THE PEOPLES’ LEADER
In the past, the geostrategic position of Kurdistan had wetted appetites, which had made the country a pawn in the struggles over the distribution of resources, wars and state terror. This is still true today and goes back far into early history as Kurdistan had been exposed to attacks and raids by external powers at all times.
The terror regimes of the Assyrian and Scythian Empires between 1000 and 1300 BC and the campaign of conquest by Alexander the Great are the best known examples. The Arab conquest was followed by the Islamization of Kurdistan. Much as Islam understands itself as a religion of peace, at its heart it has always been an ideology of conquest of the Arab nation, which was able to spread quickly in Kurdistan. Islam proceeded into the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros mountains. Tribes that put up resistance were exterminated.
In 1000 AD Islam had hit its peak. Then, in the 13th and 14th centuries the Mongols invaded Kurdistan. Flight and displacement followed.
After the battle of Chaldiran in 1514, which saw the Ottomans come off as victors, the natural eastern border of the empire was shifted further eastward. The treaty of Qasr-e Shirin officially established the Iranian and Turkish borders and concluded the partition of Kurdistan, which has continued into the present. Mesopotamia and the Kurds found themselves for the most part within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Until 1800 a relative peace had prevailed between the Ottomans and the Kurdish principalities, which was based on the Sunni denomination of Islam that they had in common.
Alevitic and Zoroastrian Kurds, however, were defiant and took to resistance in the mountains. After 1800 until the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Kurdistan was shaken by numerous rebellions, which were usually bloodily crushed. After the end of the Ottomans the Kurdish partition was even further deepened, exacerbating the atmosphere of violence.
The rising imperialist powers Britain and France redrew the boundaries in the Middle East and gave Kurdistan under the rule of the Turkish republic, the Iranian peacock throne, the Iraqi monarchy and the Syrian-French regime.
Under the impression of the loss of a large part of its former territories, Turkey switched over to a strict policy of assimilation In order to enforce the unity of the remaining parts of the former empire in this way. All indications of the existence of a culture other than the Turkish were to be exterminated. They even banned the use of the Kurdish language.
The aspiring Pahlavi dynasty in Iran proceeded in the same way. The rebellion of the Kurdish tribal leader Simko Shikak from Urmiye and the emancipation struggle of the Kurdish re-public of Mahabad were crushed in blood. The Shah established a terror regime in the spirit of the nationalist-fascist epoch at the beginning of the 20th century.
In the Iraqi and Syrian parts of Kurdistan Britain and France suppressed the Kurdish emancipation efforts with the help of their Arab proxies. Here, too, a bloody colonial regime was established
