Kurds
Kurds are an Iranian people with their own language, Kurdish, who inhabit the region of Kurdistan in Western Asia that is split between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The region of Kurdistan has the world's sixth-largest reserve of oil which has naturally accelerated conflict as well as repression of the local people. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, with significant minorities in other branches of Islam and local religions.
After World War I the allies promised to establish a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, however that promise was broken three years later in the Treaty of Lausanne that gave the lands to Turkey, with Kurds similarly denied a state in Syria or Iraq. In modern history Kurds have been subject to genocides and repression, with Kurds carrying out ongoing armed rebellions against all four countries their nation is split across. They have however taken part in killing of Assyrians themselves around the early 20th century. In Syria and Iraq the Kurds have autonomous regions, with the one in the Syria commonly known as Rojava.
Kurdish oppression is particular in Turkey and Syria, where their cultural existence is denied. The Turkish state since its foundation in 1923 sought to purge any identity other than Turkish, labeling the Kurds as "mountain Turks". Following a coup in 1980, Turkey launched a repressive offense against Kurds that destroyed 4,000 villages and killed 40,000 people by the 2000s, receiving help from the US and UK in this. At this time the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) became the center of resistance to state terror, with its leader Abdullah Öcalan promoting a style of government that emphasized libertarian socialism, democratic confederalism, and feminism. He was captured and imprisoned in 1999 — likely with the help of the US.[1] In 2002, the PKK and allied groups organized the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) which sought to implement Öcalan's ideas in the region — the year after, the Democratic Union Party was established as a Syrian branch of the PKK, becoming the leading political party of Syrian Kurds. Its armed wing, the People's Defense Units (YPG), was established in 2011 after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.
Syria
The al-Assads harbored Öcalan and the PKK in order to weaken Turkey, but have also tried to wipe out the Kurdish identity. By 2010 an estimated 300,000 Kurds lost or were denied Syrian citizenship and the rights that go with such, leading many Kurdish people, who are 10% of the country's population and live mostly in the northeast, to take part in demonstrations when the Syrian Revolution broke out in 2011. Fighting later broke out and Bashar al-Assad retreated from northeast Syria, letting the Kurds take over.[1] This gave rise to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, which is an unofficially autonomous region in northeastern Syria that consists of self-governing sub-regions whose official military force is the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the main component of which is the YPG. When the Islamic State swept across the area in 2014 the United States turned to the PKK and YPG already fighting the IS for partnership — despite having designated the former as a terrorist organization. As they captured areas from the IS, Kurdish fighters forced out Arabs in many of the lands seized. In March 2019 the last piece of IS-held territory was captured by what became the SDF, with President Donald Trump declaring a withdrawal in October. Turkey, which fears the SDF would promote the efforts of the PKK that Turkey has declared a terrorist organization and long fought, then took the opportunity to seize part of Rojava.[2] 160,000 have consequently been displaced, with Rojava prompted to look to the Syrian government for support.[1] Prior to this, conflict between the YPG and the Syrian government was rare, in some campaign tacitly cooperating against Islamist forces.
Iraq
Iraq became a British mandate in 1921 and officially independent in 1932, though with British control still running deep in its power structure. In the north where there is a Kurdish majority, the British discovered oil which compelled them to crush Kurdish independence movements with particular ferocity, employing chemical weapons on top of bombs. The British appointed Kurdish nationalist sheikh Mahmoud Barzanji as governor to try to contain his movement and keep control of the region, but they were fundamentally at odds, with his first governorship ending in pro-independence revolts and the British capturing and exiling him, however then reinstated him, but then captured and exiled him after pro-independence revolts happened once more in his second goverorship. Kurdish movements were subsequently picked up and dropped several times depending on whether imperial forces supported or opposed the government of Iraq. In 1968 the US supported a coup that brought the Ba'athists to power, who put down the Kurds, but in the 70s the US supported the Kurds against the Ba'ath regime in order to help Iran, then an ally of the US. With Saddam Hussein's rise to power in the 1970s, the US found an ally in him and ignored his atrocities against the Kurds, including the genocidal Anfal campaign of 1986–89 which led to the destruction of over 2,000 villages and killed between 50,000 and 182,000. The US encouraged Kurdish rebellions when it invaded Iraq in 1991, but ended up abandoning them to be massacred. The Kurds were granted an autonomous region in return for supporting the US's invasion in 2003, but its leadership is repressive and dependent on its relationship with and support from the US, for which it in turn must support US imperialist aims in the region. In 2014, Kurdish president Masoud Barzani called an independence referendum after helping the US to defeat the IS, with the result being 93% in favor. The US however responded by sending troops to back the Iraqi government in pushing them back to their pre-war borders. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger summed up this approach: “Promise [Kurds] anything, give them what they get, and fuck them if they can’t take a joke.”[1]
Iran similarly puts down its own Kurdish movements while continuously inflaming Kurdish revolts in Iraq, as it had done during the Iran–Iraq War.