Shukriya Bradost, Iranian Kurdish security analyst, non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, and a regular contributor to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, spoke to a January 27 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes her comments:
The campaign against the Kurds that began under the Safavid Empire continued under the “Qajar Empire, then by Pahlavi, [and] after Pahlavi by [the] Islamic regime of Iran.”
The struggle for Kurdish rights in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria garnered attention as the tumult in the Middle East unfolded, but the Kurds in the Iranian part of Kurdistan who have fought for their rights in the region the longest have largely been ignored by the U.S. and the West. This month marked the 79th anniversary of the establishment of the first Iranian Kurdistan Republic in 1946, the so-called “Mahabad Republic.” Its short-lived modern, secular government surrendered to the Pahlavi monarchy under Mohammad Reza Shah. However, the root cause of the Kurdish struggle in Iran has its origins in the early 17th century under the Safavid Empire, whose ruler targeted ethnic Sunni Kurds for forced conversion to Shia Islam.
Western academia and research remained silent regarding the first genocide committed against the Kurds by the Safavid ruler in the 17th century “because [the West was] allied with the Safavid Shia Empire against [the] Ottoman Sunni Empire.” The international community’s silence regarding the discrimination and dehumanization of Kurds in Safavid publications during that period continues until the present day.
Following the Safavid genocide against the Kurds, Azeri Turks were brought into the Kurdish region to change the demography. Today the region is one of Iran’s national security problems. The Azeri Turks are Shia and as such are “closer to the [Shiite] central government” and control more of the “power, economy, and military.” The Iranian regime uses this imbalance to sow division between the Azeri ethnic group and the Sunni Kurds. The campaign against the Kurds that began under the Safavid Empire continued under the “Qajar Empire, then by Pahlavi, [and] after Pahlavi by [the] Islamic regime of Iran.”
When the Iranian Constitution of 1906 was established, it was “supposed to be a more modern constitution,” but the “nation of Iran” was defined as Shia, which excluded the Sunni Kurds. This “exclusive” political system continued under Pahlavi’s monarchy. Pahlavi established Iran as an “incomplete national state” because it excluded the Kurds on religious as well as ethnic grounds.
The Iranian parliament passed a law under Reza Shah Pahlavi that continued in force under the rule of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aiming to assimilate the Kurdish ethnic group.
The Iranian parliament passed a law under Reza Shah Pahlavi that continued in force under the rule of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aiming to assimilate the Kurdish ethnic group, its culture, and language into a “united Iran with one identity.” The law marked a significant departure from the ancient Persian Empire’s “diverse society” of different ethnic and religious groups. The monarchy’s incomplete nation-state policy was influenced by the Berlin Circle, a group of “Iranian intelligentsia” who introduced the “unification” of ethnic groups into one “[dominant] ethnic group” of Persian identity.
The 1979 Iranian revolution offered an opportunity for ethnic groups to assert their rights. The Kurds sought “freedom for Iran and autonomy for Kurds.” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s leader, initially received support from varied ethnic groups when he pronounced that as Muslims, all the groups “have the same right.” It was only after he assumed power that he “declared jihad against Kurds,” rejecting their autonomy, and calling them “infidel.” Khomeini became “the first Muslim leader” in world history to declare jihad “against his own Muslim population in Iran.”
When the identities of ethnic groups are subsumed to the “state’s national identity,” their demands for recognition are deemed a threat to “state national security.” Between 1979 and 1983, “more than 10,000 [Iranian] Kurds were killed.” In 1983, the Kurdish Peshmerga military groups departed Iranian Kurdistan for Iraqi Kurdistan, changing their strategy in their war against the Iranian regime. Instead of using military force, they concentrated on changing “civic society inside of Iran.”
The regime has since doubled down on its propaganda by portraying the Kurds as a “terrorist group, a separatist group” threatening Iran’s territorial integrity.
Today, the “Iranian Kurdish party and Iranian Kurdistan [has] become the center for Iranian opposition.” The regime focuses its attacks there because the opposition’s “successful mobilizations” are “the [Achilles’] heel of the Islamic regime.” In 2022, Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died at the hands of the Islamic Republic after being arrested by the regime’s modesty police. The cohesive response of Iranians to her death was the first time the Iranian population demonstrated solidarity with the Kurds. Moreover, it “was a political earthquake for [the] Iranian regime.” The regime has since doubled down on its propaganda by portraying the Kurds as a “terrorist group, a separatist group” threatening Iran’s territorial integrity.
The regime is also trying to undermine Kurdish nationalistic sentiment by promoting radical Islamism among the secular Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, and the Kurds in Turkey and Syria. There is even a “Salafi Islamic movement in Iranian Kurdistan” where the regime pays mosques to “spread the ideology among Kurds.” The regime has taken to targeting the Iranian diaspora support for the movement by investing a million dollars in the ayatollah’s call for a “social media jihad” attacking Kurdish identity and its political party.
Despite the ayatollah’s rhetoric and the regime’s strategy, the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that arose in response to Amini’s death continues and has “at least [changed] part of Iranian opinion about Kurds in Iran.” The Kurds’ “Iranian Renaissance” against the Islamic Republic is not only “against this Islamic fundamental[ist] regime,” but also exists to advance the idea of a “more democratic, more secular society” in Iran that accepts a variety of ethnic identities.
