Kurdish people

The previous topics provide the baseline for the reader to understand why support for the Kurds is not a cut and dry issue but instead invites an ethical dilemma. The US is forced to choose between established allies, the GOI or Turks, and Kurdish partners, the KRG and Syrian Kurds. The Kurds have made a concerted effort to garner positive international opinion through reform of their ideals and practices. Surrounded on all sides by ethnic groups who have opposed and repressed them over the years, the Kurds have identified western powers as allies with the strength capable of supporting their bid for autonomy. Diplomatic Ethical Dilemmas As such, factions like the KRG have made it their mission to promote social freedoms in support of UN…

Introduction The Republic of Turkey is one of many states greatly affected by the current Syrian Civil War, which has also caused an immense displacement of Syrian refugees seeking safety. As a neighboring state, it is burdened by the great influx of refugees, prompting an adjustment on the refugee policy, the state of Syria and the Islamic State. Its foreign policy greatly depends on systemic variables such as geography, alliances, and relative power. According to Joseph Micallef,…

4. Case Study of Competitive Control by an Insurgent Group: How the Theory Applies to The PKK The PKK is mainly an ethno-nationalist based insurgent group. It was committed to the rights of the Kurdish people, to equipping them with necessary resources to defend their rights, and to ensure equality within the organization itself (Schoon 2015, p. 274). Among the contemporary insurgent groups, the PKK is termed as an ethnic insurgent and terrorist organization which is operating especially in the…

11.3 million people have been displaced by the civil war in Syria and, despite a lack of coverage recently in the media, the number is only growing (World Vision). When asked, people guessed the number of refugees to be in the thousands and one even responded “is that still going on?” (Mason). We, as people of the world, should help out the refugees by all able-countries working together to assist diplomatically, socially, and economically. In addition, informing the masses about this ongoing…

“civilized”. The new capitalist-neoliberal enterprise required transformations. Marx and Engels further illustrate regarding capitalism, “It compels all nations, on the pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeoisie mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst; i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image” (Marx and Engels, 1992: 7). The Kurdish leaders having “no other alternative,” jumped on the…

formations of the Kurds. In his essay “The Impact of Islam on Kurdish Identity in the Middle East,” Hakan Ozoglu argues that Kurdish identity evolved through various, overlapping phases with Islam at the core of its formation process, a process he calls “dialectical, dialogical, and monological” (18). First, while the term “Kurd” was not ethnically associated with the modern term Kurd, nevertheless, many proto-Kurds accepted Islam early on in the Islamic expansion period after the death of the…

The film is based on the Kurdish people and their long history fighting for a national identity which can be seen in their history. The Kurdish people are Sunni Muslim people, who have their own language and traditions, living on the mountainous borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Armenia. They are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East but they are still considered “nationless”. The traditional Kurdish life was nomadic until World War 1 and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.…

persecution, these groups search for ways to create their own nation and become independent. According to Joseph Stalin, for an ethnic group to become a nation they must be “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” The world powers do not see the Kurds as a nation due to not meeting a majority of these characteristics. However, the Kurds believe themselves…

Kurdish women living in Turkey face a difficult choice in terms of their personal freedoms and equality. As Kurds, a prosecuted minority in Turkey, Kurdish women can either conceal their Kurdish identity, or they can live freely as Kurds but enter the world of violence that surrounds the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). For decades, the PKK has been involved in armed rebellion against Turkey in hopes of gaining an independent state, and is considered by Turkey, the US, the UN, and NATO to be a…

Since Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, Muslims across the globe, such as Jamal al-din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida, proposed revolutionary ways to apprehend Islam and make it competitive against the overwhelming dominance by Western, Christian powers. However, their particular revivalist methods should not be seen as the only ways in which Islamic peoples and groups reformed or reinterpreted Islam in order to meet the current political and social demands. An imperative…