Posted on 05/29/2016 10:16:08 PM PDT by Cronos
well, the only difference between tribalism and nationalism is scale, right?
Yep. Tribalism = larger numbers of smaller groups. Increased complexity.
It makes no sense that there is no Kurdistan, for example.
Kurdistan is the only part of the mideast that has a constitution that allows the free execise of religion.
And there is a Kurdistan..no matter what the friggan UN or any other org says.
Poor innocent Kurds. Hard to believe they helped murder 200,000+ Assyrian Christians.
Kurdistan is a figment of your imagination.
Tell the Kurds that.
Ignorant bas^%rd.
“Poor innocent Kurds. Hard to believe they helped murder 200,000+ Assyrian Christians. “
That was the policy of the Ottoman Empire a century ago - not an independent Kurdish initiative. Today, the Kurds are the best ally that Assyrian Christians have on the ground in Syria - in the face of their worst enemy since the Ottoman genocides.
I see. It looks like the poor Kurds were the victims of the Assyrian genocide, not the perpetrators.
The Kurds were part of the Ottoman Empire, at the time that the Ottoman Central Government conducted the Genocide.
The genocidal initiative came from the central government - it was not something that independently arose out of Kurdish culture.
Yes, many Kurds (who are mostly muslim) took part. If they were in the military, or had government jobs, they were ordered to. If they were civilians, it was an opportunity to pillage. Religious imperative was promoted by the government, as was agitprop against CHristians, designed to inflame the public. It was wartime (WWI), fighting was taking place and Christians were viewed as natural sympathizers with their enemies - kind of like Japanese-Americans during WWII.
Although I offer those points as mitigating factors, there is no getting around the fact that Assyrian Christians were concentrated in predominately Kurdish areas of the Ottoman Empire, and many of the local officials and local mobs rounding up, robbing and killing Christians were Kurds.
My point is that it did not stem from Kurdish culture, but rather from wartime Ottoman Government policy and islam - and it was a century ago. They Syrian Kurds who are in alliance with Assyrian Christians today, are not primarily motivated by Ottoman Government policy or islam - they are organized around the socialist revolutionary doctrine of Abdullah Ocalan (”Apoism”), and are often characterized as atheist (although in fact they are secularists, in terms of government).
Very significantly, the Syrian Kurds are the most reliable and effective local allies available to the Assyrian Christian community against the present day genocidal threat posed by ISIS. They are by far the biggest force on the ground saving Assyrian Christians from ISIS murderers and slavers.
Germans today are not genocidal Nazis, and Kurds today are not genocidal Ottomans.
The Germans were de-Nazified and renounced Naziism. The Kurds have never renounced Islam. Also, the Kurds use terrorism to achieve their political goals. The world does not need more terrorist states.
“the Kurds use terrorism to achieve their political goals. The world does not need more terrorist states. “
That is a serious concern. The PYD political party in Syria, which represents the YPG and YPJ militias which we (America) are backing to fight ISIS, is essentially the Syrian branch of the PKK - which has been fighting Turkey for decades, has caused more civilian deaths than the IRA ever did, and which America has officially recognized as a terrorist organization.
Both the PYD and the PKK are designed around the philosophy of Abdullah Ocalan (Apo), in prison in Turkey for terrorism. Their philosophy started out as a pretty hard Marxist variant, often compared to Maoism. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the PKK, as well as Iraqi Kurdish parties, began moderating their Marxism. The Soviet Union had been a principal source of support for Kurdish independence movements.
The dominant KDP party in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and to a lesser degree the second largest PUK party, without the need to curry favor from Soviet Communists, have implemeted relatively free market policies over the last decade - much more crony capitalist than socialist/marxist. The PUK remains the more avowedly socialist of the two, although in practice they are more similar, than they are in rhetoric.
The PKK (and PYD) still maintain a kind of cult of personality around Ocalan, who has continued to write while in prison. He has also moved from old school Marxism over time, and has favored the philosophy of the obscure American radical, Murray Bookchin.
Ocalan now promotes a (in my opinion, mushy) philosophy of Democratic Confedralism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Confederalism ), with an emphasis on democratic consensus, pluralism, local governance, and equality for women. Despite the much softer doctrine, the PKK and PYD still have a strict military culture, and pretty intense political indoctrination programs.
The terrorism of the PKK has been motivated by Kurdish independence, and they have strongly relegated islam outside of the political realm. Overturning traditional islamic restrictions, especially on the role of women, are pretty central to their ideology. They are often (typically) criticized as atheists by islamists like ISIS. Nowadays (while operating in majority Arab areas) Syrian Kurds make an uncharacteristic effort to sprinkle some islamic phrases like “God willing” into their statements. as a kind of PR move, even though the party leadership are pretty militant secularists.
There is potential danger that the PKK/PYD could become a Leftist terrorist state. Their newly softened dogma not only reduces Marxist justifications, it also reduces Kurdish nationalist justifications - which establishes a possible universal imperative to spread their version of “Democracy”. However, they have never given more than conceptual support to such expansion beyond their own homelands in practice.
If the Iraqi Kurdish experience is the model, then it is likely that Syrian Kurds would pursue pragmatic politics and economics if in power. If they do remain more dogmatic and ideological though, the targets of the potential terrorism seem limited to Turkey, local competitors, and islamists.
Turkey is actually a likely target, as the Erdogan regime has been conducting a bit of a war against Kurds in Turkey since last year - with tanks and jets, hundreds killed per month, and ethnic cleansing areas of tens of thousands.
Kurds have been notoriously protective of Americans in recent decades though - not one American military member was killed in the Kurdish controlled areas of Iraq during the many years of the occupation. So far, Syrian Kurds have been similarly reliable - no rogue policemen or soldiers has yet turned a gun unexpectedly on an American.
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