Why don't the Kurds learn from history?

It is something that needs to be thought about at length.

It might be a subject for those interested in political sociology, but perhaps even more so for political psychology or social psychology.

There is truly a situation at hand that strongly demands an explanation.

How can it be explained that the Kurds persistently and stubbornly repeat the same mistake by trusting imperialist centers, primarily America?

Even though they are used every single time and then cast aside like a crumpled piece of paper, they do not learn any lessons from this whatsoever.

How, you ask?

Let us turn the pages of the book slowly.

In 1946, the Republic of Mahabad was established on Iranian soil. The Soviets were behind it. The President was Qazi Muhammad, and the Chief of General Staff was Mullah Mustafa Barzani.

When the Soviets withdrew from Iran as a result of agreements made with America and Britain, things got complicated.

As soon as the support was lifted, Mahabad collapsed, and Qazi Muhammad was executed. Mullah Mustafa Barzani took refuge in the Soviet Union with about 500 of his peshmerga.

He stayed there from 1947 to 1958. He lived around Moscow and Baku. The Soviets trained Mullah Mustafa Barzani militarily and put him through their ideological tutelage, but they did not offer an active political project. At that time, they protected and looked after Mullah Mustafa Barzani, but they did not openly use him; they deemed it sufficient to invest in the future.

The first thing General Abd al-Karim Qasim, who overthrew the monarchy in Iraq with a coup on July 14, 1958, did was to issue a general amnesty and call for Mullah Mustafa Barzani.

The Kurdish leader returned to Iraq like a hero.

Then what?

He established a cautious relationship with Baghdad; the rights of the Kurds and such were brought to the agenda, but no concrete result emerged.

Seeing that talking was not working, and having peshmerga who had already received military training from the Soviets, he launched an armed uprising in 1961.

Long-lasting clashes with the Iraqi army began.

This time, he did not move closer to Soviet Russia, but to America, the Iran under the Shah's regime, and Israel.

His goal was to weaken Baghdad.

In other words, he was cooperating with imperialists against Iraq and openly betraying his own country.

In his calculations, he would force Baghdad to the negotiating table and extract as many concessions as he could.

The plan at home did not match the market; the 1975 Algiers Agreement became the breaking point. With the consensus reached between the Shah of Iran and Iraq, border issues were resolved; in return, Tehran cut off all support it gave to the Kurds, and America withdrew instantly.

Mullah Mustafa Barzani was left completely alone overnight.

They had used the Kurds well, then left them to the mercy of the regime in Baghdad without batting an eye.

The rebellion collapsed.

Tens of thousands of Kurds piled up at the Iranian border. Mullah Mustafa Barzani fled first to Iran, then to America.

He passed away in Washington in 1979. But the letter he wrote to the American President before that went down in history as a document of warning.

The letter is a controversial document, a cry that was half-begging, half-reproachful. In summary, it said, “We trusted you. We fought for your interests for years. Now you are leaving us to our fate.”

From another perspective, this letter was a document certifying that there was no strategic mind in Kurdish politics.

It was obvious that Mullah Mustafa Barzani, without calculating the balance of power, was acting with a purely moral approach and an expectation of mercy.

Let us underline that in international politics, this is the weakest position.

This letter was also, in a way, an admission that the Kurdish movement could not stand on its own feet.

For America, however, the Kurds were already a tool, an apparatus, not an end. When the tool lost its function, it was naturally shelved.

Indeed, Kissinger would say years later, “Covert operations are not missionary work.”

Let us continue.

The same scenario was repeated in the following years.

Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 with the green light from those in Washington. America intervened immediately. The coalition removed Saddam Hussein from Kuwait but did not march on Baghdad.

The goal of those in Washington was not regime change, but keeping Iraq under control.

When Bush called for “the Iraqi people and army to rise up against Saddam,” the Kurds took up arms again, saying “America is behind us.” The Kurdish uprising began in March 1991. Cities like Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Duhok fell in a short time. Saddam’s army scattered at the first moment.

At that moment, a psychology emerged among the Kurds that “This is over. America will not leave us halfway this time.”

They made their biggest mistake here.

America stopped; not only did they not send a single soldier, but they also allowed the Iraqi army to use helicopters.

Saddam attacked the Kurdish regions, especially with helicopters and heavy weapons.

America just watched; it did not intervene. The concern of those in Washington from the very beginning was not to liberate the Kurds, but to weaken Iraq.

Barzani ignored this difference, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

In the end, Saddam suppressed them, and the Kurds fled. The Iraqi army regained control in a very short time.

Hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled toward the Turkish border and the Iranian border. While they were struggling with hunger and cold in the mountains, an epidemic began.

The poor Kurdish people were paying the price for the Barzani family's concern with serving America's interests in the region.

When this picture was reflected in the world press, the situation changed. America and its allies declared a no-fly zone in Northern Iraq and launched Operation Provide Comfort.

The Kurds returned. A de facto autonomous area was formed in Northern Iraq. But this was done to manage the refugee crisis, not to save the uprising.

The year 2001 became a turning point for both the region and the world.

After the attack on the Twin Towers, when America put Iraq on its target list, the Kurds became hopeful again.

America's 2003 invasion of Iraq was actually just the completion of the story that was left unfinished in 1991, this time in a “controlled” manner. But this completion was not a saga of freedom for the Kurds; it was the allocation of a political space as much as the imperial mind allowed them.

They received their reward with the 2005 Iraqi Constitution. The Kurdistan Regional Government was officially recognized. They were given a parliament, a government, and a flag. The Peshmerga were not considered part of the Iraqi army and were protected as a separate force.

This was a first in Kurdish history.

An official and constitutional autonomy in the shadow of an imperial occupation. But this autonomy had limits.

For example, they could not do the following:

They could not declare independence, they could not conduct foreign policy, and they could not completely sever oil from Baghdad.

In fact, it would be more accurate to call this a licensed political space rather than an autonomous statelet.

However, the Kurds misread this picture again. They thought America's presence was permanent and said, “The disintegration of Iraq is inevitable.” The feudal structure in the region relied on oil instead of modernizing, and politics became completely familial instead of institutionalizing; the autonomous statelet turned into a rent area for elites instead of offering prosperity to the people.

The 2017 referendum was also a result of the misinterpretation of 2003.

They thought the space given in 2003 would be institutionalized with the declaration of independence in 2017. In the end, America did not support it, Europe remained silent; Iran, Turkey, and Iraq met on the same line.

Finally, America sold out the Kurds in Syria as well.

We all know the developments.

Yet, the PKK and its derivatives had trusted their big brothers in Washington and Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, who would make Hitler look merciful.

They were going to be partners in the title deed of Syria for free; they were supposedly going to unite the four parts and establish a great Kurdistan.

But since Trump preferred al-Shara and Tayyip Erdoğan for now, the Kurds' enthusiasm was once again cut short.

Let us look at the matter with a cool head;

If we take into account what has happened in this geography for more than a century, the Kurds should have developed a political “conditioned reflex” long ago.

But that did not happen.

Even though this story has been told many times, they still have not learned their lesson.

Let us put on our reading glasses again.

Conditioned reflex is explained in the book as, “An automatic reaction that is not innate but learned later, first defined by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.”

It is called a reaction that occurs without the need for conscious thought as a result of connecting a stimulus that is initially neutral to a natural stimulus through repetition and pairing.

In fact, it is the most primitive but most permanent form of learning!

We can also call it a permanent change in behavior as a result of experience. Learning sometimes occurs consciously, that is, by thinking and questioning, and sometimes unconsciously, that is, by getting used to it or becoming automatic.

Conditioned reflex is the latter.

Even ants can develop conditioned reflexes.

But the Kurds, absolutely not!

We are not using the Pavlov analogy here as a metaphor; this is a repeating historical pattern, as if we are examining Kurdish politics under a microscope in the laboratory of imperialism.

Let us write it clearly: imperialists do not have an “emotional,” “moral,” or “historical” relationship with the Kurds.

This relationship is purely functional from the perspective of the imperialists. When the job is done, they break the connection or leave whoever they used fallow until the time they will use them again.

Just like in Syria today.

America played a dirty trick on the Kurds, that is obvious, but it did not completely write them off either. It said, “I won't make you partners in the title deed of Syria like that; go play at being a canton around Qamishli and Kobani.”

In short, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria… The fate of the Kurds will be shaped together with these four countries. The decision-makers in Washington do not live in this geography. They do not pay the price. They do not bury their children in the black soil.

As we conclude the article, let us emphasize with a thick pen; the Kurds avoid talking about their own mistakes the most.

They are constantly in a narrative of “betrayal,” but it is they themselves who somehow leave the door open to betrayal!

Let us put a period to our article by saying that instead of romanticizing the issue with the tears of Şivan Perwer, an approach where reason prevails will be the most correct one not only for the Kurds but for the entire Middle Eastern geography.