 1980s, Iraqi Kurds continued to rally in preparation for new uprisings.

Syrian Kurds also actively opposed the regime of national lawlessness in Syria and toughened by the local Baathists after their seizure of power in 1963. Kurdish democratic parties (KDP of Syria "al-Party" and others) emerged in the country, leading the struggle of the Kurdish minority for their rights. The regime of President Hafez Assad, established at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, did practically nothing to alleviate the plight of the Kurds, trying in its confrontation with Ankara and Baghdad to use the differences between the various Kurdish parties in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, which damaged the unity of the Kurdish national movement ... In 1986, the three main Kurdish parties in Syria merged into the Kurdish Democratic Union.

After a long hiatus, the active struggle of the Kurds of Turkey resumed against the official policy of non-recognition with the resulting prohibitions in the field of language, culture, education, the media, against which were severely punished as a manifestation of "Kurdism", separatism, etc. The position of the Turkish Kurds especially worsened after the military coup on May 27, 1960, one of the main pretexts for which was to prevent the threat of Kurdish separatism.

The military caste in Turkey, which took (directly or covertly) key positions in the system of government and organized two subsequent coups d'état (in 1971 and 1980), began to fight the Kurdish movement. This only led to an intensification of the Kurdish resistance in Turkey; In the 1960s and 1970s, several Kurdish parties and organizations that operated underground arose, including the Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan (DPTK) and the Revolutionary Cultural Centers of the East (RKOV). In 1970, the DPTK united in its ranks several small Kurdish parties and groups and developed a program with broad general democratic demands, giving the Kurds "the right to determine their own destiny." In 1974, the Socialist Party of Turkish Kurdistan (SPTK) was formed, popular among the Kurdish intelligentsia and youth. At the same time, Kurdish patriots established ties and interactions with Turkish progressive political forces.

By the early 1980s, the situation in Turkish Kurdistan had deteriorated markedly. The growing number of Kurdish legal and illegal organizations intensified anti-government agitation and turned to violent actions. The most popular, especially among the poorest and socially unsettled layers of the Kurdish population, was acquired by the Kurdistan Workers 'Party (more often they say the Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, the Kurdish abbreviation PKK), founded by Abdullah Öcalan in 1978. It was a left-wing extremist organization professing Marxism-Leninism Maoist sense and giving preference to violent methods of struggle, including terrorist ones. Individual partisan actions organized by the PKK were noted already in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and in 1984 the party openly began an insurrectionary struggle against the Turkish authorities and punitive organs in Eastern Anatolia.

Since then, Turkish Kurdistan has emerged as a permanent new hotbed of tension in the Middle East. None of the warring parties managed to gain the upper hand: the Kurds - to achieve recognition of the rights to self-determination, Ankara - to break the growing Kurdish resistance. The many years of bloody war against the Kurds aggravated the economic and political difficulties experienced by Turkey, gave rise to right-wing extremism destabilizing its political system, and undermined the country's international prestige, preventing it from joining European structures. On the Kurdish movement, both in Turkey and in other countries, the struggle under the leadership of the PKK and its leader Ocalan had a contradictory effect. She everywhere, in the East and in the Western world, evoked responses among the democratically minded strata of the population, attracted the working strata of the population, student youth to the active struggle, contributed to the dissemination of information about the Kurds and their struggle, and the internationalization of the Kurdish issue. At the same time, this party and its followers were characterized by adventurous tactics, indiscriminate choice of means of struggle, like terrorism, inability to reckon with the real situation and artificial running ahead, sectarianism and hegemonism of its leadership in developing a strategic line, which ultimately led it to political isolation from other units of the Kurdish movement and to defeat.

In Iran, the Kurdish problem was not so tense, but it has steadily escalated since the early 1960s under the influence of socio-political tensions that arose in the country during the "white revolution" and events in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1967-1968, under the leadership of the DPIK, an uprising broke out in the region of Mehabad, Bane and Sardasht, which lasted a year and a half and was brutally suppressed.

Despite the defeat, the DPIK did not lose heart and launched an active work on the development of a new program and party charter. The fundamental slogan "democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan" was proclaimed, and the tactics of the party involved a combination of armed struggle with political methods aimed at creating a united front of all forces opposing the regime.

Iranian Kurds took an active part in the growing popular anti-Shah movement in the late 1970s, which culminated in the "Islamic revolution", the overthrow of the Shah’s power and the proclamation at the beginning of 1979 of the “Islamic Republic of Iran”, which is actually the rule of the Shiite “mullocracy”. For the Kurds, as well as for the entire Iranian people, this "revolution", in which they could not prove themselves as an independent political force capable of defending their national demands, turned into a counter-revolution, the dictatorship of Imam Khomeini and his followers and successors. Even in a religious aspect, this medieval-type regime was dangerous for the interests of the Kurdish minority, overwhelmingly Sunni. Khomeinism denied the existence of a national question in Iran, including, of course, the Kurdish one, placing it exclusively within the framework of the "Islamic ummah" as already resolved. The new government decisively rejected the DPIK project on administrative and cultural autonomy for the Kurds.

Disagreements in the spring of 1979 escalated into armed clashes between the forces of the Kurdish resistance (units of the DPIK, the Kurdish left organization "Komala" and the Peshmerga who came to their aid from Iraq, the left formations of the Persians fedayeen and mujahideen) and government forces, reinforced by the gendarmerie, police and Islamic stormtroopers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). In the summer of 1979, battles between Kurdish rebels and punishers took place almost throughout the territory of Iranian Kurdistan. DPIK has established control over most of it, including large cities. In some of them, the authority of the Kurdish revolutionary councils was established. Kurdish religious leader Ezzedin Hosseini has even declared a jihad against the central government. The leaders of the Iranian Kurds have repeatedly called on Tehran to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the conflict and carry out socio-economic and political-administrative reforms in Kurdish-populated areas. However, the negotiations did not take place. In the fall of 1979, the government launched an offensive against the Kurds and managed to push them back into the mountains, where they began a guerrilla war. The Islamic regime has deployed the most severe control in those areas of Kurdistan over which it managed to regain control.

The defeat of the Iranian Kurds at the beginning of the Islamic regime was largely due to the lack of unity in the Kurdish movement, traditional Kurdish particularism. The left-wing extremist forces in the parties "Komala", "Ryzgari" and others have done a lot of harm to the Kurdish cause. The DPIK itself turned out to be split, which was used by the Iranian authorities, who by the middle of 1980 completed the establishment of their control over practically the entire territory of Iranian Kurdistan.

In the 1980s, the Kurdish movement in Iran and Iraq was going through difficult times. The Iranian-Iraqi war (1980-1988) created an extremely unfavorable environment for him. The hostilities partly took place on the territory of Kurdistan, the Kurds suffered human and material losses. In addition, both belligerents tried to enlist the support of the enemy's Kurdish population, which served both Tehran and Baghdad as a pretext for anti-Kurdish punitive measures (including the aforementioned gas attack in Halabja). By the early 1990s, the general situation in Kurdistan was extremely difficult and tense.

The Kurdish question at the present stage. The world-historical changes that occurred at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s in connection with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR directly and indirectly affected the Kurdish national movement. It continued to develop in the geopolitical reality that required new approaches in the strategy and tactics of struggle. First of all, this concerned the situation in Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan.

In the 1980s, taking advantage of the war with Iran, Iraq canceled out all the concessions it had made to the Kurds. The Autonomous Region became subordinate to Baghdad. Measures were taken to resettle Kurds from border villages, as well as against Kurds suspected of anti-government activities. By the early 1990s, when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 triggered another acute crisis in the Middle East, Iraqi Kurdistan was on the eve of another major Kurdish uprising.

In Iran, both during Khomeini's lifetime and after his death in 1989, the Kurdish autonomous movement was suppressed; it could only function underground and in exile. In July 1989, the DPIK General Secretary A.Kasemlu was killed in Vienna, in September 1992 the new DPIK General Secretary S.Sharafkandi was killed in Berlin. Negotiations with Kurdish nationalists on the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan with the Iranian leadership were thwarted.

During the presidency of Khatami, when the position of supporters of the liberal realist course strengthened, there was a tendency to make some concessions to the Kurdish population in the field of culture, education and information policy in order to reduce the intensity of protest moods. At the same time, the authorities tried to play on the ethnic and linguistic kinship of the Persians and Kurds, who seem to have identical state and political interests. On this basis, the Kurds have no representatives in the Mejlis, although there are deputies from other non-Persian ethnic groups (including Assyrians and Armenians) there.

Since the second half of the 1980s, the PKK-led insurgency has noticeably increased in southeastern Turkey. There were regular attacks on police stations, gendarme posts, and military bases. Kurdish suicide bombers appeared. The organizational and propaganda activities of the PKK crossed the Turkish borders, the influence of the party spread to a significant part of the Syrian Kurds (Ocalan himself with his headquarters moved to Syria). PKK activists have launched extensive campaigning among the Kurdish diaspora in Western and Eastern Europe in the press they run and on Kurdish television (MED-TV).

For its part, the Turkish government has stepped up its repression against the Kurds. Turkey extended the scope of anti-Kurdish campaigns to northern Iraq, into whose territory, pursuing the retreating Kurdish partisans, they deepened 20-30 km. Events in Turkish Kurdistan acquired a general Kurdish scale, as well as anti-Kurdish actions of all Middle Eastern governments.

Thus, under pressure from Ankara, at the end of October 1998, Damascus denied Ocalan the right of political asylum. After several days of wandering around different countries, Ocalan was seized by the Turkish special services, tried and sentenced in June 1999 to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. The arrest and trial of Öcalan caused a huge explosion of discontent in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. However, the Kurdish movement in Turkey has declined sharply. Ocalan himself called on his associates from prison to lay down their arms and enter into negotiations with the government on the basis of partial satisfaction of their demands, which was done: a Kurdish press, radio and television appeared in Turkey. The Öcalan case showed that left-wing extremism in the Kurdish movement in Turkey was based mainly on the charisma of its leader, and not on objective grounds; with his departure from the political arena, the uprising was doomed to defeat, and the main problems of the Turkish Kurds remain unresolved.

The defeat of Iraq in Kuwait in early 1991, inflicted on it by the US-led coalition ("Desert Storm"), marked the beginning of a new stage in the liberation struggle of the Iraqi Kurds, although the Kurdish question occupied a subordinate place in these events. In February 1991, a spontaneous uprising broke out in Iraqi Kurdistan, the participants of which relied on the help of the United States and their allies and liberated the entire country in a short time. However, the Kurds were once again sacrificed to the geopolitical interests of the West, in this case the United States, which were not interested in further destabilizing the situation around Iraq (mainly in its Kurdish and Shiite regions) and therefore allowed Saddam Hussein to suppress the Kurdish uprising.

However, the Americans soon changed their attitude towards Iraq. An American-British air umbrella was installed over the Kurdish and Shiite regions of Iraq - a no-fly zone for Iraqi aviation, a regime of economic sanctions (embargo) was introduced, and a long-term confrontation of Iraq, mainly with the United States and England, began. As a result, for the first time in history, a favorable situation arose for the part of the Kurdish people living in Iraq, allowing them to achieve their demands.

In April-May 1992, the South Kurdistan Front, which included all the main Kurdish parties, organized elections for the first Kurdish parliament (national assembly). About 90% of the votes were received by the two main Kurdish parties - KDP and PUK; the voices between them were almost equally divided. The leaders of these parties, Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, became the country's two informal leaders. A government was formed and a declaration on the Federal Union was adopted. Thus, the beginning of the Kurdish statehood was laid and the structure of state administration was outlined. The new government controlled most of southern Kurdistan (55 thousand square kilometers out of 74), called "Free Kurdistan". Only the oil-bearing district of Kirkuk remained under the rule of Baghdad, in which the policy of supporting the Turkic minority of the Turkmens and the territory north of the 36th parallel adjacent to Mosul were pursued. "Free Kurdistan" enjoyed military-political and partly economic (mainly humanitarian aid) support from the United States and its closest allies, but did not have any international legal status. It was autonomy in full, which for the Kurds was undoubted progress and an important step in the struggle for national self-determination, especially since the United States and its allies were on their side.

The first years of Free Kurdistan's existence were not easy. Despite the undoubted successes in establishing economic life, solving urgent social problems and organizing public education, serious mistakes were made in creating a healthy internal political climate. Affected by the low level of political culture, expressed in the non-obsolete ideas of traditional society, first of all, typically Kurdish particularism and leaderism. In 1994, a sharp conflict arose between the KDP and the PUK, which resulted in a prolonged confrontation with the use of armed force.

There was a threat that the Iraqi Kurds would lose their achievements. However, a process of reconciliation began, which, based on its own interests, was strongly supported by the United States. On September 17, 1998 in Washington, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani signed an agreement on a peaceful settlement of the conflict. It took quite a long time to finally resolve the conflict and reconcile the remaining controversial issues, but in the end all the differences were overcome. On October 4, 2002, after a six-year hiatus, the first session of the united Kurdish parliament was held in the capital of southern Kurdistan, Erbil. It was decided to unite the judiciary, as well as to organize new parliamentary elections in 6-9 months.

Vasilyeva E.I. Southeast Kurdistan in the 17th - early 19th centuries M., 1991
Mgoi Sh.Kh. The Kurdish national question in Iraq in recent times... M., 1991
Musaelyan Zh.S. Bibliography on Kurdish Studies(starting from the XVI century), part I – II, St. Petersburg, 1996
History of Kurdistan... M., 1999
Gasratyan M.A. Kurdish problem in Turkey (1986–995). M., 2001

To find " KURDS AND THE KURDISH QUESTION" on the

2.2. Factors of demogeographic development of the ethnos. ... VI

2.3. Dynamics of fertility, mortality and natural increase

2.4. Migration mobility of Kurds and its impact on the demogeographic situation

SHVA Sh. ECONOMIC AND GEOGRAPHIC ANMMZ

3.1 * Employment and social stratification of the population. *.

3.2. Agriculture

3; 2.1. Agriculture

3 * 2.2. Livestock

3.3. Industry

3.4. Reyesla

3.5. Urbanization.

Dissertation introduction (part of the abstract) on the topic “Kurds: Experience of Geogr. issled. disunited. ethnos "

Ethno-national problems are becoming one of the most important dominants of the modern world historical process. ”This is not only about“ classical ”ethnic conflicts that threaten stability in many parts of the world. This phenomenon has received in the literature the name "ethnic revival" or "ethnic paradox of modernity";

As you know, "in the human psyche, two principles are in conflict: the tendency to assimilate" the desire to be similar to someone, not to stand out from the general! the masses, to become an organic part of the whole "and the tendency to uniqueness ^ to preserve one's own face, one's own" I ". Unfortunately, until recently, modern civilization had only an ethno-leveling, unifying, ie * ultimately depersonalizing character! This circumstance, firstly, is associated with intensive interethnic "mixing" in the Western world, the formation of a single market economy, and integration processes; secondly, the ideology of nationalism has been compromised in the eyes of world public opinion by fascism, which is an extreme form of nationalism; thirdly, a significant role in reducing the importance of ethnicity in social relations was played by the split of the world into two opposing social systems: socialist and capitalist - in these conditions, national differences seemed to recede into the background.

After the reduction and actual elimination of the factor of class struggle, the situation in ethnic processes begins to change significantly * Civilization quickly discovers that ethnicity does not disappear, but rather, on the contrary, bursts into the human world, which is often conflictual and tragic, but this is another question. There are too many "non-standard situations" in the ethnic picture of the world, artificially created burrows and preserved for centuries, contrary to the aspirations of millions of people.

One of these "non-standard situations" is associated with the Kurdish ethnic group *

This dissertation is devoted to the socio-geographical study of the Kurdish ethnos - one of the largest in the world, which does not have its own state. It is known that representatives of this ethnos are scattered all over the world, but more or less compactly they inhabit mountainous regions ^ entering Southeastern Turkey ^ Northwestern Iran, Northeastern Iraq and Northeastern (and partly Northwest) Syria. In this regard, the fact is the presence of an integral ethnogeographic sub-region ?, subdivided in Russian literature into Turkish Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan / fig. I /.

The word "Kurdistan" is not recognized by international law, is not used on political maps and geographic atlases, and is not used officially. There are some difficulties in defining the border line of Kurdistan and in drawing its map! which remains at the present time in the competence of private assumptions and free research.

As a result of studying the region "which is inhabited by Kurds" - and from the historical objective point of view it constitutes a single land - one can approximately depict the granido of the country of the Kurds. On this basis, the entire area of ​​Kurdistan exceeds 409,650 sq. Km. The map, which was issued in 1949. The Center for Kurdish Studies in Paris, I cl I shows that the area of ​​Kurdistan is more than 500 thousand square kilometers and covers the entire area "stretching between Mount Ararat, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.

Kurdistan is like a ridge of the Middle East due to the fact that it is located in the center of Western Asia, and also because it contains rich sources of oil ("black gold") "From the center of Kurdistan originate the most important rivers of the Middle East:" top , Euphrates, Khabur, etc., and therefore it contains numerous sources of fresh water, which is especially valuable in the conditions of a semi-ard climate.

It is this aforementioned integral ethnographic sub-region; identified in numerous historical and ethnographic works of Soviet, Western European and Kurdish authors, is the territorial object of our research. There are also Kurdish settlements outside the main territory of their settlement, in particular: in Iran (Azerbaijan, Khorasan), in Turkey (northeastern regions), in Iraq and Syria (mainly in cities), in Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, as well as in North America, Europe, Australia. Their characterization is not part of our intention, and if there are separate descriptions, it is only by way of extrapolation

Kurdish studies as a scientific direction is based on a very extensive literature in the Eastern, Western, Russian languages. In fairness, it should be pointed out that the share of sources of a purely geographical nature (especially socio-geographical) in it is extremely small, moreover, they are usually devoted to the study of individual Kurdish territories, and not the entire ethnographic subregion. So, we treat with great reverence the works of the famous modern Arab scientist, geographer by education, prof. Shaker

Hasbak living in Baghdad * One of his works - "Northern Iraq (physical geography and population)" D84 / - contains valuable factual material about the Kurds of Iraq, interspersed with descriptions of "non-Kurds"; the other - "Kurds. Geographical and Etvogeographic Study" D83 / - is devoted to the characteristics of the socio-economic situation of Kurdish nomadic shepherds and Kurdish farmers of certain ethnic territories (in particular, the Sulaimani region of Iraq); the third - "Kurds and the Kurdish question" / III / - is made in a pronounced historical vein and, unfortunately, provides little food for understanding the socio-geographical nature of the Kurdish ethnos.

Along the way, "the geographer Abdullah Gafur Ismail D / wrote about the peculiarities and problems of urban and rural settlement of Kurds in Iraq, historian Mohamed Amin Zaki / 223 / about the ethnogeography of Kurds in the Sulaymani region of Iraq, writing, etc.) - such representatives of the Kurdish ethnic group as Maruf Khaznadar, Pshtivan Nariman Aziz, Shukriya Rasul Ibrahim, Mohamed Mokri and many others; Arab authors Abd ar-Razzak al-Zhasani, Abbas al-Azavi, Fazel al-Ansari and etc.

In-depth research (not geographic in nature) on Kurdish issues has been carried out in recent years in Syria, which is especially pleasant for the author of the thesis (a representative of the Kurdish population of Syrian Kurdistan), since there are fewer scientific works devoted to the Kurds of this part of the ethnographic subregion (perhaps because for a long time the Kurds of Syria, being localized on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, were studied as "Turkish Kurds")

Scarf about the hammers of the Hassek provinces - "Hassek Provinces. Socio-economic, historical and ethnographic research" D49 /, which contains thorough ethnographic sketches of such Kurdish regions as Kamyshli, Sarek Kani, Malyshe, Amuda, Derbasiya.

A number of valuable books and articles on the Kurds (mainly their material culture and political history) were published in German, English and French. If you do not mean the "old" works mainly of the last century by Rich D26 /, Bishop / 122 /, Wagner / 128 /, Ainsfors / II9 /, Blau / 123 /, Webb, then from among the interesting works of the second half of the XX century. the works of the German ethnographer Dr. Wolfgang Rudolf deserve to be noted! made by him on the basis of his own field material collected by him during scientific expeditions to Kurdistan (Turkey and Iran in 1958, 1962 and 1964) / see, in particular, 127 /; the work of the English officer S. Edmons TKur-dy, Turks, Arabs ", published in London in 1957 D24 /, the book of the Iranian general X. Harf" Kurds: a historical and political study "D21 /, dedicated, as the name implies, political history of the Kurds and valuable by the author's own impressions, who lived among various Kurdish tribes.

Soviet (including Russian) science, especially ethnographic, has achieved outstanding success in the development of Kurdish studies! The latter has deep roots. Suffice it to recall the brilliant three-volume work of P. Lerch "Studies on the Iranian Kurds and their ancestors, the northern Chaldeans" / 69 /, published in the middle of the last century in St. Petersburg. Of no less importance are the works of V.F. Minorsky, who served in diplomatic work in Iran and Turkey and did not return to Russia after the October 1917 coup / 83 /. But I.A. Orbeli, who devoted many of his works to the study of the Kurdish language, the peculiarities of the culture and life of the Kurds / 93, etc. /.

Considerable merit in the development of certain aspects of curtsology belongs to such well-known orientalists and Caucasian scholars as V. Bartold / 25 /, V.A. Gordlevsky / 42 /, N. Ya. Marr / 71 - 73 /, B.V. Miller / 77 /, V.F. Miller / 80 / etc. A notable phenomenon in the study of the life of the Kurds was the monographs of modern scientists TF. Aristova "Material culture of the Kurds of the 19th - first half of the 20th century (the problem of traditional cultural community)" / 19 / and "Kurds of Transcaucasia" D8 /; M.A. Hasratyan "Kurds in Turkey in modern times" / 36 /; G.B. Akopov. / TO - 12 and others /, Bakaeva / 21, 22, etc. / and many others.

We especially note the contribution to the study of the Kurdish ethnos of Soviet authors - Kurds by nationality, such as: writer Arab Shamklov / 104, 106, 108, etc. /, ethnographer Amine Avdal / 3, 4, etc. /, J. to-lil, Ch Karlen, K. Kurdoev, 1. Mgoi et al.

Thus, an extensive source study base about the Kurds gives reason to assert that Kurdish studies cannot be classified among the poorly studied scientific directions. However, as mentioned above, there was practically no comprehensive socio-economic-geographical work on Kurdistan, except for fragmentary descriptions of travels in its individual territories. For example, quite interesting geographical descriptions of travel, usually of a local nature, are given by V. Dittel / 48 /, N.V. Kha-nykov DOZ /, IL. Berezin / 29, 30 /, R. Bekgulyants / 26 /, A.I. Iyas / 56 /, G. Kipert / 57 / and others.

Apparently, tangible progress in geographical terms has been achieved only in the study of the toponymy of Kurdistan "which is extremely important for solving a number of complex problems, especially ethnographic ones. R. 1ogasheva / 70 / and V.I.Savina / 95 /.

That is why the study of the socio-economic and geographical structures of Kurdistan, understood as an integral ethnic sub-region, seems to us to be very topical and relevant.

The subject of our research is the spatial ethnic, demographic, social, economic and settlement structures of the Kurdish intercountry sub-region.

The purpose of the work is a comprehensive study of the above structures and the identification of the main trends in their change. In accordance with this, the main tasks of the study include:

1. Disclosure of the essence, content and basic patterns of spatial development of ethnic, demographic, social, economic and settlement structures of the Kurdish ethnos.

2. Research at the empirical level of the peculiarities of the ethnogeographic situation both in the pan-Kurdish framework and on the scale of individual Kurdish regions.

3. Classification of the above-mentioned spatial structures of "grassroots" regions, characteristics of the characteristics of each type, study of the conditions and factors of their formation and development.

4. Study of the influence of various types of geographic structures of an ethnic group on its consolidation, conducting ethnographic, social, demographic and other parallels in order to identify the community of ethnocultural traditions of the indigenous Kurdish population.

The scientific novelty of the work consists in an integrated, systematic approach to the geographical study of the Kurdish ethnos as an integral intercountry formation, which has not only a historical and ethnographic community and centuries-old traditional everyday culture, but also the modern national identity that unites them * The cementing element of the latter has always served and is the heroic struggle of the Kurdish people against the forces of reaction (in whatever country they are concentrated), the struggle against physical extermination, the struggle for the national self-determination of Kurdistan.

The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that its theoretical and methodological provisions can be used by the relevant bodies of both the existing Kurdish autonomies and the government bodies of those democratic states for which the Kurdish problem is not an empty phrase. The findings and results are intended to help the growing Kurdish youth in the process of forming their worldview and choosing life priorities.

Work structure. The purpose of the dissertation research and its main tasks predetermined the structure of the dissertation; It consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a bibliographic index of used literature and illustrative cartographic equipment.

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Conclusion of the thesis on the topic "Economic, social and political geography", Yousef Zeyad

CONCLUSION

The most important conclusions of the dissertation research are the following:

1) the historical roots of the Kurts, the "crystallization core" of the ethnos are within the limits of the integral ethnogeographic region we are investigating, which is recognized by the majority of authors. All attempts to question the autochthonous nature of the Kurdish ethnos are refuted by the latest archaeological research and excavations;

2) historically, the self-awareness of the Kurdish ethnos has passed a very contradictory path, especially after the Turkish-Iranian, and then the Turkish-Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian division of Kurdistan. However, in spite of the centuries-old impact of natural and forced assimilation, modernization (or "deuterization"), the self-awareness of Kurds not only has not been lost, but has acquired new qualities. The distinctive features of the Kurds are manifested in both material and spiritual culture. The specific national character traits and ethnic psychology of the Kurds are the subject of research by numerous authors;

3) the natural resource potential of Kurdistan is diverse and huge in scale, which is a powerful incentive for the economic development of this region and is an effective counterargument against attempts to prove the non-viability of Kurdistan. Its bowels are rich in copper, iron, manganese, mercury, tin, sulfur, marble, molybdenum, lead, and coal. Of particular importance are the oil reserves in Iran (ZKarmanshah) and in Iraq (Kirkuk and Mosul), which are one of the largest in the Near and Middle Voetok;

4) ethnogeographically, Kurds are divided into many clans, tribes and tribal communities. With a certain degree of convention, four large confederations can be distinguished: Tsurani, Kelkhor, Lu-ry and Kurmanji. The most famous Kurdish tribes and tribal formations are Jaf, Avroman, Merivan, Bilbas, Mukri, etc. Moreover, the Kurds of each tribe are clearly aware of all the habitats of their fellow tribesmen, they know the national tribal traditions and laws, which they obey without question. The multinational ethnic composition of the population of Kurdistan in large cities is especially difficult to analyze;

5) a certain role in the history of the Kurdish ethnos has played and continues to play self-consciousness not only in ethnic, but also in religious form. Their religion has individual characteristics that distinguish the Kurds from their neighbors. Along with Islam (for adherence to which they paid and pay dearly to this day), the Kurds profess Yezidism as a purely "ethnic ** religious trend. Many Kurds belong to the Ahl al-Haqq community, are Christians or Jews. (Features of the confessional geography of Kurdistan set out in the dissertation);

6) demogeographic parameters of the Kurdish ethnos indicate that the annual rates of natural growth of the indigenous population as a whole correspond to the average annual rates of natural growth of the population of the entire region (including Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria), which makes it possible to determine the dynamics of the number of Kurds by extrapolating the data. In addition to internal reasons that influenced the change in the demographic situation in Kurdistan, there are external reasons that do not depend on the Kurds, associated with the intrigues of the imperialist states in the region, armed conflicts, migration mobility, etc .;

7) the relatively high demographic growth in Kurdistan, the "swelling" of cities in the conditions of industrial stagnation lead to an exacerbation of the employment problem, which is also aggravated by the exacerbation of underemployment and hidden unemployment in agriculture and traditional crafts, the lack of linkages between family planning policy and professional training of labor resources with natural population growth, deep technological lag, etc .;

3) the industry of Kurdistan is located extremely unevenly: most of it is concentrated in Iraqi Kurdistan (oil production and oil refining), while in the rest of the region there are only isolated centers, most often represented by single enterprises and, as a rule, located at a considerable distance from each other. friend. The reasons for this unevenness should be sought primarily in the different levels of socio-economic development of parts of Kurdistan, in the plight of the Kurdish people. Unevenness and rapid changes in the location of local industry are also associated with any new construction;

9) a kind of addition to the Kurdish industry is handicraft production, which has survived mainly as small manual production, designed mainly to meet the limited local demand with its specificity and individuality.

The analysis of the geographical features of the Kurdish ethnos confirms the existence of numerous threads - ethnic, ideological, cultural, religious, political, economic and others - linking it together and making up an integral cultural and civilizational space located at the junction of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, near the former Soviet Transcaucasian republics.

Unfortunately, the world community still considers the Kurdish problem insignificant against the background of the global ethnic crisis, and this is one of the signs of "delaying" the adoption of radical measures to resolve it. Such a cool attitude towards the fate of the Kurdish people is partly due to the disunity of the Kurds' actions, the inconsistency of the demands put forward, the absence of relevant leaders of the national liberation movement, with whom the West could pin its hopes for the formation of a secular, democratic and stable regime in sovereign Kurdistan!

The distant attitude of the West towards the Kurdish problem is confirmed at least by its tacit position towards Turkey, which should be condemned for the bloody repressions against the Kurdish rebels. There are good enough reasons to assert that the Western countries are showing a double standard and are ready to forgive the secular and pro-European Turkey for what, for example, fundamentalist Iran, for example, would have been punished.

No matter how the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi authorities strive to create mono-national and mono-confessional states, to the actual absorption of the Kurdish ethnos, the multimillion people cannot be destroyed and forcibly assimilated. The long-suffering territorially divided Kurdish people have every right to finally change their tragic fate for the better.

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A significant number of Kurds live in the diaspora (mainly in other countries of the Middle East, Western Europe and the CIS). Currently, the Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world (up to 30 million), deprived of the right to self-determination and state sovereignty.

Geographical position.

Kurdistan occupies a key geopolitical and geostrategic position in the Middle East region, and the Kurdish struggle for national liberation makes the Kurdish issue an urgent problem of world politics. A feature of the geographic location of Kurdistan is the absence of clear physical and legally fixed political boundaries. The name Kurdistan (literally - "country of Kurds") does not refer to the state, but exclusively to the ethnic territory, in which the Kurds constitute the relative majority of the population and the geographical coordinates of which cannot be precisely determined, since they are purely evaluative in nature. Due to historical cataclysms, the outlines of this territory have repeatedly changed, mainly towards the expansion of the Kurdophonic area.

Modern Kurdistan is located in the very center of the West Asian (Middle East) region, approximately between 34 and 40 ° north latitude and 38 and 48 ° east longitude. It occupies approximately the entire central part of the imaginary quadrangle, in the northwest and southwest bounded by the Black and Mediterranean Seas, and in the northeast and southeast by the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. From west to east, the territory of Kurdistan stretches for about 1 thousand km., And from north to south - from 300 to 500 km. Its total area is approximately 450 thousand square meters. km. Over 200 thousand sq. km. is part of modern Turkey (Northern and Western Kurdistan), over 160 thousand square meters. km. - Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), up to 75 thousand sq. km. - Iraq (South Kurdistan) and 15 thousand square meters. km. - Syria (Southwest Kurdistan).

Ethno-demographic sketch.

According to the main ethnic characteristics, primarily linguistic, the Kurdish nation is very heterogeneous. The Kurdish language is mainly divided into two unequal groups of dialects, northern and southern, in each of which its own literary language has been formed; in the first - kurmanji, in the second - sorani. About 60% of Kurds living in Turkey, Northwestern and Eastern Iran, Syria, parts of Northern Iraq and the CIS speak and write in Kurmanji dialects (mostly Latin, as well as Arabic script), up to 30% (Western and South -Western Iran, Eastern and Southeastern Iraq) - in Sorani dialects (only Arabic graphics). In addition, among the Kurds of a special ethno-confessional group Zaza (Il Tunceli in Turkish Kurdistan), the language of Zazaki or Dumli (Latin script) is widespread, and among the Kurds of Kermanshah in Iran, the related Gurani (Arabic script). Original literature and folklore developed in these languages ​​and dialects.

Although Kurdish languages ​​and dialects have their own grammatical features, sometimes considerable, linguistic differences in the Kurdish ethnic environment are not so great as to exclude mutual understanding, especially in oral communication. The Kurds themselves do not attach much importance to them, categorically not recognizing their ethno-dividing role. In addition, within one country, many of them were united by bilingualism - knowledge of the main language of the country of residence (Turkish, Persian or Arabic).

The role of religion in modern Kurdish society is relatively small, especially in the area of ​​national identity. The vast majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims (75% of all Kurds), but Sunni orthodoxy, as well as fundamentalist Islam, is little popular. Even in the recent past, the Dervish (also Sunni) orders of Naqshbendi and Qadiri were traditionally influential, now they are much less. Shiites, mostly supporters of the Shiite sects of the Ahl-i Hakk or Ali-Ilahi, live mainly in Turkey (there they are known under the collective name "Alevi"), accounting for 20 to 30% of the Kurdophonic population. Zaza Kurds are completely Ahl-i Hakk. In Iran, Shiites inhabit the vicinity of Kermanshah. A special ethno-confessional group of Kurds is formed by the Yezidis (up to 200 thousand), professing a special cult of a syncretic nature, having absorbed, in addition to elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, some ancient Eastern beliefs. Yezidis live dispersedly mainly in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the Caucasus.

Among the Kurds, there is a high natural population growth - about 3% per year, which has led to a significant increase in the number of the Kurdish ethnic group in recent years.

Kurds are settled unevenly in the countries of their residence. Most of them are in Turkey (about 47%). In Iran, Kurds are about 32%, in Iraq - about 16%, in Syria - about 4%, in the states of the former USSR - about 1%. The rest live in the diaspora.

Throughout the historically foreseeable time, the ethnic composition of Kurdistan has repeatedly changed due to the countless cataclysms that have taken place on its territory. These changes are taking place now.

Socio-economic relations.

The Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria are distinguished by a lower level of economic development, social relations and social organization of society, as well as culture in comparison with these countries in general and with their most developed regions.

The social organization of Kurdish society partly retains archaic features with remnants of tribal relations, within which the feudal system makes itself felt. True, at present in the Kurdish society there is a rapid erosion of traditional social forms. In the relatively developed regions of Kurdistan, there are almost no tribal ties left.

Nevertheless, socio-economic progress is being observed in the comparatively backward regions of Kurdistan. Economic positions are undermined and the political influence of the Kurdish secular and spiritual nobility is falling, modern social structures are emerging and gaining strength - the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie (urban and rural), the working class.

Changes in Kurdish society have created the basis for the emergence of Kurdish nationalism, both ideology and politics. At the same time, the remaining vestiges of traditional social forms continue to hinder the process of modernization of this society.

The traditional elite of modern Kurdistan, consisting of people from feudal-clerical and tribal circles, still has a noticeable economic and, especially, political and ideological influence. True, there are many democratic and leftist leaders among modern Kurdish leaders. Moreover, it is they who make the weather in the socio-political climate of Kurdish society. However, the influence of archaic traditions continues to be felt, such as religious discord, tribal particularism and parochialism, class and dynastic prejudices, hegemonic claims and leaderism. Hence such negative phenomena in social and political life as political instability, internecine feuds, etc.

The visible features of backwardness in social relations to a large extent stem from an archaic and unproductive economic basis, which, moreover, is currently in a crisis state of transition from old pre-capitalist forms to modern ones.

Remote pastoralism (with seasonal migrations, mainly "vertical", in summer to mountain pastures, in winter to valleys), the basis of the traditional economy of the rural population, has fallen into decay, and intensive methods of agricultural production are hardly adopted. Industry and infrastructure are poorly developed in Kurdistan and have not created enough jobs for impoverished peasants, artisans and small traders. Deprived of their livelihoods, the Kurds rush to the cities of the developed regions of their countries of residence, as well as abroad. There, the Kurdish proletariat is predominantly engaged in unskilled and unskilled labor, being subjected to particularly strong exploitation. In short, the Kurdish areas are a backward periphery in all the countries that divided Kurdistan. It is characteristic that even where there has been an abundant inflow of petrodollars in recent decades (Iraq and Iran, whose oil riches are largely located in Kurdistan and adjacent regions), there is a noticeable lag in the development of the Kurdish outskirts from the territories inhabited by titular nationalities.

In Kurdistan itself, the level of economic development in different regions is not the same. Until the early 1970s, the economy of Turkish Kurdistan, like that of the whole of Turkey, developed faster, although already from the 1960s Iran began to catch up in terms of economic development. After a sharp rise in world oil prices in 1973, Iran and Iraq, and then Syria, found themselves in an advantageous position. Although the Kurdish areas of Iran and Arab countries have received relatively little benefit from the oil boom, the flow of petrodollars has somewhat increased their well-being.

Thus, two main problems are inherent in the socio-economic relations of modern Kurdistan: overcoming backwardness and uneven development in its individual parts. The lack of resolution of these problems negatively affects the process of national consolidation of the Kurdish people and the effectiveness of their struggle for their national rights.

HISTORY

Kurds are one of the most ancient peoples of Western Asia. The original center of Kurdish ethnogenesis is located in Northern Mesopotamia, in the very center of historical and modern Kurdistan. This process began around the 4th millennium BC. and took at least three millennia, and its participants (Hurrians or Subareans, Kutis, Lullubis, Kassites, Kardukhs) can be considered only the distant ancestors of the Kurds. Their immediate ancestors, Iranian-speaking (especially Median) shepherd tribes appeared on the historical arena in the middle of the 1st millennium BC, when the process of ethnic consolidation of the Kurdish people proper began, in which Semitic elements also participated. This process, which began within the framework of the ancient Persian civilization (in the 6th-4th centuries BC in the era of the Achaemenid kings), continued under the Parthian Arshakids and ended under the late Sassanids, already in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. By the time of the Arab conquest of Iran and the fall of the Sassanid state (mid-7th century AD), the Kurdish ethnos had already fully formed and the Kurdish history itself began. However, the ethno-consolidation process among the Kurds was not completed, later other ethnic elements (especially Turkic) were included in it, and it continues to this day.

The formation of the Kurdish people, and later the nation, was not accompanied, as in most other peoples, by the formation of statehood, the tendency to unite into a single centralized state. This was prevented primarily by the external conditions in which the Kurdish people found themselves during and after the Arab conquest and the accompanying violent Islamization. Kurdistan, thanks to its central geostrategic position in the Middle East, has become a permanent arena of endless wars, predatory raids of nomads, uprisings and their terrorist suppression, which abounded in the military and political history of the region during the era of the Caliphate (7-13 centuries), accompanied by endless civil strife, and especially devastating Turkic-Mongol invasions (11-15 centuries). Kurds, resisting the oppressors, suffered huge human and material losses.

During this period, the Kurds repeatedly attempted to achieve independence for individual large tribal associations headed by the most influential and noble leaders who claimed to establish their own dynasties. Some of them owned vast territories for a relatively long time as de facto sovereign rulers. Such were the Hasanvaykhids, the rulers of a vast region in Southeastern Kurdistan in 959-1015, the Marvanids who ruled in Southwestern Kurdistan (the region of Diyarbekir and Jazira) in 985-1085, the Shaddadids (951-1088), whose possessions were in the Caucasus, finally Ayyubids (1169-1252), also immigrants from Transcaucasia, conquered Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Central and Southeastern Kurdistan, the most famous representative of which was the conqueror of the crusaders Sultan Salah Ad-Din.

However, none of the Kurdish dynasties proved to be durable and could not turn the territory under their control into a national hotbed of Kurdish statehood. In the empire of Saladin, for example, the majority of the population were not Kurds, but Arabs, and the army consisted mainly of Turks. The idea of ​​national-state unity could not yet spread and receive effective support among the Kurds, divided into tribes and small fiefdoms.

The beginning of the 16th century - the most important milestone in Kurdish history. The Ottoman Empire, which by that time had captured the entire Arab East (and soon the West), and Iran, where the Shiite Safavid dynasty united the whole country, divided the territory of Kurdistan among themselves, about 2/3 of which went to the Turks, who inflicted a crushing defeat on the Persians at Chaldyran in 1514. Thus, the first division of the territory of Kurdistan took place along the Turkish-Iranian border, which has since become the border of the war. Turkey and Iran over the next four centuries endlessly fought among themselves for complete domination over this strategically key country, which opens the way for expansion in all directions and is itself a natural fortress due to its mountainous relief and warlike population. Ultimately, the Turkish-Iranian wars were unsuccessful, because the current border remained basically the same as after the Chaldyran battle. But they caused enormous damage to the national development of the Kurds. The Kurdish lands were periodically subjected to devastation, the people, alternately involved in hostilities on the side of the Turks or Persians (and often both at the same time), suffered heavy human losses (including the civilian population). This situation deprived the Kurds of any hope of unification.

The position of the Kurds in the Ottoman Empire and in the Shah's Iran was ambiguous. On the one hand, they, along with the entire population, perished in endless border wars. On the other hand, in both Turkey and Iran in the Kurdish provinces, a kind of vassalage system developed, when real government on the ground was carried out not by government officials, but by the Kurdish tribal leaders themselves and the feudal theocratic elite - beys, khans, aha, sheikhs - in exchange loyalty to the central government. The existence for a long time of this kind of buffer in the center-Kurdish periphery system partially eased the position of the Kurdish masses, served as an antidote to the assimilation of Kurds by the Turks, Persians, Arabs, and contributed to the preservation and strengthening of the Kurdish people of their national identity. However, the direct subordination of the Kurds to the power of their feudal-tribal elite also led to serious negative consequences: the conservation of traditional socio-economic relations in Kurdish society, hindering its natural evolution in a progressive direction. At the same time, separate large separatist uprisings organized and led by the Kurdish elite (for example, in South-Eastern Kurdistan - Ardelan in the second half of the 18th century) shattered the absolutist regimes in Turkey and Iran and created the preconditions for a subsequent rise there in the 19th and early 20th centuries. national liberation movement.

The Kurds' actions against the Turkish sultans and Iranian shahs took place against the backdrop of a deep crisis and decline of the Ottoman Empire and Iran. From the beginning of the 19th century. in the territory of Kurdistan, powerful uprisings broke out continuously. In the first half of the 19th century. the main arena of the Kurdish movement was the historical regions of Bakhdinan, Soran, Jazira, Hakari. It was brutally suppressed (the so-called "secondary conquest" of the territory of Kurdistan by the Turks). In 1854-1855, almost all of Northern and Western Kurdistan was seized by the Ezdanshir uprising, in the late 1870s - early 1880s in South-West Kurdistan, in the region of the Turkish-Iranian border and in Northeastern Kurdistan, the largest and most organized uprising of the Kurds took place, one of whose leaders, Sheikh Obeidullah, set the then unrealizable goal of creating an independent united Kurdistan. Several major demonstrations of the Kurds were noted in Turkey during the era of the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908-1909, during the Iranian Revolution of 1905-1911 and on the eve of the First World War. They were all suppressed.

The rise of the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Iran tried to take advantage of primarily Russia and England, and from the end of the century and Germany, seeking to establish their political and economic influence over them. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. the first shoots of Kurdish nationalism appeared as an ideology and as a politician: the Kurdish press and the beginnings of Kurdish political organizations became its bearers.

The second section of Kurdistan and the struggle for its independence and unification.

After the First World War, the Entente powers redistributed the Asian possessions of the Ottoman Empire, which was part of the defeated Quadruple Alliance, including the part of Kurdistan that belonged to it. Its southern part (the Mosul vilayet) was included in Iraq, the mandate over which on behalf of the League of Nations was received by England, the southwestern part (the strip along the Turkish-Syrian border) - entered Syria, the mandate territory of France. Thus, the division of Kurdistan has doubled, which significantly complicated the struggle of the Kurds for self-determination and made the geopolitical position of the country more vulnerable by increasing the intervention of Western colonial powers in the affairs of the Kurdish region. The discovery of the largest oil reserves, first in southern Kurdistan and the beginning of its production there in the 1930s, and soon in other nearby regions of the Arab East, further actualized the importance of the Kurdish issue for the imperialist powers, especially in connection with the rapid rise of the national liberation movement throughout Kurdistan. ...

In the 1920s-1930s, a wave of Kurdish uprisings swept across Turkey, Iraq and Iran, the main demand of which was the unification of all Kurdish lands and the creation of an "Independent Kurdistan" (uprisings led by Sheikh Said, Ihsan Nuri, Seyid Reza - in Turkey, Mahmud Barzanji , Ahmed Barzani, Khalil Khoshavi - in Iraq, Ismail-aga Simko, Salar od-Dole, Jafar-Sultan - in Iran). All these scattered and unprepared actions were defeated by the superior forces of local governments (in the mandated Iraq and Syria, supported by Britain and France). Young Kurdish nationalism (its main headquarters at that time was the "Hoibun" ("Independence") committee), both militarily and politically, was too weak to resist its opponents.

During World War II, conditions were created in the Soviet zone of occupation of Iran to activate the democratic wing of the Kurdish resistance. Soon after the end of the war, the first ever Kurdish autonomy was proclaimed there, headed by Qazi Mohammed with the capital in Mehabad, which began to carry out (in a rather limited area south of Lake Urmia) democratic reforms, but it lasted only 11 months (until December 1946) having lost Soviet support in the outbreak of the Cold War, which had a decisive impact on the internal situation in Kurdistan over the next four and a half decades.

Kurdish movement during the Cold War era.

Due to its geographic proximity to the USSR, Kurdistan was viewed in the West as a natural anti-Soviet bridgehead, and its main population was Kurds, due to its well-known traditionally pro-Russian and pro-Soviet orientation, as a natural reserve of Moscow in case of possible complications in the Middle East, whose peoples intensified the struggle against imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, the West was then treated with suspicion or directly hostile to the Kurdish national movement, and the anti-Kurdish chauvinist policy of the ruling circles of the Middle East countries - allies of NATO countries and members of its Middle East branch - the Baghdad Pact (later CENTO) was favorably disposed. For the same reason, the Soviet Union treated foreign Kurds as potential allies and unofficially supported left-wing Kurdish movements and parties, such as the post-war Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq and their counterparts under roughly the same name in Syria and Turkey.

After the fall of Kurdish autonomy in Mehabad (which was preceded by the defeat of the Kurdish uprising in Iraq in 1943-1945, led by Mustafa Barzani, then the commander of the armed forces of the Mehabad autonomy and the main figure in the general Kurdish resistance), the Kurdish movement experienced a decline for some time, although several major uprisings were noted eg peasant uprisings in Mehabad and Bokan (Iranian Kurdistan). Only at the turn of the 1950s – 1960s did the preconditions for a new sharp rise in the Kurdish national movement emerge.

The main impetus for its rapid revival was the crisis that rapidly developed since the second half of the 1950s in almost all countries of the Middle East, caused by the aggravated confrontation between the Arab (and also largely Muslim) world and Israel and the aspirations of two military-political blocks use it to their advantage, to weaken a potential enemy. At the same time, if the West sought to preserve and, if possible, strengthen its imperial positions in the region (primarily control over oil), the USSR and its allies actively supported the sharply intensified local nationalism, which took a clearly anti-Western direction. In Egypt, Syria, Iraq, pro-Western puppet regimes fell. In such a situation, Kurdish nationalism, which was gaining strength, gained relative freedom of maneuver and the opportunity to openly and independently act in the Middle East and the world arena, and its main opponents were regional regimes that pursued a policy of national discrimination against their Kurdish population.

The events in Iraqi (southern) Kurdistan, which became the general Kurdish center of the national movement, began. In September 1961, General Mustafa Barzani, the leader of the Iraqi KDP, revolted there, returning from emigration to the USSR. Soon, Kurdish rebels (they were called "peshmerga" - "going to death") created in the north-east of Iraq, mainly in the mountainous part of it, a large liberated region - "Free Kurdistan", a hotbed of Kurdish independence. The confrontation between the Kurdish rebels and the government's punitive forces lasted for about 15 years (with interruptions). As a result, the resistance of the Iraqi Kurds was temporarily broken, but not completely, and the victory of the government was not unconditional. By the law of March 11, 1974, Baghdad was forced to create a Kurdish autonomous region "Kurdistan" and promise him certain guarantees in the field of local self-government, some social and civil rights, equality of the Kurdish language, etc. This was the first precedent in the modern history of the Middle East indicating that the process of officially recognizing the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination has begun.

The Baath Party (Socialist Arab Renaissance Party), which came to power in Iraq back in 1968, tried to emasculate the democratic content of the concessions made to the Kurds back in 1970 (which did not satisfy them from the very beginning). The autonomy was actually controlled by emissaries and local collaborators sent from Baghdad. The hostility of the Iraqi ruling circles towards the Kurds became especially evident after the establishment of the sole power of Saddam Hussein in the country, proclaimed by the president in 1979. Taking advantage of the war unleashed by him in 1980 against Iran, he organized a gas attack by the Iraqi Air Force on the Kurdish city of Halabja (March 16, 1988); killed, according to various estimates, from several hundred to 5000 civilians, injured about two tens of thousands.

Thus, there remained the reasons why the resurgence of the Kurdish resistance in Iraq was inevitable. The political organizations of Iraqi Kurdistan have tried to draw conclusions from the failures of the past and overcome the divisions that weakened them. In 1976, a group that had previously splintered from the KDP, led by Jalal Talabani, organized the second most influential Iraqi Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which entered into an alliance with the KDP. In the same year, the rebel movement in Iraqi Kurdistan resumed under the leadership of the KDP and PUK. In the 1980s, Iraqi Kurds continued to rally in preparation for new uprisings.

Syrian Kurds also actively opposed the regime of national lawlessness in Syria and toughened by the local Baathists after their seizure of power in 1963. Kurdish democratic parties (KDP of Syria "al-Party" and others) emerged in the country, leading the struggle of the Kurdish minority for their rights. The regime of President Hafez Assad, established at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, did practically nothing to alleviate the plight of the Kurds, trying in its confrontation with Ankara and Baghdad to use the differences between the various Kurdish parties in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, which damaged the unity of the Kurdish national movement ... In 1986, the three main Kurdish parties in Syria merged into the Kurdish Democratic Union.

After a long hiatus, the active struggle of the Kurds of Turkey resumed against the official policy of non-recognition with the resulting prohibitions in the field of language, culture, education, the media, against which were severely punished as a manifestation of "Kurdism", separatism, etc. The position of the Turkish Kurds especially worsened after the military coup on May 27, 1960, one of the main pretexts for which was to prevent the threat of Kurdish separatism.

The military caste in Turkey, which took (directly or covertly) key positions in the system of government and organized two subsequent coups d'état (in 1971 and 1980), began to fight the Kurdish movement. This only led to an intensification of the Kurdish resistance in Turkey; In the 1960s and 1970s, several Kurdish parties and organizations that operated underground arose, including the Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan (DPTK) and the Revolutionary Cultural Centers of the East (RKOV). In 1970, the DPTK united in its ranks several small Kurdish parties and groups and developed a program with broad general democratic demands, giving the Kurds "the right to determine their own destiny." In 1974, the Socialist Party of Turkish Kurdistan (SPTK) was formed, popular among the Kurdish intelligentsia and youth. At the same time, Kurdish patriots established ties and interactions with Turkish progressive political forces.

By the early 1980s, the situation in Turkish Kurdistan had deteriorated markedly. The growing number of Kurdish legal and illegal organizations intensified anti-government agitation and turned to violent actions. The most popular, especially among the poorest and socially unsettled layers of the Kurdish population, was acquired by the Kurdistan Workers 'Party (more often they say the Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, the Kurdish abbreviation PKK), founded by Abdullah Öcalan in 1978. It was a left-wing extremist organization professing Marxism-Leninism Maoist sense and giving preference to violent methods of struggle, including terrorist ones. Individual partisan actions organized by the PKK were noted already in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and in 1984 the party openly began an insurrectionary struggle against the Turkish authorities and punitive bodies in Eastern Anatolia.

Since then, Turkish Kurdistan has emerged as a permanent new hotbed of tension in the Middle East. None of the warring parties managed to gain the upper hand: the Kurds - to achieve recognition of the rights to self-determination, Ankara - to break the growing Kurdish resistance. The many years of bloody war against the Kurds aggravated the economic and political difficulties experienced by Turkey, gave rise to right-wing extremism destabilizing its political system, and undermined the country's international prestige, preventing it from joining European structures. On the Kurdish movement, both in Turkey and in other countries, the struggle under the leadership of the PKK and its leader Ocalan had a contradictory effect. She everywhere, in the East and in the Western world, evoked responses among the democratically minded strata of the population, attracted the working strata of the population, student youth to the active struggle, contributed to the dissemination of information about the Kurds and their struggle, and the internationalization of the Kurdish issue. At the same time, this party and its followers were characterized by adventurous tactics, indiscriminate choice of means of struggle, like terrorism, inability to reckon with the real situation and artificial running ahead, sectarianism and hegemonism of its leadership in developing a strategic line, which ultimately led it to political isolation from other units of the Kurdish movement and to defeat.

In Iran, the Kurdish problem was not so tense, but it has steadily escalated since the early 1960s under the influence of socio-political tensions that arose in the country during the "white revolution" and events in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1967-1968, under the leadership of the DPIK, an uprising broke out in the region of Mehabad, Bane and Sardasht, which lasted a year and a half and was brutally suppressed.

Despite the defeat, the DPIK did not lose heart and launched an active work on the development of a new program and party charter. The fundamental slogan "democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan" was proclaimed, and the tactics of the party involved a combination of armed struggle with political methods, which were aimed at creating a united front of all forces opposing the regime.

Iranian Kurds took an active part in the growing popular anti-Shah movement in the late 1970s, which culminated in the "Islamic revolution", the overthrow of the Shah’s power and the proclamation at the beginning of 1979 of the “Islamic Republic of Iran”, which is actually the rule of the Shiite “mullocracy”. For the Kurds, as well as for the entire Iranian people, this "revolution", in which they could not prove themselves as an independent political force capable of defending their national demands, turned into a counter-revolution, the dictatorship of Imam Khomeini and his followers and successors. Even in a religious aspect, this medieval-type regime was dangerous for the interests of the Kurdish minority, overwhelmingly Sunni. Khomeinism denied the existence of a national question in Iran, including, of course, the Kurdish one, placing it exclusively within the framework of the "Islamic ummah" as already resolved. The new government decisively rejected the DPIK project on administrative and cultural autonomy for the Kurds.

Disagreements in the spring of 1979 escalated into armed clashes between the forces of the Kurdish resistance (units of the DPIK, the Kurdish left organization "Komala" and the Peshmerga who came to their aid from Iraq, the left formations of the Persians fedayeen and mujahideen) and government forces, reinforced by the gendarmerie, police and Islamic stormtroopers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). In the summer of 1979, battles between Kurdish rebels and punishers took place almost throughout the territory of Iranian Kurdistan. DPIK has established control over most of it, including large cities. In some of them, the authority of the Kurdish revolutionary councils was established. Kurdish religious leader Ezzedin Hosseini has even declared a jihad against the central government. The leaders of the Iranian Kurds have repeatedly called on Tehran to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the conflict and carry out socio-economic and political-administrative reforms in Kurdish-populated areas. However, the negotiations did not take place. In the fall of 1979, the government launched an offensive against the Kurds and managed to push them back into the mountains, where they began a guerrilla war. The Islamic regime has deployed the most severe control in those areas of Kurdistan over which it managed to regain control.

The defeat of the Iranian Kurds at the beginning of the Islamic regime was largely due to the lack of unity in the Kurdish movement, traditional Kurdish particularism. The left-wing extremist forces in the parties "Komala", "Ryzgari" and others have done a lot of harm to the Kurdish cause. The DPIK itself turned out to be split, which was used by the Iranian authorities, who by the middle of 1980 completed the establishment of their control over practically the entire territory of Iranian Kurdistan.

In the 1980s, the Kurdish movement in Iran and Iraq was going through difficult times. The Iranian-Iraqi war (1980-1988) created an extremely unfavorable environment for him. The hostilities partly took place on the territory of Kurdistan, the Kurds suffered human and material losses. In addition, both belligerents tried to enlist the support of the enemy's Kurdish population, which served both Tehran and Baghdad as a pretext for anti-Kurdish punitive measures (including the aforementioned gas attack in Halabja). By the early 1990s, the general situation in Kurdistan was extremely difficult and tense.

The Kurdish question at the present stage.

The world-historical changes that occurred at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s in connection with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR directly and indirectly affected the Kurdish national movement. It continued to develop in the geopolitical reality that required new approaches in the strategy and tactics of struggle. First of all, this concerned the situation in Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan.

In the 1980s, taking advantage of the war with Iran, Iraq canceled out all the concessions it had made to the Kurds. The Autonomous Region became subordinate to Baghdad. Measures were taken to resettle Kurds from border villages, as well as against Kurds suspected of anti-government activities. By the early 1990s, when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 triggered another acute crisis in the Middle East, Iraqi Kurdistan was on the eve of another major Kurdish uprising.

In Iran, both during Khomeini's lifetime and after his death in 1989, the Kurdish autonomous movement was suppressed; it could only function underground and in exile. In July 1989, the DPIK General Secretary A.Kasemlu was killed in Vienna, in September 1992 the new DPIK General Secretary S.Sharafkandi was killed in Berlin. Negotiations with Kurdish nationalists on the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan with the Iranian leadership were thwarted.

During the presidency of Khatami, when the position of supporters of the liberal realist course strengthened, there was a tendency to make some concessions to the Kurdish population in the field of culture, education and information policy in order to reduce the intensity of protest moods. At the same time, the authorities tried to play on the ethnic and linguistic kinship of the Persians and Kurds, who seem to have identical state and political interests. On this basis, the Kurds have no representatives in the Mejlis, although there are deputies from other non-Persian ethnic groups (including Assyrians and Armenians) there.

Since the second half of the 1980s, the PKK-led insurgency has noticeably increased in southeastern Turkey. There were regular attacks on police stations, gendarme posts, and military bases. Kurdish suicide bombers appeared. The organizational and propaganda activities of the PKK crossed the Turkish borders, the influence of the party spread to a significant part of the Syrian Kurds (Ocalan himself with his headquarters moved to Syria). PKK activists have launched extensive campaigning among the Kurdish diaspora in Western and Eastern Europe in the press they run and on Kurdish television (MED-TV).

For its part, the Turkish government has stepped up its repression against the Kurds. Turkey extended the scope of anti-Kurdish campaigns to northern Iraq, into whose territory, pursuing the retreating Kurdish partisans, they deepened 20-30 km. Events in Turkish Kurdistan acquired a general Kurdish scale, as well as anti-Kurdish actions of all Middle Eastern governments.

Thus, under pressure from Ankara, at the end of October 1998, Damascus denied Ocalan the right of political asylum. After several days of wandering around different countries, Ocalan was seized by the Turkish special services, tried and sentenced in June 1999 to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. The arrest and trial of Öcalan caused a huge explosion of discontent in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. However, the Kurdish movement in Turkey has declined sharply. Ocalan himself called on his associates from prison to lay down their arms and enter into negotiations with the government on the basis of partial satisfaction of their demands, which was done: a Kurdish press, radio and television appeared in Turkey. The Öcalan case showed that left-wing extremism in the Kurdish movement in Turkey was based mainly on the charisma of its leader, and not on objective grounds; with his departure from the political arena, the uprising was doomed to defeat, and the main problems of the Turkish Kurds remain unresolved.

The defeat of Iraq in Kuwait in early 1991, inflicted on it by the US-led coalition ("Desert Storm"), marked the beginning of a new stage in the liberation struggle of the Iraqi Kurds, although the Kurdish question occupied a subordinate place in these events. In February 1991, a spontaneous uprising broke out in Iraqi Kurdistan, the participants of which relied on the help of the United States and their allies and liberated the entire country in a short time. However, the Kurds were once again sacrificed to the geopolitical interests of the West, in this case the United States, which were not interested in further destabilizing the situation around Iraq (mainly in its Kurdish and Shiite regions) and therefore allowed Saddam Hussein to suppress the Kurdish uprising.

However, the Americans soon changed their attitude towards Iraq. An American-British air umbrella was installed over the Kurdish and Shiite regions of Iraq - a no-fly zone for Iraqi aviation, a regime of economic sanctions (embargo) was introduced, and a long-term confrontation of Iraq, mainly with the United States and England, began. As a result, for the first time in history, a favorable situation arose for the part of the Kurdish people living in Iraq, allowing them to achieve their demands.

In April-May 1992, the South Kurdistan Front, which included all the main Kurdish parties, organized elections for the first Kurdish parliament (national assembly). About 90% of the votes were received by the two main Kurdish parties - KDP and PUK; the voices between them were almost equally divided. The leaders of these parties, Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, became the country's two informal leaders. A government was formed and a declaration on the Federal Union was adopted. Thus, the beginning of the Kurdish statehood was laid and the structure of state administration was outlined. The new government controlled most of southern Kurdistan (55 thousand square kilometers out of 74), called "Free Kurdistan". Only the oil-bearing district of Kirkuk remained under the rule of Baghdad, in which the policy of supporting the Turkic minority of the Turkmens and the territory north of the 36th parallel adjacent to Mosul were pursued. "Free Kurdistan" enjoyed military-political and partly economic (mainly humanitarian aid) support from the United States and its closest allies, but did not have any international legal status. It was autonomy in full, which for the Kurds was undoubted progress and an important step in the struggle for national self-determination, especially since the United States and its allies were on their side.

The first years of Free Kurdistan's existence were not easy. Despite the undoubted successes in establishing economic life, solving urgent social problems and organizing public education, serious mistakes were made in creating a healthy internal political climate. Affected by the low level of political culture, expressed in the non-obsolete ideas of traditional society, first of all, typically Kurdish particularism and leaderism. In 1994, a sharp conflict arose between the KDP and the PUK, which resulted in a prolonged confrontation with the use of armed force.

There was a threat that the Iraqi Kurds would lose their achievements. However, a process of reconciliation began, which, based on its own interests, was strongly supported by the United States. On September 17, 1998 in Washington, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani signed an agreement on a peaceful settlement of the conflict. It took quite a long time to finally resolve the conflict and reconcile the remaining controversial issues, but in the end all the differences were overcome. On October 4, 2002, after a six-year hiatus, the first session of the united Kurdish parliament was held in the capital of southern Kurdistan, Erbil. It was decided to unite the judiciary as well, as well as to organize new parliamentary elections in 6-9 months.

Mikhail Lazarev

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