International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

The Kurds are the largest non-state nation in West Asia, and their homeland, Kurdistan, remains distributed mainly among Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, and to a lesser extent in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Syria. Five to six million Kurds, forming 10 percent of Iran's population, still live in Iran and strive to carve out their autonomous existence. Despite the changes in ideology and regimes, Iranian nationalism and Kurdish identities have repeatedly clashed since 1945. During World War I, Kurdish leaders announced independence, taking advantage of Iran's political weakness. Ismael Agha established authority in the west of the Lake Urmia zone from 1918 to 1922, and Jafar Sultan began to expand his control between Marivan and Halabja. Reza Khan, leader of the Iran empire, suppressed the efforts at autonomy. Ismael Agha was killed in 1930 and hundreds of Kurdish chiefs were deported and exiled. During World War II, when Allied troops entered Iran in 1941, the Kurdish movement gathered momentum under Hama Rashid from Baneh, who was finally driven out in late 1944 by the Persian army. Meanwhile, from 1942 onwards, the Society for the Revival of Kurdistan, popularly known as Komala (Kurdish for society), developed in Mahabad in Iran. Principally an urban bourgeois body with a small nationalist clergy and landed aristocracy, Komala became the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1945 with the program ... log in or subscribe to read full text