The Kurdish People have their own culture, own freedoms and have all the elements of a nation. They have access to oil - which could improve poverty and bad infrastructure in Turkish and Iranian Kurdistan. They have already accomplished so much without their own government or country and their objective is to create a free nation where women and ethnic minorities would be treated equally.
Yet, due to the current borders of the Middle East, which have been imposed by European colonial powers to pursue their own interests, the Kurdish people have had little success toward independence, until recently.
The borders drawn up in Middle East were a disastrous attempt to impose western colonialism and a western state model upon a vast heterogeneous population, where no single religion or ethnic group made up more than 50% of the population. The Kurdish people are an ethnic group mostly inhabiting a contiguous area spanning over adjacent parts of eastern and southwestern Turkey, Western Iran, Northern Iraq, and Northern Syria.
It just so happens that the Kurdish people had been dragged into all this mess. The Kurdish people have faced discrimination, genocide and the denial of basic cultural and political rights at the hands of their occupiers due to artificial borders after WW1. This was all accompanied by the Sykes-Picot agreement, and sadly this year marks the 100th anniversary of the agreement.
So, how is it possible that one of the oldest civilizations in the world weren’t given their own autonomous state? There are four main countries in the Middle East that now contain Kurdish territory: Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey.
Most Importantly is the country of Iraq, at first the French and the Americans post-WW1 denied British interests in the annexation of The Vilayet of Mosul (Modern Day Northern Iraq), both hoping for the creation of a Kurdish independent state. However, The Vilayet of Mosul was not only possessing an abundance of Kurds, but revealed to be rich in oil. American and French protests did not prevail once Great Britain offered the French 25% and the Americans 10% of the stocks of what would become the North Oil Company (NOC). The Kurds were basically sold out by the Sykes-Picot agreement (1923) between the UK and France, forcefully separating the Kurds between four countries. What could have been one of the most influential turning points in Kurdish history, instantly turned into a hellish nightmare, a nightmare where the Kurds became an instant target for the exploitation of their land for oil interests.
After a few decades, the Iraqi regime controlled by Saddam, changed governorate boundaries (1958), thus, pushing Kurdish people further north of Iraq, and in a way gradually separating them from their oil rich lands in the Vilayet of Mosul. After decades of violence conducted by the Iraqi regime through the genocide of approximately over 200,000 Kurdish people known as Saddam's Anfal/Arabization campaign and the retaliation of Kurdish "rebels", the Iraqi government granted the Kurdish people autonomy in 1992 by Saddam. However, they only received autonomy over the Kurdish speaking areas which didn't have any oil. In the last 10 years, the KRG government (the Kurdistan regional government) tried, unsuccessfully, to get what is rightfully theirs to extend the green line to the blue line.
Today, In respect to regaining the Kurdish Homeland, ISIS has been a gift from heaven as the Kurds are now controlling huge swaths of territory of Northern Syria and Northern Iraq, gaining what is rightfully theirs and what the Arabs would have never given them. With territory in this region of the Middle East, comes oil, and with oil, fear has risen within the Iraqi government of a possible Kurdish independence. With oil profits to fuel a bid for independence, the Iraqi government has threatened to sue any country or company that buys Kurdish oil, and has cut off national funding for the Kurdish region.
Although Iraq has the right to impose Iraqi law, the Kurds have kept pumping oil anyway, betting that their American allies, who have pressured them to abide by the Iraqi oil law, will soften their stance, and that buyers will come forward. But as oil prices have plummeted within the last year due to less reliance on oil in western countries, and as Iraq and the United States have refused to budge, the odds are getting less in favor by the day.
For now, Kurdish officials are determined, from a long-term perspective, on the confrontation; despite its high cost at a time when the government is all but broke. They believe that, eventually, the oil glut will end and that international buyers will need Kurdish crude and support their nationalist aspirations. Also, Kurdish credibility over the years has risen in Syria. The Kurds created their own constitution in 2014 and the YPG Kurdish fighting force has become a major ally of the United States in its campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. I believe there will be a silver lining out of the many deaths and sacrifices during the ISIS occupation of Iraq and Syria, at least for the Kurdish people.
Update on newest proposal for a Kurdish Independent state: "Once Islamic State is defeated, Iraq should be divided into three separate entities to prevent further sectarian bloodshed, with a state each given to Shi'ite Muslims, Sunnis and Kurds, a top Kurdish official said on Thursday."
