Kurds

8 Pages 1908 Words

ty and denied the Kurds their own state. This was the beginning of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. At about this same time, the Kurds attempted to establish a semi-independent state, and actually succeeded in forming the Kingdom of Kurdistan, which lasted from 1922-1924; later, in 1946, some of the Kurds established the Mahabad Republic, which lasted for only one year (Prince, p. 17, 1993). In 1924, Turkey even passed a law banning the use of the Kurdish language in public places.
Another group of people to consider is the Kurds living in Iraq. Major conflict between the Kurds and Iraqis did not really begin until 1961, when a war broke out that lasted until 1970. Around this time, Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq. In 1975, Hussein adopted a policy of eradicating the Kurds from his country. Over the next fifteen years, the Iraqi army bombed Kurdish villages, and poisoned the Kurds with
cyanide and mustard gas (Hitchens, p. 46, 1992). It is estimated that during the 1980’s, Iraqis destroyed some 5000 Kurdish villages (Prince, p. 22, 1993). From this point, we move into the recent history and current state of these conflicts between the Kurds and the Turks, and the Kurds against the Iraqis.



Causes for Conflict

The reasons for these conflicts have great relevance to geography. The areas of geography relating to these specific con...