Vladimir Putin, Godfather of Kurdistan?
If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thought last November that by downing a Russian Su-24 bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border he could contain Vladimir Putin’s Middle Eastern ambitions, he is certainly regretting that now. An incensed Vladimir Putin vowed that Turkey would come to rue its actions. He warned that Russia would not settle its accounts with Turkey with mere economic sanctions, adding, “We know what we need to do.”
The first thing observers need to understand is that today’s alliance between Russia and the PKK is hardly new or unusual. The Russian-Kurdish nexus has been a recurring feature of Middle Eastern geopolitics for more than two hundred years, since Catherine the Great commissioned the publication of a Kurdish grammar in 1787. Catherine’s interest in the Kurds was not purely academic. Kurdish tribes, tsarist officials recognized, were important actors along Russia’s southern frontiers. From 1804 forward, Kurds played important roles in Russia’s wars with Qajar Persia and Ottoman Turkey. As the century wore on, the Russian army made increasing use of Kurdish units to fight the Persians and Turks.
The end of the Russian empire in 1917 did not mean the end of Russia’s Kurdish ambitions. In 1923, Soviet authorities established “Red Kurdistan,” a nominally autonomous Kurdish province wedged between Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan. It was the first ethnically defined Kurdish entity. Complete with a Kurmanji (Kurdish-language) newspaper and Kurdish schools, its purpose was to serve as a beacon of socialist revolution to Kurds throughout the Middle East. Deciding that devices to export revolution might serve instead to import counterrevolution, however, Stalin disbanded Red Kurdistan in 1930.
Among other lessons, what Americans needs to take away from Russia’s Kurdish play is that they are not the only game in town, and that their leverage over the Kurds is limited. The Kurds have options, and in Russia, the PYD and PKK see a patron with extensive experience—and without the best interests of the United States at heart.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/vladimir-putin-godfather-kurdistan-15358
Long (4 page) article with a lot of interesting background information on Russian--Kurd relations. I would think Iranian concerns with an autonomous Kurdistan may eventually pose the same sort of dilemma for Russia as the west has with Turkey.
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